Tapping into your Superpower with Dean Quiambao

george grombacher 0:02
Dean Quiambao is a partner and chief relationship builder with our menino. They are one of the nation’s largest CPA and accounting firms. Welcome back to the show, Dean.

Dean Quiambao 0:12
George. I’m happy to be back. Second time here. Let’s do this baby.

george grombacher 0:18
Let’s go. Fresh our memory Dean, tell us a little about a little bit more about your work a little bit about your personal life and why you do what you do.

Dean Quiambao 0:26
Oh, I love it. Okay. Let’s see. First off, I’m a dad, married to my wife got 113 year old daughter PQ got to Bernie doodles been with my wife for a long time, I think 28 years. I love all of that stability in my life at work. Like you said, I’m a partner at Armanino. I also lead our Northern California marketplace. I’m our technology industry leader and I sit on our board of partners. Why do I do it all? Because I love it. I’m not gonna lie. Like, there’s a lot of things you can go do. You got to love it. Just because I say I love it doesn’t mean it’s hard. It’s hard. George. Things are hard. That’s just the way it goes. But I love what I do. And I love my team. Excellent.

george grombacher 1:14
Things are hard. I love doing hard things as well. 28 years of marriage way to go.

Dean Quiambao 1:21
What do you here’s a marriage. Oh, my this is gonna blow your mind. 23 years at Armanino. Wow. That’s that’s maybe maybe I like maybe I liked the stability more than I think. I don’t know. I don’t

george grombacher 1:34
know. It’s an interesting thing. And it looks like you’re 35 years old. So got married pretty young buddy. All right. So I don’t know how long it’s been since we chatted. But what’s what what have you been up to? What’s what’s what’s new?

Dean Quiambao 1:49
Yeah, what’s new? I think since the last time we talked, if you look at the date of that podcast to now if you think about what’s just taking over, everybody’s talking about AI George AI is everywhere. I’m here in the San Francisco Bay area. I was out an event last night. And we were in this. It was called future of finance. And we’re there in a brewery garden. Okay. And this young guy comes up to me. And he’s like, What do you guys got going on? Like, you know, you got like, 50 people over here. What is this? And I’m like, oh, it’s the future of finance. These are people who, you know, tech execs who want to be CFOs one day, and he’s like, Oh, really? What do you mean, he’s like, Well, I’m part of the largest AI collective in the Bay Area. And the Bay Area is the home of AI, we got 10,000 people. And so we literally start talking. And he’s like, okay, great. And I don’t want to give away his company idea. But he shows it to me on the spot. This kid is a kid. And it was pretty mind blowing what he was doing. As a demo on his phone. Right then in there. AI is everywhere. And it is taken off. And it is probably the newest thing and video as of yesterday, the most valuable company in the world. Right? They’re selling all the picks and shovels to make the AI happen. So yeah, AI is the number one thing on top of everybody’s minds, or it shouldn’t be anyway, right now.

george grombacher 3:21
Yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s probably gonna stick around for longer than NF T’s are doing but I guess we’re just gonna have to wait and see on that one. So

Dean Quiambao 3:33
I think so I think we might have some, some labor in here. Shots

george grombacher 3:37
prior to NF Ts. All right. What your you’ve always been an active guy as well. We’re having this conversation talking about what how, what time we like to get up in the morning and how we’d like to have routines. How are you have anything new on doing anything hard? Yeah,

Dean Quiambao 3:53
I’m not gonna lie to you, George, I want to talk about it. I did. 75 hard, actually, I want let’s let’s be real here. I failed at 75 hard, but it was one of the best experiences I ever had. And the results were crazy at failing. 75 hard. So let’s talk about that too. Because I think that 75 heart experience. I extrapolated that to so many other things in my life. And now I just tried to do the same things and replicate replicate at work especially and it was killer.

george grombacher 4:28
So you you mentioned that you had had gone through that program. And I don’t know it’s Andy for Sela who is CEO, very public entrepreneur podcast where he developed it he calls it a mental toughness program more so than anything else. And I don’t know you that well, Dean, but I know you to be a very very, very mentally tough physically fit, really disciplined, high achieving person. So for you to say that it was one of the hardest things you’ve ever done is pretty surprising too. Me,

