Unlocking the Power of AI in Executive Productivity

01Winner is going to be the person who has the most information and the most up-to-date experience, knowledge, ability in the room. And if you're not that person, you're not gonna be that person. I feel like that that opening line for every one of them is this changes. So Jim, I was talking to Aaron last night. We were standing in the kitchen, or it wasn't last night, it was I was talking to Aaron a f a few ⁓ weeks ago and I was standing in the kitchen telling her ⁓ that I'm building this ⁓ this stuff with AI and she's like, Well what are you building? And I'm like, I'm building ⁓ Cyrano, which is this open brain that we were talking about ⁓ before. But and she's like, why? And I'm like, well, what I want to have happen is at night, I want my computer to wake up in the middle of the night, check my calendar, look at the meetings that I had the day before, like have Notes or takeaways and action items and mix that with the calendar.

02And if I'm supposed to meet with somebody tomorrow, ⁓ you know, ⁓ for a networking event, maybe go look them up on LinkedIn and get me some information about that person. And then when I sit at my computer at seven in the morning, I want ⁓ to hit a button and ⁓ I would like a voice to to ⁓ to have a conversation with that would give me a briefing. You are I was I was very very We're specific. I mean what did what does it sound like? Did you pick a did you pick like an accent? Did not pick an accent for each I I I did not want Jarvis, ⁓ you know, I didn't need the butler. I I I did want ⁓ the persona to be a little Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds esque ⁓ to try and keep me in line. Okay, so it's a sarcastic Yeah. No, I get it. And that's actually pretty honest, I'm not gonna like I was trying to hate a little bit. I'm not gonna hate. That's actually pretty cool. Jason Bateman was my buddy, I'd be I'd be just fine. Come on our podcast too if he wants. So That's what I be him and Arnett and Yeah. Yeah.

03I forget the name of their podcast right now. So Stupid? Something s something. Don't be stupid. No, it's not don't get stupid. Can't be I'm looking it up. Something like anyway. You c All right, you look that up while I mess up. Yeah, it won't take long. Okay, keep Going. All right. So I told Aaron, this is what I want, right? This very specific vision. And you know, you have to take steps to get to it. And and she looked at me and she goes, That's creepy. Yeah, I mean like I can see why people think that though. I mean we're we're dumping so so just to recap a little bit, you're dumping scads of personal data. Like your personal data, your calendar, emails, your private thoughts with LLMs. I mean not that not not that they're creepy and I'm really that I'm not trying to make a joke there. But you do have private thoughts when you're like thinking through things, right? It's like Absolutely. Do you really want somebody to know that you asked it to explain a concept you feel like you should know? Like a sixth grader.

04You know? But but it can do that and it helps you get to first L ⁓ you know, like the Yeah. Like the first principles of the you know, the heart of it. So you can really understand things, like and and how have them crystallized. So it's great for education. But having all that information out there and then having somebody or something regurgitate that to you, that's that's pretty creepy. Security alarms go off in my head too. Maybe so. Right. And and but but the ⁓ you know I get it. I mean, and it's not to say it's not to be dismissive and be like, well, you know, clearly you're missing the point. No, no, it is. It it it it's crossing a new frontier and a new line. But I'm telling you, give this just another year, maybe two years, right? Like like the winner is going to be the person who has the most information and the most up to date, like Experience, knowledge, ability in the room. And if you're not that person, you're not gonna be that person. Well yeah, but I mean I would say so okay.

05So thinking about this whole podcast and then it's great segue, why is that any different from what it's always been? Right. Right? Everybody to some degree has tried to show up well prepared, right? And and and you are a good example of somebody who comes to ⁓ you know, prepares, over prepares, thinks through scenarios. Well, you know, I know you. But Over prepares is correct. Problem. the the the the bar is getting raised and the ability to do what i described and to be that well informed is not only good for me it frees up time and we're gonna talk about some of that today and ⁓ it frees up ⁓ margin but it also creates opportunity to go deeper into other things but the idea that we can be An even better version of ourselves. If we're already the people who overprepare, we're gonna be hyper prepared. Yeah. I no I I ⁓ completely agree with what you're saying. So let's say let's fast forward though, and if it's ten or fifteen years from now. Being prepared, everybody will be prepared, let's just say, right?

06Because somebody's gonna maybe operationalize this and marketise it and I don't know if that's a word, but like they're gonna put it out there. Right. People are gonna buy executives are gonna buy it. So all executives will have this brain. I mean, I just keep thinking that, okay, well, where am I in the process? So, you know, does this do the thinking for you or I mean it's not going to be accountable? So I think the differentiator as we keep going right now, the differentiator might be, hey, I am way more prepared than you. In the future though, and right now too, if you don't use it right, I think the differentiator is I took all this information, I acted on it, or I synthesized it, I took it and I used I I got I leveraged it somehow to add more value to whatever it is that you're I mean, it could be your kids' soccer tournament planning, but I leveraged it to do something more with my brain. So That's the piece that I keep playing with. It's like, yes, it's gonna help you be prepared. Yes, it remembers everything, but remembering is, you know, kind of just the first step.

07Right. And this'll continue to evolve. So if you're staying on the front end of it, you're gonna evolve with it, right? And the guys who are on the back end of it might get to the same place, but People might produitize what you're building, right? I'm calling mine Syrano, you're calling yours open cognition. I know. Yeah. Yeah. But somebody like if you just took the output of that, like you can't turn that in like a research paper. That's like these kids who are turning in, you know, book reports written by AI, or let's not be dismissive, these lawyers that are turning in briefings that are wrong written by AI. Yeah. And that's been going on for a while. And it's getting better. I know that they're, you know, the law, you know, legal profession is really working on that. And you know, everybody's kind of head on a swivel about it. All the good attorneys I know are head on a swivel. You know, like, ⁓ I just don't take everything. My sister's an attorney. We had a huge debate a couple weekends ago about I mean not angry debate.

