205. How Leaders Thrive in an AI Enhanced World

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Speaker 7 What's up, guys? Welcome back to another Monday mindset. Today, we are going to discuss a topic coming out of the book, Crossing the Chasm by Jeffrey A.
Moore. This is a tremendous book.

Speaker 7 It was specifically written about the tech industry and essentially the chasm that forms between

Speaker 7 your early adopters and your early majority, and how most products can get some initial traction in your innovators.

Speaker 7 They can even get momentum in early adopters, but it is that break between early adopters and the early majority that allows products to go from nice little startup to enterprise level business with a real significant valuation that most companies that fail are not able to cross this chasm.

Speaker 7 And this book breaks down a lot of the ideas. Highly, highly recommend this book.
I'll have it in the show notes. If you're listening at home, I'll I'll have it in the show notes.

Speaker 7 Otherwise, if you're watching this on YouTube, it'll be in the description as well.

Speaker 7 This is just a, it's a book I've had on my shelf for years. I've read it two or three times.
I come back to it all the time.

Speaker 7 What I wanted to talk about is actually a couple quotes from the book that I'm going to pull specifically chapter five and chapter six to reference one of the business related items that I'm getting asked the most about.

Speaker 7 So all of my keynotes that are coming up so far in 2024 are on this particular topic, as well as the questions that I'm getting that are business related.

Speaker 7 They're all focused around leadership, around sales, and have something to do with AI. So it's how as a leader do I get the most out of my team? How do I position my sales team against AI tools?

Speaker 7 How do I leverage AI tools in my business? Should I be using AI tools, etc.? This question is coming up over and over and over and over again. And I think it's on everyone's mind.

Speaker 7 I mean, AI is a major part of our lives now. It is only seemingly going to become a deeper and more diffuse part of our lives, meaning it will just kind of be behind the scenes in everything.

Speaker 7 And I think people are scared. And I think for good reason, AI can eat your lunch.
Absolutely positively.

Speaker 7 There are certain particular job functions that just will not exist or will not have humans doing those job functions in the very, very near future.

Speaker 7 That does not mean in any regard that humans are in trouble of you know losing all their jobs or everyone's going to be out of business or ai is going to that there's new job functions that need to be done there are more creative job functions there are what i call human optimized tasks human optimized experiences in which we as leaders if we are going to be if we're going to run human optimized businesses and i'll explain what human optimized means in a second it's a it's a core idea of what i teach that if you're going to be a leader who runs a human optimized business, you have to think and embrace AI.

Speaker 7 It cannot be a battle against AI. However, we cannot engage with other companies.
We cannot engage with the marketplace unless we're ready for war because war is coming.

Speaker 7 Particularly, the industry that my career was born out of, the insurance industry is in a hard market. It means

Speaker 7 the cream of the crop is doing okay or even rising, and everyone else is getting the absolute crappie out of them.

Speaker 7 And I know that this is what's going on in almost every other industry in the country, as much as that may not be the headlines that we're seeing right now through mainstream media.

Speaker 7 Obviously, it's in their best interest to not tell this story yet. But like

Speaker 7 because Rogue Risk, my independent insurance agency deals with small and mid-sized businesses around the country, we are seeing this across the board in every class of business that the cream of the crop, the A players, the market leaders in either a region or an industry, et cetera, are actually doing just fine, if not growing.

Speaker 7 However, the marginal players, the smaller players, those who haven't invested in marketing, who haven't built brand, or are just young in the game are getting the crap beat out of them.

Speaker 7 And I think a lot of that has to do with what I want to talk about today. Now, before we get there, I want to quickly just talk about what does it mean to be human optimized.

Speaker 7 So this was a concept that I came up with three years ago, and it had to do with dissecting again the insurance industry. But this applies regardless of what industry you're in.

Speaker 7 Just know that much of my experience the last 17 years is born out of being an executive and a founder, an entrepreneur inside of the insurance industry.

Speaker 7 So, in our industry, I was looking at the way business was done, and I essentially viewed it like this: Assume that you have a 20-minute block of time, the traditional way of operating would be 15 to to

Speaker 7 or

Speaker 7 three to five of those minutes of that 20-minute block that say a human in your business has with a customer. Say there's 20-minute block of time.

Speaker 7 Three to five of those minutes are spent actually engaging with the customer, asking questions, trying to gather information, figure out what the problem is, and then rushing them off the phone as quickly as possible because of technology, because of systems, because of processes, because of antiquated or arcane ways of doing business.

Speaker 7 They then have 15 to 17 minutes of processing time on the back end.

Speaker 7 So, the reason that they're rushing our customers off the phone, not building deeper relationships, not asking open-ended questions, not trying to get referrals or reviews or cross-sell or upsell or just simply building a deeper bond with our customers is because there was so much nonsensical transactional work on the back end of that 20-minute block that they had to rush them off the phone.

