You’re Leaving Money on the Table if You’re Not Adopting AI

In the world of AI, it is changing so, so fast. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be learning and adopting it now. It actually means that you should be doing it as soon as possible. Wow. If you’re listening now and you haven’t done anything, you already bought it. Yeah. I’d like to say you’re behind. I just would say, like, if you keep waiting, you will be very quick. This is revenue makers, the podcast by Sixth Sense investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. Isama, it’s that time again. Oh, I’ve been looking forward to it. Where are we headed today, Adam? Well, this is gonna be a fun one and certainly a very timely conversation. So we have Cole Leffer, who is a B2C, MBD marketer turned CMO AI advisor Mainly. And marketing strategist, and she’s known for harnessing the power of AI against things like social media, demand generation, product marketing, should’ve taken all these things and is now actually out helping marketing teams and empowering them with the skills and the strategies they need to actually bring AI to their company. So she’s worked with CEO, CMOs, VPs, and all go to market leaders. I mean, I don’t have to point it out. AI is everywhere, and Nicole is awesome. She’s been at the forefront of how this technology can be applied across revenue teams. It’s an exciting time, but with things happening at breakneck pace, it is hard to them. And frankly, she’s got insights by the truckload. So by the end of the episode, I’m pretty sure the audience is gonna have some actionable tips on how to bring AI to your team. If you haven’t already and how to make it successful. Let’s do it. Alright. We’re in it. Nicole. Thank you for joining us. This is perhaps the most timely conversation. What? I alright. What do you mean Adam? Like, is this a hot topic? It is. Apparently, in the last something has already changed in the last twelve seconds. I forgot to look in the last three minutes. Of years that’s happened. And so I hope I’m not too out of date. I I I don’t know. It’s it’s exhausting, but it’s it’s also pretty wild and and dare is a fun, but, you know, so we’re, you know, we’re talking about we talk to revenue teams. We’re talking about revenue makers. We’re talking about all that fun stuff. And I think there’s so many conversations about AI for marketing or sales, but, like, what’s your perspective on, like, the most significant ways that AI is affecting the whole b to b, like, the entire revenue process. And you could go anywhere with that, but would love to hear general thoughts. So I think what’s really incredible about AI and where our tools already are is that it can help everybody with whatever their own weaknesses are. So where it’s gonna be the most beneficial to you, Adam, or you, Simon, is probably going to be different because where your strengths weaknesses are gonna be different. So if it can pick up some of the slack and do the things you don’t wanna be doing and help make that easier, faster, higher quality, it’s gonna be beneficial to every single person and a go to market organization. Which is wild. Right? Because, yes, marketing, evolve, sales evolve, CS evolves, but nothing AI is truly such a catalyst in terms of how everything changing so quickly. I mean, Nicole, before you jumped on and we started recording, you were mentioning that you did a podcast six weeks ago and you just listened to it and you’re like, so much has changed since then. In the other industry, it would have been, like, I recorded this a year ago. It was that dramatic of a difference of what happened in the last five, six weeks in the world of AI. It is changing so, so fast. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be learning and adopting it now. It actually means that you should be doing it as soon as possible because it’s getting harder and harder to get caught up and learn. It’s much easier to learn the foundational elements and be continuously building as more stuff is coming out. I can’t imagine, like, waiting another year to jump in on this stuff. The people who have it already. Wow. If you’re listening now and you haven’t done anything, you’re already done. I mean, I wouldn’t say you’re behind. I just would say, like, if you keep waiting, you will be very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s gonna be so expected. Like, it’s not gonna be that long before this is in the same way email or being able to do a Google search is expected, they it’s just part of doing your job. Yeah. Before we jump into all the questions we have Nicole. Like, let’s talk about change. Your career is a whole new career because of AI. Like, can you just speak a little bit about that? Yeah. I mean, it’s been so wild. So I come from a unique background. I actually was in both b to b and b to c marketing as the owner of an e commerce chocolate ingredients company, and I started out while I was still in college. During a change time, it was early thousands, early e commerce. And so I could have grew up in that. So I’ve been through this whole change thing before. That moves fast. This move so so much faster. I stopped doing that in twenty twenty. Did some marketing consulting for a while? I decided I do not wanna be a consultant that is not for me, jokes on me. Right? But, went in and got a role at a B2B SaaS company as their head of marketing, and that’s where in twenty twenty one, I brought on these AI tools for my team