What if discipline—not motivation—was the secret to getting ahead?
Meet Robert Collier, founder performance and execution coach, who went from draining his savings and 401(k) to building a coaching business that helps entrepreneurs achieve extraordinary results.
🔥 One client earned $96,000 in 90 days, lost 17 pounds, bought his dream car, AND saved $20,000.
His secret? A repeatable system for focus, discipline, and execution.
In this episode of Legacy Launchers, we talk about:
🎯 How to accomplish 1 year’s goals in 90 days 🚀 Why systems beat motivation ❤️ Why billion-dollar brands are chasing human connection 💡 How making people feel seen changes everything
Because success isn’t just about working harder. It’s about executing smarter.
Years ago, Sheena Yap Chan interviewed me for her podcast. This time, I got to turn the microphone around.
Sheena is the author and host behind The Tao of Self-Confidence, a platform dedicated to helping Asian women become more visible, confident, and recognized as leaders. Our conversation explored identity, representation, leadership, artificial intelligence, and what becomes possible when Asian women accurately name their own accomplishments.
From Wanting to Look Different to Embracing Herself
Sheena moved from the Philippines to Toronto when she was seven. Although she grew up in a multicultural city, the media she watched did not reflect that diversity. She did not see people who looked like her, and that absence shaped how she saw herself.
“I never wanted to be Asian,” she shared. “I wanted to have blonde hair, blue eyes to feel accepted.”
In her twenties, she dyed her hair back to its natural color. She described that period as a turning point: embracing her appearance, her culture, and who she was instead of trying to become someone else.
Her story raises a different question from the usual advice to “be more confident.” Before asking someone to believe in herself, it is worth asking what taught her not to.
For Sheena, representation was not an abstract cause. It was something she had needed as a girl—and something she could help create as an adult.
Creating the Conversations She Needed to Hear
That experience helped inspire The Tao of Self-Confidence, her podcast highlighting Asian women’s stories: the paths they forged, the setbacks they encountered, and how they moved forward.
Sheena wanted more than polished success stories. She wanted women to hear the parts that often remain private.
In our conversation, she described cultural expectations that discourage people from discussing their problems. When everyone stays quiet, it can feel as though you are the only person struggling—even when others are navigating similar doubts and pressures.
Her podcast makes room for those conversations. There is a difference between hearing that someone succeeded and hearing how she worked through the moments when success was uncertain. The second story gives you something you can use.
It also makes the person behind the accomplishment visible.
The Leadership Book She Wasn’t Sure She Could Write
When Wiley approached Sheena about writing a leadership book for Asian women, she initially questioned whether she was qualified.
“I didn’t even know if I considered myself a leader,” she told me.
The opportunity was there, but she was still questioning whether she was the person to take it. Encouragement from people around her helped her move forward. With three months to write the manuscript, she committed to getting it done.
The book came out in May 2023. Its title is The Tao of Self-Confidence: A Guide to Moving Beyond Trauma and Awakening the Leader Within.
That distinction matters: awakening leadership, rather than assuming a woman has none until someone gives it to her.
Sheena later wrote Bridging the Confidence Gap, continuing her work on confidence and women’s advancement.
Her experience offers a useful reminder: uncertainty about a new role is not proof that you are unqualified for it. Sometimes you have already been doing meaningful work long before you feel comfortable naming what it makes you.
“I Am the CEO” Is Not Bragging
One of the most striking parts of our conversation concerned Asian women who were already running substantial businesses.
Sheena described speaking with women who had built eight-figure businesses yet went years without calling themselves CEOs. She also described situations in which people assumed a woman’s husband was the chief executive—or assumed she was the secretary—when she was actually the person running the company.
Her response was direct: take ownership of the role.
“No, I am the CEO.”
That is not arrogance. It is accuracy.
Asian women are frequently encouraged to work hard, remain humble, and allow the quality of their work to speak for itself. But work cannot always correct assumptions that prevent people from recognizing who created it.
Women should not have to minimize their authority to make other people comfortable. A woman should not have to borrow someone else’s appearance, personality, or authority to have her own expertise taken seriously.
Naming your role is not bragging when it is the truth.
Before AI-Ready, Be Human-Ready
Our conversation also moved into the workplace and the growing pressure to prepare for AI.
“We can have all the tech in the world, but if people aren’t ready to adopt it or trust it or have the confidence to use it, then nothing happens,” Sheena said.
She calls this human readiness.
Organizations can purchase sophisticated technology, but adoption still depends on people having the confidence to participate. It also depends on workplaces where employees feel able to ask questions, contribute ideas, experiment, and admit when they do not understand something.
Leadership is not only about choosing the right tools. It is also about creating an environment in which people can contribute what they know.
The same principle applies to entrepreneurship. Many people have valuable ideas, consume enormous amounts of information, and continuously prepare—but never execute. Information alone does not build a business. Progress requires decisions, support, experimentation, and action even when the outcome remains uncertain.
The technology matters. So does the person using it.
A Girl Who Wants to Build Robots
When I asked Sheena what legacy she wanted to leave, her answer returned to possibility.
“I just want to show people what’s possible, especially for women, especially for Asian women.”
She recalled attending a technology conference where a little girl said she wanted to make robots when she grew up. At that age, Sheena remembered wanting to be a princess.
Hearing a child imagine herself building technology was meaningful to her. The contrast was not about judging one childhood dream against another. It was about the range of futures a girl can picture for herself.
Sheena wants women to see writing books, speaking on stages, building companies, and creating ambitious work as possibilities available to them—not lives reserved for somebody else.
She also described helping people access speaking opportunities, with a particular desire to see more women recognized as leaders onstage.
That brings her story full circle: a girl who did not see herself represented becomes a woman creating more opportunities for others to be seen.
For me, the takeaway is not that Asian women need to become different people to lead. It is that we need more space to name our accomplishments, use our voices, and pursue the work we actually want to do.
Sometimes the next step is writing the book. Sometimes it is stepping onto the stage. And sometimes it begins with saying, plainly and accurately:
“I am the CEO.”
Explore Sheena’s books, speaking work, and free VISIBLE Framework Toolkit through her official website.
Real estate deals can look clean on the surface and still have problems buried in the paperwork.
That is where Brian Alper of Corinthian Title comes in.
