Success Leaves Clues: Ep 294 - The Mindset Behind Breakthrough Leadership with guest Hugh Chow, CEO at ventureLAB

Narrator: Welcome to the Success Leaves Clues podcast with Robin Bailey and Al MacDonald. Have you ever wondered what makes someone successful? What are they doing that's different? How do they achieve greatness? We believe that Success Leaves Clues. In this series, we are interviewing very successful people from different walks of life to hear their stories. We'd like to remember, remind our listeners that the views expressed in this podcast are those of our guests and not necessarily those shared by our hosts. Today's episode is sponsored by Life and Legacy Advisory Group. Discover our commitment to our clients at Life and Legacy. Building wealth, securing your family's future, giving back and creating a lasting legacy are not just values, but a way of life. Let us guide you toward a future aligned with what matters most to you. We're also brought to you by ARIA Benefits. If you're a business leader challenged with talent, attraction, employee engagement or supporting mental health, we can help use your benefits package as the key to unlock your workforce. Now, here's your hosts, Robin Bailey and Al MacDonald.

Host: Welcome back to the Success Leaves Clues podcast. I'm your host, Robin Bailey, back at it again with my co host, Al MacDonald. Al, we're getting some pretty good introductions these days. Pretty excited about how having today's podcast. What are you saying?

Al MacDonald: Absolutely, yeah. Today's guest is no exception and just reiterates and builds on the, you know, we've talked about a number of times. Good people. No good people. Today is no exception. So yes, I'm sure that you're excited and I'm excited to talk to, uh, our guest today.

Host: Well, joining us is quite a legend, Hugh Chow. And Hugh is the CEO of Venture Lab, a global innovation leader with more than 30 years of experience in technology, investment, sustainability, governance and entrepreneurship. An inventor with 12, yes, 12 international patents from his time at. And Hugh, I might get this wrong. ATI Technologies.

Hugh Chow: That is correct.

Host: Okay, good. And Hugh later co founded VIXS Systems, helping it grow into a global technology company with over 500 patents, 8 R&D centers worldwide, and more than 500 million in lifetime revenue. Today, through his work at Venture Lab, Hugh is focused focused on helping founders scale breakthrough technologies while advancing innovation, collaboration and sustainable impact. Hugh is also grateful to have had the opportunity to be at the helm of the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology research institution where 600 plus full time researchers get to work every day to turn advanced research into some of the most impactful applications for people and business on a daily basis. Hugh, welcome to the show. First of all, this is a real pleasure for us.

Hugh Chow: A, uh, pleasure is all mine. Thank you for having me, Al and Robin and Hugh.

Host: Before we get started, I wanted to thank our mutual friend Amanda Small for this introduction. And Amanda, I think I may have mentioned to you, last time we chatted at our podcast awards, she received a pretty important award, one that is very special to me. It's in my mum's honor. When my mom passed away, we created the Gene Bailey Legacy Award. And it was just Amanda was, I knew was the choice all year. I had to wait and keep it a secret, but it was well deserved. And she speaks so highly of you. And when we were chatting recently, that feeling was reciprocated. You were speaking very highly of her. And both of you told us about a moment that I thought would be worth sharing here on the podcast. And Amanda just pointed out that you had this really unique skill of seeing talent in people very early on, and maybe those people necessarily didn't see it in themselves just yet. And I think I had said when we first chatted that I had framed it as you were willing to take bets and you kind of challenged that answer and you had a bit of a different answer about what you thought that was. So I'd love to just chat about that a little bit to get us started.

Hugh Chow: Sure, sure, love to. And, uh, first thing first, congratulations to Amanda for receiving Jean Bailey Award. I think it's a sign for more than just who she is, but, you know, representative of humility and kindness to people and all things that we all want human beings to be, and it's really great. I think she more than deserved that. I mean, I've known AMANDA for over 10 years now, and artists by training, if I recall correctly. And being new to Canada, I think she was here because of her husband. And it's really trying to figure out where life in Canada may take her. Right. So, but at the time, you know, I ran in other innovation organizations, which is quite sizable too. Uh, also have about 5, 600 researchers spanning Vancouver, Toronto and some even overseas. And we were barely in need for a talent specialist. So what it really means is that, you know, if you like most business, but I think it's more the case if you're in innovations. It's really about people's mind and not just about all the math that can do. It's about mindset, too. It's about being innovative. It's about challenging the status quo. It's about relentless and tenacity and a lot of attributes. Makes a good researcher not just research, but turning research into actual application that change people's Lives. So what I saw in the matter was someone who really understand people, who connect well with people. Now, the reason why I challenge the notion of taking a bath, it's something, you know, I like to go back to an old Chinese saying in English. What it really means is that you have a great horse, but you also need a great trainer and someone who can identify a great horse. Now, you can also have that great person. But if there's no horses to choose from, then it doesn't yield any result and vice versa. So I think it really comes to this synergy between the two. And I think that, you know, taking bet is almost like, oh, I may lose, and I'm taking a chance. I think at the end of the day, what I'm after is win, win on both sides. My organization got stronger because having someone like Amanda at the same time, I've learned from people around me as well. That includes Amanda and many others, and up to today would be including Alan, Robin as well. And I think it's a lifetime of learning and lifetime of meeting new people, lifetime of absorbing what other people would like to offer you. And I think it was one of the many people that I have brought on to the organizations. But I think that I should say, you know, not hindsight. I should say that I believed dearly that a man that was going to do great things. But then we kind of parted our separate way, took on different challenges. But 10 years later, looking back, I was right. Damn right.

Host: You were 100% right. And, Hugh, what's cool about this whole scenario and us doing a podcast together and meeting and having a conversation is I get to be the one to tell you what an impact you had on her life. Because when we're sitting there and having a conversation with Amanda and when she starts talking about who you were and willing to take a chance on her when she didn't necessarily know what she was going to happen in her career. And you're right, she's gone on to do amazing things. But it's so cool for me to be a spectator and talking with you and knowing that you had that impact on this person's life. So I, uh. That wasn't part of what I wanted to talk to you on the podcast, but it just. I just thought it was so important to bring up, because I think that's really important. As business leaders, we're all sitting here running companies, and you think about these interactions that you have with people, you know, you hire or you just interact with, and you don't realize sometimes that the impact, and that can be a really positive impact, but if we're not careful, that can be a negative impact. So I think it's very important to be cognizant of that. You can have these wonderful impacts on people and see them go on to do great things. So I wanted to start there, but now I wanted to dive into the meat and potatoes of the podcast. Because going through your bio, I mean, you have had such a rare career arc, right? Like you've gone from, you know, inventor and an engineering executive, a founder, an investor, a, uh, board, you know, now CEO of Venture Lab. I mean, you name it, you've kind of done it. When you look back, can you talk to us about what were the pivotal moments that shaped how you think about innovation and leadership and what you bring to the current company that you're at now?

Hugh Chow: Well, let me continue with the thoughts about meeting people. And really, we are all, some of, uh, all the people that we've met in our life, if you believe in that. When I graduated from college in Hong Kong, at the time, semiconductor was not the thing. Unlike today, everybody's talking about, you know, GPU chip and this and that. But for some reason, I was really into designing chips and building chips. So when there's no opportunity in Asia, I took the chance to go to the US and get my graduate degree. It ran into a time when the economy was not doing great. It was the elder bush kind of period. So just when I was dining out, kind of go, wow, you know what? It doesn't look like good education is going to get you anywhere. I got a call from a friend of my brother in Toronto, and the guy gave me a call, Talked to me 15 minutes on the phone and go, hey, listen, why don't you come over and start? And I believe, I remember I arrived on Friday and started on Monday, and there was ati. It was a very small company at the time. But then, you know, 10 years later, uh, it was, everybody today knows about Nvidia. Way back when we were number one in industry, Nvidia was number two when it comes to GPU. But that opportunity gave me a chance to see how quickly a company can grow in the tech sector, especially in microchip. And years later, I ran into the hiring manager again, and I asked them, I go, hey, you know, similar question that you asked me. I asked him, I go, well, what do you see in me that gave you the courage to hire a guy over the phone over 15 minutes, phone call, and I go, wow, is it because you know, I got like perfect grades, you know, for my whatever. And he go, well, you know, it's not really that. Sorry if I'm gonna deflay your ego. If I hire you and you fly over here, then the plane ticket's on you. But if I fly you over here, the interview, then the plane ticket's on me. So I just took the cheap way to get you here. And if I don't like you, I just get you fired. Okay. But I think in any situations, whether it's an employment or business deal, it really has to come down to win Win, right? I have to be the right person and the job has the right job for me. I think that we find a match. And the companies obviously did really well. By the time that I left it, it was a five billion dollar company. And I also was benefited from that as well. So, yeah, I mean, that's really how I get my career started. And also believing that an immigrant with good educations, great technical backgrounds, and foolish enough to believe in himself, then you can actually go and build your own company. And that really gave me the courage to start my own company back in 2001. That's what it is. So I think it really comes down to every person you meet in your life journey, in your career journey or professional journey. It's almost like a door. All it takes is that having the courage to walk through it and figure out what's on the other side. And if you see something you like, you keep opening Linux door and the door after that and so on. And that's really how I not just walk my professional life and how I live my own life too. It's been interesting so far.

