AJV (00:02): Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And today I have a friend and a fellow BBG member that is our guest on the show today. And I’m so excited to introduce you guys to Matt Ferdo. We actually just had Matt come speak to our internal group at Brand Builders Group, all on the topic of ai, which, you know, that’s what we’re talking about today if you clicked on this episode. But before we get into this conversation of ai, I wanted to let you know why I invited Matt on the show, because we’ve had several other people in and out the last two years talking about ai. But I think one of the things that’s really interesting is, you know, Matt’s the founder of the AI Advisory Group. But one of the things that I recently learned is like, I think one of the things that our team, and I, and I had Matt on the show, because I know if our team struggles with it, and if we struggle with it, you likely struggle with it, which means your team struggle with it is they hear lots about it, they know lots about it, they test different things, but it really hasn’t become a routine way of creating efficiencies in the business, right? AJV (01:14): And so the conversation that I wanna have today is like, well, one, we’re gonna talk about what does the future look like with this? And not in a, a job scarcity mindset. That’s not what we’re talking about, how everyone’s jobs are being eliminated, because I don’t really believe that. But it’s more of like, Hey, how can we use these, these tools that are at our disposal to create efficiencies in the lives of our team members and our lives and daily routine tasks that seem to overwhelm us? Because if I hear one more entrepreneur tell me, there’s just not enough hours in the day, right? We, we’ve all said it. I’ve said it, I probably said it last week. And at the same token, it’s like, are we using the things all around us to help improve our schedules and daily lives? And so in having a conversation with Matt a few months ago, I was like, you know what? AJV (02:01): It’s time to bring this conversation back to the table, not on just what is the future gonna look like and sales and marketing, but more of like, how can we use this to better our daily lives, right? How do we become more efficient, thus more effective without having to add three, four, or five more working hours to our day every day? So if you were listening to this, that’s the conversation around AI that we’re gonna have today. Now I mentioned this earlier. Matt is the founder of the AI Advisory Group. He’s also been speaking and acting little known fact for more than three decades, 30 years. He’s also led leadership thought leadership C two o round tables different events. He’s on podcasts. He’s had new out news outlets like the CIO and CDO magazines. And I know him personally. So I know that the value that he’s gonna bring today is gonna be so helpful for anyone who is in business, no matter what your role is, entrepreneur, business owner, salesperson in marketing, operations or those, someone aspiring to do any of those things. So without further ado, Matt, welcome to the show, MF (03:12): And thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the, the kind words. And it was you know, an honor to have you approach me because when you actually said, you know, we would love to have you come speak internally, that’s the most important thing, right? That transformative mindset of how do we actually start moving the needle and how do we get to a place where we can create a competitive mode and be people first, AI driven to enable everyone in the organization to be more effective, more efficient, and spend more time doing the things they love. AJV (03:42): Yeah. And that’s really the conversation around this that I love. ’cause I, I love because I, I, you know, I’m just not one of those people who’s gonna look at anything as the, you know, glass is half empty, gloom and doom. This is gonna, you know, take over the need for humans. It’s like, nah, I don’t, I just, I just don’t believe that, right? I think that as a human species, we’re also, we’re always gonna be needed. So I think there is, if we, if we just can all agree on that for a second, then there’s a lot of power and how we can use some of these tools. So here’s my first question for you and I wanna help our audience get to know you a little bit. But before we talk about how you got into AI in the first place, what I would really love to hear from you, for everyone who’s listening, is when it comes to personal branding, right? This is a podcast all about building an influential personal brand. A lot of that is tied to, you know, the mi the mindset of entrepreneurship. But how does AI benefit you when you consider all the different things of building a personal brand and being an entrepreneur? Like, how, how does AI benefit you if you’re that person? MF (04:47): Well, and we, we can get into my, my backstory as to why this even came to fruition. But I think the, the reality is I wanted to create a lifestyle brand where everyone that’s a part of the team could actually have good and strong work-life balance. And that meant how do we do more with less? How do we use technology to our benefit? And so there’s me and one other person that are running the organization, and then we have former Fortune 500 CDOs on the team. And for us, it’s let’s eat our own dog food. What do we need to do? Where do we spend so much time? Where do we waste time where we could be having more efficient productivity, or we could be having more meaningful relationships? And so for, and like two examples on that of what we’ve built out. MF (05:34): One is a just an inbound prospecting engine. For those that reach out to me, we have an entire automation process that determines where does someone fit in the lifecycle in their maturity as well as are they an ideal customer? Because if they’re an ideal customer, then we wanna get a meeting set. And getting to that point has now all been automated, and that saves us about 30 hours per week just with that, just for one person, right? So if you have a sales team if you have a marketing team that’s highly multiplicative, and