08That sounded like we were like no, we're adults. We talked it through. But she's just anti I'm not gonna I'm not gonna use this stuff until it's really, really solid because I don't trust the research. I like to see it with my own eyeballs. And I have to tell you, I do that a lot. Like it tells me things all the time and I fight it. And a lot of times I'm right. Just so I I just carry so much more context. And I know that's what we're trying to solve with this, but I just carry so much more context and years of experience, like as a human, than this thing does. So I do think there's like a Again, it just goes back to the ability to d discern what's important and not as important or what you well really I'll just leave it there. What's important versus what's not important is still on the human. Absolutely. So last time, right, on functional executives. Yeah. So last time we talked about really we talked about what open brain is and that, you know, we have essentially four layers. I mean, it gets a little more nuanced than that, but we're capturing a lot of data.

09That's what we were talking about. Then we have all of these connectors that are, you know, that are bringing it in to a central repository of so like a storage layer. And that storage layer is supposed to be Our memory. And so this is Google or Gmail, it's meeting transcripts, all of our work product, et cetera, et cetera. We're trying to bring everything into this memory system, storage, so that then an LLM that sits on top of it that has really strict guardrails and a lot of different instructions from us can tell us what either it suggests we do next or help remind us in the moment or prepare for a meeting, those type of things. That's what we talked about last time and we got pretty technical on, you know, how we built ours out. And then this time we're not going to be as technical. We're going to be a little bit more, okay, we told you about it. We talked in theory. Now here's kind of the practical application. So so you I don't know how many late nights, and I don't know if you just wanted to show me up, but you've built on your computer this, you know, good you use a Mac.

10So you've built this Swift application that sits on your I mean, you didn't just go web, you went, ⁓ I'm gonna build a standalone application. ⁓ so you built this, you've given it all sorts of tools and whiz bangs and it has all your memory and ⁓ that's what that's what I'd like to I'd like to just start by, you know, just asking you how you're using it so far and and ⁓ you know, we know your wife thinks it's creepy. Well, and so I built it. I built this app, right? And I call it the balcony, ⁓ right, because I'm I'm just like leaning into my Cyreno ⁓ metaphor here. So standing out on the balcony is is where we we communicate. And so ⁓ the the balcony's got several like pieces, but I built an app so that I could kind of consolidate ⁓ the the levers and the buttons that are necessary to make Cyrino work. And One of the things that I've got set up on there is at 1 a.m. ⁓ the the the a series of of jobs runs on my computer, goes and gets my calendar, the last couple of days and the next five days of calendar.

11And that's the spine because my day is organized around what I've committed maybe to do. And then who are the people, ⁓ projects, recent Tasks, things that are are ⁓ the open brain and and Cyrno has this concept of tasks and open loops, things that haven't been closed yet. So go get all that and ⁓ and mash it together as like a chief of staff would to prepare a morning briefing. And so it's a little bit of a book report, but it's a little bit of a directional guide. And now that that document, I could read it, but I'm not. 'Cause I come and I sit down in in the in front of my computer and I hit my little keyboard shortcut and the balcony comes up and I hit ⁓ I hit morning briefing and ⁓ I linked it to ⁓ Gemini's ⁓ voice model and ⁓ it gets fed this briefing. It has access to Cyrino via ⁓ MCP server so it can it can augment the briefing and ⁓ and it's got a personality.

12⁓ we talked a little bit about like ⁓ you know like w you know what who do you want to talk to i in the morning and ⁓ you know did di did I want a ⁓ a a British butler or ⁓ a a soft voiced ⁓ secretary, you know, a la madman. but what I what I wanted was just somebody to hang out with. So I gave it a little Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds type ⁓ personality like I wanted to you know kind of you know kind of you know shoot back at me if I say something dumb or I and I've given it instructions to be a little bit of a shepherd. A chief of staff isn't just somebody who reads a report. A chief of staff is somebody who is reminding somebody that the North Star is over there and that's your direction and that's where you should be going. So you know you are free to make your choices. Here's all the things that are are are coming due What where why what do you think you should be focused on? So it's gonna read out a bunch of stuff to me. It's gonna ask me what am I thinking about, and then it's gonna make suggestions.

13Hey, Veer, why don't you work on this billing issue that you've said you want to work on? And if I say, well, I'll work on that tomorrow, it has enough latitude to be like, are you sure? Because you said that two day two days in a row. And, you know, why don't you do why why shouldn't you do that today? ⁓ which is two days ago, that's exactly how it coached me. Like I I I I said, Well, I can do that later. And its question was, Isn't it just a button click? Like, why don't you do it now? Wow. Yeah, I mean that's that I I love that use case. I do have a question for you. So like I'm just thinking Does it give you bullet points as well in the morning? Does it have to be spoken? Spoken seems like it would take a little bit longer than just skimming like fifteen bullet points or something. So The interface has got the the chat window, right? And so I could open the the briefing. The the briefing document gets prepared like a markdown.

14So it's got tasks, upcoming events, you know, it it the the synthesized input that goes to Cyreno in the morning when I hit the button, I could read that. For me, I feel like this can be a morning routine, right? So this is different for everybody, but I'm not going to an office, right? I'm I'm I'm not having A morning conversation over my cup of coffee. But this, I think, engages me in a way that, you know, I am talking it through. So I'm thinking, and I'm, I can see the words on the screen if I want to, but I'm having a little bit more interactive conversation. It's waking me up, right? Letting the caffeine hit my system from that first cup of coffee. ