Name: Forge Digital 2026 Day 2
Uploaded: 2026-09-30T18:33:51.649Z
Duration: 1 h 30 min 24 s
Description: Forge Digital 2026 Day 2

Transcript for "Forge Digital 2026 Day 2": If I was to describe Forge in one word, I would say inspiring. You have real marketers talking about real problems and and real solutions for those problems. One of the biggest takeaways is using the AI agents to our advantage. Find personalization, find better ways to use our data, and just really create better customer experiences. When I think about the future of AI, it's not machines replacing marketers, but a regression to the mean. The fate of great work isn't decided at the idea stage anymore. Ambition and career defining risk meet their faith in the gap between the idea and executing. The technology is just the weapon you wield. The edge, that's on you. The biggest takeaway I'm leaning forward with is AI is here. It's not the future. It is here. And how do we learn to integrate that with our communications, with our clients? The point is to connect with users in a human way. It's not just about spewing information or statistics about what it is that you're trying to sell, but it's about why that product or service matters. Please welcome Bray's chief business officer, Asta Malik. Good morning, everyone. I know it's day three in Las Vegas, so congratulations on being here and upright. Well, mostly. And I see you as I see you on day three, I actually have started recognizing faces. I've seen you in the hallways and sessions and workshops. And speaking of recognizing faces, by a show of hands, I wanna see if you know any of these people that I'm about to show. Margaret Hamilton? One hand. Yay. Great. Radia Perlman. Yeah. No hands. And Kraftwerk. Oh, okay. A few more hands. I expected that from this crowd. And while you may not recognize some of these names, you have likely heard of their achievements. The Apollo mission, the Internet, and the electronic dance music. Turns out, four men dressed like robots in 1978 are the reason why every DJ on this trip is making more than a surgeon. Go figure. The point is we tell the same handful of stories about who we truly know and who gets to make the biggest impact. The ones who end up on a stamp, a statue, they win the popular awards, which by the way is all commendable. But most of history is built by people who never got the statue, but still made a huge impact. They just happened to be in the room when the rules were being rewritten, and they decided to be the ones doing most of that rewriting. Now I know some of you are thinking, but my job isn't going to the moon or inventing Internet and all these things. That is fair. Your job is to reach customers and grow your business. I get that. But we're in an interesting moment in time. And here's the thing about those people that they had in common. None of them chose the moment. The moment showed up and they chose what to do with it. Hamilton put error checking into the Apollo code after being told astronauts never make mistakes. And three minutes prior to the ship that landed, her code is what saved it. Pearlman was handed a network that kept crashing, and she wrote a fix that the Internet still runs on. Kraftwerk picked up machines nobody called instruments and played them anyway. No permission, no set playbook, just a bold decision to go do something. The rule for how our profession works is also being rewritten by people in this room, our community of very ambitious and very bold marketers. Today, we have tools that let us do things that we were considered impossible before. And forgive the excitement, but I think they're pretty fucking cool. The technology matters, but it's not the advantage by itself because everyone in this room can get access to the same tech. Miles Davis had a way of putting it, and I'm gonna give it to you the way he said it. Anyone can play. The note is only 20%. The attitude of the mother effer who plays it is 80%. His words, not mine. I kinda said it. Also, my son went through college this fall, so I no longer have to set a great example, so I can say whatever. So the only limit is our ambition to create and to build. It's not sort of playing what was done before. It's not playing safe and making the same choice again and again. It's not to sort of be slow and not to be boring. And let's just say, let's not be beige. The good news, I've met a lot of you. I've watched you in the workshops this week. And I can tell you, everyone in this room can take the same note and make some something out of it that nobody has seen before. I've seen it myself. It reminds me of Lego. Not because it's a great brand, though it is, but because of something much closer to home. As I said, my son left for college this year. And after eighteen years of running the most personalized nurture campaign that I ever had, I have to reinvent my own engagement strategy with a customer who now only responds to Venmo. But all that aside, we prepared for college and we cleaned out his room, and that meant going through years of memories, lots and lots of tears, and, of course, a lot of Lego. Watching him build Legos over the years taught me something about creativity that I don't think I would have learned any other way. You see, the magic of Lego is the freedom it gives the builder. You can follow the instructions to a tee, or you can dump out a bin of straggler pieces on the floor and build something nobody has ever built before. I've watched both scenarios play out with the same kid. There were times when he liked the instructions and he wanted to kinda, like, make the thing exactly as it is. Like a few months ago, he built a stranger thing set. But for every set he kept, there were many that he tore apart. Sometimes out of frustration, from missing some steps, but most frequently more frequently due to his own curiosity. One day, he would tear down a set to build a city from the ground up. And then the next day, he would break the city down to build something that had no name at all. No diagram, no box, no instruction, just his pure imagination. Which meant that for years, my living room was a minefield. Parents in the room, hands up if you stepped on any one of these. It's painful, but it was all worth it. The mess, the chaos, all of it. Because those little bricks could be anything that he wanted. If you've seen the Lego movie, and if you have kids, you've probably seen it 40 times. I'm sorry. That song is probably playing in your head right now. I'm sorry about that. But you know that everything was not awesome because, lord, business. A villain whose entire plan is to glue every piece into place so that nothing changes, nothing breaks, nothing gets rebuilt, so no creativity and everything looks exactly the same. He says that all I'm asking for is perfection. The Lego companies learned an important lesson here. Twenty years ago, they nearly went bankrupt. And part of the problem was Lord Business or at least his mindset. One build wasn't right answer. One saved them was remembering what the pieces were actually for. To build whatever you wanted and perhaps that the brick wasn't the product. Human creativity was the product. For us marketers, the pieces we have to build with have never been better. And now what we build with them is up to us. But this drive towards creativity and desire to be different really isn't a Lego thing. It's a human thing. Sometimes we want what's popular, then we get it, and then we want ours to be slightly different. Whether it's a limited edition on the world's most iconic bag or the customization craze that turns the world's least desirable, I was gonna say ugliest, but least desirable, Shoo into a global phenomena that also came up with a collaboration with Balenciaga. It's our nature as humans to be drawn to uniqueness. And it's our instinct as marketers to be constantly creating what's different for our customers and for our business. Which is why the best marketers I know don't wait for certainty. Nobody handed Kusama a playbook to say, well, polka dots are gonna be a fantastic idea or they would work. The ambitious marketers try it, build it, they see what happens, and they rebuild. I believe you build certainty through experimentation. I say this to my team all the time. And now that we find ourselves with the tools that enable this kind of experimentation at incredible speed and scale, I have a question for you. What kind of a marketer are you? The one that is bold enough to define the next chapter of your craft or the one that just wants to observe and see how this all shakes out? I think most of you already know the answer. You wouldn't be here otherwise. And if you need proof that this works, you're at the right place. Grace was born from running a race nobody else was running at that time. There was no instruction manual for what the team was about to build. Just a handful of people who knew the way brands talk to customers had to change. That's the builder mindset. It never feels certain. It just feels like a very strong conviction and a lot of pieces on the floor. And Braze is building for a world where there's never been a better time to be a better marketer. Not a good marketer, not a wait and see marketer, but a great one. The kind of mindset is being put to use by my own team. We're building with Braze because we love Braze. Whether we was telling you about the Braze AI smooth operator in the phone booth or building our video on day one opener, running our webinar series and driving more engagement, or inviting all of you to forge, we use Braze. As you came into forge this week, you saw our billboards up and down the strip. Look who's on them. The star is not logos or the product, it's the marketer. On a