the same token in regards to me talking with a lot of boards of directors and c-suite, you need to do a lot of research to be prepared for those types of meetings, right? You can’t just wing it. And so we’ve created a, using LLMs, we’ve created a sales brief, like that goes right next to the calendar event. So we know everything that’s going on with the company in the news, based on their website the person that I’m meeting with, or the groups of people that I’m meeting with, and they’re likely pain points so that I can build a stronger, more trusting relationship faster. And I used AI to help augment doing that, but it was AI as a enablement tool, not AI as a replacement tool. AJV (06:46): Yeah, I, I, I love that term. It’s an enablement tool, not an a replacement tool, but those are two really good tangible things for everyone listening, if you didn’t pick up on that, is just, I mean, I’ve had these conversations with people, even in the brand builders group membership community of going, I just don’t have enough time to take all these calls myself anymore. And it’s like, well, tell me about the calls that you’re taking. It’s like every single discovery call. And what I hear you saying, it’s like, Nope, there’s opportunities for, you know, technology automation and some AI integration of, well, how do we help expedite that process so that every discovery call has actually already been qualified so that you’re actually taking the calls that you should be taking, routing the other ones in different directions. And then also research, right? The amounts of information that’s required to help keep you up to date that is exhaustive . AJV (07:41): And so you know, just, I think those, those are really helpful tangible ways of like, in everyday interactions, both on a sales front and just like an operational front of like, man, like kind of need to be in the know to some degree of what’s happening in my space, in the market, in the economy. It’s like, to what degree everyone is different. But if you don’t wanna get consumed in the deep, dark, black hole that is news and media, then how can we use this to gimme the things I need to know that are pertinent to my role, my industry, my space without getting consumed in the masses? So I think those are two really great things right there. MF (08:19): Yeah. And that’s a great point, is that there’s so much noise in the industry today that people wonder where the heck do I start? And, and how do I actually create meaningful impact? And, you know, I spoke as to what we’re personally doing because we want to eat our own dog food so that we can evangelize that out as proof that you can use ai. The reality is that especially for entrepreneurs, unless you’re going for VC or PE funding, you have a lot of things on your plate. You have a lot of manual things that you do day in and day out, and it’s time consuming. My calendar’s booked in 15 minute blocks with task and I shouldn’t maybe use technology pitches. But reclaim AI is one I do use because it automates putting the task into empty slots on your calendar in regards to what needs to be done, right? But what we look to do, what was that AJV (09:09): Again? Say that one for so they can hear it. MF (09:11): Sure. It’s reclaim.ai, and so they’re a, they do task inhabit automation. So if we have a meeting set some or, or a meeting after this somebody wants to book, they can book that and the task will automatically get moved. So that way you’re not trying to figure out what to do, which takes a lot of cognitive load, right? Of trying to figure out like, what’s important, what should I focus on? What fires do I need to put out? Instead, you can go, okay, I know what’s important because I’ve already put it into my calendar and I can focus on the things that matter. AJV (09:42): Yeah. And I think those are like the, the subtle tools that we all should just, even if you choose not to use ’em, be aware of ’em, because right now it’s whether you’re doing it or you’re paying for someone else to do it, regardless of how that’s happening, this is an idea of something you could automate and repurpose that person’s time into something that’s more significant. Yeah. Right. Not, you know, what you said, not replace them but replace the task, right? Yep. What else could they be doing if they weren’t doing this very simple thing, right? A hundred MF (10:14): Percent. AJV (10:15): How did you get into this? Right? And I know we kind of, you know, jumped right in, but I, I do think it’s important for people to understand, you know, regardless of what you may think, it’s like AI isn’t entirely brand spanking new, right? Sure. It’s been an evolution process. And so how long did you, how long ago did you start using a AI in your life? How’d you get into it? What led you to here? MF (10:40): Yeah, I mean, so AI started the, we’ll say the majority of models started in the 1950s, right? And there’s been two winters that were general only due to compute, and I’m nerdy now, it’s not too much, but I, I love this space. And when I was in school, took through regular elementary, middle high school, through university, and even into my PhD, I took every, like, quantitative course because math had a, a, a beauty, a pattern, right? The same way that as a musician, I could look at that. And when I was finishing my master’s about to start my PhD my advisor and I actually had we’ll say difference of opinions because I was doing a lot of work with the, the Office of International Research Education Development, working with Third World like NGOs to help third world countries be more efficient and productive. MF (11:32): And one of the things that we found out in doing that research was that when looking at really small villages, the entire population only trusted the village chief. And so if they didn’t actually get the buy-in those NGOs, didn’t get the buy-in from the village chief, and nobody was going to do anything that was said. And, and so looking at, like, this was called social network analysis, but looking at these types of things was really, really important to me because it’s like the internal mechanisms of our attitudes, behaviors, cognitions