Host: So yeah, I'd say it's been interesting just reading through your bio, but I love that perspective of just every person adds to that experience. And I'm so glad you added Al and myself to that as well. So hopefully that benefits you and opens another door. But I think that's just a wonderful perspective and something, uh, unique that we haven't heard before. So I think the audience will really appreciate that as well.

Al MacDonald: Hugh, one of the things I've heard you say already that I really like and I think people should take note of, you talked about you didn't really see things as a bet, and a bet kind of implies win or lose, but you didn't really look at it that way. You looked at it as, you know, there was something to be gained regardless. And then you also use the phrase win win a little bit later on in your Answer, which again is, I think it's related to that in terms of, you know, if there's something in it for everyone and you can again, it's not just a zero sum type of thing. It's something that everyone can learn from and win from, essentially. So I hope people take note of that, uh, because I picked up on that and I thought that's really important. The word innovation has come up quite a bit so far. It came up in your bio, came up in your career path. It's obviously a big part of your career. Can you talk a little bit about what you think from your experience? Innovation actually means what, what drives it, and maybe what people get wrong sometimes about it. And maybe you can reframe it in a little bit different perspective for people.

Hugh Chow: Great question, Al. And I would never say anything about right or wrong. In fact, I remember when I was just being appointed as a CEO at Ashtree, the applied science and genetic research institute, in my first town hall, and I told my research team m and I would say, this is what I said to them. I go, if human didn't innovate, we would still be trying to make fire. So I think you can call that being not satisfied, dissatisfied with status quo, or having too much free time. But I think it's really about seeing what's around us and having the desire and the willingness to change it. And I think that going back to, you know, no loser and no right or wrong is that, uh, it really comes down to if you believe in certain things and you gave it a try, you either succeed or you learn. You're gonna learn from the experience whichever way it goes, so that your next try is gonna be better and your time runs out, write it down, someone's gonna benefit from it. And I think that, you know, even what we do today, we went to school many of the article just hundreds of years ago. It's full of wisdom. People try different things and they have the courtesy to write them down. So we all benefit from that. So I think it's not just for me, one person, or for anybody. It's really for the common goods and adventure. Uh, lab, we see founders every day. We have passionate founders. They believe in the technology, they believe in the product. They have a lot of the problems that we see on a daily basis can be solved. And one thing that I keep reminding them is that, you know what, not all of you will see the product all the way to the end. You can do all your market research, you can do all your analytics, you can do all Your product market fit and all this stuff. But the world is a changing place. Change is only constant. But I think because of that change that makes our life interesting and also because of the change that we really need innovations on a daily basis. Now you can argue that, well, you know, at what cost? I would say at all costs. Otherwise, you know, back to what I said in the beginning, we would be still trying to make fire as far as Silsam gain. You know, I do think that once you mix the concept of capitalism, um, and some people can easily argue that, you know, now more and more we do see the zero sum game being played out in more and more places. I'm not a believer of that. I think that obviously one cabinet of capitalism will tell you that, you know, what the market will adjust for itself. But I'm a believer that I have to know when is enough. And I think that there has to be enough for everybody. And I think that that forms the basis of sustainability. And I think that, you know, if we can all lift each other up, this is a sustainable process. If we leave some people behind, it's not great for the future. And especially people like myself have three kids and I want to make sure that we don't deplete it the world and all the goodwills around us and save a little bit for them and for everybody.

