Business
**Think AI Podcast**

Whether you’re curious about how AI might impact you, an AI enthusiast looking for the next big thing, or an AI skeptic trying to implement AI for your personal or organizational growth, there’s something for everyone!

Please join me !

Latest Episodes:

Data First, AI Second, People Always | Ep. 13 with Scot Burdette (ABB) Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

🎙️ Data First, AI Second, People Always | Scot Burdette, ABB CIO
"𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻." - Scot Burdette
Scot Burdette runs digital transformation at ABB across 3 business lines, 60+ countries, and 17 factories. 40 years in technology, from HP and EDS to global division CIO, and a 2025 Ohio ORBIE Awards global finalist. In this conversation with Dave Goyal, he lays out a simple order of operations: 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁. 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀.
We get into the unglamorous data plumbing nobody celebrates, why a demo is the easy part, what good data means across 60 countries, capturing hard-won knowledge before people retire, and how the CIO role moved from the basement to the boardroom.
If you lead data, AI, or a team through change, this one is for you.
⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 Meet Scot Burdette: 40 years, 60+ countries, 17 factories
01:01 A day when one decision touches 60 countries
03:34 Using AI to run his own calendar and time
05:30 Why expecting AI to be perfect on day one backfires
06:54 The multi-year build for end to end order automation
09:33 What good data actually means across 60 countries
13:49 Why the data plumbing has to come first
14:56 Building a demo is easy, the foundation is hard
17:12 Capturing tribal knowledge before the retirement wave
21:13 Why the team, not the tech, are the rock stars
23:40 Right people, wrong seat
25:44 From the basement to the boardroom
27:54 Will AI take jobs? AI as a tool
29:38 Teach kids to use AI, not just build it
32:30 Data and AI: transformation and adoption
🎧 Watch or listen:
YouTube: https://youtube.com/davegoyal
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7z6mVpTBjbqwuAgLtxgoSq?si=1171658bc9e944af
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-ai-podcast/id1884395529
About the Think AI Podcast:
Dave Goyal sits down with the operators and leaders putting AI and data to work in the real world, minus the hype. New episodes weekly.
#ThinkAIPodcast #DataStrategy #AILeadership #CIO #DaveGoyal

Prescription Before Diagnosis is Malpractice | Ep. 12 with Sung Paik (Data QI) Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

🎙️ Prescription Before Diagnosis is Malpractice | Sung Paik, Data QI
"Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice." Most AI is sold backwards, and Sung Paik came with the autopsy. In this episode, Dave Goyal sits down with Sung Paik, VP of AI Go-To-Market for North America and Field CTO at Data QI, to break down why most manufacturing AI projects die in pilot purgatory, and what the 5 percent that actually work do differently.
They get into the data foundation nobody wants to fix, the 6 percent output jump that added $3.6 million to one production line, the silver tsunami retiring out of factories, and why the operator on the floor, not the executive who signs the check, is the real buyer of AI.
In this episode:
00:00 Meet Sung Paik: finance, code, startup, and the sales number
01:13 Prescription before diagnosis and the AI chasm of confusion
03:22 Data before AI, and why data is never garbage
05:43 The 6 percent output jump worth $3.6 million
08:09 Walking away when the ROI isn't there
11:31 How to say no to a client and still keep them
15:08 Why the operator is the single most important person
18:41 The silver tsunami and capturing institutional knowledge
24:50 Assistant vs agent, explained simply
34:52 Innovation sprints and escaping pilot purgatory
53:40 What actually separates one AI vendor from another
If you build, sell, or buy AI for the factory floor, this one is a blueprint. Subscribe for more, drop your biggest AI-in-manufacturing question in the comments, and hit like if "prescription before diagnosis" just reframed how you think about AI.
---
🔗 Links & Resources
Data QI: https://dataqi.ai/
Sung Paik LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sungpaik/
Grow Without Sacrifice: https://growwithoutsacrifice.com/
#AIinManufacturing #ManufacturingAI #IndustrialAI #AIStrategy #ThinkAIPodcast