and values are at least supported or proxied by data. And so it means that we can use data to help enable and improve behavioral change. And there’s so many ways that we can do that. We’re talking on the organizational level, but there’s also the, the personal level. There’s also the, the coaching level, there’s the therapy level. MF (12:22): And so when I was in my PhD, I left after my master’s was actually recruited out as a data scientist. I think it was one of the first data science titles out there. ’cause That came into fruition in 20 10, 20 11 officially. And and so I went to now Defunct Sports Authority and basically rolled up to the CEO and CMO and and then was a data scientist for quite a few years building important models. And sometimes like that impetus of feeling or thinking you’re important ’cause you’re helping drive change wasn’t always true either. Like the CEO of Dish had me build out all of these models for this 15 do billion dollars of spend that he had. And and it was for and FCC spectrum auction. And then the day of, he told me he’s just gonna go on his gut and that that hurts, right? MF (13:13): To hear like, you’ve spent months and months working on this, you know, it’s good. You’re proud of your work, and it wasn’t leveraged. And that painted a picture to me that we’re seeing in industry today, that 80 to 90% of AI models never make it into production. And a lot of that had to do with the tools and technologies of the past. But as I moved further, I had a, a data science consulting firm. I was very, very fortunate that some Nvidia leaders had seen me keynote and event back in 2015. And they brought my firm on one of seven service delivery partners worldwide for them. And then after a few years of running that, where I was working a hundred, 120 hours a week and killing myself and losing friends and family I, I knew I needed to back out of that. MF (13:57): And fortunately, they actually asked if I would join what’s called the VAR solution Integrator space. And so for those guys, they sell hardware, they sell software, and they have like implementation and managed services. And they asked me to build an AI practice for their top partner. And I thought, this is actually great because we can look at this at a system level of like, what is going on with the organization? And instead of focusing on like one little use case, what are we actually trying to do here holistically? And then figure out what you actually need from hardware, from software and from services. And so the, the company I was at as well as the next company, we ended up being number one and number three globally in sales worldwide with Nvidia top five, with like Dell, HPE, Cisco, along with a lot of the SaaS software companies. MF (14:40): And because for me it was about how do we enable people to have a strategic roadmap on where they want to go and how do we help drive and implement change? Because what I was really seeing was that people are still stuck in the mindset of the past of let’s be transactional, let’s focus on one small thing and let’s focus on technology. But the reality is, the gaps today are really in regards to people and processes. If you don’t have people that trust ai, that trust data, that want to leverage it to improve their lives, they’re never going to use it. And the same thing with processes. If you’re not assessing your ecosystem and identifying where are the gaps? Where are we spending so much time today that we could potentially automate a workflow or use AI for then what are we doing? And so, you know, we did a great job at those two companies. MF (15:33): The sales teams were absolutely phenomenal. And I still had a, a, a small last hint of an ego and and I said, I want to have a chief data officer role. So I took a role at a Goldman Sachs back company, and after six months the CEO and I decided to part ways. And it wasn’t that like either of us was wrong or that we didn’t respect one another or trust one another. It was that they wanted to build a platform with lots of dashboards and lots of data that people could try to like decipher. And I wanted to minimize everything so that we could actually implement behavior change. Because if you have a hundred metrics, yeah, nothing’s going to change. But if you have three things that you know are your weaknesses that you focus on, you’re going to exponentially improve those and see exponential growth within your company. And so that’s what really ultimately led to me creating the AI advisory group. We have fractional Yeah, go ahead. AJV (16:31): Because I think that’s, that what you just said is, I think, so valuable because I think so many times people go, they hear things like, data is your, is the new competitive advantage, or, you know, there there’s so many sayings like that, and I don’t disagree with that. Like I think data is vitally important. In fact, if you looked at our dashboards you’d throw up, they’re overwhelming. We have so many. And I think that’s sometimes the challenge. It’s like to even sit and review all of the dashboards could easily take hours daily. Mm-Hmm, . So when you say, hey, like instead of having hundreds of data points and letting people to their own, you know, devices to go figure out what to interpret or how to interpret it, how do we simplify the things and focus on that? How do you do that? MF (17:17): Well first you have to assess where your company is and where you think the weaknesses or gaps are, right? And so like if let’s just pick the, the sales side example, the, the BDRs SDRs make phone calls for, right? And and so you could potentially measure the number of phone calls, but that’s a proxy for everything because ultimately you’re just trying to get to conversions, right? You want customers to buy. And so maybe increasing phone calls will lead to that and, and very likely it will with diminishing returns. But what if marketing could better target the ICP and drive the right customers already into that funnel? Then you’re gonna see higher conversion rates. And then if you have processes for your sales reps that are systematic, so you can identify, do some people have weaknesses in a demo