street where the billboard usually has a magician, a DJ, or a residency, or things I might not stay on the stage. It's the only one where the star is a marketer. These are your peers with a real outcome from a brand you recognize. Of course, that was very, very intentional. We champion the experience makers in this room. Because behind every campaign you've ever admired is someone who decided to take a chance and build it. That's why we're celebrating you this week, and it's our privilege and honor. So before we finish, I wanna leave you with a few things. One, real creativity starts when you put the instructions down. Two, don't wait for certainty. Create it. Three, you all were made for this. And now I'll hand it over to Seth Madeline, longtime marketing executive and the host of Create or Destroy, who will lead a panel of incredibly ambitious industry leaders. Seth, I may have used up all the profanity budget for the day, so you're on your own. But take it away, and I'll see you back in a few. I just wanna say how proud my dear mom would be that my personal brand is so inextricably linked to profanity. Or should I say, fuck yeah, Vegas. How is everyone? Let's give it up for Asla. She did such a great job. Thank you all for being here. And I I I told this story the other day during a master class here. I don't listen to my own podcast because it just would freak me out, but I needed something from it. So I was looking at it on Spotify, and I did see that it had an explicit warning, which kinda made me happy. So you now have an explicit warning, and I will, however, still try to be discreet. Let me introduce the two legends that are about to join me in this conversation. First, Tara Walpert Levy is a tech and media titan. She just left as head of Americas for YouTube a couple of months ago. She's been at Google forever. She is a legend in our business, and she is also a Braze board director. Thomas Renice I think you guys should come out. I don't know. Do you wanna just wait? Like, come on out. I'll talk. You walk. Thomas Verneese, who's yes. Yes. Thomas, who's the CMO at Intuit, was previously the CMO at Uber and Chobani, and he spent a decade with Tara at Google, where amongst many other things, he helped launch Google Pixel. So I couldn't be happier to have you guys here. Although, we couldn't find the legends backstage, so we came out instead. Yeah. No. No. Thank you. We're we're just gonna ad lib the whole way. Perfect. We have a lot to cover and not not so much time, so I'm gonna stop babbling. I wanna start before we address kind of the titular question, which is what's shaping the the future of customer engagement, I wanna get both your perspectives on just and I feel a little pressure to say it this way. What the fuck we mean when we talk about customer engagement? Because I think in today's world, we find ourselves at a point where it's been used to mean so many things and so loosely for so long that maybe it's come to mean and maybe it is everything from a click to a lifelong relationship. And so, Tara, let me start with you. What do you how do you define the phrase? K. You know how I love specificity. So this is awesome even though it wasn't on the sheet. I think interestingly, customer engagement for a long time has been defined by interaction, just straight up interaction. Right? How are you using various channels and things like that? But actually, what I think people are increasingly realizing, ironically, due to technology, is that what customer engagement actually is is a relationship. And the trust and the earned perception of how customers experience your product, your service, your brand over a long period of time. Does that mean that it can't be measured in the moment if it's over a long period of time? I think it can be measured in the moment. Right? You've got, forward looking indicators. Right? And you'll see the data. One of the other beauties of AI is you can actually see much more easily Yeah. Correlation and causation over time. So you can measure it along the way. But I do think brands and marketers need to have patience that, you know, ironically, in our immediacy world, it is actually quite hard to build real relationships in one moment. Yes. Yes. It is. Thomas, what's your tech oh, I I can't add to that definition. I think it's a great definition. In many ways, I think everything, every touch point, every interaction is customer engagement because it is about the relationship, and we know relationships are built over collection of moments, right, over time. And I think in some ways, while everything has changed in thinking about customer engagement, nothing has changed, right? And everything has changed in that, I got we have more we have we have more channels than we've ever had. We have different intermediaries, and expectations have gone up. But at the same time, if you come back to the basics, like, it's first principles. Like, how do you how do you understand your customer, what their needs are, and show up for them in that moment in the way that they need you and deliver value? I want as we get to the end, help me remember that I want to come back to the point that as much as everything has changed, some things have not. Alright. So with that, with with definitions defined, let's let's start by just answering that question. What forces what do you think are, and, Thomas, I'll start with you, are in fact shaping the future of customer engagement. And I think maybe as a follow-up, like, you think the definition of engagement changes moving forward or no, it still adheres to everything is the same, the foundational? Well, Well, I mean, I think there are a number of forces we're all grappling with. Right? From moving from search and keywords to prompts. We're understanding intent now is at such a nuanced level down to the individual because the question can capture so much versus the keyword. Right? And understanding how to respond to that. I think we've gone from a world, particularly having lived at Google for a while, of answers now to actions where people don't just want answers. They want you to do something for them. Right? And so what's that interaction look like when you have to do something for them, not just give them the answer or the insight? I think we're going from personalization to anticipation. Right? And so, like, so much of what we're doing at Intuit is like how do we actually take all these forces and transform our product so that we're able to show up for folks in these ways that meet these higher expectations as I think these greater forces are changing the ways that customers are looking to value from us. And the line between product and customer engagement is blurred. I mean they're all the same now. When you're when you can experience our product off of our product, which we can get to, right, then the whole idea of customer interaction and product are now one and the same. Tara. So I think that's interesting and I I really agree with the points that you're making. I think the only thing I would add is I think the result of a lot of what you're describing is that in some ways brands actually have less control than they have had in the past because there are so many intermediaries between the customer and your brand. Right? Whether that is an agent just giving you information or actually doing something for you as what makes Or a customer who had a bad experience who's sharing it. For for sure. Right? Or or a creator who's talking about your brand in a way you did or did not mean. Yeah. And so I think what that means is figuring out the levers for managing the touch points that you do control, particularly first party relationships, and also how you set yourself up to be best positioned for the ones that you don't control is a really interesting and challenging, moment because you have to be sort of readable by agents and machines and loved by humans. And those are two different skill sets. And bringing them together, I think, requires both sort of a distinct set of tech tools, but also the judgment and creativity and originality that a lot of the folks on stage have been talking about. That's a great segue to to the next question, but I wanna ask you guys you kind of didn't answer the question. Right? So So I'm gonna ask you to, like you gave great answers to a different question. We're media trained. We're the same way to answer the question. Never ask the answer the question. Just say what you wanna say. What what forces are changing? You talked about the change. Great answers. Bravo. What forces are driving the change? And we all know AI. Right? And, of course, and I don't mean to I don't say that dismissively, but is there something beyond technology or some things that you think might be driving it? I mean, often there's a couple things. I would expand on the definition of technology because I think it's AI, social media, customer touch point distribution, sort of our phones, all of the things that we know that have amped up the volume of interaction and put more pressure on the ability to deliver value and breakthrough with that. And the other thing I would say that's very relevant or resonant in my mind is trust is eroding in a lot of the places that it once existed in our life. Right? In institutions, in governments, in a whole variety of places. And so the way that people react to something from a corporation or a brand has a lot more more pressure on it. And I think both the ability to be sort of authentic and deliver real value in the right moment as a brand and also to tap into the new sources of credibility and trust, whether that is creators or service providers or in COVID, it was often health care providers or actually religious leaders. That