Meet My AI Crew | Ep. 11 Jun 23, 2026

Show notes

🎙️ Meet My AI Crew
I opened the garage door on the system that runs my company. Not a chatbot. A real crew of AI employees with names, jobs, and shifts that show up on my calendar every morning. I will not hand you the secret wiring, but by the end you will know exactly what is possible and have the shape to build your own.
**In this episode:**
00:00 The handbike and the garage door
01:11 The real bottleneck was me
03:24 What an AI employee actually is (not a chatbot)
05:29 Meet the crew: Maya, Morgan, Sasha, Owen, Felix, Harper, FIO
07:39 MCP vs API in plain English
10:05 Inside Felix, my CFO financial cockpit
16:41 Watching my AI employees clock in on my calendar
24:25 A Fortune 500 back office for the cost of a coffee a day
If you have ever felt like your business only moves as fast as you do, this one is for you. Subscribe for more, drop a comment with the first role you would hand to an AI employee, and if you want the step by step build, come join me.
👉 Learn to build your own AI crew inside Grow Without Sacrifice: https://growwithoutsacrifice.com
---
#AIcrew #AIemployees #GrowWithoutSacrifice #SmallBusinessAI #SoloFounder

The 5 F's of a Legendary Life | Ep. 10 with Coach Kevin (We Live Legend) May 27, 2026

Show notes

🎙️ The 5F's of a Legendary Life | Coach Kevin
Coach Kevin has coached more than 40,000 people across five continents, from everyday entrepreneurs to heirs and billionaires. In this episode he tells Dave Goyal what almost every single one of them got wrong about success, why his first three billionaire clients were suicidal, and how to build KPIs for the parts of your life that actually matter: your marriage, your kids, your fitness, your faith.
We get into the Five Facets framework (Fitness, Faith, Family, Finance, Fun), why a grind season is fine but a "season" without an end date is just laziness, the teenager KPI that will rewire how you parent, and a brutally honest take on what AI is doing to entrepreneurs right now (spoiler: it lets you overclock until you melt).
In this episode:
00:47 The two truths almost no one will tell themselves
03:16 Why coaching billionaires taught Kevin that money is not enough
10:32 The Five Facets framework: Fitness, Faith, Family, Finance, Fun
14:29 Deferring joy is the same as deferring profit
19:25 How to set real KPIs for marriage, faith, and family
31:30 Grind seasons are fine. Seasons with no end date are not.
38:18 The KPI every father needs to be tracking
44:36 The teenager hack: crossroads and giving them the radio
53:46 AI is the tractor of the mind (and why it will melt you)
59:04 The constraint you didn't choose but should be grateful for
1:05:20 Love yourself warts and all
If this episode gave you a new lens, hit subscribe, drop a comment with the one KPI you're going to start tracking this week, and send it to the entrepreneur in your life who needs to hear it.
---
🔗 Links & Resources
Coach Kevin: https://itscoachkevin.com
Grow Without Sacrifice: https://growwithoutsacrifice.com/
#ThinkAIPodcast #CoachKevin #Mindset #Entrepreneurship #LiveLegend

Grow Without Sacrifice | Ep. 9 May 19, 2026

Show notes

🎙️ Grow Without Sacrifice

This is an episode about three things that looked unrelated and turned out to be the same thing: a composer, a hand bike, and an AI workforce. If you have ever felt like the business you built was the thing standing between you and the life you actually wanted, this one is for you. By the end, I'll show you how an AI workforce gave me back my Saturdays, my hobby, and my today.

In this episode:

00:00 The dark monitor moment that changed everything

03:30 Why sacrifice doesn't bill you in hours

05:30 The composer who stopped trying to play every instrument

08:30 The Kishore Kumar song that reframed why I build AI

10:30 AI as a cognitive prosthetic for the founders no one talks to

15:00 Meet the AI team: Maya, Morgan, Sasha, Owen, Felix, Harper, Theo

21:30 The hand bike: the real proof

25:00 Where to start in your next 90 days

If this episode lands for you, pick the one role you would hire first, write a one-page job description, and send it to me on LinkedIn. I'll tell you if it's the right place to start.

🔗 Links & Resources

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davegoyal/
Grow Without Sacrifice (Pilot Program): https://growwithoutsacrifice.com/

Think AI Consulting: https://thinkaicorp.com/

#GrowWithoutSacrifice #AIWorkforce #SoloEntrepreneur #DisabledFounder #DataAIStudio

