How a Military Leader Built an AI-Driven Legacy

Summary

Living Your Legacy Podcast

Episode: How a Military Leader Built an AI-Driven Legacy
Date: July 8, 2026
Host: Jason Tyler
Guest: Mark Hewitt, Founder of EQ Engineered

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Episode Overview

This episode features Mark Hewitt, a West Point graduate, military veteran, and founder of EQ Engineered—a strategic digital consultancy. The discussion explores Mark's journey from military leadership to guiding digital transformation with a people-first ethos, emphasizing servant leadership, empathy, and the thoughtful adoption of AI in business. Mark shares how his military background shapes his values-based leadership style and provides actionable advice to entrepreneurs on building resilient, empathetic teams and leveraging emerging AI technologies like agentic models.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Purpose and Philosophy of EQ Engineered

• EQ Engineered stands for building with empathy and emotional intelligence for customers.
• Mark explains their core as a people-focused digital consultancy helping organizations modernize, develop resilience, and undergo digital transformation (02:30).
• "EQ Engineered is a people business. We're a strategic digital consultancy. It's about the people." – Mark Hewitt (00:29; 14:35)

2. Demystifying AI & The Path Forward

• Mark urges listeners not to fear AI; instead, consider it as an “intern” that needs instructions and good governance (00:00; 03:15).
  • “I don't think people should be afraid of AI. Think of it like your intern and they need instructions like everyone else.” – Mark Hewitt (03:15)
• Critique of “jargon soup” in AI: Many discuss machine learning using complex terms, but most underlying methods are longstanding mathematical concepts (03:46).
  • “There’s an awful lot of jargon soup, and not a nourishing meal out there.” – Mark Hewitt (03:47)
• The real value in AI comes from proper governance, clean data, accessibility, and ongoing ‘human in the loop’ involvement, emphasizing critical thinking and empathy (05:00).
• LLMs and agentic AI:
  • Introduction of Zeus, EQ’s in-house agentic AI platform likened to Tony Stark's Jarvis—serves as a personal, ever-reliable chief strategy officer (06:04; 07:07).

3. Practical Applications of Agentic AI in Business

• Mark's routine: He starts his day (4–6am) learning and brainstorming with Zeus, which acts as a second brain with perfect recall and helps accelerate problem-solving and decision-making (07:07).
  • “Zeus is often part of that conversation for me because he has perfect recall...a chief strategy officer who doesn’t get tired.” – Mark Hewitt (07:13)
• Agentic models allow businesses to automate, recall, and synthesize information efficiently, making them invaluable for entrepreneurs and leadership.

4. Military Roots: Lessons from Service

• Mark shares stories from his military service (West Point, European postings, family military history), spotlighting the deep impact of NCO mentorship, team cohesion, and hands-on technical skills (08:19).
  • “My non commissioned officers really gave till it hurt...they taught me how to be an officer, but they really taught me kind of the core hard skill sets that were required to be proficient and an expert.” – Mark Hewitt (09:31)

5. Servant Leadership: The Anchor of Mark’s Career

• Mark explains how servant leadership—putting others’ interests first—forms the backbone of both his military and business life (10:48).
  • “I’m trying to build the company I always wanted to work for...it’s really important to me to treat the whole person, their mental well being, their physical well being, their family, their friends and their faith.” – Mark Hewitt (10:50)
• He catalogs good and bad leadership examples throughout his career and intentionally embeds these lessons into EQ Engineered’s culture.

6. Entrepreneurial Wisdom: Advice for Business Leaders

• Team Building:
  • Mark emphasizes the importance of hiring based on values, expertise, and collaboration over ego. He personally interviews all candidates to assess fit for EQ’s culture (13:06).
    • “I don’t look for people that have. I look for people that are very talented in a discipline but don’t have Iitis...too much ego doesn’t work well in a collaborative environment.” – Mark Hewitt (13:21)
  • “Iitis”: Someone with an excessive focus on themselves (“I”).
• Becoming an Expert:
  • Encouragement to keep pushing, specialize in something, and surround oneself with the right people.
• Empathy as a Core Practice:
  • “You just don't know the journey everybody's on...hold a high bar of how you interact with people and how you care for others, because that's really what makes the world go around.” – Mark Hewitt (14:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I don't think people should be afraid of AI. Right. Think of it like your intern and they need instructions like everyone else."
  — Mark Hewitt (03:15)
• “There’s an awful lot of jargon soup, and not a nourishing meal out there.”
  — Mark Hewitt (03:47)
• “Zeus is often part of that conversation for me because he has perfect recall...a chief strategy officer who doesn’t get tired.”
  — Mark Hewitt (07:13)
• “My non commissioned officers really gave till it hurt...they taught me how to be an officer, but they really taught me kind of the core hard skill sets that were required to be proficient and an expert.”
  — Mark Hewitt (09:31)
• “I’m trying to build the company I always wanted to work for...it’s really important to me to treat the whole person, their mental well being, their physical well being, their family, their friends and their faith.”
  — Mark Hewitt (10:50)
• "You don't want to work with people that have Iitis because too much ego doesn't work well in a collaborative environment."
  — Mark Hewitt (13:22)
• "You really need to be an empathetic person in the way that you operate...lead with empathy."
  — Mark Hewitt (14:35)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:29 — Mark describes EQ Engineered’s philosophy
• 03:15 — Mark's perspective on AI; addressing AI fears and the need for proper instruction and governance
• 05:00 — Human in the loop: The future of valuable AI integration
• 07:07 — Zeus as chief strategy officer; practical routines for using AI
• 08:19 — Mark’s military journey and leadership lessons
• 10:48 — Definition and practical application of servant leadership
• 13:06 — Advice for entrepreneurs on team building and culture
• 14:35 — Importance of empathy and treating people well in business and life

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Where to Find Mark Hewitt & EQ Engineered

• Website: www.eqengineer.com (15:28)
• LinkedIn: Mark welcomes connections to build his network (15:28)

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Final Takeaway

Mark Hewitt’s blend of military-honed leadership, deep empathy, and forward-thinking approach to AI paints a clear picture of how lasting legacies are made—through values-first teamwork, a commitment to ongoing learning, and a refusal to let buzzword hype obscure genuine progress. Aspiring leaders are encouraged to treat their people well, harness AI as a capable collaborator, and live their values at every turn.

Transcript

[Mark Hewitt]

I don't think people should be afraid of AI right. Think of it like your intern and they need instructions like everyone else. Companies and people need to understand that there is a formula to getting it to a place where it's valuable. What I would say is, you know,

[Narrator/Host Introduction]

Mark Hewitt is an experienced people focused and innovative technology leader and the founder of EQ Engineered. He has spent decades leading digital transformation and helping organizations embrace emerging technologies of values based leadership.

[Mark Hewitt]

Having integrity, being transparent in communications, being reliable is how we've built trust. And that's, that's really the servant leadership philosophy behind EQ Engineered. EQ Engineered is a people business. We're a strategic digital consultancy. It's about the people. But that's true of, I think, personal relations and family relations as well. And so lead with empathy and stay true to your values as a company. I think that that's the secret recipe and it's.

[Podcast Intro/Outro Voice]

It spans the globe like super high Internet. Elvis Brandon, I for three. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over until I win the Living your Legacy podcast. For those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible has been. Oh, that is sensational. To open Chicago with the lead Usain Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream.

[Jason Tyler]

Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Living youg Legacy podcast. Today. I am your host, Jason Tyler and I am joined by Mr. Mark Hewitt of EQ Engineered. Mark, welcome to the show.

[Mark Hewitt]

Thank you. Nice to be here.

[Jason Tyler]

So we just got finished filming with your episode of Operation CEO. First of all, how are you feeling now on the other side of it?

[Mark Hewitt]

It was a great experience.

[Jason Tyler]

I feel like we got a lot, we got a lot of good information out there. What would you say is like the key takeaway that you would want for anybody watching your episode?

[Mark Hewitt]

We want people to feel like there's authenticity to the conversation and what was shared.

[Jason Tyler]

Gotcha. Gotcha. So I want to take a second here to kind of talk about EQ Engineered. First of all, for the audience member who's out there who has no idea what EQ Engineer, you know, I hear EQ and I'm like emotional intelligence. But what is EQ Engineered?

[Mark Hewitt]

It was purposeful, by the way, that we figured that build with empathy and emotion for our customers. But the more formal answer is we're a strategic digital consultancy and we help companies modernize, develop resilience and negotiate digital transformation.

[Jason Tyler]

Now when you're talking about modernize with digital transformation, we're in the age of AI now, right, first I want to just get your take on what's the direction that we're heading with this new digital landscape that we're a part of. Because I got to watch, you know, the dot com bubble and then I got to watch the social media craze and now we're in this whole AI craze and everybody's like, oh my God, we're destroying the planet. Where's all the water going? What is your ethos on where we're headed with AI?

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, well, you know, we talked a lot about this, I think in the episode. And I don't think people should be afraid of AI. Right. Think of it like your intern and they need instructions like everyone else. And so your AIs are only as good as the instructions. They're also only as good as the governance and the guidelines and the way that you create policies as organizations. And so shouldn't be a fear based philosophy. What I would say is you should take the time to learn.