opens up a whole other expanse, that that I think people didn't have to think as heavily about when people trusted more. I couldn't agree more on the concept and the importance of trust, and I'd love to come back to that one. And I love the push on the forces. And I wonder if one of the things, and I think it's related to trust and driven a lot by AI, is the desire for greater connectivity. Like, I think the more the world has become polarized and fragmented, the more people want to be seen and connected. And whether that's to their pod, to their world, even to their their brands. Right? They want their brands to see them Yeah. And know them and connect to them or connect to people in that community with their brands. Brands. They want some brands too. Yes. The ones that they value and they want in their lives, they want to feel connected to. And I think connectivity is an important part of this. And I think AI plays an incredible role in that, but I think coming back to the role of humanity and the human connection and real life experiences, I think those forces are gonna be even greater, for brands and the technology itself. And do you think that's a reaction our human reaction to this new machine era? Or would we want that regardless? I'm not sure the answer matters, but I'm curious. I mean, I think it's an intrinsic. Right? And at the end of the day, we're still all humans. And hopefully, this technology will not challenge that or change that. And so I think there's an element of, well, this is just intrinsically who we are. And my when I'm hopeful about AI, I hope it it helps us see the importance of the humanity in in us so that we go back to reinforcing that and the technology plays its role but helps us then enhance the way we connect to each other as people. And if brands lean into that, I think you can really differentiate yourself. I love that you both brought the the answer back to and this goes actually, Thomas, to your first answer, which is as much changes, things stay the same. Fundamental human needs and wants, and while those may evolve, serving those fundamental human needs and wants remains the job, not just of marketing, but of business. Yep. Right? Value is created by the problems you solve and how well you solve them. And I love, Tara, that you you talked about trust, which does become the segue to the next question, which is the engagement challenge, which is a mighty, mighty one as touch points have expanded as, you know, it's I think it's trite to even talk about a funnel at this point, but it's still a useful construct. We're no longer pushing people through something that has any semblance to the linear, but our task is to meet them where they are. But when they include in a way that we've barely scratched the surface of machines, which you brought up, and not humans, How does the challenge change? And do we need to begin to bifurcate the way we approach trust, which is trust for the human and trust from the agent? Trust for as as the agent interprets trust. Tara, why don't you start? It's a very big question. Well, you guys are big thinkers. So I wanna make sure I actually answer the exact question. So you I'll I'll let you know. Why? Because I was like following on it. This is also interesting. And give me the the heart of the question one more time is I wasn't listening. I think it was basically about, can you approach a world that has both agent choice and human choice in the same way and what that How do you? Yeah. How do you do that? And interestingly, I guess I'd say a couple of things. One, I think brands are actually more important than ever in this world because if you can stop the person from going to the agent because they know and love your brand, that is a way easier place to be and better place to be and a stronger way to drive engagement and results than having to go through the machines. But interestingly, what it might do to the point of some things are actually the same things just reorganize, is it might take what we've always thought about, like, the functional benefits of a brand. Right? And the emotional benefits of a brand and simply make them more clearly bifurcated in the sense that your functional benefits, when the agent is likely to look for, includes a lot of functional benefits. Yeah. Is it cheaper? Is it faster? Is it better? What do people say about it? And yet, my experience has been their ability to really read what humans want and love and care about and whether someone is going to, you know, feel an emotional pull when you see it is not as strong. And so we've always thought about both sides of that equation in the marketing. And perhaps there's just one additional step of sort of lining it up even more cleanly to make sure the right benefits are coming through the right channels in a meaningful way. So I couldn't agree more that brand is even more relevant now than ever in this conversation. I just wanna point out, Thomas has said that two or three times that he couldn't agree more with you. He probably said it once to him. I'm just saying. I think I was I don't know about you. I think I was very deep in in in many of my comments. We go way back. You know? We do. He he knows I like you and I think he's not my comment. He's much more confident than I am. I don't need to give him that same assurance. But I do disagree with one point you made. No. No. I agree with that. I think brand is as relevant for AI as it is for the humans. And I think we're all starting to figure out how these LLMs work, including the LLMs themselves. So I don't, you know, profess to be expert on this. But I have to believe with with AI, with the LLMs, like, if they're picking up signals on your brand and how it's showing up in Reddit forms. Right? And who's talking about what with what affinity or what sentiment? Is it coming up in positive ways or negative ways? We know that influences how then we show up, right, in props and prop results or GEO or whatever you want to call it. And so your brand is really relevant from the standpoint of, like, getting AI to pay attention to you in a positive way and to everything you said, we want the humans to be looking for our brands, to have a direct relationship with our brands. And if the bots are not surfacing our brands, to say, well, why isn't QuickBooks in that answer for small businesses? I would expect it to be there. Right? Or they give you a list of brands to think about and a recommendation, and you're obviously the one they're gonna pick because of the relationship you have with them. So I think it works on both ends. So, Thomas, I could not agree. It's about time. And I think the the nuance that you're pointing out, which makes us not actually disagree at all, is that I think of that as, like, in an indirect management of the brand versus, like, the brand writing on Reddit, right, or things like that. But you're a 100% right that both listening, tracking, and responding. And this, I think, comes back to also who are the sources. Right. Right? Because the other massive, you know, GAO source is YouTube. And what is viewed as, influential on YouTube is creators. And why? Because creators have trust with with consumers. And brands, I think, are actually only at the very beginning of even considering that, and moving that forward. So I wanna get tactical for the audience, but I I have a follow-up that I'm in a state and then we're gonna move past it because I want people to consider it. You both talked after the session is over, you both talked about the incremental importance of brands. As I listened to you talk, it raised for me the question, what about them? Right? What about the brand? And I think I think we can sometimes paint with a broad brush and say brand, but brand is, of course, the sum total of many parts, and we have to begin to diagnose, interrogate What about the brand will be most important to whom moving forward? Human machine. And so I if we had more time, we'd dive into that, but I think it's worth considering that. Okay. Tactical. For the many people, if not everyone in this audience who's running engagement day to day, I wonder if you guys can can offer both a big mistake that you're seeing people across the marketing landscape, the business and enterprise landscape make when it comes to engagement. Maybe it's that everything's changed and this has changed too. And then looking forward, because this is a future forward conversation, one thing, like, if I could only provide one piece of advice to you guys before this is over, here's what it would be to engage more and more deeply better. K. So I'm gonna say, actually, one of the things that that was in a brief keynote, maybe it was in multiple that that I loved was they talked about the value of the solutions in giving you all more time to think. And I would say, honestly, that is both the biggest mistake I see and the biggest advice I would give, which is the AI revolution can allow you to do so much more and people are so excited about that and that's awesome. But you can really get on that treadmill of, like, only being in the nuts and bolts of sort of the data and the optimization. And that's a mistake because the value of it isn't taking so much of that off your plate because a lot of the quant and other various things like that, the machines can do better. And using that to really, like, sense check what's happening against your own judgment, your own creativity, and even saying, am I asking asking the tool or the solution the right question. Because I think in a world that it has all the qualities that we just described, right, it's taste, it's judgment, and it's creativity that are gonna drive breakthrough. And I will say, I you guys may or may not have seen