Brian has spent more than two decades in title, and one of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was simple:
30–40% of real estate titles have errors on them.
Those errors can range from something relatively small, like a misspelled name, to something much more serious involving the wrong property or an issue in the chain of title.
The key point is that not every error means the deal is dead.
A lot of problems can be corrected.
Title Work Is More Than Paperwork
Before talking with Brian, it is easy to think of title as one of those background pieces of a real estate transaction that just quietly happens.
But Brian describes the work almost like detective work.
He spends time examining the chain of title and understanding how a property got to its current situation.
That means looking at documents, ownership history, inconsistencies, and anything that might need to be cleaned up before the transaction moves forward.
A good title professional is not just processing paperwork.
They are trying to understand the story behind the property.
And sometimes that story has problems.
Sometimes You Just Need a Second Set of Eyes
One of the strongest ideas from Brian’s interview is:
Sometimes you just need a second set of eyes.
Real estate transactions involve a lot of moving pieces.
Agents.
Lenders.
Escrow.
Buyers.
Sellers.
Documents.
Deadlines.
And even experienced people can miss something.
That is why a knowledgeable title professional can be so valuable.
Brian is willing to look at complicated issues and help people understand what they are dealing with, even when the transaction did not originally come through him.
That kind of help builds trust quickly.
When someone is in the middle of a stressful deal, they remember the person who helped them figure it out.
Not Every Error Is a Defect
Brian made an important distinction during the interview.
An error is not always the same thing as a defect that makes a property uninsurable.
Some problems can be fixed.
The goal is to identify what is actually wrong and determine whether there is a path forward.
That requires judgment.
It also requires experience.
The real value is not just noticing that something looks off.
It is knowing what the issue means and what might need to happen next.
What Should You Look for in a Title Rep?
Brian’s answer comes down to three things:
Knowledge. Availability. Collaboration.
Can your title rep actually talk through a complicated real estate issue with you?
Can they help you understand the problem?
Can you reach them when something comes up?
Transactions do not always go wrong between 9 and 5.
Problems can surface at night.
On weekends.
Right before closing.
That makes responsiveness a real part of the job.
As Brian put it:
“You make a phone call and they’re lifting you up.”
That is a very different standard from simply asking which title company has the nicest marketing materials.
Fix the Problem So the Next Person Does Not Inherit It
Brian also talked about the importance of cleaning up the record.
If an issue can be corrected, fixing it now can prevent the same problem from resurfacing in the next transaction.
That is good business.
You are not just trying to get one deal closed.
You are helping leave the property record in better shape than you found it.
That can save someone else a major headache later.
AI Still Needs Human Judgment
Naturally, we also talked about AI.
Brian sees ways AI can help with parts of title production, but he is cautious about relying too heavily on it for complicated research and corrections.
His concern is accountability.
If an AI-generated answer is wrong, especially in a transaction involving significant money, somebody still has to catch it.
That is where expertise matters.
Technology can make people faster.
It can organize information.
It can assist with research.
But it does not automatically replace the person who knows enough to question the result.
In title work, confidence is not the same thing as accuracy.
The Real Value Is Being Useful When the Deal Gets Hard
Brian’s legacy is not really about title insurance.
It is about being useful.
Helping someone in a pinch.
Working through a tough transaction.
Being the person a client or colleague can call when they are stuck.
That is what creates long-term professional relationships.
Real estate is full of people who can help when everything is going smoothly.
The people you remember are the ones who help when it is not.
Sometimes the difference between a stressful transaction and a solvable one is simply having the right person take another look.
He just did not want to drive an hour and a half to play mahjong.
A few months later, his Orange County mahjong group had grown from a brand-new social media page into weekly events drawing around 100 people, collaborations with the Irvine Public Library, and a community large enough that venue capacity had become a real problem. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
The wildest part?
They did it without paid advertising.
From Zero to 100 People in Three Events
OC Mahjong technically began in March 2026.
Andrew and his team created the social media page, secured the account names, and posted their first event only a few days before it happened.
They expected mostly friends.
Instead, around 40 people showed up.
The second event brought roughly 70.
By the third, attendance had climbed past 100. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
That kind of growth usually comes with a big marketing budget.
This did not.
Andrew says the demand was already there.
Orange County had been underserved compared with areas of Los Angeles, where mahjong communities were already more established. OC Mahjong simply gave people somewhere local to go.
Mahjong Is Having a Cultural Resurgence
For many Asian Americans, mahjong has traditionally been associated with older relatives.
Andrew remembers the same stereotype: aunties playing around the table, not necessarily something young people considered trendy.
That is changing.
He sees a broader resurgence of pride in Asian identity, and mahjong has become part of that shift.
Cultural practices that younger generations may once have viewed as old-fashioned are being reclaimed as something worth celebrating.
As Asian culture has become more visible in entertainment and mainstream American culture, Andrew believes younger people have become more comfortable embracing traditions tied to that identity. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
But this is not just an Asian-American trend.
OC Mahjong’s events are diverse.
Andrew estimates that roughly 60% of attendees are Asian, while the rest include white, Hispanic, Black, and other players.
That is part of what makes the current moment interesting.
Mahjong is moving from something culturally specific toward something increasingly mainstream. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
The New Pickleball?
Andrew compares what is happening with mahjong now to what happened with pickleball several years ago.
At first, pickleball belonged to a relatively specific crowd.
Then suddenly everyone knew someone who played.
Courts appeared everywhere.
Leagues formed.
Brands followed.
The same kind of momentum may now be happening with mahjong.
People see friends playing.
They get curious.
They learn.
Then they invite more friends.
The cycle continues.
Andrew also compares it to boba: something once concentrated within Asian communities that gradually became part of mainstream American culture. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
Why Mahjong Works So Well Socially
Mahjong is not just intellectually interesting.
It gives people a reason to sit together.
That may be its biggest advantage.
Andrew works full-time in mental health as a program director, and he sees the social side of mahjong as especially valuable.
The game requires concentration, pattern recognition, strategy, and problem-solving.
But it also requires people.
Four people sit around a table for extended periods.
They talk.
They compete.
They help each other learn.
They laugh.
And when conversation gets quiet, the game fills the silence.
That creates a very different experience from networking events where everyone feels pressure to keep talking.