Dean Quiambao 5:01
you know, let me tell you did I want to do 75? Heart, George, hello, my friend, my partners came up to me and they’re like, Dean, we want to do 75 heart. And I was like, well, that’s great. You should go do it. I don’t need it. I’m good, right? I live this, right? This is what I do. And they’re like, no, come on, we can do it together. And I was like, you know, I was thinking about my friends, my partners, and I was like, Alright, fine. If you’re in, I’m in, right. So what is 75? Hard? It’s drinking gallon of water every day, which is challenging. That’s a lot of water, you’re gonna go to the restroom a lot. Right? Read 10 minutes a day. Do workouts 45 minutes each one outside, follow a nutrition plan. No alcohol, right? That was kinda like the parameters. And when you’re looking at that, you go into it. And we gave ourselves like two or three months to think about this and prepare and then sure enough, here we go. January one, just like everybody else when I’m challenged guy, I don’t like challenges. Right? So the challenges are, right. Like you ride the wave. I’m good, whatever. So here we go. We kind of prep for it. And let me tell you what it did. And this is key, right. I also heard this in a George Sweetman podcast. He’s a former CEO of slow snowflake and a lot of other technology companies, but he always says narrow the focus. And you think about those things that I just mentioned. And you’re like, how am I going to get that all done? But the reality is you actually start to think of, I’m just going to focus on this and it becomes your focus. So gallon of water. That’s easy. I was drinking 40 ounces of water before five in the morning. 530 in the morning. I had 40 ounces. Done easy, right? We were well on our way. Yeah, that one? Easy. All right. Just little check off the box. Working to working doing two workouts a day. Okay, that’s really hard one outside, that’s really hard. Following my nutrition plan, my nutrition plan that I wanted to do and it lined up with my CrossFit workouts in my preparation was I gave up processed flour, processed sugar, and then obviously no alcohol. So that’s what I did. The reading. That’s the challenge, right? Get get you’re trying to cheat your 10 pages in every day. All right here. Here’s here’s the punchline, George. I failed. I failed. Did I hit every single one of those metrics every single day? No, I failed at 75 hard. But guess what? I didn’t hit every single thing every single day. But I hit 90% of the things every single day. And any day that I missed anything that I say, Oh, well, I failed. It’s over chocolate up there all the way done back to doing whatever I want. No, just went back to the next day. Is that alright? How many of these things can I hit? Against what? George, you said I was a mentally tough guy. I take that as a huge compliment. I was super mentally tough. I was so locked in. Right? I was locked in at work. I was locked in that life. I was locked in at the gym. It gets scary. I loved it. I was like, Dude, I love this. Even my wife was like, I don’t know how you’re doing this. But it was because I just focused on these things. Okay, fast forward. Instead, he loves 75 art, blah, blah, blah. What did it all mean? At the end of the day, and it wasn’t my goal. But the ending result was mentally tough, felt great clarity. And even the most part, I lost two and a half percent of body fat. Right got to at my age, I’m 46 years old, I got to 10 and a half percent body fat. And I was like, holy cow. But so many things got unlocked. Because we did this hard thing. George and I think that like people got to think about that is like oh my gosh, you could do this hard thing and find a little community and we should talk about the little secrets that I found. Little enlightening is about doing the 75 hard. Like, it was awesome.

george grombacher 9:30
How many people did you do it with? You mentioned some of your business partners.

Dean Quiambao 9:33
There you go. We had a team of about, I think, six or seven people.

george grombacher 9:37
And how was that?

Dean Quiambao 9:39
It was fantastic. Right? I think anybody who’s going to do something like this, like find your people. So we had a little chat. And we would just say all right as we got started the first like every day everybody was like I’m in I got this done. I got this done. And we would keep point celebrate every small win. Okay, congrats. lessons. And then if there was a day like say, I just had to travel, I’d go to New York or something like that. Well, how the heck are you supposed to get into workouts? And you, you know, you’re traveling in New York? Well, I said, alright, well, my first workout is I gotta walk all around the airport, and I got to do this. And that’s 45 minutes of walking. So that was good. And then it was like, okay, don’t worry about it. Get when you land tomorrow, get your workout in. And so we were very supportive. We celebrated the small when we were just little check in the box. And then it just became this thing of like, Hey, man, I don’t want to let anybody else down. Right? So there was just the little things that we did, then all of a sudden, you can just see the group getting tighter. And then, you know, some of my friends were getting amazing results. My partner Jeff, he lost 35 pounds. He’s still losing weight. Right? And so it’s just how do you just keep it going? Keep a little community keep it tight. For each other positive culture, not no shaming, no. Anything like that. Work together that that? That worked really good.

george grombacher 11:04
The first time you miss something? Did you just crush yourself?