immediately when I started and solve very quickly how huge they were. And I was probably driving everybody in the entire company nuts trying to get them to all your AI too because it was just so mind blowing and, left them last August and got deeper, deeper in AI. And I did not plan to become an AI consultant or teach marketing teams and go to market teams how to use AI. But by virtue of the fact that at this point, I’ve been using it almost two and a half years. Wow. Which is unheard of. And this is I had CMS CEOs CEOs, Sierra’s all coming to me, like, help us adopt this. And so it has been a wild change to my life. And at this point, I have no idea. I don’t know. Every everybody’s like, what are you doing next year? Like, what’s your business plan? I’m like, business plan. How do you have a business plan in AI consulting when I don’t know what’s coming out in three hours? It’s like what Tuesday is questionable. Yeah. So it’s been wild. It’s a daily change in Actually, you said two and a half years. Right? So going back two and a half years or two years. So six cents, we’ve been we’ve been we’ve been an AI world for a while. We’ve had products and and so forth. But what did that even look like two and a half years ago You know? In the gen was there even generative at that point? Yeah. That’s what I brought on initially. So we brought on Grammarly and another tool called Anyword, and I will say, which I still use both of those tools to this day. I love them, but, you know, I would say that the generative AR was a lot more advanced than I think people realized. Like, two years ago when I brought it on. It was it still had issues. You know, I mean, it was still definitely a lot earlier than it is now. You can do all the crazy stuff that you can do, you know, tell it to make a picture to go with this in the same conversation, analyzing documents. I couldn’t do all of that. But the interface I was using was built to help, like, craft at the time that social media posts and email subject lines, and I was going, nope. We’re figuring to use this to help us write our emails, to help us write landing page copy, evaluate landing page copy and improve upon it, and I was I mean, instantaneously, it was incredible the difference that it made to our marketing strategy even two years ago. And, you know, when Chad GPT came out last year, I was like, wow. This is a game changer because it makes it so much more accessible And it was clearly, like, a step up from where it had been. War. And it’s so funny now because I look back at chat. GPC’s been out almost exactly a year. I was on in the few first few days. And I look out now, and I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s so quaint. What it was a year ago. So cute. That we thought that was so good. Toorible. That was the coolest thing ever. And now if, like, you made me use the the free version that was when it first came out, I’d be like, please don’t do this to me. This is so old. And it’s a year old. So, so you, you know, we started this by saying Adam should be using it. I should be using it, but Absolutely. You know, it really depends on, I guess, the the goal or whatever you’re look whatever’s missing today that you’re looking to really augment, scale, improve. Right? So as we start to talk about how revenue teams should and could be using. And I can you talk about some key strategies on number one where to start? And how to make it a smoother transition. I mean, you you provide advice to so many companies on this. Where should people start? Because everyone knows they gotta be in it. They just don’t always know how. Yeah. So the first thing is you need an account. And I know that sounds silly, but a lot of people just get stuck on. I’m not even creating an account somewhere So either go to chat GPT and create yourself an account. And if you can upgrade upgrade to the paid version, just because it is a lot more powerful. I don’t work for chat, GPT or OpenAI. I very much believe in that paid was. But even the free account, if you need to start there, start there, If you can’t do chat GPT for some reason, like your company doesn’t allow it, things like that, there’s another tool called Claude where you could start with Claude, c l a u d e. That is the second best language model that’s out there other than GPT four. So I would start with one of those two. Can’t use one of those use Microsoft Bing. I know a Bing chat on your edge browser or just on Microsoft. So I would just start with getting an account and start experimenting. You know, everybody wants a manual, and there are things you can do. You know, I train marketing teams and go to market teams how to use this. But at the end of the day, you don’t have to have a million tricks to get something out of it. And so I would just start with have a conversation with the tool. Tell it something you want to do and ask it how it can help you. Ask it. What do you need for me to help me with this project? Whether that writing an email or whether that’s, you know, creating a drip campaign or creating knowledge bases for our customers, you know, this is across the board, it’s gonna be different for what everybody’s gonna need to do. Just start asking it how it can help you, give it context about what you want to do and just see what happens because a lot of it is. It’s it’s intimidating. You have people like me, you should include this and this and this and this in your prompt, but at the end of the day, that’s for the best possible results. You can get a lot. I mean, I was sitting here getting ready for this, and I was on chat GPT on the voice thing, just talking to it while I straightened my hair. Just, like, having an opportunity. Thank you. Yeah. I wanted to know if this platform could blur my background or if I needed to clean my clean my background before we started, and I just had a conversation with it while I’m straightening my hair. It went out, searched this platform, figured that out for me, gave me an answer are, so I knew what to prepare for. It wasn’t some fancy prompt. It was literally me asking my final question. So It’s really just playing. That’s where you start. If you’ve never touched it, touch it, see what you could do. Get a face. Yeah. It makes just jump in. You mentioned, you know, we talked about signing in for an account, and you said if your company doesn’t allow or not. Obviously, security privacy, there’s been, I know, back earlier, like, oh, so and so put this out there and it exposed company secrets. And there’s been, you know, a opening. I just got enterprise solutions. There’s other solutions now, like, How are you navigating that world of privacy compliance? And I’m sure you talked to different customers from, like, That’s that’s that’s yeah. That’s that’ll be my snippet for today. Like, how has that been in terms of, like, giving somebody I don’t know how deep the advice has gone from you to them. Like, how are you getting them to say or companies to, like, you gotta give a little to get a lot. Yeah. You definitely get out of it. What you put into it, but I do highly recommend having very clear parameters for your company. Now I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a security burt any of that. So don’t take this as security advice. But I definitely recommend to any company if you don’t have an AI policy about what can and cannot go into your tool, you should. And if your company doesn’t, then you need to personally understand you should not be putting anything covered by a nondisclosure agreement into any AI tool unless it has already been vetted by your security team, and you’ve been told this is okay. But nothing covered by an NDA, nothing that’s proprietary. Do not put client details, client contact information, any of that into these tools. So sometimes that means you have to anonymize what you’re putting into it a little You know, you could go in, you wanna do a transcript of, call. Just change the names to, like, the purple elephant and the pink Pandive. For the names of companies or whatever it is, you’re gonna know what it outputs that that’s what it’s talking about, but you’re not exposing anybody’s data. You know, there’s there’s an in between of you can have clear guidelines. Make sure people know what can and can’t go in these tools. And then let them do what they can with the tools beyond that point. Because beginning it completely just means you’re gonna have shadow AI work. I mean, I’m seeing this all over the place. I know so many people had have told me, so my company doesn’t allow us to use AI. So what I do is I put it on my phone or I put it on my computer and I just do it myself. And instead of having, like, clear smart rules, they’re just going completely rogue with no guidelines. You’re much better off to say, you can use it. Here’s what you can and cannot put into these tools. You know? And again, it’s the really super private proprietary also on a personal level, don’t put your birthday, your social security number, your bank account information in these tools. That’s a bad bad idea. But, you know, either you give people the guidelines and allow them to use it, or even if you don’t allow it, here’s your guidelines if you’re gonna go rogue. Like, if you’re gonna go on your own and do this whether you’re allowed to or not, you still do not do this, this, this, this, like, wise. Yeah. So it seems like, obviously, you know, there’s there should be a need to embrace it then. And and then that starts at the very top. Right? And so How important is the role of leadership in developing successful AI adoption? I think some of it already hit on, right, around setting the parameters, setting what’s okay, what’s not okay, but what else could leaders be doing to encourage their teams to take advantage of of everything that AI has to offer. Oh, so much. I know there’s so important, like, what a leader does because you got you’re gonna have the people going rogue, you’re using it no matter what, but the vast majority of people aren’t going to use it unless you really are leading them on this. This is change management. Right? So the first thing is if you are a go to market leader, you need to start learning how to use this stuff yourself and using it and modeling using it. You need to let people see you think this is worthwhile, you use it in your own work, this is going to make a difference, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Right? Like, so it’s not just using it, but telling your team you’re using it, telling your team how you’re using it, all of that is a really huge thing. The next thing is really talking to your team about, like, where can you start implementing AI in your workflows? Where is this going to help supplement your weaknesses? Where is this going to supercharge your superpowers? How is this going to help you have higher quality work? How is this gonna help you get things done more quickly? But help them identify those places. Don’t