Andrew describes strong social support as one of the most important protective factors for mental health, and mahjong naturally creates opportunities for people to build those connections. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
A Third Place People Actually Want to Return To
Sociologists sometimes talk about a “third place.”
Home is one place.
Work is another.
The third place is where people go simply to belong.
For some people, that is a gym.
For others, a church, coffee shop, sports league, or hobby group.
Mahjong can become that place too.
People can spend hours together without needing a formal agenda.
Andrew has even brought mahjong into his mental-health work, where people with disabilities or mental-health challenges can use the game for structure, stimulation, and social interaction. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
That same need exists in the broader population.
Adults want friends.
They want recurring communities.
They want somewhere they can show up and know people will recognize them.
OC Mahjong seems to be filling that gap.
The Secret Is Not Just Getting People There
One of the most interesting parts of Andrew’s approach is what happens after someone walks through the door.
Large gatherings can be intimidating.
A person may technically attend an event and still spend the whole night standing alone.
Andrew and his team try to prevent that.
When someone arrives, co-hosts ask about their skill level.
Then they walk that person directly to a table and introduce them.
Andrew describes it almost as intentionally forcing social connection—in a good way.
People are shy.
They hide.
So the organizers remove the awkward first step.
That small act matters.
People tell Andrew that they met someone at a table, exchanged social media, became friends, and then came back again. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
That is community building.
Not simply gathering bodies in a room.
Zero Dollars in Advertising
Despite the rapid growth, Andrew says OC Mahjong has not spent money on paid advertising.
The group posts consistently on social media and uses AI tools to help create flyers and graphics.
But the biggest driver has been word of mouth.
Around 60% to 70% of attendees are regulars.
Those regulars bring new people.
Some of those new people become regulars too.
Then they bring someone else. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
That is the kind of marketing every business wants:
People enjoying something enough to recruit the next customer for you.
Build Something People Want to Belong To
Andrew did not have a professional background in event promotion.
Mahjong was not his full-time job.
He simply saw a gap and created something to fill it.
Then he listened to what the community wanted.
Today, OC Mahjong hosts Monday events in Irvine and Anaheim, weekend events, collaborations, and other mashups involving activities like pickleball and run clubs. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
The lesson goes well beyond mahjong.
You do not always need a groundbreaking product.
Sometimes you need to recognize a demand that nobody is serving properly yet.
Give people a good experience.
Make newcomers feel welcome.
Build a team.
Let people bring their friends.
Then keep showing up.
Andrew’s stated legacy is simple: helping people and building community.
Considering how quickly OC Mahjong has grown, he is already doing exactly that. Export text – mahjongcleanedpod…
Follow OC Mahjong on Instagram at @OC_Mahjong and check their calendar for upcoming events in Orange County.
Success can look perfect from the outside and still feel completely wrong on the inside.
Monick Halm had the credentials people are taught to chase: Columbia Law School, a prestigious legal career, a six-figure salary, and a life that looked successful on paper.
But the path that looked impressive was not the path that ultimately fit.
Today, Monick is a real estate investor, educator, and mentor whose journey has grown to include 1,100 doors and approximately $400 million in real estate syndication. She also mentors women who want to understand real estate investing and build wealth through opportunities they may never have been introduced to otherwise.
When the “Successful” Career Isn’t Your Life
Monick’s transition into real estate did not begin with a master plan.
She originally followed a traditional high-achievement route into law. But even during law school, her body was giving her clues that something was wrong. Stress showed up physically, and practicing law did not solve the problem.
Then came an unusually revealing moment.
After her appendix ruptured and she ended up in the hospital, one of her first reactions was relief: she would not have to go to work for a while.
That realization forced a bigger question:
What is the point of building a successful life if you are miserable living it?
Sometimes quitting is not failure.
Sometimes staying is.
Real Estate Started With a Housing Problem
Monick did not initially set out to create a massive real estate portfolio.
She simply wanted to own a home in Los Angeles.
She found a property with multiple living units, lived in one, and rented the others. The rental income helped offset the mortgage.
That first experience opened a door.
Later, she and her husband began buying and flipping houses. Then, while pregnant during the 2008 financial crisis, Monick lost her legal job.
What initially looked like a setback eventually became something she describes much differently: a gift.
Losing the job loosened the grip of an identity she might otherwise have stayed attached to simply because she had invested so much time becoming a lawyer.
That is one of the recurring themes in entrepreneurship:
The thing that disrupts your original plan can become the beginning of the better one.
The Conversation That Changed What She Thought Was Possible
Eventually, Monick ran into another problem.
Flipping houses still required constantly finding the next property, renovating it, selling it, and starting again.
She wanted something different.
Then a mentor challenged two assumptions.
First: you do not have to invest where you live.
Second: you do not have to buy an entire property with only your own money and credit.
Through real estate syndication, multiple investors can pool capital to participate in larger properties.
Before learning about syndication, Monick had assumed that owning a piece of a large apartment building was something reserved for billionaires.
Then she discovered that people in her own network had already been investing this way.
Her reaction was basically:
Why didn’t anyone tell me?
That question became bigger than real estate.
It became a question about access.
You Cannot Choose an Opportunity You Never Knew Existed
At one investing event, Monick looked around a room of roughly 120 people and saw only a handful of women.
That matters.
A person cannot seriously consider an opportunity if nobody ever tells them the opportunity exists.
Monick went on to spend years helping women—particularly women who might not naturally find themselves inside traditional real estate-investing networks—understand how these deals work.
Her work through Real Estate Investor Goddesses focuses on expanding that access.
But there is an important distinction.
Access does not mean obligation.
Learning about a syndication does not mean you should invest in it. Knowing about an opportunity does not eliminate the responsibility to understand the risks.
The goal is not to pressure people into investing.
The goal is to make sure they actually know what choices are available.
AI as a Thinking Partner, Not an Oracle
Our conversation also turned to AI.
Monick uses AI across areas like planning, marketing, operations, and idea development.
Her description of it is one I particularly like:
AI can be a thinking partner.
Not the final authority.
Not the person responsible for the decision.
A thinking partner.
She also double-checks numbers and financial information because polished output can still be wrong.
That distinction matters enormously for entrepreneurs.
AI can help expand your thinking, challenge assumptions, organize information, and accelerate work.
But confidence is not accuracy.
A machine can produce a beautifully formatted mistake.
Monick compared technology to fire: enormously useful, potentially transformative, and dependent on what the human holding it decides to do.
Financial Freedom…For What?
For years, Monick had a major mission: helping one million women achieve financial freedom through real estate.
Then another question emerged:
Financial freedom for what?
It is an unusually important question.
Entrepreneurs can become very good at postponing their lives.
We will relax after the next deal.
Travel after the next milestone.
Spend time with people we love after the company hits the next revenue target.
Have fun after we finally become successful enough to deserve it.
Monick began deliberately practicing something much simpler: having fun every day.
When we recorded our conversation, she was hundreds of days into that practice.
And the examples were not all luxury vacations or expensive experiences.
They included things like dancing, bubbles, pillow fights, water-gun fights, and building a pillow fort.
That may sound small compared with a $400 million real estate figure.
It may actually be the bigger lesson.
The Portfolio Is Not the Point
Monick Halm’s story could easily be summarized with the impressive numbers:
Columbia Law graduate. 1,100 doors. $400 million in real estate syndication.
Those numbers are real achievements.
But they are not what makes the story interesting.
The more important journey is from following an approved definition of success to deliberately choosing her own.
From lawyer to investor.
From being unaware of certain opportunities to creating access to them for other women.
From pursuing financial freedom to asking what that freedom is actually supposed to make possible.
And from using technology simply because it is powerful to using it thoughtfully—as a tool that serves a larger human life.
That is the kind of legacy worth launching.
Learn more about Monick Halm and her work with women in real estate investing at REIgoddesses.com.
Her 11-Year-Old Built a Dog App. Swetha St. Peter Says the Future of AI Is Agents.
By Li Lin | Legacy Launchers
A lot of people are still trying to figure out how to use ChatGPT.
Swetha St. Peter is already thinking about what comes next.
On this episode of Legacy Launchers, I sat down with Swetha, an AI and product expert with experience across organizations including Accenture, Amgen, Disney, and MIT Sloan, to talk about agentic AI, empathy-driven design, the future of work, and one of my favorite examples of AI in action:
Her 11-year-old daughter built an app for their Maltese.
That one story says a lot about where AI is going.
The next generation is not waiting for a perfect roadmap. They are building useful things around real problems.
And that is exactly how Swetha thinks businesses should approach AI too.
We are moving from AI that answers to AI that acts
For the last few years, most people have experienced AI through tools that generate text, summarize information, brainstorm ideas, or answer questions.
Swetha sees the next major shift as agentic AI.
Instead of simply telling you what to do, an AI agent can potentially complete parts of a workflow.
She gives a healthcare example.
A traditional chatbot might explain how to reschedule an appointment.
A more capable assistant might help someone find available times.
An AI agent, with the right permissions and safeguards, could potentially verify the patient, understand the request, check availability, book the appointment, update the relevant systems, and send confirmation.
That is a very different level of usefulness.
The distinction is simple:
Generative AI gives you an answer. Agentic AI takes action.
For business owners, that means the AI conversation is moving beyond “Can this write my email?” toward “Can this actually help complete the process?”
Stop asking where you can add AI
One of the strongest ideas in the conversation is also one of the simplest.
Swetha says companies are starting to realize that adding AI everywhere does not automatically create value.
The better questions are:
What problem are we solving? What outcome are we trying to create? Should AI even be used here?
That last question matters.
There is a temptation right now to force AI into every workflow because it sounds innovative.
But technology is only useful when it improves something.
Faster does not automatically mean better.
Automated does not automatically mean smarter.
And more AI does not automatically mean more value.
The goal is not to have the most AI.
The goal is to solve the right problem.
Empathy should come before the product
Swetha’s work in product management and design thinking has made empathy a major part of how she evaluates technology.
For her, empathy is not something you add at the end.
It starts before the product is built.
Who is going to use this?
Who might be excluded?
What happens if the model gets something wrong?
Are you designing for a real range of users or only for an imagined “average” person?
Those questions become especially important when AI starts making or influencing decisions that affect people.
Technology is trained on human-created data.
Human data contains human patterns, assumptions, and biases.
If those patterns are not examined, AI can reproduce them at scale.
That is why human judgment still matters.
AI can sound confident and still be wrong
During our conversation, I shared an experience where I asked AI to help price my services and felt like the suggested number undervalued me.
When I questioned it, the system gave me an explanation that referenced gender and race.
Swetha pointed out something important.
Just because AI gives a confident explanation does not necessarily mean that explanation accurately describes what happened internally.
That is an important distinction.
AI can produce a convincing story about its own answer without truly “knowing” why that answer happened in the way a human might assume.
The lesson for business owners is bigger than pricing.
Do not confuse confidence with truth.
Use AI as a tool.
Check the assumptions.
Compare the output against real-world evidence.
And do not outsource your judgment to a machine.
Her 11-year-old daughter is already building
Then we got to one of my favorite parts of the episode.
Swetha’s daughter is 11.
She wanted to build an app related to their Maltese.
The idea was to track things like the dog’s training habits and eating habits.
Instead of giving her daughter a giant technical lecture, Swetha asked simple product questions:
Why do you want to build this?
What is the value?
What problem are you solving?
Once the purpose was clear, the milestones became easier.
Her daughter completed the first phase as a weekend project.
That is wild when you think about it.
A lot of adults are still debating whether they should “learn AI.”
An 11-year-old is already using the tools to build around a real need.
And Swetha is teaching her the more important skill:
Not just how to build.
How to think.
The kids may have an advantage
There is something interesting happening with younger people and AI.
Many of them are not carrying the same intimidation around technology.
They are not asking whether they have permission to build.
They are experimenting.
Swetha said her daughter constantly comes up with ideas, so she gave her a notebook and encouraged her to write them down.
That combination is powerful:
Ideas.
Curiosity.
A place to capture them.
And tools that can help turn those ideas into something real much faster than previous generations could.
The competitive advantage may not belong to the person who knows the most technical jargon.
It may belong to the person who can identify a useful problem and move quickly enough to test a solution.
The future of AI is quieter than people think
Swetha believes AI is moving toward becoming less of a separate tool and more of an intelligent layer around everyday life.
That might actually be the biggest shift.
Eventually, using AI may feel less like opening a special application and more like using electricity or the internet.