Dean Quiambao 11:10
Did I did I was like, ah, guys, I’m not gonna make it today. I’m not gonna make it. Like, it’s like, I’m running out of time. I’m on a plant. You know what I mean? You’re just looking at I mean, there are times at night, I’m gonna lie to you. I’m reading a book, I got my phone on my flashlight here. It’s like the clock then 30 At night, and that’s late for me. And I’m like, trying to get in my 10 minutes reading. And so yeah, but that’s what I mean. And finally, when I just I said this, I said, Hey, guys, not gonna happen. I’m gonna miss this. And my team was supportive. Do the next right thing. Because you know what? Nobody hits 100% Every single time? Nobody George, you know that? For sure. If you could hit 80% all the time. Guess what? You’re gonna crush it. And so why else did I fail? 75? Hard. George. Guess what? I only did five workouts a week. I mean, I only worked out five days a week. My the guys at my gym, my trainers and everybody. They’re like, No, you’re not doing you’re not gonna do seven workouts a week. You’re too old for that. And our workouts are too hard. So maybe you can go walk, you can go do things like that. And you can do, you know, non intense workouts. So I only did five workouts a week. But I stayed disciplined in so many other things. That the results were insane. And that’s really the takeaway from me, is the discipline and the accountability and all of that, George, it just unlocked so many things for me. And then I carried that on to work. And I said, Hey, okay, well, can I take this day to day, week to week focus, like, hey, like I heard you, I introduced myself, I’m gonna technology industry leader. I’m not even paying attention. But besides the high and the biggest tech companies in the world, like the technology industry is still in some pain. Right? There’s not many IPOs there’s not many m&a is out there. And so it’s hard. And so what can you do, I can only control what I can control. So you narrow the focus. And you say, from a week to week, day to day basics? Am I getting the things done that I need to get done? Otherwise, there’s lots of things you can worry about and feel like you have no control?

george grombacher 13:23
Yeah, it is guilty of, of doing all those things you just described, of trying to boil the ocean or whatever the term might be trying to do it all but I can’t do that I can’t do 75 hard in one day, I can just do one thing after another and focus on the things that I do have control over. And that it refines your focus if or narrowed your focus or focused or focused. I think that’s that’s not surprising. But again, it is because I do consider you to be such an already focused and hardworking person so that you got so much out of this is pretty wild.

Dean Quiambao 14:06
Oh, absolutely. I loved it. I do it again. I do it again in a second. Right. Someone tells me Hey, I want to go do this. You need to partner Okay, let’s go. Yeah, now I try to I try to gamify other things in the same exact way. I’ve always been that atomic atomic habits. Big fan of that. But I love this and I and how about this right? When business is hard, and maybe you don’t have the results you want the company like this, this accountability, this discipline can became very, because then you can tell everybody well, here’s all the things that I’m doing. Here’s all the things that I’m doing. And like if you have anything to add, please tell me because we’re emptying the tank every single day. And here’s the things that I’m focused on. And if anybody has anything to ask, add or things or recommendations or anything like that, we’re open to it. Right? Versus if you’re not empty in the tank every day. And that’s a different conversation. But this really allowed me to just, like I said, Stay narrow, stay tight, and execute. And in times like this, right? Let’s see, if people think that business is easy right now the phone is ringing off the hook. It’s not. So at times like this, you need to know that, hey, we’re doing we’re executing.

george grombacher 15:29
So Andy Purcell also has where he talks about as the power list, and maybe that’s part of the 75 hard book and program that I’m not sure of. But his power list is it’s five things that he knows he has to do every day. And it’s separate from, from the items on 75 hard, but it strikes me that it’s just his whole thing is how do we help people to better narrow their focus and execute on those things? And you one day builds on the other?