Why 90% of Manufacturing POCs Die | Ep. 8 with Naresh Mehta May 12, 2026

Show notes

🎙️ Why 90% of Manufacturing POCs Die with Naresh Mehta
After 20+ years building enterprise tech for global manufacturers across India, Mexico, and the US, Naresh Mehta has lived through every wave from Excel dashboards to digital twins to agentic AI to physical AI. In this conversation, he gets blunt about why most manufacturing AI projects never make it to production, names a brand new trap nobody is talking about (intelligence silos), and walks through two real deployments that prove what works when you stop chasing the model and start respecting the plumbing.
We get into a real agentic AI build that automated 65% of supplier risk monitoring at an industrial conglomerate (200+ risk parameters, 8 multi-agent workflows, 20+ back office roles redeployed instead of fired), an auto OEM physical AI build that cut defect rates 25 to 30% by shifting inspection left with situationally aware robots, where quantum actually fits before manufacturing leaders even start asking, why every enterprise needs an AI control plane (and why the database-deletion horror stories happen without one), and what to tell the AI curious, the AI enthusiast, and the AI skeptic.
In this episode:
00:00 Cold open
00:17 Welcome to Think AI Podcast
01:24 Meet Naresh: 20+ years across India, Mexico, US
02:00 The inflection point: when AI moved from read about to ship on
04:30 Pace of innovation vs. pace of adoption
07:03 The POC mindset that kills 90% of pilots
10:00 Data silos. Org silos. Now intelligence silos.
10:30 AI is 5%. The plumbing is 95%.
13:42 Real win #1: 65% supplier risk automation, 20+ roles redeployed
17:30 Real win #2: Auto OEM physical AI cuts defects 25 to 30%
22:28 AI meets quantum: why manufacturing should care now
30:19 The AI control plane: business outcomes + trust outcomes
34:00 The agent that deleted the database
35:57 Known patterns vs unknown patterns: the real implementation gap
39:14 What surprised me. What stayed boringly true.
46:01 Four things every manufacturer starting today must do
49:54 The cake analogy: build the slice first
50:58 Advice to your early 2000s self
53:09 Dave on building from a different lens (disabled, dyslexic)
54:45 Naresh's 10-year-old kid published a coloring book on Kindle
57:41 One message each: AI curious, AI enthusiast, AI skeptic
1:00:43 The unsolved problem: AI optimization for live video
1:02:36 Take one idea and turn it into action
If you lead a plant, a network of plants, or any operation where AI has to survive shift three at 2am, this one is for you.
Subscribe for weekly conversations on what AI is actually delivering for manufacturers and healthcare. Drop a comment on which silo (data, org, or intelligence) is biting you hardest right now.
---
🔗 Links & Resources
- Naresh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naresh-mehta-53b1b437/
- Think AI Consulting: https://thinkaicorp.com
- Dave on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davegoyal/
#ManufacturingAI #AgenticAI #AIStrategy #DigitalTransformation #ThinkAIPodcast

The Long Arc of Data and AI | Ep. 7 with Reza Rad (RADACAD) May 05, 2026

Show notes

The Long Arc of Data and AI with Reza Rad

Reza Rad has watched every Microsoft data platform turn since SQL Server. 15-time MVP. Founder of RADACAD. Author of seven books. 10 million YouTube views. In this episode he tells Dave Goyal exactly which workforce AI is replacing, why your Copilot output is only as good as your star schema, and what a 22-year-old should spend the next two years learning if they want to survive the next decade.

In this episode:

00:00 Cold open: Who AI is actually replacing

00:34 Welcome and intro

01:48 What has actually changed and what has not in the AI era

07:52 Why Copilot in Power BI fails on a bad data model

10:39 The CFO who got the right Q3 number from stale data

14:59 Why AI is replacing juniors, not seniors

16:02 Real Fabric and AI customer outcomes

20:39 Governance, F-SKUs, and the iceberg under every AI investment

24:49 Mindset, energy, and surviving 20 years of platform turns

29:36 What Reza would tell a 22-year-old today

34:18 Power BI and Fabric Summit and why virtual beats in-person

37:55 Music, pattern, and improvising inside structure

42:13 What kept the content engine running for a decade

44:01 One thing AI-curious, AI-enthusiast, and AI-skeptic should each learn this quarter

47:02 New Zealand vs US adoption curves

49:22 Closing word

If this conversation helped you frame your own Power BI, Fabric, or AI strategy, share it with one teammate wrestling with the same questions. Subscribe for weekly conversations on building real AI in real companies.

---

🔗 Links and Resources

RADACAD Academy: https://radacad.com

Reza on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rezarad/

Reza's books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3QOdC4I

Power BI and Fabric Summit: https://globalpowerbisummit.com/

Think AI Podcast: https://bit.ly/ThinkAIPodcast

#PowerBI #MicrosoftFabric #DataAndAI #Copilot #RADACAD

Compliance, Music & AI | Ep. 6 with Nilesh Maheshwari (Yuktra AI) Apr 21, 2026

Show notes

What do music and regulated manufacturing AI have in common? More than you'd think. Nilesh Maheshwari, founder of Emorphis, Emorphis Health, and Yuktra AI, joins Dave Goyal to unpack why the hardest places to deploy AI (pharma, healthcare, regulated plants) demand faithfulness over cleverness — and why structure and freedom aren't opposites.