expect they’re gonna be able to figure it out themselves. Having, like, a Slack channel or, you know, something like a Slack channel where people are sharing what they’re doing with AI and encouraging those conversations and really celebrating AI wins. You know, when people do it, elevate it, promote it, like, cheer for them publicly, or however they like getting praised, but I think the public cheering lets everybody else see AI good. I should use. And then you know, there’s just so much, but all of that normal change management, any behavior you want to change, you’re changing people’s lifelong habits. And, you know, that’s not gonna be an overnight thing, and it’s going to take investment and commitment from you as a leader. But it’s going to pay dividends that are bigger than anything you could possibly imagine. Yeah. So like any other technology evolution revolution, there’s always generational team. Yeah. Or so I, you know, in terms of the old Adam? I was actually gonna get to sign a vehicle. That was my But the gap might not be what you’d expect it to be. Well, that’s gonna be my question. Right? Because, like, I like, everything else, so that, yeah, I’m sure it’s not traditional. So, like, in terms of, like, adoption, it’s like, oh, young people learned to AI, but old people don’t. Like, what what are you seeing out there in terms of that? I am seeing that if you are of the age where you know what you do when you blow an an intense no cartridge and why you would do that, you’re gonna be really good at AI. So what do you think? Nice. I would say, older millennials, and gen xers are by far in my experience, a mid middle to older millidials and gen xers, younger baby boomers tend to be having the easiest time with adoption. Now that’s not a universal rule. But it is something I am seeing a lot of, especially in, like, the tech space, I mean, which is most of my clients. I have some hypothesis around those. And the biggest one being that if you have lived through the birth of the internet, email, Google, everything has changed, and you’ve had to adopt Zoom, like, all of these things, one thing after another, after another, your entire life has been adopting new technologies, learning how to use it, and a lot of it being taught, with, like, having to learn it without a user guide. Right? Like, it wasn’t just ready. You could Google how do I do this and get an answer? If you have had to do that over and over and over, it’s second nature to do what it can with AI. Right. Makes sense. Yeah. Under a certain age, if you were born with an iPhone in your hand, You know, if you’re too young to remember navigating technology before technology was finished. Because in many ways, like, has your computer changed that much in the last decade? Twenty years? Like, has it, like, really, like, using your computer changed that much? Has using a phone change that much. If Google, like, all of that stuff, if you’ve always had that, somebody could teach you how to do it. You learned it once. You didn’t have to figure things out. And so it’s a new life experience that younger generations are having to figure out how do I adopt this? So a lot of the leaders I’m talking to, I’ll come in, and they’ll be like, so the young people will be fine. I don’t need to worry about them. It’s the older people. And I’m like, no. No. You need to make sure you are not putting the pressure on the young people to figure out how to do this themselves. And that’s nothing leave the older people behind. It’s just don’t assume your younger ones are gonna be the fastest. There also seem to be a little bit more scarab in general, not across the board. And if they’re coming straight out of college, I’ve had a lot of, like, new, you know, this is their first year work kinda people that are on teams. I trained message me on LinkedIn after and say, thank you because this is the first time I haven’t felt like it’s cheating because my school told me it was cheating. And now my boss wants me to use it. And I don’t know how to marry those two things in my head. And So, yeah, there’s a lot going on with the younger generation. And that’s not just, I mean, plenty of younger people are great at it. But just don’t make this assumption as a leader. That the twenty three year olds that you just hired is gonna be the fastest to adopt and teach everybody else how to do it. It’s probably the forty year that it’s gonna be the fastest to adopt and teach everybody else how to do it. Interesting. Okay. So I am going to pivot and ask for a specific one or two successes that you feel people have been able to or companies have been able to get I think a lot of people when they first think of the power of AI in their revenue team, everyone thinks content. Right? We’re gonna, we just true. Absolutely. This helps you build, create, refresh content. But are there any other sort of areas that you found companies have had success with? Strategy. So it’s a really good strategic partner. It can help you think through new creative new ideas to of how to accomplish your goals. You know, you give it the context. Here’s the goal we have. Here’s the resources we have. You know, and get just like have this back and forth thought partnership to help you flush out strategy and also identifying blind spots in the strategies you So this is what we’re gonna be doing, what are we not thinking about, what are we not doing. And that is something that can apply to any team That is not a marketing specific