this yourselves, but I can tell now there's a bunch of engagement messaging and and content that I'm getting where I'm like, yeah. That was obviously done by AI, and that is bad for everybody. Right? And particularly, I I looked to you when I read it. When you watch the conversations where, like, I'm like, okay. Both of you are doing AI. This is just, like, terrible. So I think making enough time to to step back, think, and carve out time to to make sure that your your big idea is sort of the right start, which to your point has always been the case, is my biggest piece of advice. It's Good advice. Plus one. Love that. You totally agree. I like the way you frame the I agree. Love it. You know, I I think there's such an obsession with focusing right now on the technology and back to the theme of the humanity and let folk focusing less on the human interactions. And I think this is something at Intuit we've really thought a lot about over the last couple years as we're transforming our products, and we've been all in on the data and the domain expertise and the insights and the ability to really help you think about your money in your life, whether you're a small business or a personal consumer. But we're also now equally focused on how do we get you in touch with a human when you need it. We're building a network of 13,000 experts. So when you're doing your taxes and you just want the extra confidence that a human has looked at it, we're gonna put you in touch. Or the 650,000 accountants who are actually managing your books and your business more than you are every day as a small business person. So how do we bring those two things together and really build those human interactions to be more value added as much as we're building the AI itself actually deliver value. I wanna use that, and we're we're almost at time. So two two two last questions, need quick answers from you guys, but but, of course, equally thoughtful. No pressure. There's a the tension between personalization and privacy is rising. Thomas, how do you see that playing out in in this moment? And I'm literally thinking about the way I was screaming at an AI customer service represent representative. Representative. Don't worry. I'm like, because if they were personalized, they know I always yell at them to just get me a huge gap. How do you see this tension? Yeah. Well, I think it comes back to trust. Right? And how do you build trust? And to me, the ultimate about in building trust is delivering value. Right? Because if you deliver value, you'll be much more willing to share your information, right, kind of have access to my accounts, right, and do things that actually deliver a real value that I that I that I, that I want in my life. But, you know, I've spent a lot of time with this topic at Google and now at at Intuit as well, which is I think it comes down to three fundamentals that haven't changed either, which is, permission. So personalization without permission is a disaster. Right? And so how do we make sure there's permission or consent? The second is transparency. We have to be transparent when we're using data, when we're not using data, help people understand that. And the third is control. At the end of the day, making sure the customer feels like they ultimately have the control so that if they're not getting the value, they know they're not trapped. And I think those three things really kind of are fundamental principles. We started doing that work at Google fifteen years ago. Similar work that we're doing today into it, but in a whole new context. And, of course, trapping people is the business model for some businesses. I think that that will go away very quickly. Your agent will make sure of it. That's right. Tara, what's your take? Yeah. I mean, just the headline I put on that, like, it really, I think, is actually almost just about the value. All of the other stuff is necessary, but not sufficient. But at the end of the day, right, you'd be happy if they just got you an agent, even if it meant that was using data about you. People love Instagram ads because they love the personalization is that good, and it delivers real value. But I don't want something that's creepy and and, you know, it's just like, I saw that you were at the, you know, waxer the other day. Right. I'm just saying, like, there's no need to talk about that. By the way, you're giving me some, like, amazing product that relates to it. But I think that's, like, the headline I would use is if the value accrues to the customer, it's good. And if the value is just only accruing to the brand, that's pretty bad. I think of the example of Target knowing someone in the household was pregnant before someone in the household, like, that starts to cross the line of your That's a great example. I'm gonna steal that. Yeah. Yeah. That's bad. Alright. Last question. Astha brought it up. I think it is discussed too little on our stages as an industry. As much as it is discussed, it's still too little. Let's talk about creativity and your last thoughts, Tara then Thomas, on creativity's role in enhancing engagement strategy and impact moving forward. Okay. I would just say there is a reason that creativity has always been the primary driver of campaign performance. Always. And I don't think that has changed. And I would bring you guys back to where we started when Bill showed that incredible Sketchers campaign. But literally, a bunch of us were sitting there and we're like, that's amazing. How did we not see that? And then, of course, you had the punch line that it didn't get done. And I would just leave you with that's what I'm gonna walk away from this conference with as my, like, example of a great campaign, which is an imaginary one. But the relevance, I think, is going to be that at the end of the day, creativity has always been king, and it still is. Maybe more than ever. Could not agree more. I mean honestly, like this is something I'm super passionate about and the thing we we forget is that for media campaigns half of the effectiveness is attributed to the message and the creativity. And I think we often forget that because it's just less measurable and scientific than the other half. And then when I'm most optimistic about the world we're living in, I think it's we're gonna embrace more creativity and the brands that stand out are the ones that lean into taste and judgment and authenticity and the ways that we show up and don't leave it to the bots, to create the work that we want to put out in the world. So With that, Thomas, Tara, thank you both so much. You dropped gems. Thank all of you. Good luck out there. Please welcome back Asa Malik. Alright. So we've covered a lot of ground over the last three days. Bill opened up with a call to close the gap between ambitious ideas and bringing them to the world. Yesterday, John and Pierce, I saw them. They're right here. Hi. Told us what we're building for you to bring your ambitions to life. And this morning, we all agreed, write your own playbook and be the marketing leaders you wanna be. Now let's hear from two people who've used the same kind of drive to carve our groundbreaking achievements and rewrite the rules time and time again. One of them arrived in New York at 21 with $50 and a pocket of full of knives. Sounds a little dangerous, but it wasn't. And now runs dozens of restaurants and an organization that has served more than 600,000,000 meals in more than 20 countries. The other has won seven grand slams, five Wimbledon championships, and four Olympic gold medals. She's arguably one of the most accomplished and inspiring women in sports history and has successfully advocated for equal pay at the highest level of sports. Please welcome presidential medal of freedom recipient and two time Nobel Prize nominee, Jose Andreas, an athlete, entrepreneur, and best selling author, Venus Williams. Alright. Hi, Jamie. I don't wanna have you twice again. No. No. That's alright. Pick your spot. It's totally fine. Okay. Who is this phone? Oh, someone forgot their phone. Hello? That is for you. Hello? Man, why I say anything? I know. You should've just kept it. I wish you. Little fun with it. But, you know, while you were debating the seats, I was like, I have the best seat in the house so far. So thank you for joining us. It's a lot of stuff. You put your phone there already. Hold on. Well, let's give it up again for a fabulous panelist. I've been looking forward to this conversation for weeks. Have you? This room has been. I thought I was coming to play against her. I mean, I asked if there's gonna be any competition around playing or cooking. Like, I'm obviously not the right person, but, you know, you guys can duke it out. I mean, nothing like a cooking competition and a tennis competition at once. Yeah. Yeah. You can make the biggest mess in the kitchen. And who loses the game? Cleans the dirty dishes? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe next time. You're giving us great ideas. Creativity, we love that. So let's get into it. Venus, you know, you turned pro at 14. And by the time you were 25, you're standing in a room full of officials telling them to close their eyes and imagine that their daughter is standing here and not getting paid as much as the men, and then you walked out. That's courage. Like, what where did you gather that from at that age? Thank you so much. First of all, thank you for having me and and Andres. I'm speaking on his behalf, but very cool to be in this room with you guys. It's a great stage. And you jumped right to the serious stuff. We can have some fun stuff too. Do you want to share another story before we get into it? That's a gossip. But in any case, for those you didn't know, women didn't have equal prize money since the beginning of when they started to pay professional tennis players to play. So that was a very long time. So roll around when I started playing, seems like very long ago, still was going on. Right. And places like Wimbledon, the men got paid more than than the women and so on and so forth. So I ended up being a part of something that was something I didn't think that I was going to do. I was there to, kind of, win the tournament, not to argue. No Johnny Mac style. Like, you can't be serious. But in any case, I was called into the Grand Slam Committee and they always have this meeting. Every year all the Grand Slams meet at Wimbledon. And each year they would the the Women's Tennis Association would present. And year after year after year after year, you know, at this point we're thirty something years in. It was denied. Right. So what you speak of and I incidentally was playing the finals the next day, so I really needed to be training. I was playing a tough player. And I just asked them, you know, how would you want your wife to be treated or your daughter or your sister? And if you close your eyes right here, everybody close their eyes, the person next to you can't tell if it's a man or a woman or all of our hearts beat the same way. So sometimes it's just important to get down to those basic levels because sometimes we can get caught up in the way things have been done forever. And and at that point, it's time to change. So that's the end of a very serious story. Yeah. Well, you know, at 14, I must say that you were very serious and, like, you know, there very courageous at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. But that's remarkable. Yeah. And, you know, unfortunately, some of those things still persist. But what a great way to sort of, like, you know, take the lead and start that conversation at that age. Pretty remarkable. You had a different story, but, you know, I I'm introduced to you by saying you arrived in New York with, like, $50 and a pocket full of knives. That's sort of like and it's not what I was expecting, but please explain. Yeah. Well, I mean, my, you know, my early I came America two times. You know, because when you are from Spain, they always tell you about the conquistadors, sailors that went to discover new walls. And the first time I came to America, I was in the Spanish Navy. I was in a boat that was almost like from a movie. Was the Juan Sebastian del Cano, a tall ship, four months. Why I ended in that tall ship? Well, I was a young cook, more or less. Some people said I was very talented. I thought she was bringing Very talented. And they put me cooking for the admiral. And I was like, really? I'm in the navy and I have to cook in the house of the admiral? Like, give me a break. Very early on in life, I learned that if you wish something, don't shut up. Speak up. And I knock on his door. I'm like, admiral, I love to be with you, but I will love really to go in a boat. He was crying because he was like, this is still good. Young people like you that want to serve their country. Thank you for asking me for this. And I told him, yeah, but I wanna choose the boat. And so that boat was for me very much what changed my life because I came first time I went all around the Atlantic sailing 300 people. First time I arrived to Pensacola, first time Rio De Janeiro, Ivory Coast, Dominican Republic. I mean, like, oh my god. I was seeing the world for the first time. And this was, important moment in my life because I understood in that moment the value of of teamwork. Like, you are one person Mhmm. But you are only as good as the people you have around Mhmm. You. And then very quickly goes to the early days of my life. My father was a nurse. My mom was a nurse. Both love to cook. My mom, Monday through Friday, more cooking for us, my three brothers and I. My father cooking for the entire hospital. He love to cook. He will make these gatherings for 50 people, 100 people, big paella. He put me always making the fire. And one day, I wanted to do the cooking. I told my dad, I wanna do the cooking. He didn't let me. You need to do the fire. You must control the fire. That's what I need you to do. I got upset. He sent me away. And in that moment, when they finish eating and cooking the paella without my help, he got me on the side and told me, my son, everybody wants to do the cooking. Almost nobody thinks about making the fire. Control the fire, master the fire, and then you can do any cooking you want with your life. I didn't realize then that this was a great lesson for a young cook in the making. Mhmm. But without realizing that's the best metaphor of life itself. Control your fire and then you can do anything you want with your life. Yeah. Yeah. That's very much So important lessons of my young me. Yeah. So how did how did some of those lessons and maybe your experiences in the formative years help you make a transition? I mean, you came up in, like, avant garde, fine dining, and then you moved into, like, you know, Haiti to support the earthquake victims and, like, set up these mobile kitchens. What what inspired you to do that? And maybe you can walk us through that a little bit. Okay. I I don't know you guys. Right? But I'm terrible at everything. I like to do everything, but I'm terrible at everything. Like like, one day, I was playing with this British, ambassador in Cayman Islands, and he one day, he he raised his arms in the air. Okay. I surrender. I give you Gibraltar. You know Gibraltar is owned by the British but in the Spanish territory. What I'm telling you is because I every time I was hitting his cart, his back, or himself playing golf. I scuba. I I did theater. I play tennis. I played basketball. I think he's inviting you to match, by the way. He just said that. My my life always always was of trying to understand that life always began at the end of my comfort zone. Right. During the pandemic, my daughter challenged me to do kite surf. And until I didn't got above the surfboard and I fly, I didn't stop. But I'm telling you all these things because, for me, I see that life, it's all these interconnections of things that don't seem to make sense. If you're a chef, you may say that you get inspired by going to the farmer's market and smelling the beaches or going to a conference which is about chefs. But I began learning that the best way to open, the the possibilities of my own profession Mhmm. Is if I will will go to Harvard and work with scientists and understand that everything in cooking is physics. And if we understand physics, I can be better at cooking. Or going with Chihuly, the the master glassblower. Yeah. Because in a way, he's creating art that in many ways resembles many foods we cook and the inspiration, the beauty of how he does art can help me do better beauty on the plate. And all of these at once, because the Bolsonaro Kitchen. What Bolsonaro Kitchen has to do with the chef feeding the few? I told you my mom feeds the few. My father feeds the many. I saw that we all have talents within our own knowledge and professions that if we really think about it, help us to perform our work Yeah. To help the few. But everybody in every profession, that same talent, can be put at the service to inspire or help the many. The same meals I can do in my little restaurant with 100 seats, the same heart, the same knowledge, one day can help us like we did in Ukraine, 1,500,000 meals a day. Right. More than 300,000,000 meals in the worst zone. So at the end for me, I love this connection into the things that connecting the dots in in within things that sometimes don't make any logic. Yeah. But when you are able to make those connections is when life becomes unbelievably interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting and obviously very very inspiring. And you talk, many a times about like, you know, these connecting dots and things coming together even if in the moment it doesn't quite make sense. But life throws curve balls as well, and, like, you know, it has, for both of you. It's interesting and, like, funny that in the corporate world, we give a lot of sports analogies. We talk about resilience. We talk about commitment. We talk about dedication. And Venus, in your own life, you face challenges including your own diagnosis. Tell us, how do you rise above that and continue to push through? Yeah. Absolutely. Life is about rising above and I really loved what you said that you or the growth starts when you are uncomfortable. And that's the growth zone. And it's so uncomfortable, and it's so frustrating to be uncomfortable, and to be doubtful, and all of those things. But I think dealing with with that is is so important. And I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and to be honest, it didn't make any sense because it started with an s and a j and we don't put those two letters together in English. So I'm thinking, what is this? It's called Sjogren's syndrome. And so that was challenging to say the least, but I think that it helped me learn new skills. So I always say to myself, I don't ask for less challenges, I ask for more skills. So it meant I needed to develop more skills to deal with whatever the heck this was that was going on with me. So I think the biggest thing I learned from that was that everything adds up. There are some days where you can do more, there's some days where you can do less, there's some days where you fail, but each day that you try leads to a success of the next day. And I think it made me a better person. Yeah, no you've inspired a lot of people in the ways that you've continued to sort of put one foot in front of the other despite all your challenges and it's really remarkable to see. And Jose like you know for you as well like you know similar challenges experienced in Puerto Rico like tell us about that too. Yeah. Well I think the challenges we we we face in life. Right? It's it's if everything was always perfect, life will be boring because we will never understood how good we have it. We enjoy the moments that are fascinating because sometimes we go through moments that, poof, I'm gonna make I'm gonna make it today. Whatever is the problem. Relationship, you know, my relationship with my mom was not the best one. But I am everything I am thanks to her. She was so for me, those were early life challenges. I left home early because home was complicated. But I love my mom. And now what I know, I wish I knew more when I was young Because probably she needed help. That was a big challenge for me. That's why I got into a boat. I was trying to be away from home as much as I could. I'm not gonna have you talk to my son, but that's okay. Alright. But the reason why one of my my my challenges, you know, I wish I studied business when I was young because I learned business just hitting the wall so many times. You know, I think they say Winston Churchill said that success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is something I have as a chef, as a top professional tennis mythical player, you you are only as good, if you think about it, as the last shot you hit. You are I'm as good as the last dish I did. Nothing else before counts. If you are enjoying my meal today and it's no good, like, this is the mythical Jose. So in my end that failure, even if you put your lifetime trying to be the best you can, failure is just in an instant. And sometimes you don't even have the control because you are in the hands of amazing, team members. But for me, obviously, the moment that I think I I was proud of the people, bringing now from my professional life to to my nonprofit life that is like my hobby. My my golf game will be better if I didn't go to so many emergencies. I've been in every hurricane in the last fifteen years, in every earthquake very much. I've been in every every volcano. I've been, next to the teams. It's not me. It's the teams. And what I learned in those moments where chaos and mayhem happens that seems there is not gonna be tomorrow is that in the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity shows up. So people tell me, why do you go to use I came back from Ukraine. In those moments, you see that the best of the people, the best of us shows up. And I keep going because I get so much inspiration. Even you go to moments that is very hard. In Ukraine right now, we have drones falling every day on civilians. It's hunger games in real time, in civilians every day, hundreds of times as they go for bread. Okay. I can look to the other side and let them or I can say I'm gonna step up and we're gonna do something about it. Those same drones that are killing lives, when we can, we use them to deliver food in very complicated places of people that are living in this kind of terrible reality, that they are in a world that is not theirs, that they don't wanna be part of, but they have no ways to feed the children. Mhmm. And they are living in a hunger game situation in real times. So I keep going to those things because for me, it's very important Yeah. That I understand the world I live in so I can work to create a better world for my three daughters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what you said about you said a few things. One is also around obviously getting inspired and being committed to the greater good and obviously your efforts, you know, speak volumes for the work that you've already done. But then you've also talked about how you push yourself. You gave that example of, like, you know, I care a lot about the last meal you had. If it's not good, like, doesn't matter, you know, the 10 previous meals you've had, they might have tasted really good. So how do you you know, with all that pressure that exists in both your worlds, like, I'd love to hear from both of you. How do you continue to sort of, like, you know, tackle that while making sure that of course you know there are tools that you're handed, the expectations you have around you, but ultimately it's the conviction you have, the creativity you have, and the commitment you have that probably helps you rise above all of that. So what does that mean for you, Venus? Being under pressure is an honor. I love it. Don't always succeed under it, But then I go right back in. I want some more. And being under pressure has been my whole life since I was a very young person. I turned pro at 14 and I was, you know, playing people that were much more experienced than me that actually knew what they were doing. I was just out there. So being able to to deal with pressure in the moment, really helps you to to face success and face failure and figure out how you how do you bend it towards your your way. So I think when sometimes though you've had enough. Sometimes I've had enough and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I was playing a match recently and it was my sister and I playing our first doubles match in forever. Mhmm. And I swear I just thought I was gonna fall apart. Is that because of the sister or because of the match? Well, it was the only pressure I put on myself. You know, no one else put this pressure on me. I was the only one feeling this, and I just thought, I'm I I I think I'm gonna blow up. Like, I could literally explode right now. There'll be bits of me all over the stadium. Yeah. At some point, I had to realize, okay, let me focus on one thing that I can do better. Yeah. And kind of backing up instead of letting the whole occasion get to me because I don't want to let my sister down. I want to win a match. I want to beat the hell out of these girls across the net. And, you know, I was I was and I never really felt that in my whole life. So I was, like, at a new level this deep in my career of I've never experienced this. How do I handle it? So for me in that moment, I just backed up and said let me focus on the one thing that's actually bothering me. It would have to be my forehand that was going Mach 10 to the fence. So how do I fix that? And then maybe I'll feel better about everything else I'm doing. So, pressure allowed me to develop a new skill and unfortunately we didn't win that match. But I did learn something from it and I continued to play it better. So if you're not under pressure then you're probably not trying hard enough to achieve something and that's okay too. But if you do want to achieve something, if you do want to get to that next level, being under pressure is a real honor and you wake up and you say thank God for this pressure because I'm trying to go for something. And And then if you're not under pressure, then you got to figure out, okay, am I going for enough? Yeah. So it's about asking yourself those quest these questions and also figuring out the right process. So that way when you're under pressure, it doesn't feel like as much because your process is so well thought out and it's so, you know, in intact that you're able to hopefully start to breeze through these situations then be able to add more to your plate because you can deal with what you're dealing with. Yeah. I mean, and you raise, you know, pressure claim, but pressure outside the court. I mean, you you were very young when you raised your voice in something you thought was a way to fight for equality. And this had to be a lot of pressure on your shoulders because you were speaking not only on behalf of players, but on behalf of young girls and women all around the world. And you say, I believe that we deserve equal pay. And probably that was a battle that was very hard to fight and you you had to experience some pressure during those those month where you said, oh, this happens this way or or something bigger is gonna happen. You were brave when you did that. You had a lot of pressure on that time? It's interesting because I think we all deal with pressure in different ways. It was Wimbledon. Right? I think yeah. It was the first one. The pressure I put on myself is maybe the hardest pressure ever, and the pressure of maybe the expectations of someone else as much as I'm trying to think, I don't care about what anyone else thinks at some point, like, it does creep into your mind. A little fight though, I like. So if you tell me no or you're like, you're not getting paid. I'm like, yes, I am getting paid. I went to this doctor once and he looked at my knees and they are a disaster. He said, you're gonna have a knee replacement. I said, no, I'm not. I'm probably gonna have knee replacements. Very worried about these two things, but it was like, you're not gonna tell me I'm gonna have a knee replacement? So I do love, like, that challenge and that fight and someone telling me no. That's great. And I think we all need a little of that. We can't back down from those challenges. What about you? Because usually you got off the boat. Yeah. Well, they were kicking me out of the boat. Yeah. Yeah. You should have made some meals for people on the boat. They would have kept you on the boat forever. But but that was for me I mean, yeah. No. But they are really for my profession, for everything I did in life, those six months on the sea was life changing for me. It was probably the university I never had. Six months? Six months. Wow. Was the university I never had. So that was very super important for me. You know, 1994, 1995, I have this Tapas restaurant, my first, Jaleo. This is a commercial. I have one here, two in Vegas. I have seven restaurants in Vegas, so please okay. Commercial is over. By the