In this episode:

00:00 Why a "knowledge thread" beats a database on the shop floor

04:17 The real pain signal that built Yuktra (hint: it wasn't "we want AI")

07:08 Guardrails for regulated AI — why clever LLMs are dangerous

10:34 The plant-worker pushback that killed fancy AI answers

13:23 Music, discipline, and how structure creates freedom

18:54 What most US founders get wrong building with India teams

21:07 Why there's no such thing as a "best product"

29:22 Curious, enthusiast, or skeptic? Nilesh's take on AI

If you lead a plant, hospital, lab, or any regulated environment and you're wondering where AI actually fits — this one's for you.

👉 Subscribe for more conversations on Data, AI, and the humans behind the systems.

💬 Drop a comment: Are you AI curious, enthusiast, or skeptic?

---

🔗 Links & Resources

- Yuktra AI: https://yuktra.ai

- Emorphis Health: https://emorphis.health

- Nilesh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nileshmaheshwari/

- Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegoyal/

#ThinkAIPodcast #RegulatedAI #ManufacturingAI #PharmaAI #FounderConversations

Data Before AI | Ep. 5 with Alex Ryals (MicroAge) Apr 14, 2026

Show notes

What happens when a cybersecurity leader who has sat on every side of the tech table — customer, reseller, distributor, and vendor — decides the future belongs to AI? Alex Ryals, CISO and SVP at MicroAge (celebrating 50 years!), breaks down why most companies are getting AI security dangerously wrong, and what to do before you flip the switch on Copilot or any AI tool.
In this episode:
00:05 — Intro: Alex's rare career journey across all four sides of the tech channel
03:47 — Why Alex traded global scale at TD SYNNEX for a smaller, more impactful role
10:53 — As a CISO, how do you balance "move fast" with "stay safe"?
14:02 — Shadow AI: the silent risk happening in your company right now
18:46 — Building a Copilot sales assistant and using AI avatars on YouTube
22:34 — Humanoid robotics, skills marketplaces, and where IT partners fit in
25:51 — MicroAge at 50: bankruptcy, reinvention, and lessons for every tech company
29:53 — Octum.ai: why data hygiene comes before any AI investment
33:30 — First move for leaders who don't know where to start with AI
If you're a business leader sitting on the fence about AI, this episode will either push you off or hand you a map. Like, subscribe, and drop your biggest AI security question in the comments.

🔗 Links & Resources
[MicroAge YouTube Channel] — Search "MicroAge" on YouTube
[Cybersecurity Deciphered] — Alex's personal channel: youtube.com/CybersecurityDecyphered
[Think AI Consulting] — thinkaicorp.com
Dave Goyal - davegoyal.com
[Add additional links here]

AIGovernance #CybersecurityAI #MicroAge #ThinkAIPodcast #AILeadership

AI Sprawl Is Real | Ep. 4 with Priya Udeshi Apr 08, 2026

Show notes

What happens when someone with 17 years of IT strategy experience gets a front-row seat to the AI transformation inside a global tech enterprise? Priya Udeshi is Chief of Staff to the CIO and Head of IT PMO, sitting at the intersection of AI strategy, governance, and execution. She shares how she balances enterprise-scale agent deployments with democratized AI for every employee, why old governance frameworks are breaking, and what CIOs need to do right now to stop falling behind.
In this episode:
00:00 Meet Priya Udeshi: From PMO leader to Chief of Staff
05:25 AI curious vs. AI enthusiast vs. AI skeptic: Where do you fall?
08:24 Enterprise search as the real solution to meeting overload
11:59 Why PPM tools fail and what actually works
18:55 AI is in the passenger seat, I’m driving
22:31 AI doubles capability every 3.3 months. What that means by 2030
24:00 Agent sprawl is real and governance has to evolve
31:16 Hallucinations: What’s working to contain them
41:05 What CIOs should be doing RIGHT NOW
44:33 Measuring AI-assisted engineering with real KPIs
47:06 Priya’s 7-year-old built a children’s book with AI
52:04 Trust your gut: Advice to her younger self

If this conversation sparked something for you, hit Subscribe and drop a comment with your biggest AI challenge right now. New episodes every week.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Think AI Podcast

AIGovernance #CybersecurityAI #MicroAge #ThinkAIPodcast #AILeadership

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected