Mario Harik

In my mind, what ego is, you think that you're so good at something that you stop learning.

Well, I think engineering gives you a very good roadmap and a very good framework of solving problems.

I have young kids and I always tell them whenever we have something that gets broken or something we want to build, I always tell them, what do engineers do?

We say they build things and they fix things.

And I think in the world of business, you're dealing every day with either problems or goals you want to accomplish.

And an engineering mindset gives you a framework of how to solve for these problems.

If you think of the engineering design process, it's based on one identifying a problem or a goal.

Then it's about collecting a lot of data around that particular problem or goal.

Then defining your requirements.

Then designing and building a solution.

And then eventually testing it for what the outcome would look like.

And that discipline and rational thinking and data-driven analysis actually helps you in being able to run a company.

Now, the other side of that, though, is around people skills, because when you run a company, you're effectively, you have teams of people, and your goal is to make sure that they are the best versions of themselves.

And applying engineering principles to that also helps a lot.

So then your team becomes very data-driven.

Your team becomes problem solvers in terms of how being able to go from point A to point B. Again, whether it's a goal, whether it's a problem you want to solve as well.

So I think these are some of the early innings in terms of as I grew in my career, engineering gave me that framework to be able to solve problems and achieve goals.

Couple that with people skills.

This is what has enabled me to effectively run a trucking company.

As the CEO, your first goal is to actually figure out what is your overall strategy.