I Thought It Was the Worst Day of My Life

Hello everyone. Welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host Lauren Feldman. This week we welcome Ted Wolf, co-founder of Guidewise as the newest regular member of the 21 Hats podcast [music] crew. And Ted arrives with a pretty good story. Back when he was building his IT staffing business with his [music] brother, a senior employee walked out. But he didn't walk out alone. He took key employees, key accounts, [music] and 40% of the company's revenue. At the time, Ted thought it was the worst day of his business life. Turns out, he says, it [music] was the best because that disaster forced him to rethink everything. How decisions get made, how profits get shared, how responsibility gets distributed. And that shift led not only to healthy growth, but eventually to the kind of exit business owners dream about. That experience continues to inform the work Ted does [music] today. Helping companies integrate AI into their operations. The hard part, he tells Jennifer Karen, isn't the technology, [music] it's the people. It's managing the change, the fear, the implications. Of course, technology matters, too. Ted and Jennifer also discuss whether small businesses should try to retrofit AI into [music] their current tech stacks or whether the smarter move, painful as it may be, is to [music] start fresh. Even in good times, owning and running a business can be a lonely pursuit. Our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not [music] alone in facing challenges. In fact, that's the whole idea behind the 21 Hats community. Engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insight only another owner can offer. If you're interested in learning more, you can sign up for the morning report newsletter, which offers examples every day of owners confronting challenges and seizing opportunities. Just search the 21 Hats Morning Report to subscribe. Joining me this week on the podcast are Jennifer Karen, CEO of SB Expose and Events, an events management business based near Baltimore, and [music] Ted Wolf, who is CEO of Guidewise, which helps businesses implement AI and is based in [music] Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The episode is titled I thought it was the worst day of my life. Welcome, Jennifer, and our newest regular, Ted Wolf. Thanks for uh agreeing to join us here, Ted. Uh >> thank you very much. Look forward to the conversation. >> So, Ted, I did a one-on-one podcast with you a few weeks ago where you talked about your background and you gave something of a primer for business owners figuring out how to get started using AI. I don't want to repeat that, but for those who didn't hear it, maybe just give us a little bit of your background. Tell us about the IT staffing business that you built. >> Uh okay. Way back I graduated from college decades ago uh worked for IBM Corporation along with my brother. Uh we decided we wanted our own business. So we started a technical consulting and staffing business. It was a total of $1,000 we put in and a lot of sweat equity and we built it up and I would say the biggest mistakes we made were all people related because we didn't know how to hire, we didn't know how to fire people, we didn't know how to manage people in many respects. So I I think had something in common with a lot of people and that is I'm not sure about this people equation in the business. Technology 1 plus one usually equals two but with people it's a little bit more variable and um had a lot of lessons to learn in that. >> Well you must have figured something out because the business got pretty big. >> Yeah. Um we figured out through actually a real I I'll shorten this story. went into the office one Friday and we found out that 40% of our revenue disappeared overnight by way of accounts and we had an individual who worked for us >> um who had a non-compete sign. We brought him in, relocated him, a technical manager. Uh he decided he wanted his own business and took several of our prime accounts and some of our prime people. So that was the eye openening event of we better change some things and we did and it was all people related and that's an interesting story but when we changed it I would tell you that uh probably 5 years to the date almost we were on the Inc 500 as one of the 500 privatelyowned fastest growing businesses in the United States and it was all because of the people. >> What did you change? How did you solve that problem? >> We changed our whole idea about the business. uh the our initial paradigm I'll say is that we looked at it as our business and they were coming in to help us grow and we paid them well and everything but that small shift had to be changed and we said we're building a company together and they have to succeed before we succeed and how do we restructure the framework from silos to more of a team orientation get rid of politics get focused on the right things and it worked out I mean it really did we got great relationships and we sold it many years ago and I still get phone calls from people asking what I'm doing. Am I starting another business? And they'd love to work with me again. And that's gratifying. >> Ted, all right, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. You grew that fast and it's just people. So, no process, no new product, new service, new marketing, whatever. Just people because I'm I'm hiring more leaders right now. Did you hire people with experience from bigger companies, from people that were ambitious, >> people of culture? Like what were some of the Was it experience versus culture versus ambition? What were the traits that got you leaders to help you grow this fast? >> Initially, we hired for skill and brought people in because it was technology background. You had the skill. We'll get you acclimated. But we found out we had to reverse it. we had to hire for culture and then upgrade skills. When we upgraded the skill set, we basically kept people on the bench who weren't building for pretty long time. We used that as a retraining opportunity and that attracted other people. But what we focused on honestly was bringing people in that we thought we could build. We could develop their talents. We could develop their emotional intelligence, we'll call it today. And that was a big change that we made and we demonstrated it day in and day out. We lived it. And that that's what made the big difference for us. >> Who trained them? >> My brother and I started training them. We built a whole new onboarding uh system. Um and it was all on the values. And the secret to the whole thing was basically having good core values and how to implement them in a business. If you don't have core values to find and you don't know how to implement them, you're just all you're doing is manufacturing bigger bigger levels of chaos. People cost money and when you're starting off it's very hard to afford the quality of people to grow. Did you how did you do that? >> Uh well, we had lines of credit with the bank because that first 30 days we had to fund their startup till their invoicing came in. And uh you know when that infamous Friday came along which I thought was the worst day of my life but ended up being the best day of my business life. Um, on that Monday I knew I had to go in and renegotiate covenants and lines of credit and it was embarrassing to say the least, but it was a lesson that I needed to learn. >> Ted, when you uh rethought things to try to give your people a sense that they were part of the enterprise, did you focus primarily on bringing them into the conversation about how the company was managed or was it about giving them uh a stake in the outcome? uh some you know >> compensation that made them feel more part of the enterprise. >> Well, the first thing that we did is we brought them in in all decisions. So, we said, "Here's what we're thinking of doing. Here's what we'd like to do. We have to have you buy in in order to implement this. So, tell us the pros and cons." And we actually entered into a deep dialogue about what are their needs and desires and where do they want to be. Then we knew how to place that in relation to what we wanted to do. We couldn't come in and just build systems and expect people to change their behavior because behavior starts with the individual at a deeper level. So we had to hit that. We had to make sure that that we were listening to them that they knew it. And then we started reframing new systems and um actually we got rid of all titles. We got rid of all personal offices. We put people into teams and they elected a team leader and teams were about 10 15 people. They all had an objective to accomplish and then we instituted profit sharing. We didn't do uh what we'll call today like equity sharing and things like that, but they all got a piece of the equity when we did sell the business. >> How big did the business get? Um we had some private equity involved and uh we eventually grew to today's equivalent in billing would be about $und00 million in revenue and we sold that was acquired by our Iron Mountain Corporation. Um which opened up a whole other facet of my life then for change. >> Congratulations Ted. That's pretty impressive. That's what every entrepreneur listening to this podcast wants to hear. [laughter] >> Um gratifying experience I have to tell you. What I learned, the number of zeros in your bank account mean nothing compared to the personal relationships that you can build. And I hope everybody can get to that point uh of saying this is all about relationships with people, clients, people, employees, myself, my family. That's the most important thing at the end of the day. >> Did you feel as though your employees ended up in a good situation uh after the sale? >> Oh, absolutely. We made more than a few millionaires and uh in those days we had a receptionist and in that time I think she was making about $25,000. She got more in stock that we gave her um because she was there through the buyout and everything than she ever made in a year. >> Isn't that wonderful? >> Yeah. Very proud of the experience that I had. Still making mistakes today, but much further ahead because of that Friday experience. >> When did you sell the business? We actually sold the business. Uh I uh ended my contract in 1998. >> What have you been doing? [laughter] >> Started a number of other businesses. I had an online coffee and tea business to learn more about the internet. As soon as we you know basically got out of the contract of the cell completed um started up gee number of different businesses. I'm on my last one right now with my son and that's all about AI and how do you manage people and business? Um, so that it's a balanced approach with AI because you have to get into it today. >> That's guidewise you're talking about. Yes, that's guidewise. >> Uh, when when did