thing. You need kind of strategic work you’re doing. Planning. Planning. Yeah. Planning. Yeah. Planning. Any of that is a huge win that’s not content. And then the other thing is, like, just life, like, internal communications, not content for the public, but just, like, your own communications. One of my favorite things to do is if I need to draft an email, I’ll go to the chat g p t app, record my voice dump of what I’m trying to get across. And have it draft me the email to send to whoever it is. And it’ll be done in five minutes instead of, you know, sitting there and get every single word rate. And that’s a huge win internally as well. If you can speed up, instead of spending all your time writing, your boss the perfect email, you can spit it out in two minutes, so you can focus on your actual work. Nice. Well, that’s, you know, the fear of people like, oh, hey, hi, he’s coming for your job, but the one you just walked through clearly points out it’s not. It’s your partner. I mean. Like, you can’t you can’t feed a strategist without there’s gotta be the impact. Right? So Like, you’re Like that. You just sort of made the case. Yeah. It’s not it’s it’s gonna help you. But it’s not gonna take your job. I mean, there’s all those fear mongering out there. The jobs it’s gonna take aren’t really that it’s taking jobs as much as, like, if you refused to use email, right, at work, are you going to still have a job? Like, is somebody going to be willing to employ you? If you are, like, I don’t use email and I don’t Google, but you can have me for anything else you want. Right? Like, if you do that with AI, a couple a year from now, probably a year or so from now. Like, companies are gonna be like, yeah, you’re not adapting, you’re not adaptable. You’re not using tools we need to be able to use to have the highest quality outputs because it’s not just efficiency Actually, one of the biggest benefits people are seeing is quality increases. And I actually did a study. I believe it was Boston Consulting Group. Employees using GPU. They just had access to GPT four. No training or anything. And they compared the quality of the outputs. And people who had the AI forty percent higher quality than the ones that did not have the AI. And so these things, like, if you’re not willing to use these tools, you’re not gonna have a job for that long, but it’s not because the tools are taking your job. It’s because you’re refusing to take the to use the tools. Yeah. Costing you your job. So there’s a huge difference between those two things. Yep. I mean, I think of one of our most compelling use cases at six cents around generative AI, and it has been almost exactly those two points you just raised. Quality and consistency about put. Right? For us, that is our BDR team. And they, you know, we love our BDRs. They are frankly the best in the business and they generate whole lot for this company. And we’ve just augmented what they do with generative AI to scale the quality of their outreach, customization, provide the prospect with a great experience. And it’s not taken BDR’s jobs away, but I think it’s taken things off their plates that maybe were just repeatable and not so interesting, and it’s allowed them to really up their game in terms of the outbound communication with prospects. So it’s it’s a perfect example. Yeah. And when you can do things a little bit quicker with a higher quality, you’re more likely to do it just like you’ve said. Like, you know, I post on LinkedIn very consistently because it’s so much easier than it used to be. And it’s all my own ideas. It’s all my own stuff, but it’s just so much quicker to crank it out and so much easier to get it to that point of being high quality that I can be proud of. And so it definitely makes it much easier to be consistent. When we were done when we started off and we were joking about it’s been three seconds. Something else has changed, and it’s been more than three seconds in over twenty six. I gotta be, like, hours of research afterwards on how it happened in the last thirty minutes. And we’re in trouble. We’re definitely in trouble. How does the team actually keep up? Right? Like, is is it just like don’t bother? You’re not gonna keep up, but just sort of like know, jump on and hold on for dear life. And any tips there? Roller coaster hands up, like, no. Yeah. Seriously. You know, so I think the biggest thing is you’ve got to keep give yourself permission that you don’t have to know everything that happened the minute it happened. You’re not falling behind if you don’t know the latest thing the second it happens. You also do not have to learn every single tool. In fact, I actually recommend the opposite. I recommend you figure out your base tool or two that are gonna be, like, used throughout everything you’re doing and, like, tune out the rest of it at least until that habit and, like, something you really don’t. So you maybe, like, you need to keep up. If you’re if Chad GPT is that tool or Claude is that tool, you’re keeping up with what happening with Chad, GPT’s updates? Like, what can I be learning about how to make the most of this? What can I be learning about what they’ve rolled out? Or if it’s clogged, you know, around what they’re doing, but you don’t have to keep up with what every single company in AI is doing. You keep up with what’s the most relevant And also what’s got staying power. Because, like, there’s a lot of squirrels, like, you know, looking for acorns or