or do they not ask the right question? MF (18:10): Then you should see higher conversions on a per person level. And so being able to just like wonder where you’re struggling or where you have inefficiencies, where the gaps are, where you think that there’s problems, you as a subject matter expert, that’s what’s really important, right? It’s kind of the same thing. Whether you heard this in high school or college or not, was that ice cream and murders are highly correlated. So if you buy ice cream, you’re more likely to murder. But that’s correlational, not causational. It’s that summertime increases the likelihood that people are outdoors and increases the heat, which increases like frustration and angst. And so people buy more ice cream in the summer but there’s also a higher propensity for murders. And so like, if you’re not a subject matter expert and you just look at data and say, oh, these things are connected, then you could really be making uninformed decisions. But if you bring subject matter experts in that really understand sales, understand marketing, understand product or operations, finance, et cetera then you can identify like, where can we use data to help identify if our perspective is correct or if we have gaps in our thinking, AJV (19:21): Okay, this is so good, so we’re just gonna use me as a case study, for example. ’cause I think this is a really great tangible way that I haven’t even thought of how to use AI and data. And so I’d love to hear your thoughts as, you know, as people are listening to this going, wait, what? So one of the things that I heard you say is, and I, and I agree, it’s like, you know, I come from a sales background, which is why my ears pricked up. When you use that example of, you know, I was always told from, from the very beginnings of my sales career make more, make more calls, make more calls, work the numbers, work the numbers. And it’s like, and to some degree, yeah, like, you know, the numbers work themselves out. The more calls you make, naturally more sales you make, but not necessarily in a percentage base, right? AJV (20:08): Mm-Hmm. , right? So how effective am I being versus just how hard am I working? Right? And so I love what you said, it’s like, well, what if there was a little bit more opportunity and going, well, perhaps it’s not just making more calls, it’s making sure that it’s more calls with the right customers, right? And that should lead to better conversions ’cause they’re more qualified just by being in the target audience. So can we just, I wanna use two different examples here. Sure. How could you use AI if you are in sales, in marketing, or just in business of going, how, how could I use AI to help me with that MF (20:47): With sales and marketing? Yeah. Well, so I, I think that what we’re seeing today, especially around the and I guess let’s clarify real quick for the audience on ai. AI has been created as this umbrella term now, right? Generally people use it now in regards to gen ai, gener generative AI like chat, GBT but there’s also the computer vision, deep learning, like self-driving cars. There’s machine learning, like what is the value of my house based on, you know, location, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and but then there’s also even like basic things like rule base, right? Like if then statements. And and so when thinking about it for marketing, that’s been the we’ll say inflection area that people are using chat, GPT and or, or, or any of them, right? I, I, I have all of them. MF (21:40): And so I don’t just want say that chat, GP t’s the one because I love perplexity ai Claude’s very good emini is moving up. And so it, it doesn’t matter what flavor you choose, and you should probably play around with different ones to see what really resonates. But what’s really, really important is that and then I’ll get into your que actual question, is that the majority of material has been scraped from the web, right? And people tend to have, you know, repeat other people’s thinking. And so if you just use the base version of chat, GBT or any of the LLMs, then you’re going to get a very basic output, right? It’s not going to reflect your identity, your company’s brand identity. And so what’s really, really important is that you have to basically create an agent or a bot or an input prompt that really specifies on like who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish and how you want that done. MF (22:36): It’s my create framework, which we won’t go into today, and that will ultimately lead into better outputs. And so from the marketing side, we’re certainly seeing that as help me create an email campaign or help me with SEO optimization of my website. And we’re not really seeing it in regards to how do we increase more of the machine learning structure data? How do we increase conversion rates? How do we make sure we’re targeting the right ICP? So our cost per dollar cost per acquisition is much lower, right? And that’s where we need to go is augmenting the gen AI aspects of those campaigns with like feeding that language in into structured data model to say, oh, okay, when we use these terms, we get much higher conversions, right? And that’s like the nuance that we aren’t really tackling or organizations aren’t tackling today. MF (23:28): From the sales side, you can start rudimentarily at let’s look at all of our historic conversations, right? And say, what do I need to say next to progress this deal along? Because we want, you may not be able to read through, you know, tens, hundreds, thousands of emails and texts and brand scripts over the co over the course of a prospect, but it’s very, very easy for a large language model to do that. And so, because the, we’ll say foundationally, what you really want is to have these models help make decisions based on large chunks of data that you can’t really leverage. And so because that way you get faster time to value, you get more we’ll say a higher propensity or likelihood that you get to spend more time with that prospect, and Lord knows that you definitely increase conversion rates, the more time you actually spend talking with someone and messaging back and forth. AJV (24:32): Hmm. Yeah. That’s, so I think that’s so good. ’cause That’s like, yeah, it’s like, I think tons of people talk about, you know, chat GTP, chat GPT in terms of writing email copy or marketing copy or a landing page, but I haven’t heard anyone really talk about how are we using it to make sure that we increase conversion, that we’re targeting the right people in the right way, that allow us to have more targeted conversations, better conversations, longer conversations with our ideal prospect. So I think that’s really insightful for anyone who’s listening of going like, Hey, it’s one thing to generate a lot of calls or any calls. Yeah, it’s a whole nother thing to generate calls with your ideal prospect, right? And I think that’s a very big deal of, Hey, if we’re gonna be on the call, let’s make sure it’s with the right person talking about the right thing. AJV (25:25): So how can we be more targeted upfront? I think that’s really helpful. The other thing as you were talking made me think about is in terms of using like large chunks of data, like one of the things that we ask, you know, our, you know, sales director is, Hey, I want you auditing calls every month as spot checks. Yeah. And it’s a very time consuming, lengthy commitment, but I’m always like, where’s your report? Where’s your report? What’d you do? What’d you do? Right? and even with, like, we have, you know, we have 16 strategists who are doing strategy calls on a monthly basis, and we have three team leads, and they each roughly have, you know, four to five people on their team, and I want them doing the same thing. And it’s like those are like, you know, at least four to five hours of call reviews once a month at minimum. AJV (26:10): And it’s like, I’m constantly kind of battling like, where, where are we supposed to find time to do that with everything else we’re doing? And what I also hear is like, well, there’s the potential of using, you know, recording transcripts, uploading those and using the right prompts in GPT to give initial rounds of evaluations that just shortens maybe perhaps the time in review so that there’s highlights that are pulled out so then I can spend more time in conversation training versus, versus all the time just listening. So I think about it when I used to have a team, it’s like I would spend an hour listening to the call in order to only get like 10 to 15 minutes of feedback. Whereas if I have 10 to 15 minutes of review and 45 minutes on training and feedback, how different would the outcome be? MF (26:58): Well, and, and when I was at revenue io was where I was the chief data officer, right? And that’s what we were doing was it had embedded sales coaching from a botter agent that says, okay, you’re monologuing too long, or you’re talking too fast. But those transcripts would also populate into the platform. And so, you know, it was really just at the time, it was the video and the transcript, right? Like Fathom has, right? But where I think we can go in the market is twofold. One is a, an individual can say, how did I do on this call? Maybe that’s according to medic or med pick framework or Challenger, whatever the heck you’re using. But is there anything I could have done better? Right? And it’s the same thing even for your, your team, right? Are they are they coaching effectively? But then you can also look long. So a, a sales coach then could like go in and see, you know, the weaknesses or strengths of that individual call, but then we could take that further and go, let’s look on a individual level across all of their calls and feed all of that in at one time and say, what patterns does this individual need work on? Right? What are, what are the problems that they consistently have because we know that’s going to move the needle if they fix those major problems. AJV (28:14): How would you do that? MF (28:17): You just feed all of the transcripts in from all of their calls AJV (28:20): All at the same time. Mm-Hmm. MF (28:21): AJV (28:22): Say, this is why I’m just going mind blown , like, you know, MF (28:25): And mind, mind, mind you, like like chat GPT, they have something called token limits. So chat, GPT can’t do all of them, but there’s other ones that can AJV (28:35): Like, so what would be some, so that’s another great question is let’s talk about some of the, the tools and platforms that you have found that are highly helpful, effective and, and just user friendly, I would say. So or the novice out there, right? Who’s listening, who’s going like, okay, okay, like, maybe I could see some really good value. It’s like, and I think about the number of, you know, not to harp on this topic, sales teams that I’ve been a part of training where it’s like, part of my job was to just sit in call centers all day long doing call audits and reviews. And it’s like, I know my time could have been more efficient if there had been tools like this, you know, 10 years ago, and that was my job. But so what are some of these platforms and tools that you highly recommend? MF (29:22): So I guess we’ll start in a few different areas, and I might have to pull up a tab on mine, that’s the other ones that I use. So on, on that sales side, you have like revenue io, chorus.ai, and gong, and all of those are like rev ops sales type coaching, right? So if you have a team, those are all very valid, useful tools to leverage in that playground. When we talk about like task automation, we use you know, Asana as our project manager and task manager, and then we feed those into reclaim AI so that we don’t have to make decisions on what the heck we’re doing each day. It’s automatically prioritized and scheduled into our calendar. Outside of that, you know, I think there’s, there’s also like the, the we’ll say crawl, walk, run approach with technology. And so beautiful AI is a phenomenal like PowerPoint type creator. MF (30:17): And and so very intuitive, very easy to use. If you’re better with technology, I’d say go to Canva. If you’re very, very good with technology, then you go to like the Adobe suite, right? And so, you know, there’s, there’s more of a threshold to learn those types of things. The