way, I got one star Michelin last month at E here in Vegas. Congratulations. My team. I think we deserve two, but it's like out of three, but shit. Like, oh, you but, is this tapas place and tapas? You know, I love tapas. Right? You put in the middle of the table, you share it, or you have somebody in the party that doesn't want to share and, like, okay. That's the reason forks and knives exist. It's not to eat. It's to protect your food from Do do you do you usually also provide an instruction manual for meals and, like But then tapas is a lot of dishes coming out. Right? Yeah. And in one moment, if the restaurant keeps bigger and bigger, we were collapsing at 6PM. At 7PM, Friday, all of you want to come at the same time. And then even if the chef put his live crew in the menu, everybody has changes to every dish. Thank you. I'm a celiac. No. You are not. Some people are, but others not. It's a preference. Yeah. I want garlic shrimp without the shrimp. It's like you're gonna kill the guy. If I was AI I mean, if I had the voice of AI and, like, hey, you know, what do I do with this customer? Kick him out of the restaurant. Okay. But, so I put I put a computer in the kitchen because we were collapsing. Because at the end, everything is information. Everything in life about success is about the distribution of things. Information, smiles, whispers, wind. Everything is about moving, about distribution, everything. If you have good distribution, life is happily. We were in total chaos because in the distribution of information, orders coming in, and and orders that become food that this information that goes out, everything was going through the chef, and the chef was collapsing every night. That's me. On top of my accent that nobody could that less than anything. Like, now very much. And that day, I did huge. We began putting screens in the kitchen. The orders didn't come through the chef anymore. The orders went directly to the cooks. We were bypassing. The most important person was the one creating the chaos. That was me. What I did was take myself out of the chaos. And I began creating this very simple, in my world, very unique, but this is what successful fast food companies were doing. This very simple distribution of information that got me a very successful restaurant that all of a sudden we increased not only 30% by their sales, but everybody was happier. Why? Because the distribution of information was amazing. I'm gonna try to end this bringing it to the boat. In the boat, we were successful because we were disputing information. How with a whistle is how the sarian will communicate with every sailor in the boat what we had to do without saying anything. Only with a whistle. Every whistle will be information and order of what to do and to be successful. So, yeah, I'm gonna end it there because I don't know how I got into that story and I don't know how to end it. I have to bring you back. But it's very interesting. And, yes, I do have some preferences. I'm very complicated. You're probably gonna hate me at your restaurant, but I'll I'll try and hide. I think the things that you mentioned, both of you, it also reminds us, like, you know, this is a room full of marketers. They're going through a lot of change with AI, new tools, the expectations are rising for their consumers. And hearing your story is kind of like it also reminds me that things are changing around you all the time. You know the tools, the technology around you, the circumstances personal etcetera that you can or cannot control. But part of your resilience and your creativity sort of like, you know, kept you going. Like, what what do you think like and as we think about all the advancements in, you know, technology, tools, etcetera that might be impacting even your professions and how you're scaling your businesses and, you're doing much more, and now Venus as an entrepreneur and author as well. How do you keep your edge and how do you continue to sort of like use what's around you instead of letting that come in your way? By the way, I I was not supposed to be seated in that chair. You were. But I thought I thought that was your phone and I thought I'm sorry. Your phone in the chair. She took my chair. No. I am a bully. No. I realize now because it says here, Benuz. And I'm like, okay. I'm breathing my water. It's over there. Okay. That's okay. No worries. As long as you don't drink her water, it's fine. So so Venus, why why don't we hear from you? Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oops. I took your chair in Your chair. In the question. Okay. Are we getting, like, atmosphere that's, like Yeah. I don't know what happened. It's like I feel like Oh, hunger is about to come. Yeah. Anyway. But are you cooking? Yeah. I mean, I should cook. How many are you? But you you asked about the edge. Right? For for me, my edge my edge, what keeps me on my seat, and I'm sure it's you too, it's to make sure that what I do has a pro a purpose and understand it. And the purpose can be very selfish. I am happy. It was so great. That's a excuse. But, you know, for me, obviously, I I love creativity. The creativity is what keeps me always keeps me going. And and sometimes creativity doesn't have to be something that that comes directly from the culinary world and ingredients. I told you before about physics. Right? The challenge for me imagine you grab a glass of water right now. And I say, Venous, you and I, we are gonna create a new dish with water that has never been done before. That's a fascinating challenge. Water. Right now, we could do, you know, probably 100 different dishes only with this glass of water. We can freeze it. We we can make vapor. The the the freezing crystals, they can be different, can be thick, can be thin. We can make a snow like. We can make oh my god. We we can make gelatines. This is we can serve it warm. We can serve it hot. We can serve it super cold. We can do super cooling. We we we we can do something like the water in the moment you touch freezes in front of you like mini crystals because you are able to control. So for me, is this, in this case, is just a challenge. I'm not doing it used to be a better chef or better than others even that's that helps. But I do it because I want I wanna fulfill my own personal dreams of saying, I feel alive today. And even when I fail, like, gives me the energy to wake up next day to say, I I've been failing every day for the last week. Two days the day. And you may fail again. But this is one of of the reason of the ways Yeah. I keep on on the edge. And obviously, what I do with purpose, it's a pork called Iberico. It's the most expensive piece of meat in the history of mankind. Mhmm. The these pigs eat acorns during three months. Oh my god. It's the most expensive piece of meat in the planet. The pork was coming to America. I was a chef. I I'm only as good as my products. Thanks to that, I could be a better chef because I had a very iconic product. Okay? But but they had to help the very small producers in Spain to sell the product here in order for the Iberico to have a success, and they have no budget. Was a series on NBC called Hannibal, which was the young younger years of Hannibal Lecter from the silence of the lambs. Oh. And I don't don't know how I got myself into the gastronomic producer of that series. And I had to come up with a good idea so the script writers will have a very social conversation about how to eat human flesh in a very normal way. And because I love history and I was fulfilling those ideas and giving them ideas. This was keeping me in the edge because for me was a way to tell the stories of the world of food I love, but this was bigger because I was able to put a Iberico ham leg in the NBC series where Hannibal Lecter is explaining what Iberico is as he is slicing the leg. We don't know if it was a pork leg or a human leg. That's you need to watch the series. But this helped me market a product that had no money to tell America was here. And all of a sudden, Hannibal Lecter said, Iberico is here. Okay. This is the things that keep me in the edge. Thank you. What a great story. But watch it. I wasn't expecting a Silence of the Lambs reference, but here we are. Yeah. When I began sometimes some stories, I never know how I'm gonna end them. Yeah. And I'm like, my brain I'm like, I'm looking at the was trying to figure out how you're gonna end it. Why I'm ending this story. Like like, you know, oh, my it's easy to start. It's not even good to finish them. But this one ended almost perfect. Alright, Venus. Let's hear it from you too. I'm just trying to figure out what you're serving in your restaurant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Okay, people? Oh my gosh. So my physio is from Spain, and I've spent the last five years hearing about everything Spanish. So I know everything about it. Oh, wow. Okay. Alright. Yeah. Every day we pass by. See that Santander? That Santander Bank? That's where I'm from. Every time every so Alright. She could probably teach you something about Spain. In any case, I like what you said about creativity because growing up my dad always said, always try something new. And that definitely keeps you on your edge and it makes it more difficult for people to keep up. Most people want to be in the comfort zone. They don't want to change. But if change is a part of your curriculum and you love it, that gives you the edge. I think also never being satisfied. And there's a difference between being so dissatisfied that it actually stops your progress because you're too self critical and then the dissatisfaction that keeps your mind going and you're like, how can I improve? How can I get better? And you're like going to sleep at