David Molina

Aunt AI

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:12:43 +0000

Over the past few weeks I served as the middle person to AI-generated responses for family members. I would double check natural remedies for x, food recipes and 7-day at-home yoga plans. While there is YouTube and Facebook, TikTok seemed to be a stronger UI/ UX play. So today in an effort to get creating, than consuming, I bridged that gap on my mom and aunt’s devices. It started with sending them links to their WhatsApp or text, but it soon evolved to bringing the world’s known knowledge, thinking and structure to their fingertips.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Explaining hardware, software and now AI is tricky. The example and use case I used was a summer project in recycling large amount of yard debris. In my case we’d been taking debris to the local yard waste disposal facility— but this was costing more time and money. So I decided to store it locally and dispose of it through small yard waste batches. I then used ChatGPT for various recommendations centered on saving money and being friendly to the environment. My initial hunch was one of the recommendations. Ultimately, it designed a yard plan for where to store it, how and benefits. It was this example where my aunt knew AI was different than a regular internet search, YouTube video or her favorite app TikTok.

Installing ChatGPT on my mom’s iPhone wasn’t hard. She’s a bit more tech savvy and we’ve been using it while traveling to research our family tree. But installing ChatGPT on my aunt’s iPad took a little more time. First as is common, most don’t remember their install password so after working to secure it, we were able to document it and successfully download it onto her iPad (more about password management here. Throughout the process, she documented each step-by-step instruction, words+ icons, to remember the exact steps. It’s common for older adults to journal steps. Often we forget that journaling is key to remembering.

Once ChatGPT was installed, we started by adding three projects:

Medical, a place to learn more about natural remedies for x, y and z.
Recipes, a place to store recipes for birria de res, and other traditional regional plates.
Family, a place to create educational lessons plans for the grandchildren, but interestingly at this point is where curiosity sparked when my aunt requested a caricature of her granddaughter. After demonstrating how to add (+) an image and prompt the request, she double downed on one for her husband. While every rendered image request can take a bit, and internet can be spotty, we were ultimately successful.

The big smile on my aunt was worth every ounce of effort today. The two caricatures of her family and then sharing these was the highlight and power of AI adoption.

David Molina is an entrepreneur, strategist, and thinker–doer dedicated to exploring the full spectrum of human performance. Born to Mexican immigrant parents, he forged his path from farm fields to Captain in the U.S. Army, commissioner, and eventually to founding companies, nonprofits, and creative ventures. He shares more about health systems, business workflows, and intentional work on Instagram at @davidcmolina.

Exploratory Experiences

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

No one is born an explorer, you become one through exploratory experiences. It’s in exploratory experiences where your mind expands and rarely can you put it back where it was. You’re never the same each time, and I highly recommend it for all ages. Personal timeline example:

Child through pre-teen, my mom would pack us up in her Chevy pickup and we’d roadtrip to Mexico taking a few days to get there. This is before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the further devaluation of the mighty dollar. We’d visit annually and it’s where I first learned Spanish. Growing up as a migrant farm worker kid this was always a treat.
At 10, a school field trip to Victoria, B.C. and where I first took a double-decker bus, enjoyed tea with croissants, and the most beautiful manicured gardens I’ve ever seen.
At 11, played a key role in, The Boy Who Fought the Dragon,at the Mount Vernon Lincoln Theater. Required lots of practice and facing fears in front of large audiences.
At 15, represented my high school at the Student Leadership Program at Central Washington University along with over a hundred migrant kids. It was the first time I set foot on a college campus and surprisingly got elected by my peers to represent them on the Superintendent of Public Instruction Migrant Student Advisory Council.
At 16, represented my high school at a leadership conference at Western Washington University.
At 16, represented my high school at the National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF) on Law & the Constitution in Washington, D.C., and experienced the Supreme Court, top Washington law firms, the National Mall, Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam-War Memorial. I had to fundraise over $4,000 to attend.
At 16, represented Washington State migrant students at the national bilingual education conference in New Mexico. First time to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
At 16, represented my high school at the Washington State Hispanic Pre-Law Conference. Similar to NYLF participated in mock trials and debate.
At 17 - 20s, represented my high school, community college, and university at multiple leadership conferences throughout the United States with the last one on student government in Wisconsin (I served in student government at the time and even ran unsuccessfuly for student body president).
At 24, participated in an international internship in San Jose, Costa Rica, embedded on a journalist team taking time to travel throughout the countryside and it’s where my Spanish and writing improved.
At 24, interviewed people for Portland’s El Hispanic News y Mas. Back when it was a newspaper and getting access was as simple as flashing a badge and a Canon camera.
At 25, earned an officer commission in Infantry and attended the U.S. Army School of Infantry (Officers) at Fort Benning, Georgia. It’s where I first saw diversity and began my journey to give back to my country, a country that gave a migrant kid the opportunity to do more.
At 25, participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadet troop leader training at Fort Gordon, Georgia and assigned to a network communications military unit. I was fresh out of Infantry training and had lots of ideas.
At 28, mobilized to active-duty and sent to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Explored the entire eastern seaboard when able to. In this time, I drove cross country there and back.
At 30, helped recruit and take 13 Oregon students to the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI), Annual National Conference in Chicago. First time to the windy city.
At 31, mobilized to active-duty and sent to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Explored the entire eastern seaboard again when able to, including Niagara Falls, MIT and Harvard campuses and Alexandria, Virginia. Second time driving cross country there and back. By this time, I had traveled cross country at least half a dozen times and taken several Space-A flights.
30s and 40s, traveled extensively for various startups, including BilingualHire, Molinas Construction Company, Operation Code, and Fuerza. This is the age where you implement and accelerate what you learned throughout the years and become a master at what you are already superior at.