PowerPoint creators today are not good the, the, the, or the generative AI PowerPoint creators, right? And the, the reason why is that they basically just like populate slides with tons of text because the majority of people who aren’t like, you know, speakers generally put slides with tons of text on. So that’s what it was likely trained on. And so when you see that, you know, I might just have one word on a slide, it’s not gonna know what word to put on a slide and when you know how to make that stand out. MF (31:03): And so we’re not there yet in regards to that. In regards to art creation, mid journey is probably the defacto standard. There’s also stable diffusion, and they are not good at creating like frameworks, right? And so if we’re talking about brand builders clients you’re going to have to manually create those, sorry. Canva has tons of great designs and Vato element has lots of great designs. So you can use those and then fill out your own process or framework. But in regards to automatically creating those, we’re not there yet either. But in regards to, you want, you want a picture of a, a monkey astronaut eating a banana on top of a spaceship, it can do that, right? And so if, like, if you want something like that for a blog post, it’s, it’s phenomenal, right? If you want something to really resonate visually, you can do that. MF (31:56): And I, I have pheno like art, I could have never created, I was a musician and a singer growing up, but you know, I could doodle but I could not go further than that. And so to see things come to life that, like you envision in your head, and maybe it’s not quite the vision you have, but like to see that come to fruition is so invigorating because the same thing with there’s there’s two music creator studios out there right now for generative music, and they’re getting better and better every single day. And like, they can’t, I can’t extract it. I don’t know if this shows up, but my like soundboard like, like I can’t extract it into Ableton, which is another not AI tool. It’s a sound mixing tool. I can’t extract it into there and have all the different instruments, right? But we’re likely going to get there in the next year. And that means that if you are a producer or want to be a musician, but maybe you can never play an instrument or you couldn’t mix now, you’ll be able to do that. And that, like, that really resonates with me that people will be able to like really help build up their own creative side as opposed to us just trying to say, rewrite this email for me. AJV (33:07): Yeah. You know what’s so interesting is like, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, so clearly I have at least a couple of friends that are singer songwriters. But one of my friends is a very good singer songwriter, and I was having lunch with her the other day, and she was talking about how there’s several artists now that only wanna hear songs and their voices. So she’s able to take all of her songs that she’s writing, use ai to use their voices. So when they hear the song, they’re like, this is how it would sound if I was singing it. And she goes, the effectiveness of that is mind blowingly successful when they go, man, I like the way I sound singing that . And so like, that would be like a really good use case of using AI in a way that allows, you know, a singer songwriter who’s pitching to a very big, well-known artist of like, here’s how you would sound with these lyrics and in this song. AJV (34:06): So I thought that was like a very cool use case of something that’s not taking anything away from what she’s not replacing. It’s enabling her to enhance what she’s doing for someone else. And, and as you were talking about like mid journey and stuff, like, one of the things that we toyed around with, and this is just like a, a tangible customer service or customer experience case study for anyone who’s like, well, how do I use some of these if like, it’s not gonna do graphics for me, or it’s not gonna do PowerPoints? And it’s like, no, but so if you think about it in a customer experience environment, like one of the things that we’re trying to do is, you know, during different life moments and these could be personal professional, but you know, we help a lot of people with book launches. AJV (34:50): And so, you know, it’s like, well, we’ll use different AI tools of them holding their own book that hasn’t even been created yet. Yeah. You know, or like somebody’s going through a really, you know, hard personal times and we’ll put them in what they would look like as a superhero, right? With like an encouraging note and message. So upload their picture and say, turn this into a superhero. And just you, you know, those are just like little, little ways that you could use some of this in a customer experience way where it takes minutes, minutes, literally minutes, no money of going, you said you joined Brand elders group ’cause you wanted to write that book. We’re so excited to be a part of the journey, and then we include the picture of them with their book. That hasn’t even happened yet, right? So I think it’s like part of, of it, it’s gonna require all of us to use our human brain to go, how do I use this to make it work for whatever I do? And I think a lot of people struggle with a lot of what I struggle with, which is, okay, I don’t have a lot of time to go learn all of these different platforms. ’cause Already it’s like I jotted down, you listed like nine, I’m like, already, that’s like, I don’t have time to learn all those, right? And so I would be, MF (36:03): Which which, which we could say like a simplified way of approaching that is going to any of the chat GBT or LLMs and saying, I’m trying to use generative AI to accomplish X task. Are there any tools or name the tools that can do that? Right? And then you at least have a short list of like, what you’re trying to accomplish. Because the, the biggest issue with technology today outside of nothing talking to one another, is that people are trying to round peg square hole. Yeah. But it’s like, you should figure out what your problem is first instead of trying to find a cool tool that maybe can