You stop thinking about the infrastructure.
You just expect things to work.
That is where agents become especially important.
Instead of constantly prompting a tool, people may increasingly delegate outcomes.
Book this.
Research that.
Update this.
Coordinate these systems.
Handle this workflow.
Then escalate to a human when needed.
The interface starts to disappear.
The result becomes the product.
AI is a double-edged sword
Swetha does not pretend AI is automatically good.
She describes it as a double-edged sword.
It can remove repetitive work.
It can improve decision-making.
It can accelerate research.
It can support scientific discovery.
It can personalize education and healthcare.
But the value depends on how it is used.
That is why she keeps returning to intention.
Technology does not remove the need for good judgment.
It raises the stakes for it.
The more powerful the tool becomes, the more important it is to ask who is directing it and toward what outcome.
Don’t fear what you have not tried to understand
Toward the end of the conversation, I asked Swetha what she would say to people who are convinced AI is going to destroy everything.
Her answer was simple:
“Don’t fear what you haven’t taken the time to understand.”
That does not mean ignoring legitimate risks.
It means curiosity is usually more productive than panic.
Every major technological change creates fear because it disrupts familiar ways of working.
AI is no different.
The productive move is to learn enough to make informed decisions.
Start small.
Pick one real problem.
Test something.
See whether it saves time, improves quality, or makes a process easier.
Then build from there.
The future of AI is agents
The biggest takeaway from Swetha’s episode is not that everyone needs to become a programmer.
It is almost the opposite.
The future may belong to people who understand problems well enough to direct increasingly capable tools toward useful outcomes.
That is what good product managers already do.
It is what good business owners do.
And apparently, it is what some 11-year-olds are already doing too.
The next era of AI is not just about generating more content.
It is about getting useful work done.
The future of AI is agents.
And the people who learn how to guide them well may have a very big advantage.
🎙️ Listen to Swetha St. Peter on Legacy Launchers with Li Lin for the full conversation on AI agents, empathy-driven design, product thinking, the future of work, and what the next generation is already building.
Absolutely — here’s the Arielle Solomon blog with the stronger title you picked:
This Beverly Hills Chef Makes Luxury Dinners—Then Orders DoorDash for Herself
By Li Lin | Legacy Launchers
When I asked personal chef and baker Arielle Solomon about her favorite dishes to make, I expected a signature recipe or a heartfelt story about an ingredient.
Her answer?
“The ones that make me the most money.”
Finally. A cooking tip my business understands.
On this episode of Legacy Launchers, I sat down with Arielle Solomon, a Japanese and Black personal chef, baker, comedian, and Culinary Institute of America graduate with more than 13 years of experience.
Her work takes her into Beverly Hills homes, vacation rentals, private events, and even yacht kitchens.
Our conversation covered Japanese comfort food, luxury dining, dietary restrictions, difficult clients, pricing, plating—and why after cooking beautiful meals for everyone else, sometimes the chef just wants DoorDash.
From Japanese comfort food to professional kitchens
Arielle grew up in Japan, and the food her mother cooked remains a major part of her relationship with food.
Even after her family moved to the United States, Japanese meals remained familiar and comforting.
Her original career plan was medicine.
Then she changed her mind.
Her mother was not exactly thrilled about the pivot, but Arielle pursued culinary school, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, and says she paid off her student loans.
From there, she continued working in professional kitchens and building the experience that eventually supported her personal-chef business.
The food she grew up loving gave her the foundation. Professional training helped her turn that love into something people would pay for.
Luxury dining is not always glamorous behind the scenes
From the outside, being a private chef sounds pretty glamorous.
Beautiful homes.
Private dinners.
Steak.
Lobster.
Beverly Hills.
But Arielle describes another side of the job: walking into a completely unfamiliar kitchen and needing to produce a restaurant-quality meal anyway.
In a restaurant, you know the equipment. You know where everything lives.
In a client’s home or vacation rental, you may be learning the oven, figuring out an unfamiliar stovetop, searching for utensils, and discovering that even the client does not know where half the kitchen equipment is.
And then there are yachts.
A luxury yacht may look incredible from the outside while giving the chef a kitchen that feels closer to a tiny college apartment.
The customer sees the finished plate.
The chef handles all the invisible chaos required to make that plate happen.
That lesson goes far beyond food.
Expertise is not just what you produce. It is your ability to solve problems the customer never even has to see.
Dietary restrictions became part of the opportunity
A significant part of Arielle’s work involves adapting meals around clients’ dietary restrictions and preferences.
Instead of treating every restriction like an obstacle, she treats it like a problem to solve.
When one client wanted a vegan crab cake, for example, she researched alternatives and spoke with people familiar with vegan cooking to figure out how to create something that actually worked.
Her research process includes cooking videos, articles, food blogs, and conversations with other people.
Interestingly, she says she does not use AI to create her recipes.
That matters.
In a world where everybody is trying to insert AI into everything, Arielle’s approach is a reminder that you do not need to use every tool for every part of your craft.
Sometimes expertise, taste, research, and judgment are still the better tools.
Arielle is not simply selling food.
She is selling the ability to take a specific request and turn it into a meal worth eating.
The business behind the beautiful plate
Arielle’s joke about her favorite dishes—the ones that make her the most money—also carries a serious business lesson.
Steak and lobster are expensive.
Special requests take work.
Luxury presentation takes time.
Pricing has to reflect what the customer is actually asking someone to deliver.
She also talks about the difference between clients who can comfortably afford a service and customers who stretch their budget while still expecting every possible extra.
That does not mean wealthy people automatically make better customers.
It means pricing, expectations, and client fit need to match.
The interview also makes something else clear:
A beautiful address does not guarantee beautiful behavior.
Arielle recounts working a dinner where a guest repeatedly used racial slurs. Other people later apologized and left her a significant tip.
But money does not erase disrespect.
For service-business owners, that is an important reminder:
Client qualification should include behavior, not just budget.
The boring opportunity may actually be the better business
Not all of Arielle’s opportunities involve glamorous dinner parties.
She has also received requests for prepared meals and recalls one meal-prep opportunity approaching $3,000, with the potential customer interested in weekly service.
That may not photograph as dramatically as steak and lobster in a Beverly Hills dining room.
But recurring problems create recurring business.
Sometimes the better opportunity is not producing the fanciest experience.