you start that? We started that about 3 four years ago. Um, >> wow. Before Chat GBT. [laughter] >> Yeah, actually it was before Chat GPT. And what we actually focused on was just um people's resistance to change. How do you do change management? I call it change capacity now. That's just a term that feels better to me. How do you build the capacity for people to change because that's all we're going to have in the future of business and that's going to be the deciding factor of who wins and loses. And who's your typical client right now? We're going aftermemes. We have some clients that are doing $7 million, but we have another client that's doing way beyond $500 million. And the solution works for all of these businesses. We're kind of industry agnostic. We're going after I'm going to say senior leaders and what we call the great middle of a company. That's your middle managers and supervisors and then we have training that goes to the frontline people. But um what we're trying to do here is get everybody to live at that intersection of business objectives results that have to happen in the business balanced with technology number two and then people adapting to change that building that change capacity so the changes actually take place. Ted, is this more of a consulting company or a training company? >> We're more of a consulting company right now. We have training that we bring in, but the consulting becomes how do you implement AI into your business objectives and that's the big challenge to get the right use cases in return where people are having their problems along with not being able to identify the change. But uh starting out with consulting right now, but we're going to be moving more and more to a product orientation because what we're doing in consulting, we're going to build into an agent. >> What do you have to do when you go into a new client to figure out what their best use cases might be? What kind of questions do you ask? How do you figure that out? >> We have a discovery phase. And discovery is to identify their business objectives and to clarify the business objectives. Because a lot of organizations, believe it or not, even organizations that are doing $100 million in revenue, I have found do not have good strategy. Strategy is more than a SWAT analysis or anything like that. But if they don't have that one feature, that distinguishing feature that in the market is their differentiator, it's hard to develop a good strategy. Therefore, your business objectives get in trouble. So we go in and look and clarify business objectives. That's the key thing. What does the business need to achieve over the next 12 24 months? And then we say, okay, here's what AI can help you do potentially. And here's how we then start training your people to adapt to the change of AI because it is a AI is not a technical implementation challenge. When you look at AI, you should be looking at it as we're implementing greater competency within the organization. The reason I say that is because in old technology we're using whether it's word an ERP system or whatever it is input process output formula you input your data the system does the processing it gives you an output and that's where it ends with AI it gives you the output but now you can have a conversation with the technology which we never had before in technology and now that that conversation completely changes the equation >> do you have a certain AI that you use quite a bit or are you agnostic across all of them? >> We work with I mean we work with chat with Gemini you know with Claude we do all of those but our preferred um platform that we think is the best out there is IBM's platform with Watson X. Not talked about in the popular press as much simply because it's not fun in games. It's built for business. that's built to be able to take AI into the enterprise or the whole business regardless of size. And they've just crossed their tees and dotted their eyes very well. So, believe it or not, I started my career at IBM. Now, I'm back at IBM as an IBM business partner. We're certified to sell and implement Watson X, which is their AI solution. >> You've also told me about the security aspect of that. Um, why don't you tell Jennifer about that because I think she might find it interesting. >> Yeah. When you bring in AI, it's a lot of people look at it like chat and they're putting their financial statements on it. They're putting their own strategy on it and they're saying if other people see it, I don't care. And I think that's pretty shortsighted to be honest with you as a business. If you want to scale, you're going to regret that in the future. So the whole idea of governance, who can access the data very easy with this new technology of AI, you need governance, you need all kinds of privacy issues put in place. And AI does not like silos. It hates silos. So it wants data that everybody can access when needed. And in order to do that, you've got to get people to change because they begin asking, well, what am I getting paid for in my job? And that comes down to the governance and how you orchestrate different agents. When I say orchestrate, I mean how do you set them up so they communicate with each other, but you're still managing and directing those agents. And IBM has just thought through that whole governance issue tremendously. In fact, they indemnify you if you're using their platform for IP, copyright, and