Speaker 7 So, what I wanted to do was flip that on its head: to build simple systems processes procedures and then build build in or purchase and and integrate technology that would flip that equation where our customer service our sales team anyone who interfaces with customers directly would have 15 to 17 minutes of time on the phone right again just this could be through email or whatever but time on the phone time experiencing time interacting engaging connecting with that customer because that's where the magic happens.

Speaker 7 One really good conversation with a customer can turn them into a customer for life.

Speaker 7 One really great interaction, one caring or kind moment, one experience that separates your business from everyone else can change the entire lifetime value of that customer for thinking dollars and cents-wise, not just thinking about doing the right thing.

Speaker 7 If that's, if we believe that, then we have to give our people more time.

Speaker 7 And to do that, we need to build systems, processes, whether that's self-service, automation, outsourced VAs, technology, now AI, et cetera, so that that interaction has 15 to 7 minutes of good human connection and then three to five minutes of transactions.

Speaker 7 So that's a human-optimized business. That's the core concept.
That's what it was born out of. There's a lot more to it as you go and engage.

Speaker 7 And there's a whole filtering and decision-making framework and metric that I help people work through when I do a keynote for them or a workshop, et cetera.

Speaker 7 But that gives you the core concept of what running a human-optimized business is. So that being said,

Speaker 7 if we are going to take on this model, if we're going to engage with companies that are using AI, if we are going to engage with larger competitors in a hard or down market in which, you know, if we're smaller or we're new or we're scrappy or we're a bootstrap startup, et cetera, and we're trying to compete upstream, then we have to engage this as if it's war.

Speaker 7 You cannot go into these situations limping in or toe, you know, dipping your toe.

Speaker 7 And there are just a couple quotes here that, you know, when I was thinking through how I wanted to position this concept for you guys that I found in, again, Crossing the Chasm by Jeffrey A. Moore.

Speaker 7 Get on Amazon or I'll have it linked up in the description or show notes. So this comes from chapter five.

Speaker 7 Chapter five talks about assemble the invasion force. The first quote is actually a pulled quote from a guy by the name of Willie Sutton.

Speaker 7 It says, I've always found you get a lot more in this world with a kind word and a gun than you do with just a kind word. And

Speaker 7 to build off of that, the author, Jeffrey Moore, says,

Speaker 7 if you are committing to

Speaker 7 an act of aggression, you'd better have the force to back it up. Or to put this in terms closer to our immediate topic, in this case, marketing, marketing is warfare, not wordfare.

Speaker 7 And what he's trying to get at is that you can do all the brand work, you can create ads, you can do everything that you, you know, that would go into positioning and messaging, etc.

Speaker 7 But if you don't have the team, the process, if you don't have the people, the mindset behind you, that when you are going to engage in a marketplace, that you are going to battle.

Speaker 7 Now, again, this is not to make light of actual real warfare in terms of the army and everything that's going on in the world today, but you have to have a warrior's mindset.

Speaker 7 You have to understand that your plan is only going to work insofar as it engages with the market. And then you have to be able to adapt.
You have to be able to adopt.

Speaker 7 new technology, you have to be able to

Speaker 7 pivot, to reposition, to rebrand, to consolidate, to expand, when to build new, put new team members on the books, when do you need to go on a hiring freeze?

Speaker 7 When do you need to take a look at your team and recalibrate where you're spending your payroll dollars? Like going all in and really growing your business is a serious, serious endeavor.

Speaker 7 And in a world with AI, bringing it back to why I wanted to start this video in the first place, was in a world of AI, this happens so fast. Guys, we cannot be sitting back at this time.

Speaker 7 It doesn't mean that we're gonna have all the answers.

Speaker 8 What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

Speaker 8 If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera.

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Speaker 8 I love you for listening to this show, and I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here.
Peace. Let's get back to the episode.

Speaker 7 It doesn't mean every move we're going to make is going to be the right move. In fact, we're going to make a lot of moves, especially in this time,

Speaker 7 in this particular era where AI is so new, but having such a large impact in all industries across the board, you have to be engaging in trying stuff. Try a chatbot.
If it doesn't work, get rid of it.

Speaker 7 Try another one. If that one doesn't work, maybe chatbots don't work, but make sure you've tested them.
Maybe just a conventional chatbot works better than an AI chatbot.

Speaker 7 Maybe you're just not using the right chatbot.

Speaker 7 Are you using AI bots to help move, categorize, find missing information, move information around your databases, help clean up and cleanse your databases, making sure your data quality is accurate.

Speaker 7 Are you using tools that help you find more opportunities in your data or in your customer base? Are you using tools that help you write crisper, cleaner, clearer messaging?

Speaker 7 Are you being more, are you using marketing and content tools that allow you to get your message out in front of more people more often in a more consistent and concise manner, right?

Speaker 7 Like this is war.

Speaker 7 Because the people that are doing well are engaging with these tools. And the mindset can't be, I have to pick the right one the first time.