I’m not going anywhere without my luggage. – Richard Pryor

Again it’s a waste of your precious time to compare yourself to anyone else but yourself to where you have been and how far you’ve come.

Intentional Travels

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

In every aspect of business, startup and even in the military, a team is what makes it go around. Most recently in my downtown office I hired my first administrative assistant who went onto bigger and greener pasture co-founding her own construction company. A year later I went through a few virtual assistants to help with day-to-day new business development, research and clerical tasks. Today, I’m going to visit the last one, spend some time chatting and share lessons learned, best practices, and tips how software and AI is impacting the industry.

All too often entrepreneurs spend most of their time on the operational and tactical elements of the business and barely enough time on strategy. But strategy and planning is key in long term growth and sustainability– especially when there is so much seismic activity affecting business.

Previously, CEOs and chief executives would have several vice presidents/ directors for customer support, marketing, legal and operations:

CEO

_ VP, customer support+ human staff
_ VP, marketing+ human staff
_ VP, legal+ human staff
_ VP, operations+ human staff

Each of these director level positions would have dozens if not hundreds of individuals reporting to this senior position and use software such as Slack to communicate with each other. Every department instance requires time and human effort to move the needle and in most cases APIs and bots to expedite communication between each other. Like email but internal.

In the future and where it’s been going:

CEO

_ VP, customer support+ AI support agent
_ VP, marketing+ AI marketing agent
_ VP, legal+ AI legal agent
_ VP, operations+ AI operations agent

Companies everywhere are slowly beginning staff reductions in each of these AI-first departments. Where before you’d need 600 customer support representatives responding to individual customer requests, AI customer agents take the place of humans and automate the response rates. The latter requiring Python to modify the code. It feels very much like 2013 when I tried taking a taxi to Anacostia neighborhood in Washington, D.C. after Patriot Boot Camp and couldn’t so I took an Uber.The experience was new, eye opening, and now in some urban areas autonomous driving cars are becoming standard.

The old way of doing things are slowly being replaced by something more shiny and despite the shinyness, it’s important as leaders to slow it down, strategize, plan and be intentional in our travels with those on our teams that have gotten us this far and spend some time thinking about the future and what’s important.

Ponches and Black Friday

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

This week every business promotes Black Friday, or the period of time when business are trying to end the day in the black, not red, an accounting term for positive cash and profitability. If you own a small business you know exactly what this means. Business dependent, this means that you must figure out how to best position your product or service in front of customers balancing pricing strategy, timing, location and what people want. While word of mouth is important, understand your customers, patrons and clients have way more options at their fingertips to explore and discover you.

Whether you’re in the product business, ex. food, beverage, retail, or service business, ex. photography, real estate, appraisal, architecture or construction, same thing applies, but this means ensuring your customers, patrons and clients can find you regardless of hardware, software or AI.

iOS, this means clients can find you on Maps. This blog here and here provide great step-by-step instructions.
Android, this means clients can find you on Google Maps. This blog here and here provide great step-by-step instructions.
Software options are several, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and location-based services here and here such as Swarm by Foursquare, Yelp and TripAdvisor. Key here is you won’t know how customers and patrons came to you– so you must excavate the various trails for them to get to you.
AI, software that communicates with other software automatically in the background, pulls its data from the web, various references, and blogs enabling users to find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. If you’re not already on the web, AI won’t be able to find you.