solve one or two of your problems. Oh. AJV (36:33): So that’s good. So just use these generative AI tools to figure out what generative AI tools you should use . It’s like back to MF (36:42): And with what you said too, you know, thinking about I’ve known Gigi since I think oh 6, 0 7. And and, and you know, he was always so keen on wow experiences and I think he was only at a hundred countries instead of every country in the world when we first met. And, and that wow experience thing really resonated with me because I worked at Disney, I worked at Target, which emulated Disney and that aspect of caring about the customer, putting them first, but delivering something that’s a little more impactful than anyone else would do, really, really stands out. Right? And I had a a client of mine who one of their sales reps, this was 15, 20 years ago now, but he would take somebody’s LinkedIn headshot, he would send it to Japan, they would make a bobblehead, he would get it sent to the, like the CEO’s office and ask for a meeting. And he had about a 95% conversion rate in regards to getting a meeting scheduled. And it’s because nobody does that, right? They just send out these campaigns to 40,000 people and hope that they get some hits. But people are tired of that. They really want, like, I wanna feel special, I want people I work with who feel special and we treat them special. AJV (37:59): Hmm. Yeah. And this is a way you can do it in a really short amount of time without a lot of cost because that’s so prohibitive in some ways. But it’s like, man, you could do the similar things that really do make that impact without, you know, all the added costs with just using some creativity. The other, the other thing that I think would be, you know, really interesting, and you mentioned this earlier, and I wanna kind of come back to it. ’cause I think collectively what I, I wanna have this conversation be around is things that are universally applicable. And I think that universally everyone struggles with time management. I don’t care who you are, right? It’s like we struggle with the amount of things that we add to our plate, whether that’s our fault or whatever. I hear people say stuff like, you know, the the B word, right? AJV (38:44): I, I try not to say it the busy word. I think that a lot of people go, there’s just not enough hours in the day. And it’s like, well, yeah, I can see that, except for maybe you’re just doing too many tasks that you shouldn’t be doing . And so I think we all struggle with it at some level, right? Whether it’s real imagined or not. But you, you mentioned some task automation where we use monday.com Yep. Super comparable to Asana. But you’re saying, and I’m just thinking of like, if everyone can just, even if you don’t use a project management tool like Asana or Monday, but just think about it in general of like, man, how many things don’t get prioritized or don’t get done because they didn’t get on your calendar, or, you know, you’re struggling with just moving stuff from last week to this week to the next week because, so can we talk a little bit about, because I think this is something as universal, and you, you brought this up twice on this call, reclaim.io MF (39:39): Ai. Yep. AJV (39:40): Oh, ai, right? See, that’s why I’m asking . So talk to us about some tools like that for the, for the everyday person listening of going like, oh, man, like you’re saying, like, I could start to get some time back today. So tell us a little bit about, you mentioned Asana and Reclaim and how, how that, what’s like a good use case study for something like that? MF (40:05): Yeah, I mean, I, I think I almost want to take a step back, right? Because with what we do with the AI advisor group is most people go right to tactics and they don’t take a step back and start at strategy, right? And so then you’re always putting out fires, you’re always chasing shiny objects, and it becomes really problematic and it happens with executives along with everyone down the line. And so for me, just so AJV (40:30): You know, I completely understand because everyone comes to us and wants to build the funnel, build the website, and I’m like, you don’t even know what your business is. We, we, we can’t do that . So we understand. Yes. MF (40:42): And so coming from that perspective is like, you know, to the point of that my calendar’s fully booked with tasks this week from like 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM But if I just said and, and go back to like Pareto’s principle of the, the 20% rule leading to 80% of outputs and that’s largely due to a severe concussion I had that lasted 10 months. I could take away my task manager and just go, these are the five things that are most important. And it goes back to a story on Warren Buffett talking to his pilot, whether it’s real or false. And Pilot said, I want to be rich like you. Can you teach me how to be rich and be successful? Warren Buffett says, sure, write a list of the, the 50 things that you’re trying to accomplish. And he writes 50 things down and he goes, okay cut that down to 20 and he cuts it down to 20. MF (41:39): He goes, okay, cut it down to 10. And he cuts it down again. He says, okay, cut it down to five. And he goes, this is hard. Like, I don’t know what’s important. He goes, you gotta cut it down to five. And he cuts it down to five. And he says, if you focus on anything outside of this, it’s a distraction and noise. It’s not leading to the outcomes that you want. And so one of the things that I want to push or sh share with the audience is that don’t be busy for busy’s sake. Make sure you are doing things that actually move the needle that lead to the life that you want to have that lead to the company you want to have. And so these tools are going to either be an enabler of that and make sure we’re more efficient and productive, or you’re going to be an additional noise that just makes us check off more checklist, but we don’t actually drive innovation or success. MF (42:36): And I want to ensure that people are thinking of this in the right way because it’s not just AI and automation are great and amazing, and I, and I strongly believe it’s true, I’m already at 50 hours saved per week. Personally, we’re likely going to have 120 to 200 hours per employee saved, right? Which is a three to five x multiplier. But that means we’re doing that because we wanna focus on the things that are important. And if you’re filling your calendar with things that aren’t just to stay busy or appear busy, then you’re not approaching it the right way. AJV (43:09): Well, that is such a better answer than the question that I ask . So thank you for that. But I think that’s true. You know, ’cause the truth is, is that, you know, as I even sit here and glance over at my slightly over full calendar even for today it’s like, no, I, there I can, I can even in that quick glance, I can see two things I really shouldn’t be doing. Mm-Hmm. , right? And it’s like, if you don’t have the strategy right, no tool will help you. And that, you know, I would say the same thing with building your personal brand, right? It, if you don’t have the strategy, right, no website is gonna help you. No lead capture tool is gonna help you. No amount of anything that you do is gonna help you if you don’t have the strategy, right. And know what you’re really after or know what’s really important to you. And I, and I love that, and I think that’s, that’s really good and really wise of going, AI can really only, only help you once you know what you want it to do. MF (44:06): And I just read a report yesterday that said 90% of all executives, not just entrepreneurs 90% of executives spend an hour or less on strategy a month. And that’s mind blowing to me, right? To not take the time to ensure that you’re going in the right direction and focusing on what’s important. It’s why so many companies struggle. Like they, they don’t do that. They don’t look at product market fit. They don’t identify an ICP, like all the things that actually matter. And brand builders covers all of it. So thank you guys on top. But if you’re not doing the basics, then you don’t know who your customer is, you don’t know their pains, needs and wants, then who are you selling to and why are you trying to create a product or service offering or someone that you’ve never even talked to or don’t understand? AJV (44:49): Mm-Hmm. . And that is so important. And at the end of the day, like anything, it’s like you can inundate yourself as as easy it would be for me to like, make a list of all these and be like, oh gosh, I gotta go learn all this. No, I don’t. I need to pick the one, the two that can help me with what I’m really trying to automate, what I’m really trying to get off my plate, what really needs something, you know, that really can be done by someone or something else. I don’t need to know all of these. I need to know the one or two things that can really help solve the problems that I have. MF (45:23): Well, and, and I think it’s a great point. I, I know I shared it with your team, but the, like PRCV of pain, repetition, cost, and value, it’s like, yes. So you need to identify what are pains, right? Not what’s interesting or cool ’cause that’s the shiny object syndrome, but what are actual pains and is it repetitive? Right? The, I mean, I talked with my COO yesterday and I’m like, oh, this kind of stinks. And he goes, oh, well we could automate that. But it’s probably gonna be really complex. And I go, yeah, let’s not, it, it takes me, it was literally in regards to actually just putting task into Asana, right? We actually built it out so you could just do it in Slack. So it’s really technically easier. I was looking for an, I was considering an easier way to do it, but I’m like, if I map out the actual task that I might need to do for the day at the end of the day or whatever I need to accomplish, it takes me maybe two to five minutes, right? MF (46:15): Like, we don’t need to automate that. That’s not a big pain. But if we talk about 30 to 60 minutes of researching each prospect and we look at that over the course of a year, that’s hundreds of hours saved, right? That’s, that’s meaningful. And that’s where I want people to look at, like what does it actually cost to build this? And what’s the actual value? And then you can really ascertain is this worthwhile to pursue? Is it just something that, okay, I’ll do it, whatever. It’s obnoxious. And ensuring too that we don’t end up filling that extra time with more noise and more just ask. But we focus on what’s actually meaningful, which usually means a better product, a better service, more customer engagement and interactions, more engagements with your team to build a strong culture that’s aligned. All of those things are what really create a fantastic business and everything else is noise. AJV (47:07): Mm. So, so good. Matt, this has been so helpful, so awesome in so many different ways. If people wanna stay in touch with you, get to know about more about you and your company, where should they go? MF (47:19): We can do two ways. We’ll do, my email is Matt for Nito, F-O-R-N-I-T-O, at the a i a g.com. And and otherwise if you want to reach me on LinkedIn I certainly post a ton of content on psychology, ai, business and leadership. And so feel free to connect with me on there, happy to chat with anyone. AJV (47:41): And we will put those as just Matt for Nito as the LinkedIn name. We’ll put that in the show notes and the fact that you gave out your email address email address, I’m flabbergasted , I’m like, you might get a lot of emails. So, you know, build some AI automation into that, MF (47:56): That we have a little bit of that . AJV (48:00): Thank you so much. And the fact that you would even give your email addresses super kind and generous. So if you’ve got questions curious about what he does, how he integrates into companies, how he helps them streamline operations with AI and strategy email him. He just gave it to you so clearly he’s got a plan for handling all that. But then check him out on LinkedIn posting all kinds of good content. Matt, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate you so much. And everybody else, stay tuned for the recap episode, which will be coming up next on the influential personal brand. MF (48:35): Thanks, AJ