Speaker 7 And that's really the key. The key is when you get into battle, right? When I read this, what I heard was,

Speaker 7 I got to come in, guns blazing, I got to be ready to try everything and understanding that once my plan hits the marketplace,

Speaker 7 all hell is going to break loose. And the only thing that I can do from there on is watch the battle unfold and move my pieces, move my players, move my,

Speaker 7 you know, the different aspects of my business, move and pivot and mold and sculpt and tweak them as the market dictates that I do that, as you would in an ongoing battle.

Speaker 7 It just cannot be viewed any other way. You cannot tiptoe into AI.

Speaker 7 You know, and then this quote comes from chapter six.

Speaker 7 The fundamental rule of engagement is that any force can defeat any force if it can define the battle. The fundamental rule of engagement is that any force

Speaker 7 can defeat any other force if it can define the battle. And this is going to be the key.
And this is where I want to leave this particular video this week.

Speaker 7 As we start engaging with AI, I encourage you to understand

Speaker 7 or

Speaker 7 I encourage you to clearly outline and have an understanding for why you are testing out a particular tool. Why are you testing out a specific piece of AI technology? And

Speaker 7 what is the clear

Speaker 7 reason it separates you from your competition? Otherwise, don't add it to your business. If a chatbot is working for my business, it does not mean it's going to work for your business.

Speaker 7 So are you trying to just mimic me and what I do? Cause you see me having success? Or is there a clearly defined reason why you are taking on that piece of technology?

Speaker 7 And from the quote from Jeffrey Moore, right?

Speaker 7 The advantage is defining the battle. If you don't understand why that piece of technology, AI, in this case,

Speaker 7 being in the context of this discussion, if you don't understand what that is doing to clearly define the battle that you're fighting, to clearly define your competitive advantage in that battle, then do not take that piece of technology on right now.

Speaker 7 Piece by piece, engage with different aspects of your business and artificial intelligence tools as a way to clearly define your competitive advantage to the marketplace, right?

Speaker 7 If you don't define the battle, if you're just having a chat bot to have it, it is wasted time, energy, money. Your customers are not going to get a high quality experience.

Speaker 7 You're not going to get your bang for your buck and it's going to be wasted mental cycles.

Speaker 7 It could be that you don't want any of that front-facing marketing stuff out of AI, but geez, if you had crisp, clean data, the things you could do, right? Well, focus on that technology.

Speaker 7 Find a bot or an RPA or some piece of AI technology that can mine your databases for inaccuracies or inconsistencies in your data, and then find ways to pull in and supplement that data from third-party data sources.

Speaker 7 That's an incredible use of AI and could clearly give you a competitive advantage, but define the battle.

Speaker 7 Know why you're engaging with that piece of AI, because this is where we're going to waste so much time and brain cycles. Test, yes, engage, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 7 You have to be in this game, but do it in a smart way because

Speaker 7 adding tech, adding complexity, which AI can simplify processes, but in general adds complexity to your business.

Speaker 7 It can only be a distraction unless there's a clear reason why you're doing it. So guys, my point is the technology should be amplifying the humans to create deeper connections, right?

Speaker 7 That's kind of step one. That's a human-optimized business.
Once you understand

Speaker 7 where your humans need the most support and can be amplified the most, go find those specific and individual pieces of technology and one by one, systematically implement them with a clear reason as to why and the value you hope to get.

Speaker 7 And the minute you realize that you're not going to get it out of that particular tool, punt that tool and try another one.

Speaker 7 Punt that tool and try another one.

Speaker 7 And if you believe that finding the right tool in that aspect of the business will give you that clear advantage, will allow you to define your competitive advantage in that battle, defining your battle.

Speaker 7 Guys, AI is absolutely coming. It is not something to be avoided.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 7 as a leader, as someone who manages other people, as someone who owns a P ⁇ L,

Speaker 7 If you're one of these individuals and you have to make decisions on the tools, the technology that you're implementing, think through this process. What does a human optimized leader need?

Speaker 7 How do I get my people in front of our customers longer in the moments where they can add the most value? And what is the AI technology behind the scenes that can do that?

Speaker 7 Clearly define the reason you're using it. And you are going to be incredibly successful in this downtime.

Speaker 7 You are going to separate yourself so much further from your competition who right now has their head buried in the sand and is hoping to ride out this storm.

Speaker 7 I highly encourage you to get this book. I I love you for listening to the show.
If you're listening on auto, audio, I hope you'll subscribe. If you enjoy this show, I hope you'll leave us a review.

Speaker 7 That helps more people find this show.

Speaker 7 That's the reason we asked for reviews. I don't need it to stroke my ego.
I'm really hoping for more reviews of this show simply so that it helps more people find the show.

Speaker 7 It helps people have a clearer idea of what we're talking about, the value here. I appreciate if you do that.
If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe, leave a comment if you have comments, questions.

Speaker 7 And once again, go get this book, Crossing the Chasm by Jeffrey Moore if you haven't read it yet. I love you guys.
I'm out of here. Peace!

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