In smaller, rural towns word of mouth and local recommendations are key. Everyone knows where the good spots are. But in an interconnected world, your ability to pop in on people’s minds and on their devices is key to attracting new customers, new sales and new opportunities. This week I’m focused on spending with the locals and enjoying traditional ponche, a mix of Mexican eggnog, cinnamon tea and Tequila Hornitos. I encourage you to spend locally as well. Salud.

Leveraging Nature

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

Over the past three years I’ve transitioned from prescriptive medicine to lifestyle medicine, one in which health is the foundation of living. This has resulted in losing over 77lbs, healthy blood work, shrinking shirt and pant size, including blazers, and no longer out of breath when participating in normal or incline activities. As some of you already know, I blanked out driving my dually fully loaded over the Portland St. John’s bridge in summer 2022. That near life experience changed my perspective about entrepreneurship and hustle.

Back in the day, I would work endlessly burning the midnight oil, popping sugary drinks just to wake up, fire up the work truck and hit the nearby convenience store for a coffee and a few pumps of french vanilla, a donut, followed by a morning or midday lunch, pop, afternoon beers, endless emotional eating, endless sedentary hours in the office, coupled with lack of sleep, pills for pain and it caught up. Badly. But what good is it to always live to work, instead of work to live? What good is it to work endlessly, if your accelerating time decay and aging faster– or worse, your quality of life the last half sucks? I wrote about a few habits that I implemented a few months after here, but this week I visited an ailing uncle who’s not sick because of habits, but due to a bad step fall. This is a person that’s always been physically strong, a surveyor embedded on major infrastructure projects, but now is aging faster.

In my healing journey, I’ve done these to slow aging, reduce inflammation, and naturally help the body heal with nature’s best.

Morning

A glass of warm water with lemon squeeze and a pinch of cayenne pepper. The lemon activates the liver, is anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. The cayenne pepper is like fielding a medical doctor in your system and attacks internal injuries that you don’t see and increases blood flow.
A cup of ginger tea which is a major healing veggie that is anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. Chew on the remaining pieces in the tea.

Afternoon

A cup of chamomile tea in the afternoon to help relax and sooth the body.

Night

A cup of milk turmeric tea with a pinch of fresh black pepper. This tea is calming and puts most anyone to sleep within the hour.
Massage magnesium spray, a powerful mineral spray on chest, stomach and calf leg. It causes 300 chain reactions in our bodies that often don’t communicate, absorb vitamins, and healing properties from food. The calf is also known as our secondary heart.

When we know better, we must do better.

Huddles To Build Momentum

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

For benefits employees we all know what we’re going to collect on the day after our 20 years. I joined the Army reserve after putting myself through community college and after 20 years I wouldn’t have seen a dime until well into my 60s. For some they do that, for others not so much.

For business owners the same should be true. After a few years or even 20 years, we should be positioning our companies throughout to exit and sell the business and go onto our next chapter.

But backwards planning is a lot more difficult without a roadmap, one that builds momentum with our team.

Daily huddles, weekly management monthly accountability workshops, quarterly reviews, and annual strategic planning is the how.

The obvious one and often misunderstood is the annual. The annual is where business owners bunker down w/ key members of their team to update the annual business plan for the following year.

It can be as much as convening the entire company near a ski resort for the weekend, or somewhere in between where everyone on the team can contribute in person and provide valuable input.

Given the holiday season, business and life slowing down it’s a perfect time to update them, make any announcements, new promotions or hires, sharpen the axe, and prepare the entire ship to execute in that direction for the next year.

Collaborate More Than Compete

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

Over the years I’ve read about the importance of collaboration w/ competitors vs. competing with them.

Today, I was reminded why this is more advantageous in many scenarios. An industry newcomer is pidgin between competing on price (below the value of x) or somewhere in between.

The play by play is:

Determine if valuing on low bid, at or below value of x is worth the effort
The value of x is unknown and may cost the company in money
If t is value of time, we have time decay
Consider your burn rate (how much left in the bank before going in the red)
Thinking about the unknowns, how much can the company stomach going into more debt
Low bid is where the majority live at
All low bidders leave a percent on the table
Low bid might just be covering their direct and indirect costs, but no profits (which is a key indicator in valuations)
Conduct an actual takeoff and determine if you can take the work on w/ out increasing overhead and increase profit margins
Somewhere in between might just be good enough for some on the way to exiting their business but haven’t reversed engineered the final retirement number

Whereas collaboration is taking two or more competing companies or organizations to combine strengths, cover down on weaknesses, and minimize risks to produce better outcomes.

Very few live in this space— it’s a bold and strategic move. It’s the one owners can influence the most and set the culture and tone for the rest.