Al MacDonald: I mean, you said so much there and so many good things. And part of what you said reminds me of, um, when we just spoke earlier to another podcast guest and that is how you framed. You said, you know, you get success or you get to learn. And you didn't use the word failure in there. And, you know, he talked about and delivered kind of that same message, which was, it's not really failure if you're learning something. You may not get exactly what you thought you were going to get, but you can still learn something. So I love that and I love the message you talked about with sustainability too, and, you know, lifting everyone up and not leaving people behind. So I think that's really important. Hopefully, again, a couple of really key points that I hope people will focus on and take away from your answer, Hugh.

Host: As you know, we're a Canadian podcast. We love supporting our country that we're very proud of. Would love to talk because you have a little bit of a global perspective, I think, just based on your career and what you've done. Let's talk about any advantages that Canada might have in innovation right now. And, you know, are, uh, there areas where we're still playing smaller than we should be.

Hugh Chow: We are incredibly strong in innovation despite the fact that last few years I think our uh, Overall rating among G7 or G20 has been sliding a little bit. We have a very strong base and we don't have to look very far. Just look at in AI, the hottest topic on the planet. You know who is the last Nobel Prize winner? It's Canadian. And we're now even committing ourselves to a Canadian owned rocket. We have a very strong government policy now, refocusing ourselves on buying Canada and data sovereignty and DU and all these. This is an important topic and not just for Canada but for people in the tech industry because we do see founders every day working on these issues. Now it's actually more important for Canada than for our uh, cousin down south that we remain a global citizen. Because even though we have one of the largest country on the planet, we have some of the most resource rich supply. We have a very small market and for us to build any business that is meaningful and significant, we can have to take advantage of the supply chain elsewhere. Of course we have our own spring. We also have to make sure that we access the market where we can get the most economic benefits. And I think for many years we were doing that and I think that it's a period of time that we let up on that a little bit. So uh, I think right now it's very encouraging to see the current government is doubling down on all that and working. Obviously we'll continue to work with our partner in the United States as well as Europe and then elsewhere also. And coming back to talk about my personal experience and I want to pick up on where I left it about on my own startup. Right. It was a very fortunate journey as well. But what I want to talk about there is that 13 years after I started the company I uh, took it public onto the Toronto Stock Exchange main board. At that time we were booking about $100 million revenue a year. Zero dollar was to Canadian customers. So it doesn't mean that, you know, hey, why aren't you not building a product for Canadians? No, it's just I think Canada has a place in the global supply chain. There's certain things we're really good at, there's certain things we buy from people who are better at it. It's a very complex product. 85% of our product goes to Japan and some in US, some in Europe. And so if we didn't go global we wouldn't have a company. But it doesn't mean that every company must go global. Right? We have to have the mindset to say to the founders, and we do do that to many of our founders at Venture Labs to say, hey, listen, uh, don't confine yourself to Ontario or to Canada just because you're here. Yes, this is a great country. You have some of the greatest educations, higher education institutions, some of the world top research institute. There are areas where we can look eye to, uh, eye against the US and many other developed countries. But when it comes to developing products and businesses, the world is a big place. So Right now at VentureLab, we have partners in 22 countries and counting. And sometimes it can be with some very unsuspected place as well. Like for example, we have some partnerships going on with Serbia. Obviously, you know, all the usually suspect the us, Japan, the Taiwan, Korea, the China, the uk. But every other country has its own uniqueness and sometimes we just can't gloss over it. And having that global mindset instill into the founders early on is very important. And don't forget, they're also foreign investors too. And it's all great for Canada because we bring FDI and sometimes even bring a team to come here just because we have a very favorable environment for research, for advanced manufacturing. So that's even better. That brings in talent. So I think, um, I owe a lot of what I know today many of my privilege that I enjoy on a daily basis, personally, professionally, because of Canada. And I've been here for 35 years and I want to be able to do everything that I can to make sure that people who are coming after me can enjoy the same benefits and see the same opportunity.

Host: You say so much in every answer, Hugh. I feel like we could probably have a podcast on every question that we ask you. You know, there's so much to dig into. But I love what you say because, you know, I was one of three kids to immigrant parents, like a lot of people who grew up in Canada, and we've been very fortunate to grow up here. It's a great country. And, and it's funny, just as I was growing up in my career, you know, you would always hear about Silicon Valley and if you wanted to be in tech, that's where you had to be. And you know, it's so refreshing, especially I have a lot of clients in tech now. There's Tech Talent north coming up. There's the Tech Week next week. So there's so much tech in Toronto. And for someone who didn't grow up in tech, I grew up in employee benefits. It's just so Cool to hear that there's so many opportunities and we are really one of the greatest places on earth to be involved in tech. But I appreciate your perspective as well for younger founders to think globally and becoming that global citizen. Because you're right, we have a, a certain size market in Canada, but there's markets beyond that. And I don't think there's anything wrong with having the perspective of uh, I'm going to grow in Canada, this is a great place to be, I'm going to hire and bring in talent into Canada. But we have this global market out there and I think that's a really important perspective for people to hear. So I appreciate you sharing that.

Hugh Chow: Yeah, I mean you also point up a great point, Robin, is the microchip industry in itself. Most Canadians don't even know we have the largest community of now everybody knows gpu. We have the largest community of GPU designers outside of Silicon Valley. As a Canadian, we don't know that. We don't talk about that. You know, we love how I do and then our uh, Tim Horns and everything else but. And our mining industry as well. But I think again it all because of uh, we have great higher education institutions, but just because we don't have a sizable market oftentimes you hear this a lot in the ecosystems that oh, you know, how come we're so slow in commercializing some of the advanced research? Right. We are very good in cramping our uh, world class research. But then when it comes to commercializations, that's where we fell short. Of course I can go on to talk about the capital market as well in Canada is different than that in the US but really it's about the sensitivity of accessing the market. Right. I mean you can have the greatest things, but you don't know how to sell it and send it to the market and let the market appreciate what you have, then we're selling ourselves short. And I think it's Canadian. We're always known to be humble and reserved, but sometimes it pays to be the otherwise.

Al MacDonald: Hey, uh, Hud, if someone were to come to you and say where do you think the biggest opportunity in terms of maybe a sector, an industry or where maybe it's behind a little bit in innovation and there's this huge opportunity to jump ahead, is there one sector of the economy or one industry or something that you would say, yeah, that's it.

Hugh Chow: Well, I have been around long enough to try not to pick winner. I think that, you know, even though I have many heads, one of those HATS is a VC and I still do investments. But when it comes to investment, what I would do and what we would do, it's really looking at data and numbers and trends and all that. Instead of picking, oh, you know what, I think that's a great industry. Now the other way I'd like to take a different approach to your question is that Adventure Lab here we see a lot of founders, right? So we now been running one of our most successful hard tech, uh, Hardware Catalyst Initiative, 9th Cohort Now. And every time we have over 100 companies applying, you can add them together. You can probably do the math. It's over a thousand companies already applied and every time we took on somewhere between a third or quarter and that just only one of the many programs that we run. I think historically we have thousands of founders come through the door. And they are not just early stage. Some are early stage and later stage. Even today we serve like hundreds of them actively. We do see that they tend to be three categories that we see a lot of quality farmers, a lot of great technology and good business plan. One has to do with hardware or hard tech. So it's the opposite of SaaS, which was really popular five, ten years ago. And nowadays all the progression, uh, in AI and people kind of go, wow, you know what, thanks God I didn't put all my eggs in SaaS, right? And hardware is really, if you want to talk about threat that buy AI, uh, hy is one of those things that AI is not going to replace you because it's tangible. And we see a lot of quality startups in that space. And we have a great lab, we have three great labs to support founders doing those kind of products. The other one is obviously AI, but AI, I want to make sure that people don't automatically equate AI to GPU to compute powers. That is the shiny object everybody talks about, that every government talks about. You know, even our previous liberal administration talks about billions of dollars of commitment in building data center. You have down south to talk about, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars. But we see innovators in the infrastructure side as well. For example, what does data center need? Cooling. What does data center need? Power. We have a lot of founders actually working on, uh, those infrastructure innovations as well as interconnects, right? How to make it run more efficiently, lower temperature. And that's the second area. The third area, uh, is the medical technology, not necessarily just life science. We talk about medical device, wearable device. There's a lot of device right now that we wear on a daily basis that monitors our health and also great for those athletes and end users. So I think in one device that I personally like a lot, it's really specifically made for Parkinson's disease patients to help them steady their hand so that they can have more of a quality life, even knowing that, you know, it will probably continue to deteriorate. But anything that helps is going to help them. So, yeah, I mean, we see a lot of these, um, great ideas and technologies, and we do the best we can to make sure that they are successful. But obviously, in reality, some of them may not. But what we do want to see is that they keep trying. And, hey, if this is not going anywhere, market conditions are not right. For example, last year, suddenly the international tariff, you know, just threw a monkey wrench at a lot of people, right? So some of them, they pivot. Some of them will just hunker down, and they all make their own business decision. We have a large group of advisors can help them through business issues, regulatory issues, and other issues. But what we want to make sure is that we give them all the right ingredients and support, and they will come out stronger from the other end.

Host: It's so cool to hear you talk about this, Hugh, because you, you know, you're talking about the next generation of business leaders that are going to be creating what the world looks like for future generations, like, and you're on the forefront of that. That is just so cool. In my mind, that's why I like my job.

Hugh Chow: I mean, I'm not going to retire. This is what I do until I drop down.

Host: Uh, no kidding. I'm looking forward to. We get to hang out sometime because I don't want to have a time limit on our conversations. And we can talk about this more, Hugh. So about, I'm going to say, halfway through our podcast career, Al came to me and he said, listen, I didn't make up this question. I've got this great question. I'd love it, to bring it to the podcast. And he told me what it was. I'm like, oh, that's brilliant. And, you know, 300 episodes in, we've never gotten the same answer twice, so it's kind of cool. So if you're up for it, I'd love for Al to throw. You've already kind of answered it, but maybe there's a different answer there. So, Al, I'll let you take it away.

Hugh Chow: All right. Try me. Try me.

Al MacDonald: Wonderful.

Hugh Chow: Yeah.

Al MacDonald: No, I agree. I think we'll learn some new things from this. A, uh, society Grows great when old persons plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. So maybe you can talk about. And I think, you know, we've already got some insight on the business, but if you want to talk about that more, that is great. But if you want to talk about maybe some personal things, some community things, what proverbial trees are you planting?

Hugh Chow: Well, before I talk about what tree I'm planting, let's talk about which tree, um, I'm hiding under. And I don't often get sentimental, but when I do, I remember my parents. They're not here anymore, especially my father, who was born before the Second World War. And when you grew up in that kind of environment, you can't even think about education. You can only think about survival. And being a long story short, since a very young age, he has only one hand. And with that, you can imagine what kind of tough and determined woman my mother was to marry a guy with one hand. So I had to give my mom a lot of credit for that. And with disability and no education, you know, uh, odd jobs is all you got. In fact, even for odd jobs, you're somewhat unemployed. So he ended up running his own business. Not because that's where more money can be made. It's really out of his unemployable, and it's out of, uh, necessity. So he worked 50 years until he retired. And he only said one thing to us. I'm, um, the youngest of four. And he did exactly that to all of us, make sure that we had great education, something he didn't have. And I do everything that I can to pass it on to all my kids and all the people that I meet in my life as well. That was a very difficult time. If you talk about adversity, that was adversity. And only after I've grown up did I learn that half his siblings didn't make it through the war. So I can't think of any situation tougher than that and how determined one person has to be to finally made a life out of it. And that's this kind of shade that I was under. And when he had no education, he exhausted everything that he got to make sure his kids got great educations. Also have the virtual to remember to pass that on. And I think that pretty much drives many of my decisions in life and career as well. As I said earlier, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to have worked for a great company, build a great company, to venture into areas that I didn't know anything about, venture capital, to be recognized by some of the government officials to be handed with this like hundreds of millions of dollars of annual budget to run the largest research organizations. And now back at the Hammer Venture Lab, also a not for profit, funded by the all four level of the government. And I think that that's very fortunate as far as I'm concerned. And I want to make sure that if I can make sure that opportunities stays open for other people, then I'll do my best to do that. And I think it circle back to when I met Amanda, way back when and people I still remember when we decided to part way and I had this, uh, you can ask her for that and see whether she remembers. She was very, very pregnant. So pregnant that I don't even know how she was able to walk. But we did take a little stroll at Hyde park just next to her house. Just talk about, I'm moving on to my next challenge. And she's trying to think about what she's going to do next. And I basically told her that you're good at what you do, keep at it, and great things will happen. If not, you can learn something phenomenal in the whole process. And she did both. That's great. Good to know.

Al MacDonald: Hugh, that might be one of the more heartfelt answers that we've had. And I'm really glad you shared that story of your parents. And it's obviously pretty clear that that's a big part of who you are today. So really appreciate you sharing that and I think we can all learn from that.

Hugh Chow: I still try to live up to the standard my parents set for me.

Host: So, uh, I will echo Al's sentiments and I really appreciate that you shared that. And I'll just remind you of something that I do remind people occasionally of. You know, we're sitting here recording a podcast. We're having a wonderful conversation, but we're also capturing a moment in time and the vulnerability. And you talked about this earlier as well, the vulnerability that you've just shown. I would hope you would show this episode or this episode would be heard by your kids. You know, you mentioned trying to set a good example. And because you shared that story, I'd love to share one with you as well. About a year before my mom passed away, we knew, you know, it was cancer. So the doctors had given her 12 months. She survived 14. And previous to that, my brother had passed away, and I was the only one born in Canada. So my brother was the family historian. He knew all the family, all the stories. And when he passed away, I felt like I lost all of that. So I had said to my sister, I said, can you put mom in front of the computer? I want to record her story because she was born in 1941 in England, you know, the bombs coming down. And she was telling me the story about hiding underneath the bed, which would have done nothing to protect them. But one thing came out of that, and this is what your story resonated with me. Just the hardship that your parents go through that they keep to themselves because they want to provide you with a better life. I'm having this conversation with my mom, and I find out she didn't know happiness as a child. And it was stunning to me because growing up, I got all the love and attention, as did the other kids, that we needed. And I said, how is it even possible that you didn't, you know, know happiness and love as a child when you were able to give that to me? And I'm amazed when I hear these stories, like your father just said, okay, I'm gonna make it happen. I'm gonna run my own business. Not because that's where the money was, like you said, because that was a necessity. Because here's what I wanna do for my kids. So I really, really do appreciate. I appreciate this. Who. But I appreciate it so much more, knowing a little more about you and you sharing that story. So I know a lot of other people will resonate with this as well. So thank you for sharing your journey. If people want to find out more about what you're doing because you're doing so many cool things, what's the best way for them to reach out and find out more?

Hugh Chow: Oh, it's great. I mean, you can certainly look me up on LinkedIn hunt. There's only one. And, yeah, uh, I want to. Just before I forget, and I want to say I'm sorry about your brother and your mom, but again, you know, I think we all. My story isn't unique. I think we all have great stories, and I think we all find our motivations somewhere. And we are who we are because of the great people we have met, great people who brought us to this world. And I think it's really up to us to do great things, to pass it on to the future generation.

Host: Well, definitely couldn't have said it any better than that. So we'll wrap it up there. That does it for today's episode. We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. If you have any questions for Al or myself, please feel free to give us a call or by joining the conversation on LinkedIn. We saw it here again. Success leaves clues. We'll see you next time.