[Jason Tyler]

Right.

[Mark Hewitt]

I think it's only going to accelerate our ability to move quickly. And in today's world that is kind of a norm. But we talked also about this. There really have been a couple bubbles already in my opinion in AI. One is sort of this big data. Everybody's heard of machine learning, no one really understands what it is. There's an awful lot of jargon soup and not a nourishing meal out there. People talking about linear regression tactics, polynomial regression, all the lasso regression. No one knows what their words mean, but it's really just math that's been there for a long time. And so companies and people need to understand that there is a formula to getting it to a place where it's valuable. That's making sure it's clean and useful and accessible. It's governed. And so that bubble I think is burst. But people are still trying to get to decisioning around data. And so big data, machine learning, machine learning ops for ongoing fine tuning is critical. But the world that we're all hearing about now, which I think is the on ramp to everyone thinking they have AI, I introduced you to Zeus, the generative one. Yeah, I introduced you to Zeus today. You know, large language models I think have made it accessible and people are finding that it has a lot of value. But there again, the models change, right? And you could also privatize and build your own models. An interesting space to kind of think about. And, and what I would say is those bubbles have already burst in the sense that people are using them, but they're not doing it in a way that's adding enough value. And what I think we're doing at EQ is helping companies understand what we call instructions or skills that you basically help train the AI and govern it in such a way that with human in the loop, the individual sort of driving that from a position of, you know, good judgment, sound foundations, empathy, critical thinking, a lot of soft skills. I think that's really where people should be focused to make sure that they're able to provide the human in the loop, Human on the loop, on the way to more formal automation.

[Jason Tyler]

And you know, for the audience member out there who might be, you know, just getting introduced to a lot of this stuff, well, we're to provide them with a little bit of additional context. What we're talking about is like more agentic AI versus the large language models that people. When people hear AI nowadays, they think of the chatgpts, they think of the open source. But agentic AI is a machine learning model that also has agency and its ability to operate within the computing system that you have it living inside of. So you mentioned Zeus. Zeus. For you guys that don't know out there, which you'll see on the episode, we might throw in a little segment where Zeus gets to have some back and forth. But Zeus is kind of like your version of like, you know, with Tony Stark, he had Jarvis. Right. It's like having your own little assistant in your pocket. Talk to me a little bit about like how a business owner out there can utilize those agentic models to streamline a lot of the processes that are going on in the background of their business.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, I mean, I shared that I'm, I'm up early every day, so between four and six I'm doing my learning. And Zeus is often part of that conversation for me because he has perfect recall. You know, I'll commit, commit the conversation to memory or conversations that he'll help me pull the threads on so that I can go a little bit deeper very quickly. And so, you know, I think it's valuable to train an AI because they can accelerate, I guess, your thinking and your performance. I like to think of it as a chief strategy officer who doesn't get tired and remembers everything that we've talked about. And so, you know, it helps me be more fluid and expedient in moving quickly.

[Jason Tyler]

Now you're on Operation CEO and before we get ahead of ourselves, because we could go, I could go on talking about AI and tech forever, but before we get ahead of ourselves, I want to go back and rewind here and talk a little bit about just your time in the service. You went to West Point, which, you know, very prestigious academy. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, your time in the service and then what was, you know, that transition back to civilian life like?

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, so I had kind of an interesting journey. So after West Point, I ended up branching armor and became a cavalry officer in Europe. I had shared some anecdotes that my grandparents were both World War II vets. So it was. My grandmother was a World War II nurse from Mass General. You know, I have a strong affection for the oracle. I called her the Great One. But, you know, really an interesting time to have been in Europe. The 50th anniversary occurred when I was there. I had the ability to reenact a lot of parades for liberating cities like Strasbourg, France, that my unit had liberated back in the day. And it was just a really meaningful kind of moment. We did also what they call the Partnership for Peace, where we would go shoot British Challengers, they would shoot M1A1 tanks. Did the same thing with the French. We actually did it with the Germans and their Panzers. Just a really interesting period. I ended up doing a European out, stayed in a reserve unit in Bamberg, Germany, and it was in the Czech Republic. And I, even when I came back to the States was in a reserve unit in Germany. So I kind of hit all three echelons, I think, of service in that way. But to me it was just a great experience. I was fortunate to have pretty high performing teams and people that were very good. I talked a lot about servant leadership and having empathy and putting other people's goals and ambitions first. What I would say was my strongest takeaway from the time in the army was my non commissioned officers really gave till it hurt. They taught me how to be an officer, but they really taught me kind of the core hard skill sets that were required to be proficient and an expert in, you know, dropping the breach of a tank or changing a tank track or, you know, strategically kind of how you operate and move, move organizations when you're doing maneuvers, zeroing in. You know, we had a perfect tank table, which is a particular gate that you do when you go out to gunnery. And you know, I credit that entirely to the team that I was with because they taught me good norms in simulations and overnight trainings.