dogs or whatever squirrels look for every direction. But at the end of the day, most of these companies are not gonna be here six months from now. So, like, don’t try to learn every tool that has some cool little feature, try to pay attention to what is, like, probably got staying power. And focus on that, but you don’t have to be up to a minute. I mean, like, I struggle with, oh my gosh. I’m, like, so behind. I’m, like, I live and breathe this. Every single day. But, like, we’re joking about, like, the last fifteen minutes. What’s happened? And I’m sitting here in the back of my mind going, I haven’t even looked at AI news today. Because I’ve been a meeting all day. Like, I don’t actually know. I totally hide. And like Yeah. The reality is you don’t have to be up. It’s gonna be okay. Alright. Okay. I’m gonna ask a question on behalf of Adam because he hasn’t asked it, but I wonder if he’s thinking it. So because he runs growth marketing, he owns our website, he owns our digital. Right? If all the content out there and I’m I’m obviously exaggerating, but if all the content out there is AI generated, optimized? Like, how do you start to stand out? Like, how do you differentiate? What are the implications for SEO what’s the implications for great content? I don’t know. It’s just I feel it’s a whole new world. That’s a lot to unpack. So let’s start out with how do you stand out and differentiate. What most people are doing when they’re creating content with AI is they’re doing it wrong because they’re having the AI come up with the ideas for the content and write the content and go off all of its own knowledge base, which is essentially just a regurgitating in new words, stuff that already exists. Because it’s already learned the stuff and now it’s regurgitating it. So the first thing you wanna do to stand out in an AI content driven world is use your own ideas. Who wanna be giving it, here is what we are, like, aunt, maybe writing the content, but it’s writing the content from your bullet points, your ideas, your transcript of a podcast that you’ve done, your transcript of yourself just talking We’re actually on AI right now, by the way. This is not Yeah. We’re not wondering when people are gonna figure out that I’m not real. No. No. Okay. But, yeah, it infusing everything that you’re creating with AI with your own ideas is, you know, it’s just helping you write it instead of that it’s actually coming up with the concepts. First way to stand out, that’s also going to help you with SEO. Right? Like, because SEO is not looking for regurgitated ideas. It’s looking for your own unique thought leadership. So looking at the AI as a way to help you bring your own ideas life instead of coming up with the ideas, it’s the first key to the content that’s actually really good with AI. The other piece of that with SEO, is making sure you’re not writing it for, like, using the AI to write it for a computer, you’re using the AI to write it for a human that just happens to have some SEO optimization. In it. And at the end of the day, your human reader is still the priority. And then the other piece of that is is SEO even gonna matter. And that’s, like, a whole another conversation on bag, but I’m not sure how long SEO as we know SEO is going to be a thing. I would imagine this is gonna be a replace by AI optimization, and it’s going to be this is just my guess, but it’s gonna be the ideas become the thing you’re optimizing for rather than the, like, actual words because the AI is gonna consume the things on the internet. The things are ideas. It’s trained on these, you know, entire websites, entire pages, and then it’s going to be sharing back. You know, these ideas, and you’re hoping it’s crediting you. But I don’t know. We’re still learning how on earth. Yeah. It’s that’s the whole, like, make your headache when you realize are we all gonna even use Google search anymore in the form that we think that search, or are we gonna tell our kids one day? The same way, like, kids are getting, like, CDs of big artists now and they don’t know what how to open them and use it. Our kids, like, there was this thing. It was called a search engine. We had to open it up and type in there. Yeah. We didn’t just, like, speak out loud and have the answers, you know, whenever it was. So who knows where this is going in the next year or two? I don’t know if the second part of your or Simon’s question or is, like, on the next episode of revenue makers that Simon now hosts by yourself, but I don’t know if that’s Oh, that covers up. Yeah. It’s not taking a job. Okay. Well, it might change your job. But it’s not like I might change your job. But, you know, somebody’s gonna have to figure out how to solve all these challenges. So it should be it. Yeah. It’s your job now, Adam. Huge huge opportunity for those to grab. Alright. Right there. You know? Yeah. When we talked to early about generational adoption and, you know, jumping on to the technology. If I’m a hiring manager, right, I’m looking at Ken’s. And, like, AI readiness or, like, willingness to use AI, I mean, is this is this it’s as simple as, like, I’m sure a couple of questions maybe, but, like, how would you go about, like, working that into an interview process or a a candidate process to figure that out. So I recommend not just going, what are your existing AI skills, which those are nice. I think, like, but I think the biggest thing is if somebody says they have AI skills that shows that they’re