It is solving an everyday problem people want handled consistently.
Great presentation has a reason
Ask Arielle about plating and you quickly hear the professional chef come out.
Her culinary training emphasized functional garnishes.
In other words, do not throw something onto a plate simply because it looks fancy.
If you are serving an apple dessert, the garnish should somehow connect to apple, cinnamon, or the flavors already present.
Every element should belong there.
That is also a pretty good business principle.
Adding more does not automatically make something better.
More features.
More copy.
More decorations.
More technology.
More AI.
Sometimes the most professional thing you can do is remove everything that does not serve the result.
Her advice for aspiring chefs
Arielle gives aspiring personal chefs one especially memorable piece of advice:
“Work in a restaurant you can’t afford to eat at.”
Why?
Because great kitchens teach you standards.
You learn how food is prepared.
How it is stored.
How it is plated.
How experienced teams execute under pressure.
How tiny efficiencies compound over hundreds of meals.
Every job can teach you a technique or shortcut that eventually becomes part of your own expertise.
Even after years in the industry, Arielle still reaches out to a mentor when she has questions about pricing or unfamiliar situations.
Experience does not mean never asking questions.
It means knowing which questions are worth asking.
Yes, the Beverly Hills chef orders DoorDash
After talking about private dinners, wedding cakes, luxury clients, and culinary standards, I had to ask Arielle one final question:
What was she planning to eat?
Her answer involved DoorDash—and possibly frozen yogurt before she even figured out dinner.
😂
After cooking for other people all day, sometimes the last thing a chef wants to do is create another production at home.
And maybe that is one of the most human parts of this whole conversation.
You can be extremely good at your craft without turning every minute of your life into a performance of that craft.
Arielle Solomon’s story contains a lot of what entrepreneurship actually looks like:
Skill.
Training.
Adaptability.
Pricing.
Customer service.
Boundaries.
Unpredictable people.
And enough humor to survive all of it.
The steak and lobster might get the Instagram photo.
The expertise is what makes the business work.
🎙️ Listen to Arielle Solomon on Legacy Launchers with Li Lin for the full conversation on personal-chef life, Japanese comfort food, luxury dining, entrepreneurship, and the reality behind a beautifully plated meal.
Rathish Rajendran had barely landed in California before he started making connections.
Jet lag, apparently, was not going to get a vote.
Within days of arriving in the United States to pursue his master’s at UC Irvine, the software engineer from Bangalore was attending an entrepreneurship event in Newport Beach, talking with founders, and finding inspiration for an AI project of his own.
On this episode of Legacy Launchers, Rathish joins Li Lin to discuss starting over in a new country, why technical knowledge still matters when AI can write code, and what he believes makes a university education valuable beyond the classroom. His ambition is straightforward: build technology that genuinely helps people. Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
A New Country, a Little Anxiety, and an Invitation
Moving internationally sounds exciting until you have to figure out an unfamiliar place while your body insists it is a completely different time of day.
Rathish describes arriving with both enthusiasm and anxiety. He was entering a new country, adjusting to a different culture, and preparing to live more independently.
But rather than waiting until he felt completely settled, he and his friends visited an entrepreneurship resource at UCI. That visit led to an invitation to a local event.
They went, despite the jet lag.
What stayed with Rathish was the range of people building businesses. He met student founders and an entrepreneur around 60 who was enthusiastically explaining his product. Seeing that excitement across generations challenged the idea that entrepreneurship belongs to a particular age group.
He also recalls meeting a successful founder whose humility impressed him as much as his accomplishments.
The lesson was not simply that networking might produce a useful contact. It was that being around people who care deeply about what they are building can make your own ideas feel worth pursuing.
Rathish and his friends left wanting to build something themselves. Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
Their AI Idea Started With a Familiar Problem: Where Did We Save That?
The event produced another realization: meeting people is one thing. Organizing everything you learn from them is another.
Rathish was saving information in WhatsApp. One friend was using a notes app. Another was using Google Docs.
Back at their dorm, they had to piece everything together.
The experience inspired an application designed to accept different kinds of information—voice notes, text, images, videos, and links—and organize it so users could retrieve it later through a natural-language question.
Think of it as an AI-assisted second brain for the information you fully intended to remember.
Rathish offers a simple example: you save a video containing a high-protein recipe. Months later, you remember the general idea but not the creator, title, or location of the link. Instead of searching through multiple apps, you ask the application to find the recipe.
At the time of the interview, he and his friends were working toward that concept. It was a project they wanted to build, not a finished product being presented as an established solution.
The appeal is practical: less time reconstructing where information went, and more time doing something useful with it. Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
If AI Can Write Code, Why Learn to Code?
Rathish’s answer is that generating something and understanding it are not the same skill.
Speaking from his experience in software engineering, he argues that knowing the underlying work helps you direct AI, evaluate its output, and recognize when something needs to change.
He illustrates the point through podcasting.
A person who understands interviews, production, and audience expectations brings a different level of judgment to AI tools than someone who has never made a podcast. The tool does not erase that experience; the experience helps determine how effectively the tool gets used.
“People who know the domain knowledge well can use these tools pretty well,” he explains.
For Rathish, the same principle applies to coding. Learning the fundamentals is not pointless simply because AI can generate code. Understanding what the system is building is part of being able to guide it.
His view is optimistic, but it comes with a responsibility: keep learning how to use the tools better.
The question is not only, Can AI do this? It is also, Do I understand the work well enough to know whether it did this well? Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
The Degree Is Only Part of the Education
When the conversation turns to graduate school, Rathish does not start with coursework.
He starts with people.
For him, university provides access to a network: professors, alumni, fellow students, founders, and professionals whose experiences can help expand his own understanding of what is possible.
He points to the interview itself. Before coming to UCI, he had not imagined finding himself on a podcast in America. Being there created an opportunity he could not have fully planned beforehand.
That is why he sees attending university as more than collecting information. Subject knowledge can be acquired through many routes, he acknowledges. His reason for being on campus includes the relationships and conversations that come with it.
He also believes alumni can be especially willing to help because they recognize something of their younger selves in students asking for guidance.
His approach to education is active: learn the material, but also meet people, ask questions, and participate in the community around the classroom. Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
Same Ambition, Different Paths
Having experienced Bangalore and begun exploring Southern California, Rathish offers an observation about how ambition gets expressed.