those things. And that says an awful lot of and brings a lot of confidence to me. Does IBM send you leads? >> Well, we're in a partner program and we can get leads, but um we're only in this program for about six months right now and what we're doing is just driving our own leads. And um we're not looking to them as a lead gen source. We're looking at them as give me the technology so we can actually get companies to implement it and use it correctly and not waste money or time because we're running out of time and money. So, how long did it take you and your staff to learn the Watson AI? >> Um, I'm going to say we got involved probably about 8 months ago and my son who after college he uh worked for Deoid in technology for a while. So, he understood that big environment that I came out of big tech companies and things like that and he really is the one that dug into it. I'm more of the people business building side and he is the technology side that we're relying on and then we're going to build accordingly. Uh and we're looking at IBM and that partner program is supplying us a lot of technical people where we don't have to recruit and hire them all of oursel. That's what we're >> Got it. So you're the face to the client, >> but they will backfill your technical support. >> Yes. >> Interesting. I like that partnership. I'm in discussions regarding a partnership with a tech company and so it's interesting how they all do it very differently. >> Yeah. >> Is this IBM's push then to build this program where you're the first of many? >> Yeah. Um I think IBM gets 9% of their revenue from partners like us today and they are saying in a very short amount of time and I forget the exact time but uh the CEO of IBM said that we want that at 30% and I'm going to say that's within years cuz they see the market changing. They know what's going to happen. They all do. they know what we're heading into here and uh that's one way they can not have to hire tens of thousands of people. >> Jennifer, you've told us here that you're one of those uh business owners who have done what Ted was talking about, which is using Chat GPT for strategy, putting in all kinds of information about your business, uh including financials. Do you have any pause about sharing that with uh with an AI chatbot? Uh >> I don't. My husband hates it though. He yells at me all the time [laughter] for for putting this information out there. >> Listen to him. Listen to your husband. >> Yeah. The issue is, you know, when you're small, you can't possibly think that anybody would care whatsoever about [laughter] you as a company or your financials. And so it's hard for me to imagine why I couldn't. Now, if I was much bigger, right, I I might be concerned. And and not that I'm disagreeing. I I understand his concerns. But it is just fascinating how AI can look at patterns and easily give you answers of things or maybe not even answers, but pattern recognition and point you in directions you might not have considered before. And that's just it's inescapable that humans just cannot do that as fast. >> Yeah. And that's that whole competency thing of what I mentioned. It's not a technology input into a business AI. It's a capacity building avenue I guess you would say that is incredibly [clears throat] powerful. And I think right now you think you're small. You put your financials out there and you might say we don't care who sees them. You may care who sees them because people with AI can be very creative and if they are in another country or they're not a reputable like let's say good character there's all kinds of back channels they can go to today in that deep web that we don't talk about the dark web. You don't want them knowing all that stuff. I just don't. >> Yep. I mean, I have no doubt that's that's coming in a lot sooner than we think. I saw an incredible video about a robotic hand, and all I kept thinking about is, you know, Luke Skywalker and the at how how close I might see that in my lifetime, right? But it's hard as a small business um and I'm sure you're going into all sorts of sizes. It is really hard to figure out how you do it on a systemwide um for AI, not just individually. Individually putting in chat GP to help you write an email or help you analyze something systemwise. And honestly, I'm relying on my software partners. I mean, I use Salesforce and I was I've never gone to Dreamforce and this is the first year I think I wish I would have gone to Dreamforce to learn how Salesforce is incorporating AI that can help me. Um, because it's both too small and too big at the same time. Small that my staff's using it for emails, but too big to figure out how to do this systemically. >> Yeah. Well, I don't know if you knew this and I don't think it's public yet, but I was talking to an individual just yesterday or the day before who knows Salesforce pretty well and some people there and they're officially changing their name from Salesforce to Agent Force. >> Wow, that says a lot. That says a lot. >> Well, and I saw all the pictures and and comments about Dreamforce and it really did feel like this year they were pushing it hard and I was Yeah. I put it on my schedule to go next year, which I've never gone because of that. Because Salesforce is pretty ingrained in my business. Um, and what it'll look like. Huh. Interesting. >> So, Salesforce, my daughter works for Salesforce in Manhattan. She's doing very well with them. She was chosen to go to Dreamforce this year, and she showed us what they're using daytoday in customer service um, inquiries coming in as far as an agent. I think this is mind-blowing. Salesforce started building customer um services agents. They had 9,000 people working in Salesforce for customer service. They're down to 5,000. They let 4,000 of them go. It's all agents doing it. And the customer satisfaction metrics have not gone down at all. >> Well, it's probably pretty poor to begin with. I can't tell you how many Salesforce account managers I've had in the last six years. Probably 60. So [laughter] maybe I don't they they need to do a lot better job on that to be honest. [laughter] >> Well, they do an awful lot of turnover. >> Yeah. >> But every company is doing it today because they're saying we don't have to carry C players anymore. I hate using the word C players, but the average status quo person. They don't have to. So they're going to turn them and the only way they know to do it is we got to go through the churn >> and then they're going to implement the technology and everything. But that doesn't mean we're going to get rid of people. It just changes how that's going to work. But Salesforce, the reason I bring that up is because there's going to be a Salesforce example like that in every industry. And today we have a leaprog opportunity to take a small business and turn it into a medium-sized business in years instead of decades. >> But is your business it's you can help companies that are already on IBM or doesn't matter? >> No, it doesn't matter. >> Well, yeah. Yeah. No, we can go in and help an organization. I mean this is the consulting part also where someone might say hey I'm just not ready to bring in AI but I really need some help over here in the business objective side so we can come in and do that we have companies that we just had a company that call us we work with they do uh they have an AI product they bring into financial institutions like banks and wealth managers and basically what they're doing is um they called us and they said can you come in on the engagement with us as you know part of that whole change people change adoption change management so that they actually start using the AI and implement it instead of yeah we got a great product but nobody's using it. So we work with companies that not they don't have AI or smaller companies. We can get AI in there from IBM pretty inexpensively. >> What's inexpensively? IBM sounds very expensive to me. >> It is [laughter] more expensive than chat GBT or the other options, isn't it? >> It is. But what you get is many many times more value. You can come in an essentials program for IBM and you could get in for $600 a month for up to 10 people. >> Oh, all right. So, that's not ridiculous. >> Not at all. And what you get will be unbelievable. They have a program called Orchestrate. And Orchestrate is just like what you think of with an orchestra. You build an agent. The last thing you want to do is build agents randomly throughout the business. That's where you get into security problems. And that's where you're just building more chaos down the road because um they're not built on the same core values of the business and they're not built on the same algorithms. So that's where you get into trouble. But you can bring in AI today at IBM to get started. And that's a great way to get your feet wet and get some guidance to how do we implement it. But uh it's doable. It's doable. Can you give us an example of a use case at maybe one of your smaller clients that uh shows the power of this and where we're headed? >> Use case may be something like HR. So somebody very quickly will bring in an HR thing and they'll put their policy manual on AR. So everybody can just go there, talk to people and be able to ask their questions instead of getting somebody from the HR department. HR is a big area that you can use AI in today. there's a lot of things scheduling appointments, how are you going to verify resumes coming in and things like that. So that that is a big area that we see helping. And another area is just like uh here's an interesting experiment that we've done and and tells you a lot. We've told people bring in your business emails from different managers andor department heads or senior leadership. run them through AI and ask them how do these emails compare in association with our core values and you'd be amazed at what the patterns that AI will pick up on emails going back and forth between people. It's staggering and sometimes I'd say you probably need a bourbon before you do this. >> I mean we have that now right? So Zoom does an amazing job after having meetings you can with the meeting summary and then the AI summary and then you can you know ask how did that conversation go based on values based on the SOP for sales. Zoom has that pretty well. I think we also have co-pilot which I hate. I don't think Copilot's been helpful at all. I felt it's a bit of a waste of money. But I feel like the current infrastructure that's out there, whatever company's using, I feel like those tech companies are going to be forced to put AI in rather than I don't know. It's it's a big leap for a small company to switch. Like if someone said, "Hey, switch out of Salesforce and something else." That's a massive leap. And my hope is that the the places I've chosen, Salesforce, Slack, that they'll help us understand the use cases for AI better because there's just so big and I've seen a lot of companies come and go very quickly in this. It seems like Death Valley a little bit um of how quick these companies are going up and down. >> No question. I agree with you. And you got to be very careful and that's why we like the IBM platform. IBM I hope they're not going away. I think it's a good solid company and I think they got great technology. Um sometimes they don't market the most effectively but um I think they have a great solution along with Salesforce and people like that Oracle and those organizations but just to go back to what you mentioned about Zoom info or Zoom what that does about analyzing a conversation. I'm going a little deeper and further than that. I'm saying actually get the emails from John or Jane Doe who is I'm going to make this up. Who's your sales manager and let's say you have to produce a product. What do those emails look like with the people in production back and forth? Tell me a little bit about this AI and they actually go in and look at all the email strings and threads and everything and they start analyzing here's what we see going on in the conversations. Here's what we see as far as alignment with core values of the business. Um, when I say you need a bourbon, sometimes sometimes you be amazed at what people are saying in emails back and forth. Inter Slack might be a little different, but if you look at the emails, that's just another experiment that you can use that's very interesting and telling about the organization. >> Can you give us an example? When somebody is not living up to the core values, how does that show up? >> Okay, you got emails going back and forth between I'm going to give you an example. Here's a pharmacy related client that we had. Um, you went in, you took a look at the emails. Very, very good adapted people at the senior level. Very, very, they were doing about a billion dollars in revenue, pretty sophisticated, well taught, a lot of PhDs, etc., etc. So, all of a sudden, you get sales talking with uh pharmacy, we'll say, uh, fulfillment, and then they're talking with um overall operations. They're saying, "Well, in the conversation, I said this because I didn't know what else to say, and it changed the entire flavor of the organization, but they were selling and talking about things that the company couldn't fulfill." And that would have never gotten uncovered because they would have gone to the middle of the organization and said, "Just do it. Here's what we got to get changed if we're going to make the sale." Operations looks at it and says, "We can't fulfill that. It's impossible. You're you're creating a brand new product for somebody." Yeah. Well, just do it. We got to get it done. We need this sale. And that are some of the battles that you don't think go on in businesses. And that's also small businesses. I mean, I know companies that were doing five, seven million dollars that I've worked with that had those same problems. So, you know, all of a sudden you detect a lot of the conflict that's going on between departments and you wonder why they're not working together. They got silos and they're throwing things over the wall back and forth and not really solving the problem or the issue and making the changes they need to to to move ahead. >> How big has your company gotten, Ted? Revenue-wise, we're we're a startup and we spent three years developing our own platform for change management or building capacity for change into people. So, this year we'll probably do I'm going to say maybe $600,000 in revenue. Um, but we have [snorts] a first quarter right now that could change that significantly coming up for what we're forecasting and what we see as far as contracts in place and things like that will be moving on. So I think we can greatly exceed that. But um we spent three years developing our technology for change management and helping people recognize how I have to become self-aware emotional intelligence so that I can self-manage and then become you know self leading and self-reliable if you will. And then in the last year is when we really started looking at okay how do we get out and market it and pair it up with something like AI and that's the IBM avenue and other platforms we're working with but IBM is the predominant one. So we're a small business but we'll grow fast. >> Is the partnership with IBM your primary method of marketing or are you doing other things as well? >> Oh no we're marketing outside IBM. I mentioned another account or another another client I should say that um they have an AI product they're taking into banks and uh wealth managers we've already got two contracts not to do AI but just to do change capacity breaking down people's resistance to change and we're going in and just coaching and we have a whole set format of classes and education we take people through >> where I'm struggling and we're thinking about next year is the theme for next year is um client success through automation and all the different ways that we can use AI for further automation and and to be honest it's hard because there's a lot of different systems involved. I mentioned we use Salesforce um we use Slack every day all day, right? We use um uh another text system for for actual event management. There's a lot of different software you use and how do I like I I I have our business objectives. We also use air tableable and um so we are hiring a consultant to help us try to figure out better ways faster ways to do air table but the >> what's air tableable? >> Air table is an open form open- source uh database that's very easy to create any kind of need you have on a a database. So anybody can pick it up. It's kind of like do you remember Microsoft Access and FileMaker? Air Table's just very easy to use, very intuitive just to create databases and it links to a lot of different other systems. So we've used it to create our own event specs database um in Air Table and um but trying to connect them is what I'm looking at next year is how do I connect Salesforce and teamwork. So we use teamwork.com for our project management. How do I connect those? How do I connect Slack and Teamwork? How do we use Teamwork Desk? And you know, that's what I'm more interested in. And I think I I'm not quite sure how I know. I I'm just confused on how to do it to be honest. >> Um what you're talking about is orchestrating. How do I orchestrate all these different technology, the technology stack, and get it talking? And I know everybody says, "Hey, you know, do your APLs and it's easy, but man, you're constantly maintaining them." And that's why I like the IBM thing. It's called orchestrate. How do I orchestrate all these different agents or technologies that are doing things for us together in a seamless I'm going to say manner that we're not constantly just maintaining the links and everything. But I think that's a normal challenge that you have. And um you know I had an interesting conversation with a uh pretty large accounting firm yesterday who has a a big practice professional service practice in technology and everything and they said well we don't know if we're going to have to be able to move into it because every thing that every everything that we're using whether it's HubSpot and CRM they're all putting AI onto it so we'll just use that AI and that's how we'll implement it. And I said that's a great idea but you're just going to be status quo like everybody else because everybody else is going to be implementing it. So, how are you going to leaprog them? How are you going to leaprog them in competition? So, that I'd keep that in the back of your mind, Jennifer, when you're going through what you're doing. >> Yeah, that's a very good point. You might have inspired me to go take a look at Orchestrate. I I will say the IBM brand though, as a small business, I I think that they would laugh for a company my size. So, that's why it's interesting to hear you because I think, oh my gosh, well, IBM only deals with 100 million and above. Why would they worry about a small company like mine? Yeah, that's where their growth is going to come from. In fact, their main target for growth in the future is theme market. >> Interesting. >> Totally. They have a whole program in people set aside just to dig into it because that's where the future growth's going to come to because they know we got these leaprock moment that we're living in in the next couple of years and then that window shuts where people are going to experience dramatic growth. And you know, one thing about AI, just to keep it in the back of your mind, if you start using it from a business standpoint, we're all used to signing a license agreement and paying the licensing fee and use it as much as we want. But with AI, you sign a license agreement, but then you have usage fees that go with it. >> It's a token system, right? >> Exactly. It's the tokens. So, >> explain how that works. Um well to keep it in plain language it calculates weights and it calculates how many characters you're going to be using etc. And they put that into a weight and you get so many tokens for x amount of dollars and when you exceed that you just start adding on more tokens and they do it automatically but you got to really manage it and that is different than old technology. So the usage you really have to look at and people just can't frivolously go out and use it and that's that's a small business change to put in place though but you have to calculate it in your budgets and then you know when you maintain an agent you got to it costs money to maintain it just like it does maintain a a human being. So, in a lot of ways, when you bring in an a AI and you build an agent, that's like bringing in a new employee and training them in how they need to work in your business. And that's where core values come in. So, there's a lot there to unpack in AI. But just be aware, Jennifer, you when you get into AI, you will be paying for usage, not just license fees. >> Have you seen examples of that exploding in a way that a business isn't prepared for? >> I haven't seen it. I'm sure it's there, but I know that people were working with on it. um it's uh never been a problem because we make them very aware of and say here's the budget. Let's make sure you're putting a use case in that you can afford. Then >> how do you keep track of how much you're spending? >> There's a dashboard in particular with IBM and orchestrate Watson X um that platform there's a dashboard every day it comes up it tells you exact >> so if you know to monitor it you it's easy to monitor. >> Oh yeah yeah yeah they'd be killed if they didn't have that. Nobody wants that month end shock, >> right? >> Well, it is fascinating. It's fascinating what what we'll see in a year from now and three years from now. >> It's here. It's not going away. The big question is people say, "When do I get in it? Do I wait not be a pioneer?" If you wait, that leaprog moment's going to go away. You got to get into it in a low cost, low lowrisk environment to learn about it. And that's what we're specializes in doing and why we're going afterme market, not the the bigger guys. Jennifer, do you feel competitive pressure to uh get into AI or is it just you want to run your business as well as you can? >> Yeah, I don't feel competitive pressure to do it. I I compete with a lot of independent planners who are using Excel spreadsheets, right? >> Wow. >> I want to do things faster and better. Um, so it's it's more self-induced ones. And then knowing, you know, you just can't add staff. Um, as you grow when you're much smaller, that's your first go-to. Okay, we got more work. I'm going to add staff. And we did a couple things right by adding in technology early on. Um, going to Salesforce, going to teamwork.com. And now the next stage is, okay, how do I make this faster and better? >> And that's going to be AI. >> Yeah, I don't doubt that. I I'd absolutely agree. It's just where and how, right? That's that's absolutely a question. >> Jennifer, is there any one thing that you're really dreaming about that you would like to accomplish technologywise? >> Ooh, that a good question. H well, we get a lot of customer service inquiries. And if I could figure out how to use an agent to help with that, which seems pretty simple in the AI world, but as a small business, it's hard to figure it out, right? To do customer service inquiries. We're an agency base, so we have 40 different clients and and managing the customer service for all of those 40 different clients. I would like to do that. Um, I think that's probably my first one. And then analyzing some data through Salesforce. That would be a second one. You just you get confused where to start. And there's so many people talking about AI. There's also a lot of snake oil salesmen out there. And, [clears throat] you know, you have to be really cautious of how to proceed on this. And >> have you run into them, Jennifer? >> No, I see them on LinkedIn. you know, everybody on LinkedIn's an AI specialist and tells you all of this and and then you dive into a little bit more about them, you're like, "Oh, forget it." Right. >> Yeah. Um, you're exactly right. And I think you're thinking it through. Okay, here's my business case where I can actually improve the business. Now, how can I use technology to help me do that? That's the right direction to take. It's a matter of sitting back and saying, okay, how do I actually get some metrics and numbers around these things? Customer service, you got 40 clients. There's all kinds of things you can do with AI to better manage their expectations and how you service them and where you want to grow their business as revenue streams in the future, but you got to get be able to get some metrics around it and start tracking how many inquiries do we have coming in. What's the main pattern that we're seeing because it may not be the right pattern, but um where would you collect the data and put it together? Because that's what AI needs. It needs good data. If it doesn't have good data, it doesn't work. I think you're on the right path. Here's my dream, Ted. I want to take six years worth of podcast transcripts and train a chatbot on it and open it up uh to paying customers who can ask, "What are the 21 hats podcasters think about this situation or that situation? How should I proceed to solve this problem?" >> Mhm. >> What do you think? >> Oh, I think it's a great use case. >> I think it's a great use case. Absolutely. >> Absolutely. >> How hard would it be to do and what will it cost me? Uh, I can't answer the cost right now, but where I would start out if I was you, I would probably sit back and I would try to kind of like narrow the scope a little bit. Instead of saying such a big outcome of I want them to be able to ask any question they want and be able to get something back, you're going to have to be able to prompt and give it more guard rails on how it's going to determine those searches. So I'd break it into smaller pieces of what an agent will do, how you're going to do it, and you work then in the small piece, get that working, then go to the next one and the next one. Other words, you take the elephant and break them down into bite-sized portions. >> Interesting. >> That's what I would do. And uh I think, you know, you got a lot of data, you know, between podcasts and blogs and articles on your newsletters and all of that stuff you can put together, but you got to I think break it down a little bit, not so general, but more specific. >> All right. Okay, well that gives me something to think about. Thank you both, Jennifer Karen and Ted Wolf. Ted especially joining us for the first time. One thing before you go. Everything we do at 21 Hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to [music] help us all learn together. If you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes, consider joining the conversation. You can do that by joining the 21 Hats sounding [music] board, a Slack channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom forum where you [music] can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast. You can sign up for both by subscribing to the Morning Report. 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