curious about AI, they’re excited about AI more and not more for the vast majority unless you meet somebody that is, like, legitimately, like, living and breathing AI inside and out. Like, for most people, if they’ve used AI, that’s a good sign that they’re curious that they’re not like super, super resistant to it. But I’m really looking more for candidates that are going to be a adaptable and continue to learn. And so I would be looking for candidates that are curious that have an experimental mindset that they’re, like, not afraid of failure They’re the type that are, like, going to self teach themselves and that love learning and experimenting and continuing to learn. And you’re really looking for those people who are going to continue to adapt because this is changing so fast. And it’s not a one and done, and this skills that somebody needs if you hire them today versus the skills that they’re gonna need in a year are not gonna be the exact same thing. But what you need is the person who’s going to want to know, you know, these new skills that’s gonna be excited about it. I wouldn’t be hiring somebody that says I think AI is evil. I refuse to use it, you know, any of that kind of stuff. They’re not gonna be even if they’re curious and experimental and everything else. There probably is gonna be a resistance to this. And also creative. If somebody’s creative, it takes a lot of creativity to use AI well. Looking for strong, strong critical thinking skills, backed checking skills, things like that are really important. Because the AIs make things up. So you want somebody to be able to think critically about the outputs, check that it’s accurate, those kinds of things before it goes like, out to a customer or you’re updating your boss on the wrong things that it just the AI said so. And they don’t think twice. That’s not good. Now how you screen for that? That’s gonna be different for every job, for every leader, but I think it’s more thinking about those rates of the person rather than the skills of the person at this point for most AI. And the good thing is all of those traits are things you should already want in an employee. Right? So so let’s get And if if somebody is telling you they’re an expert at AI, and, like, they seem really dug in that they know exactly how to do it and, like, that could almost be a little bit of a red flag. If they think they know too much, I would be looking a little bit more for I’m using it. I love it. I feel like I’m one of the top users right now, but it’s constantly changing and we’re all learning how to use it. You know, like that awareness that know, even me, I’m like, I’m learning every single day. Like, this is my job, but I’m still learning every single day. So Yeah. Yeah. On that note, right, it’s changing every day. We’re still learning as companies. How should we be evaluating the AI tool set are out there. I mean, there’s the big ones, and do you recommend folks stick with those? Like, what what is the best way to make sure that we’re picking and choosing the right tools to be using, and we’re staying on top of what’s out there. Yeah. So the first thing is I would have, like, a core foundational tool that is, like, everybody uses it. At least, like, the go to market team or each individual team that you’ve got a big group of people using the same thing as a core foundational tool that can go through everything. So usually, this would be like a chat, UPC or a Claude, something like that, that is like your language model that’s kinda your go to and make sure that everybody is building the skills with that specific tool of how to leverage it and use it. Because if you learn how to use one of these core tools, you’re gonna be able to translate that to lots and lots of other tools but you may not be able to translate these random other tools back to a core tool. So I say, like, first have that one foundational tool and make sure people have adopted it, learned it, built a habit around using it before you start bringing in lots of other tools. Now there could be some exceptions to this. Like, there may be certain teams, certain roles, certain use cases that you need to also immediately bring in something new, but it’s usually probably gonna be a specific role that needs it. And, like, one example that comes to mind is, like, your conversational email at six cents. Like, that might be something. You don’t have to use chat TPT inside out before you could start bringing something like that on. But for most tools, first learn that core tool, whatever it is gonna be for your company, then you can start stacking on one tool at a time, but make sure it’s been adopted and make sure it actually does something you can’t already do with that other tool. Just as well, if not better. Because a lot of the stuff that’s coming out, like, I see people buying eleven different tools that the core tool could actually do. Better than the supplemental tools that they’re doing. And now nobody knows what to use for what, and they get used. And you know what happens when you don’t know what you’re supposed to use? You don’t use any of it. So a lot of times I saw it more. A lot of times. I saw AI tool Black Friday sales. I knew, like, that’s when it’s hit, like, literally, and I’m on Facebook, which I guess I’m old because no one who’s on Facebook anymore. But, like, literally, it was, like, and there’s probably sites I’d been to, but it was, like, half off extra credits. The fifty I was, like I