night visualizing, you know, what you want to create or how you'd like to be better. I think that's when you know you're in the zone that you go to bed, like, dreaming about it, thinking about it. And also like you it's so important for humans to have the self satisfaction from work satisfaction. My goodness, I can't speak English. But being satisfied from what you do brings a sort of peace. And I think that's an important part of the human experience is loving what you do, looking forward to that work. I know there's like this new thing of like not working as much apparently on social media, but I like to work. I want to show up. I want to get up. I want the pressure. I need to be dissatisfied. And those things definitely give you the edge in a world that's moving like super quickly. Yeah. No. We absolutely agree. In fact, we've talked a lot about over the last three days around reinventing yourself, trying something new, taking a chance because, you know, I I believe in that, and I say this all the time as well and try to remind myself that the best thing that'll happen out of that is, like, you know, it'll turn out exactly as you wanted it to. The worst is you're gonna learn something out of it, and then you move on and you use it somewhere else. So, yeah, I completely agree with what you said there. You know, speaking of the changes in AI, specifically for you, Venus, as well, both as an investor, and an author, like, you know, how how do you think in the realm of, like, so much of the talk around artificial intelligence, where do you plea place the importance of like human connection? Number one. Absolutely. There's there's no life without the human connection and AI tools are making our lives better and easier, but nothing replaces the human, at least not yet. I hope not. I don't know. Jose, what do you think? Yeah. Listen. With all the technological changes we've seen, you know, I remember fifty years ago, obviously, when things like a startling came in my world of emergencies was life changing. Right? So we were very early endorsers of something like has proven to be very brilliant. But I remember I tested so many things. You know? Because I like to test and help people that are testing new ideas. I remember one time that somebody was trying to create this instant Wi Fi for emergencies. And was instant Wi Fi for emergencies that you can create entire Wi Fi network in a very big area. And this was interesting because, oh my god. So I'm there delivering meals in the middle of, Puerto Rico back to 2017 when Maria with all my teams. And I was creating this kind of Wi Fi network. And I had to be dropping this kind of little trees. And I was hanging them in trees and, you know, I did like 20 or 30. And I was so proud. I'm like, hey. We have Wi Fi. And then yeah. Next morning, I'm like, hey. We don't have Wi Fi anymore. What happens? Like, well, you have to recharge them every day. I'm like, shit. I have to put 50 of these beacons and recharge them every day? Like, okay. That was a very brilliant idea. That was actually not brilliant at all. But, but, I love it. Right now in emergencies, we we are in this moment that when everybody says why wasn't drug exchange seems so quickly? Like in Nepal, we delivered the first meal six hours after the destruction we saw in the Himalayas. We responded within eight hours to the earthquake in Venezuela and Colombia. Mhmm. The big difference between us being quick and others seeming never being so quick Mhmm. Is that we we put boots on the ground first. And when everybody goes to a headquarters and everybody is in the headquarters trying to come up with what is the emergency plan of response, Our headquarters is in the car of every member that is in the ground zero, delivering meals from first day and learning in real time the situation. So right now, we are becoming obviously AI is just helping us to understand the assets we have at our disposal to have a quick and fast response. Mhmm. What that means? That World Central Kitchen is the biggest organization ever created. It's only 200 people, but we are the biggest organization. Why? Because every person belongs to World Central Kitchen. What happened? You don't know it yet. Every asset, every kitchen, every food truck, every stadium, every helicopter, every horse, boat, every hydroplane, everything in an emergency belongs to us. What happened, the owners of all those assets don't know it. So when we go somewhere, we are not bringing things from outside to the inside. We do what we have around us, and we put every asset at the service of doing the quickest response. The urgency of now, paraphrasing Martin Luther King, when you talk about food and water, is yesterday. So now with these new tools, just we are becoming we were very efficient before in a very simplistic way. Right. Now our response is just smarter because we know every food warehouse, every water production system, anything that can help us to deliver the first meal quick and fast, we are able to come with this solution in matter of seconds. And the only difference is that our our our our headquarters is not in a place far away from the emergency. Our headquarters is where the emergency is. Yeah. And that's the difference. You know, everybody's teaching us to follow a plan. Life is a big plan. If you think about it, our lives, they are created for us before we're born. You know, we need to go to school. We need to do this. We need to do that. We need to graduate. We need to get married. We need to bomb and we need to die. Everything is gradual. Every everything. When things don't go as planned, everybody freezes. Why? Because everybody has been trained to follow a plan. We need to put the plans away. We need to embrace the complexity of the situation. We need to learn how to raise above mayhem and chaos and use every situation for a great moment for adaptation. Humans, we are the best animals in the world for adaptation if we put our brains to it. Right now with this adaptation and the tools that AI has given us, I think if anything is gonna make humans even more much more powerful if we believe in ourselves. Yeah. Well said. Because Andres and I endorse this message. I'm gonna close with, one question for Venus. Okay. You know, with all your resolve, with your commitment, you've achieved so much. And actually, the theme of our conference is also made for this. But despite sort of, like, you know, putting all the effort, sometimes when things don't work out, things change around you. Tell us, like, what would you tell this group? Like, how do you continue to reinforce and revalidate that you were made for this? Yeah. A simple statement I tell myself and the people around me is champions adjust. The situation always changes and you've got to adapt or become irrelevant. And since at this moment I want to stay relevant and I'm not ready for my knee replacement yet, I'm ready to adjust. And that means changing your mind, changing your method, whatever it takes to get to that championship that's legal and sportsmanlike. Yeah. I hate bad sports and that's one thing I've never been, but that that it's just that simple. Champions adjust. I love that. Thank you. I have so many questions for you, by the way. Like, has anyone seen the Hannibal series? Like, I'm gonna be running to my phone to see it now. I'm just very curious what's on these menus and the World Kitchen and each disaster zone. Like, there's some like, we need another hour with you, but it's it's been awesome. And it is and, thank you so much to both of you. I have to tell everybody, like, I only asked one question out of the script. This was the rest of it is, like, all unscripted, and it was great. So we talked about that before. We're like, did you look at the questions? No. We didn't look at the questions. I'm like, alright. Then let's just go for it. Can't think of that. Did you play pickleball? You play pickleball? Can you help me can you help me raise my my my my because, I mean, a game that is called pickleball. And they don't let the chef get into the kitchen. He's giving me a break. Do you know pickleball? Do you know the kitchen? Who came up with this shitty name that the chef? I mean, I step in the kitchen at, oh, you lost the point. Like, shit in my kitchen. Can you help me change the rules or at least the name? And if anything, a chef always should be entitled to get in the kitchen anytime he wants. I think everyone hears you and agrees with you. Thank you. That was a perfect mic drop moment. Are you are you kicking are you kicking me out already? No. No. No. Please. Please. Yeah. And I was just thanking both of you. So thank you everyone for joining us today, and let's give it up again for Venus and Earth Day. This is so good. Thank you. I'm gonna take a picture with you backstage too, but thank you. This is lovely. Thank you. Alright. Oh my god. What a conversation, and I loved every bit of it. So thank you for being a great audience. And one more time, give it up for Venus and Jose. So before we wrap up, thank you one more time to all of you to coming to Ford. I can't wait to see all of you again next year. And I have to share where are we meeting next year. So as I mentioned yesterday, I'm quite the fan of Fontainebleau. They've been incredible host for all of us, the newest, nicest spot on this trip. So we're gonna actually come back here next year from September thirteen through fifteen. So block your calendars for an exciting three days, and we'll be celebrating you once again. And until then, there's gonna be a lot of programming between now and next forge, and thank you so much. Don't forget to show up for the party at the live tonight. Bring your sequence on. I'll see you soon. Thank you all.