David Molina is an American entrepreneur, founder, and blogger. A son of Mexican immigrants, a former farm worker and high school drop-out, he went on to be the first in his family to attend and graduate from a university and earn an Officer Commission in Infantry. Molina has been a founder, co-founder and launched a wide range of companies and organizations including a veterans nonprofit, featured in multiple news outlets including The Bend Bulletin, Portland Business Journal, Univision KUNP-TV, Humans of Tech, and The Seattle Times.

What Makes a Cover Letter

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

A cover letter for a job tells a story to the interviewing committee why they should proceed to the resume. This is what I’ve used and its worked:

[greeting, ex. Dear Last Name,]

[first paragraph] A cover letter for a job tells a story to the interviewing committee why they should proceed to the resume. The first paragraph is the opener, the why you’re interested, what you do now, how it relates and transition to the next.

[second paragraph] The second paragraph is the what you do now, how it connects to the post you’re applying to and transition to third paragraph. Give some detail here but keep it concise and light as you still have two more paragraphs to contend with in your one-page cover.

[third paragraph] The third paragraph expands on your previous latest experience and how it relates to the position you’re applying for. Give examples, give range of values and companies/ organizations, ex. managed programs in x dollars, or contracts ranging from $x to $xxx at y companies/ organizations. This third paragraph needs to translate and fit squarely to the position and the one interviewing committee members will be trying to rate you the most on.

[fourth paragraph] The final paragraph expresses your enthusiasm for the position, and how you look forward to meeting the committee to expand in more detail. The goal here is to convince the committee to interview.

[salutation] Very sincerely,

[paragraph 1/ blank space]

[paragraph 2/ blank space]

[paragraph 3/ blank space]

[paragraph 4/ signature] your signature should be the 4th paragraph down after your salutation–use HelloSign or similar to sign and PDF (freemium service)

[paragraph 5/ signature] your printed name should be the 5th paragraph down

Caveat:

cover letter should aim to be one page and mirror the example above
use a large, memorable font for your name and put in the header
in smaller font put your home/ mailing address, phone, email in either the header (underneath name), sidebar or footer
hyperlink your email, links to LinkedIn, etc. and test them to yourself by emailing the PDF to your email on your phone to ensure they work correctly
keep job description, resume and cover letter copy, folders organized in one place for reviewers and avoid technical debt and duplication
the pace of layoffs in 2023 don’t seem to be slowing down into 2024… always be ready
ask your business mentor or career coach if they’d review it before sending it off… remember, the more you write the more you’ll get better

Frankl On Hope, Something To Live For

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

This morning on our riverwalk and observing the sunset, reflecting and taking it in we stopped by a small coffee shop. The business, a moving trailer was retrofitted with a full barista bar and the opening was a tiny open source library. A few items to note:

Every conceivable coffee and specialty drink could be prepared
If you only focused on the interior and friendly customer service you wouldn’t think you were ordering from a trailer
The open library provided the ability to read while your drink was prepared and $8.00 if you chose to buy it

As I talked with the owners, I picked up several books to skim through, including Hoyle’s Rules of Games by Albert Morehead & Geoffrey Mott-Smith, 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham, and Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.

In Frankl’s Foreward a few parts stood out:

… they [Jews at the hands of the Nazi] died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for

The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

You cannot control what happens to you in your life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

I do find meaning in taking in the sun every morning, the birds chirping, the feel of grass on my feet, and that we can do what we want to do and is needed in the world.

#coffee #openlibrary #authors

Reporting Quadrant

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

This afternoon I observed a conversation between a business owner and an employee. The conversation centered on updates, taskers, and what is expected.

At a high level these are covered in a job description. A job description covers these in detail, but what about organizationally and day-to-day?

Roles/ Responsibilities

Often we see roles/ responsibilities early on before applying but what tools are avail once the employee (or subordinates) are in place and how do you keep the updates clear, concise, measurable and informative?

On active duty at Dover AFB the commander’s briefing centered on a briefing quadrant. It looked like this and were held regularly.

Reporting Quadrant:

- __________|__________
            |
- Top left: Working on now
- Top right: Working on next few
- Bottom left: Next few months
- Bottom right: What is keeping me up at night

The briefing tool is designed to be interactive, including:

Few bullet items per quadrant, one slide total
Quantitive and qualitative data points, descriptions
What’s on the burner now and where is our attention going
Provides team members opportunity to engage, discover and troubleshoot
Everyone in the briefing room learns quickly
The senior or owner adds value on the last quadrant by un-bottlenecking issues which builds further momentum

The key is to make updates informative, organized and provide an opportunity to discover bottlenecks. Entrepreneurs and business owners have the most influence here. This is where they should live the most and pays the most dividends.

#briefings #updates #valueadd