Dean Quiambao 15:57
Right, George? And let’s be real here, we started this conversation, talking about what AI, you know, who are the best people right now, when it comes to AI? The laziest people, right? It’s insane. Because if you showed me Hey, Dean, we have this, this and this, and it was a mountain of work to do. I’d be like, Okay, let’s break it down into tasks. Everybody, grab your pick, everybody grab your shovel, let’s get to work, right? Because that’s just that’s my style. But everybody’s like, no, Dean, what you got to do is you got to be lazy. And you actually have to pick up the AI and you got to start talking to it. And you got to think about it, and you got to use it. And the more that you use it, and you challenge it to do things, guess what, if you integrate it into your workflow, it’s going to shorten the distance, it’s going to shorten the gap. And then you’re going to be like, Oh, my gosh, I’m gonna get results that I didn’t anticipate. That is what’s happening now. So that’s kind of how I’m tying all this together right now. Like, I use AI every single day. And I tried to evolve, I tried to include it everywhere. My 13 year old daughter, George, I said, Hey, I need you to download a couple apps. They’re AI apps, I need you to download them to your phone. I’m using them, I need you to start using them every day. And she looked at me Georgia, and she went like this. And I go why? What PQ was that she was Dad, we’re not allowed to use that at school. And I go, and that’s the exact wrong mindset of a lot of folks today. Now is AI perfect, George No, it’s not perfect. We know that. But can it but the exercise of using it, and, you know, learning faster and like all of that, that that is what you need to be thinking about today. Like if you think okay, I’m just gonna wait for my aha moment. And you know, two years from now, it’ll be perfect in too late. You’re gonna be so far behind.

george grombacher 18:08
What a What a fascinating, fascinating the human thing that that we will do with it too. Because say, ah, you know what, I just, I don’t need to do that. That’s just not for me. It’s not for my industry. There’s 1000 reasons to just push that off my desk and keep doing what I’m doing, versus what you’re talking about. So what is that entry point? Because it is intimidating. It’s new. It’s, I don’t get it. So how do I start?

Dean Quiambao 18:42
Obviously, just like anything else, you start small, but I think you just be comfortable with making errors. Because people talk about the prompts that you need for AI, right? Well, don’t overthink it, just ask it a question. Just tell it something and start there and see what happens. And then you’re gonna, you’re gonna get an answer, you’re gonna be like, well, that’s not exactly what I was looking for. So you’re gonna guess what you’re going to do? Naturally? You’re going to refine your question, because you’re going to pretend like George, if you and I were having a conversation, and you gave me an answer, and it wasn’t exactly what I was asking. I go. Okay, let me think how I can ask that question in a better way. And so me personally, I use it like to use it for a lot of like, just sometimes as a thought partner. I’ll like to talk to people as thought partners, but sometimes to prepare myself for that conversation. I’ll just ask a couple questions on a specific topic. And you’re like, oh, okay, great. Oh, that does make sense. I’ve read that in a book before I heard that in a management class. I saw that in a different place, and it just does things faster. We all know there’s so much information in our heads today, kind of like in narrows things. You can validate it on your own and then you can take it off, but what you got to do is you got to use it.

george grombacher 19:59
Pick up the hammer and start swinging at the end of the day. Come on, George, we know that 1,000% Yeah, you said something that you said something I’m not sure if it was actually, after we hit before we hit recording or afterwards, he said that everything you want is on the other side. And I think that that’s so true of getting your butt out of bed in the morning. And even if you don’t feel like it, it’s, it’s entering that first prompt into the AI even if you don’t feel like it, or if you’re unsure. So maybe we can close with some thoughts on that.

Dean Quiambao 20:34
Exactly right. How about this? You know, my daughter trying to pass on everything I have to her right. She’s 13 years old, going to high school next year. I’m so proud of her. It’s impressively good job and your CrossFit class today. I’m so proud of you. That I don’t know why. You tell me. You’re proud of me when you make me do it. And I just started laughing and I said, You know what? The ability to do the things that you don’t want to do, but you know are necessary, is a superpower. Because most people don’t do it. And if you want to separate yourself and find a little bit of wiggle room, find anything else that you want out of your life. Go ahead and start doing all the things you don’t want to do.

george grombacher 21:33
Amen. That’s amazing. Dean, thanks so much for coming back on where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you

Dean Quiambao 21:41
be up on LinkedIn. Dean Quiapo from our menino are that on Instagram, Instagram ha at Dean underscore CPA, let’s connect I love chat and you can see my link tree there and book a meeting with me.

george grombacher 21:54
Love it. If you enjoyed as much as I did show Dini appreciation, share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, find him on LinkedIn, and Instagram, and I’ll link all the places on the interwebs that we can run into Dean, but certainly take his advice and start tapping into that superpower, which is our ability to do hard things that we don’t necessarily want to do, but we execute anyway. Thanks, candy. been great. Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.