He describes Bangalore as a place with talented engineers, ambitious people, and an active culture of technology events and startups.
Among the students he had encountered in the United States, however, he noticed more people openly discussing plans to build their own companies. In his experience back home, pursuing a well-paid position at an established company often featured more prominently.
He is careful to frame this as a personal observation, not a definitive comparison between countries. He also emphasizes that India has many student founders.
The distinction is not about who has talent. It is about the different directions talented people may see themselves taking.
For Rathish, exposure to new people and possibilities is helping him explore his own direction. Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
Building a Legacy Beyond a Job Title
Asked what he wants to accomplish over the next two years, Rathish does not name a salary, a prestigious employer, or a funding target.
He wants to become better at building AI systems that benefit humanity.
He talks specifically about making systems reliable, aligned, and safe. Whether that happens through his own company or by contributing to another organization is less important to him than believing in the work.
That gives the conversation a clear through line. His interest in networking is not separate from his interest in engineering. Both are ways of developing the ability to build something useful.
He arrived in Irvine with uncertainty. He accepted an invitation. He met people who inspired him. He noticed a problem worth exploring.
No perfect roadmap. No guarantee of success. Just curiosity followed by action.
Sometimes the beginning of a meaningful project is not a breakthrough. It is showing up, paying attention, and deciding that a problem is worth solving. Rathish_Pause_Edited(1)
Listen to the full conversation with Rathish Rajendran on Legacy Launchers, hosted by Li Lin. Connect with Rathish on LinkedIn by searching his name.
Rathish_Rajendran_Automatic_Transcript.txt. The raw transcript contains some transcription errors, including inconsistent name spellings.
Orange County has the talent. Farrah Khan wants more people to see it — and more of its innovators to find one another.
On this episode of Legacy Launchers, former Irvine mayor Farrah Khan joins Li Lin to discuss OC Tech Week, her path from biotechnology to public service, and the importance of opening doors for people whose ideas deserve to be heard.
Her story connects two important questions:
Who gets recognized as a leader?
And what becomes possible when a community stops overlooking the people already building its future?
From Biotech to Public Service
Khan did not grow up planning a political career.
In the interview, she describes starting in biotechnology as a quality assurance specialist before moving into management and regulatory affairs. She later relocated from Northern California to Southern California.
Her involvement in local government grew through community work.
As a nonprofit executive director working across Irvine, Newport Beach, and Costa Mesa, Khan says she regularly prepared brief updates on issues such as housing and hunger.
What frustrated her was the feeling that the people she was addressing were not listening.
That experience helped push her toward a different kind of participation: learning how local leadership worked and considering how she could change it.
Being Told She Was “Unelectable”
Khan recalls a conversation in 2014 in which, after she spoke about diversity in leadership, someone told her that people with names like hers were unelectable in Irvine.
The remark stayed with her.
So did the silence of others in the room.
Her first campaign, in 2016, ended in a loss. She describes the personal toll of negative campaigning, along with the encouragement from community members who urged her to try again.
When she returned to the race in 2018, the result was very different: she received the most votes among 11 candidates.
For Khan, the most memorable part of campaigning was the direct conversation.
She knocked on doors, shared what she was seeing, and asked residents what they were experiencing and how the city could improve.
Years later, she says, people still remember those visits.
There is a lesson here for business owners too:
Listening gives you information that a polished pitch cannot.
People remember whether you took their concerns seriously.
Why OC Tech Week Matters
That same interest in connecting people runs through Khan’s work on OC Tech Week.
She describes the project as years in the making: an effort to bring Orange County’s innovation community together and show a wider audience what is happening here.
OC Tech Week is scheduled for October 19–24, 2026.
The official event website lists Khan as co-chair alongside Tony Crisp, with Tech Coast Venture Network hosting the week.
In the interview, Khan also notes that some associated events begin on October 16 and 17.
More Than 40 Events — and a Decentralized Model
One of OC Tech Week’s defining features is its decentralized format.
Instead of forcing every conversation into one conference hall, different organizations and community members can contribute their own gatherings.
Khan describes ideas ranging from:
Founder beach walks
Investor pickleball
Educational talks
A trade summit
Golf
Community networking events
At the time of the conversation, Khan said more than 40 events were already planned, with additional participants continuing to sign up.
That number reflects the moment of the interview and may continue to change.
For founders and business owners, the appeal is the variety of ways to participate.
A workshop might help you learn.
A conversation might introduce you to a collaborator.
An informal gathering can give people time to connect beyond their job titles.
Collaboration Without the Scarcity Mindset
Having lived in both Northern and Southern California, Khan shares her perspective on a difference she has noticed between the regions.
She describes Northern California as having a stronger habit of regional collaboration, while some Southern California environments can feel more territorial.
Her broader point is about scarcity.
When people become afraid that someone else might take an opportunity, they can end up preventing valuable connections from happening at all.
Collaboration can create more opportunity rather than divide a fixed amount of it.
That idea gives OC Tech Week a purpose beyond filling a calendar.
It becomes a chance for people across organizations and industries to show up for one another — and to make Orange County’s existing talent more visible.
For the Person Who Feels Like an Outsider
During the conversation, Li asks Khan what she would say to someone who feels different from everyone else in the room.
Khan’s advice is direct:
“Walk in, own the room.”
She points to the many turns in her own career — from biotech and small business to nonprofit work, politics, and technology again.
Being willing to move through those changes has allowed her to keep learning and participating.
Her story also illustrates two forces working at the same time: the reality of exclusion and the value of refusing to let someone else’s assumptions determine your next move.
The support of people who encouraged her to run again also mattered.
Confidence helped.
Community helped too.
A Legacy Measured by Helping
Asked what legacy she wants to leave, Khan gives a surprisingly simple answer.
She is less concerned with being known than with doing some good, helping people feel better, and improving things along the way.
That idea ties the whole conversation together:
Listen to people. Open doors. Bring others into the work.
Orange County already has founders, engineers, investors, business owners, community builders, and innovators.
The bigger question is whether they know one another — and whether the rest of the world knows they are here.
OC Tech Week is one attempt to change that.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Listen to the full Legacy Launchers conversation with former Irvine mayor Farrah Khan for more on leadership, belonging, innovation, and the vision behind OC Tech Week.