saw one. If you that’s crazy. I saw it was, like, buy one year, get one free. Hold out. I do not think that I am sure The teeny AI tool is gonna be here a year from now. Like, not one, not even heck. Like, we saw what happened with the company, I’m not gonna mention their name, but, like, you know, we didn’t know for a minute if they were gonna be here, and they’re the one with staying power. And thank god they are because I don’t know what I would do. You guys would have to get me out of, like, a ball in the corner from crying. If something happened to them, But we have no guarantees. So I think, like, that and that’s the other piece of you are evaluating tools. What is their funding situation? Like, also, are they built? Are they reliant on somebody else or is it their own technology? Like, are they reliant on somebody else’s success? For them to continue to survive because the vast majority of tools out there are built on other people’s technology. So if that underlying technology fails or that company is not around, like, you better know what is the underlying technology to know, do you trust it? But, you know, it’s easy to look up funding. I am I’m a small business owner. I have always been a business owner. I am very big on, like, the smallest family business thing. But when it comes to AI tools, at the end of the day, it costs a lot of money to run this technology. It is not cheap for these companies. So if they don’t have the money behind it and the resources and the minds, these tools are a dime a dozen. And so the ones that don’t have real backing or just not gonna make ends. A lot of the ones that do have real backing are not gonna make it too. I think just to be totally fair. I think next year we’re gonna see a lot as fast as we saw them appear this year. I think next year, we’re gonna see the decline and yeah. So hold off on the Bogo. Yeah. I mean, unless you already are using a tool that, like, you’re using a free version and you’re just dying for it, but maybe not a year, but maybe by one month, get one month free. I’m holding out for the buy one get two. That’s what I want. It’s not gonna it’s not enough. Not enough. So you know what? Other than we learned a lot, I mean, a massive amount. We also learned that Simon’s old. Yeah. I could’ve told you that. I’m old too. Oh, I mean, I I I was a revelation for miss. So One of our our favorite parts are, sort of, our regular segment session questions, regular session, quest regular question, What is the most ridiculous thing anyone’s ever asked you to do in your career that could be good, could be bad, could have a good outcome, bad outcome, wild What do you got? Okay. So this is this is not at all related to AI. This is in my previous life when I had a e commerce chocolate ingredients company. We had somebody who called us, and they wanted to know how to transport sugar in the chocolate. And they wanted us to help them figure out how to extract the sugar after the transportation. To get the sugar back out. Is that sugars? And it was flotation fingers? They kept saying sugar, and they were like, well, it’s powdered sugar. And they wouldn’t tell and we were like, do we call the police? This and they were, like, really mad that we would not teach them how to transport sugar within chocolate. That could be later extracted. It could be later extracted and put back into sugar four. I look for an eye. I don’t think anything weirder will ever be asked of me in anything that I ever do. I was I was brought in at, you know, I’m working on, like, the e commerce stuff and build a r b to b e commerce and, like, my staff comes in. They’re like, we don’t know how to handle this because we don’t know what they’re really asking for. But no matter what it’s weird, I mean, maybe they were just asking to transport sugar, but it was a very bizarre question. I will never forget it. Has nothing to do with anything we’ve talked about, but But it’s probably the most ridiculous. Have you asked ChachiPT for any of this? You know, this was years ago. I need to ask ChachiPT what was happening and see what see what it Well, hopefully, like, you know, like ATF doesn’t show up at your door after doing that. So I think was like, that’s our first, potential drug trafficking related. Ridiculous thing. Question. Well, dad. I think that’s it might be just one thing. I’m just so strange that just so it wasn’t even, like, more shocking to me, like, And these people, they kept pulling back, like, trying to get a different customer service person to give them an answer. So for all your customer success listeners out there, I dare you to find the customer who challenges you with a more bizarre request. Truckloads of chocolate, they’ve extract the sugar from. Yeah. That is amazing. Well, I I don’t think we can go anywhere beyond that other than to say we’re gonna say, wow. Thank you, Nick. This was awesome. Really appreciate it. Amazing insights. Thanks so much for for joining us. And I’m sure we’ll everyone should follow you on LinkedIn. You’ve got great insights daily. Take care. Check it out. And thanks again. I appreciate it. Thank you. It’s so great to be here. This was fun. You’ve been listening to revenue makers. Do you have a revenue project you were asked to execute that had wild success? Share your story with us at six cents dot com slash revenue. We might just ask you to come on the show. And if you don’t wanna miss the next episode, be sure to follow along on your favorite podcast app.