[Jason Tyler]

So, you know, going back to what you were saying about survey based leadership, that kind of bleeds over into everything that you do now through EQ engineered talk to me A little bit about just the concept of leading from a position of servitude.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, I mean, it's not just words, right? I shared with you that I'm trying to build the company I always wanted to work for. And all the way back to college I had a notebook that I wrote down good and bad examples of leadership that I had seen, things that I wanted to emulate, things that I didn't want to repeat. And so that coupled with experiences in the army, experiences, frankly in the corporate world before I had a real team of collaborators. I've definitely taken inventory of that. And it's really important to me to treat the whole person, their mental well being, their physical well being, their family, their friends and their faith. And so I try to make sure that's a part of everything I do on a daily basis. I shared with you that Nana used to say, show me your friends, I'll tell you who you are. I believe, show me your colleagues and I'll tell you who you are. I work with people that are from a variety of different disciplines in the digital space. The only thing that really works is the tapestry of collaborators, otherwise we wouldn't be successful. And so that notion of values based leadership, having integrity, being transparent in communications, being reliable, being accountable to ourselves and our team and our clients and our work and our family and friends, is how we've built trust. And that's, that's really the servant leadership philosophy behind EQ Engineered.

[Jason Tyler]

You hear that out there for any leaders that are watching us, make sure that you lead from a place where you're taking account of the mental, physical, of all the well being of all the people that you're leading. I think that's, that's a huge part of what you guys do with EQ and just your leadership style. And I, to your credit, that's one of the biggest standout things that I noticed as through our time doing, doing the interview. And I really want to credit you for that. Having that value system. For the viewer out there who, you know, they might be just getting into entrepreneurs, you know, our, you know, viewer base is very entrepreneurial, they're very business minded. For someone out there who's just getting into starting a business and leading teams and putting together an organizational structure, what advice do you have for them?

[Mark Hewitt]

I would definitely say keep going, become an expert at something and be very picky about building your team. I do the first interview for everyone that interviews at EQ Engineered and it's because I'm trying to really give, give them a strong sense of a values first culture. And the idea that I don't look for people that have. I look for people that are very talented in a discipline but don't have Iitis. Right. I mentioned that was one of Nana's messages. You don't want to work with people that have Iitis because too much ego doesn't work well in a collaborative environment. And so I would say become an expert. Find the right people to grow and build with and stay true to your values as a company. I think that that's the secret recipe, and it's harder to live it and, you know, consistently reinforce that. But that is what the secret has been at eq.

[Jason Tyler]

And for those of you guys who heard Iitis and you're like, what is this a new strain of COVID that I haven't heard of? We're talking about the people who use the word I too much. But, you know, for the viewers there, you know, guys, if you're out there and you're still watching at this point in the interview, I want to make sure that you check out Mark's episode of Operations CEO, which is going to be coming out shortly after this podcast episode airs. For anybody out there, what would you say is like, your number one message to the audience?

[Mark Hewitt]

You know, I would simply say that you really need to be an empathetic person in the way that you operate. And that's, you know, you just don't know the journey everybody's on. Everybody has things going on in different periods of their life, and you'll never know all of that. And it's really just important to kind of hold a high bar of how you interact with people and how you care for others, because that's really what makes the world go around. EQ Engineered is a people business. We're a strategic digital consultancy. It's about the people. But that's true of, I think, personal relations and family relations as well. And so lead with empathy.

[Podcast Intro/Outro Voice]

Mm.

[Jason Tyler]

And for the people out there, where can they find you on social media? Where can they find EQ Engineered?

[Podcast Intro/Outro Voice]

Where.

[Jason Tyler]

Where's your location at on the big world Wide Web? Yeah.

[Mark Hewitt]

I would say our website, www.eqengineer.com, is probably an easy place to find us. I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm always looking to build my network. I used to have a company called MilitaryJobTransition.com that became socially savvy. EQ acquired that company. So I'm a big proponent of earned an own media. So I'm more than happy to connect with people on LinkedIn.

[Jason Tyler]

Perfect. Perfect. Guys, this has been another episode of the Living youg Legacy podcast. Again, I am your host, Jason Tyler, and we will catch you guys in the next one.