Explore the latest event schedule and participation details at octechweek.com.
Source Note
This article is based on Li Lin’s recorded Legacy Launchers interview with Farrah Khan.
Personal experiences and regional comparisons are presented as Khan’s account.
Core event dates, hosting organization, and co-chair roles were checked against the official OC Tech Week website on October 2, 2026.
Event counts, participating organizations, and individual event plans may change.
Your IT Guy Looks Like He’s Doing Nothing—Until Everything Breaks
Darrel Manalang of IT PLZ HELP on Why Small Businesses Can’t Afford to Ignore Their Technology
When your computers are working, your Wi-Fi is fast, your files are accessible, and nobody is locked out of their email, it can be easy to wonder:
What exactly are we paying the IT person for?
Then the server crashes.
Someone clicks a suspicious link.
The internet goes down five minutes before an important client presentation.
A former employee still has access to company files.
Suddenly, the person who looked like they were “doing nothing” becomes one of the most important people in the business.
That is the strange reality of good IT.
On Legacy Launchers, I sat down with Darrel Manalang, owner of IT PLZ HELP, to talk about technology, cybersecurity, small-business IT, and why some of the most valuable work happens before a problem ever becomes visible.
Good IT Is Supposed to Look Boring
Business owners tend to notice technology when it fails.
They notice the frozen computer.
They notice the printer that refuses to print.
They notice when email goes down.
They definitely notice when they cannot access the files they need to run their company.
What they rarely notice are the hundreds of small preventative actions that keep those disasters from happening in the first place.
That is one reason IT can be misunderstood.
When the systems work, it can appear as though nothing is happening.
But that may be exactly the point.
A strong IT professional is not simply waiting around to repair broken computers. The real value is often in maintaining systems, reducing vulnerabilities, managing access, monitoring technology and helping prevent problems before they interrupt the business.
In other words:
The best IT problem may be the one you never knew you almost had.
Small Businesses Are Technology Companies Now—Whether They Like It or Not
You do not need to run a software company to depend on technology.
A real estate office depends on email, CRM systems, digital contracts and cloud storage.
A medical or dental office depends on scheduling systems and patient information.
A contractor depends on phones, estimates, accounting software and customer records.
A retailer depends on payment systems.
A professional-services company may have almost its entire business sitting inside email accounts, laptops and cloud applications.
Take away the technology and many modern small businesses could barely operate for a day.
Yet small-business owners often treat IT as something to worry about after there is already a problem.
That is the equivalent of buying a fire extinguisher while the kitchen is burning.
Cybersecurity Is No Longer Just a “Big Company” Problem
There is also a dangerous assumption that cybercriminals only care about major corporations.
Smaller businesses can be attractive targets precisely because they may have fewer protections, fewer dedicated technology employees and less formal cybersecurity infrastructure.
And a cybersecurity problem does not have to look like a dramatic Hollywood hacking scene.
Sometimes it is much simpler.
A fake email.
A reused password.
An employee account that should have been shut down.
A fraudulent invoice.
An unprotected device.
A piece of software that was never updated.
The attack may be sophisticated.
The entry point often is not.
That means cybersecurity is not just an IT issue anymore.
It is an operational issue.
It is a financial issue.
And increasingly, it is a leadership issue.
The Cost of Downtime Is Bigger Than the Repair Bill
When technology breaks, the cost is rarely limited to the technician’s invoice.
Imagine ten employees unable to work for four hours.
You are paying salaries while productivity stops.
Customers are waiting.
Calls may be missed.
Orders may be delayed.
Employees become frustrated.
Management gets distracted.
And if data has been compromised, the consequences can become substantially more serious.
That is why business owners should think about IT less like fixing an appliance and more like protecting business continuity.
The question is not only:
“How much does IT cost?”
A better question is:
“What does it cost my company when the technology stops working?”
AI Makes IT More Important, Not Less
Artificial intelligence is making technology easier for ordinary business owners to use.
That is good.
It is also creating an entirely new wave of tools, accounts, integrations, automations and security questions.
Employees can now adopt new software almost instantly.
A business might use ChatGPT, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, accounting software, a CRM, an AI transcription platform, cloud storage, automation tools and a dozen other applications at the same time.
That convenience creates opportunity.
It also creates complexity.
Someone still needs to think about:
Who has access?
Where is company data being stored?
What happens when an employee leaves?
Which tools contain confidential information?
Are systems backed up?
Are passwords and permissions being managed correctly?
What happens if one of these systems fails?
AI does not eliminate the need for IT strategy.
It makes responsible technology management even more important.
Technology Should Support the Business—Not Become the Business
Small-business owners usually do not start companies because they are excited about password resets and software updates.
They want to serve customers.
Sell products.
Build teams.
Solve problems.
Make money.
Create something meaningful.
Technology should help them do those things.
The best technology strategy is not necessarily the one with the most expensive software or the most complicated system.
It is the one that helps a company operate reliably without forcing the owner to become the unofficial IT department.
That is where professionals like Darrel become valuable.
The Person Preventing the Disaster May Look Like They’re Doing Nothing
There is a funny paradox in preventative work.
If someone is excellent at preventing problems, you may never fully see the problems they prevented.
The cybersecurity breach that never happened does not send you an invoice.
The backup you never needed does not interrupt your afternoon.
The employee whose access was properly removed never becomes a security incident.
The server that was maintained correctly simply keeps working.
Success can look remarkably uneventful.
And sometimes that is exactly what you are paying for.
So if your IT person looks like they are doing nothing while everything continues working perfectly?
Maybe ask one more question before deciding you do not need them.
They may be the reason nothing is happening.
About Darrel Manalang
Darrel Manalang is the owner of IT PLZ HELP, providing IT support and technology solutions for businesses in Orange County, California. His work focuses on helping companies keep their systems functioning, secure and prepared for the technology challenges that modern businesses increasingly face.
About Legacy Launchers
Legacy Launchers features entrepreneurs, business owners and professionals building companies, careers and legacies in a rapidly changing world.
Hosted by Li Lin, founder of Legacy Launcher Labs and author of Heart, Hustle, & AI, the show explores entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, leadership, sales, marketing and the human stories behind the people building what comes next.
Because sometimes the most important business lesson is learning what you should never have to fix in the first place.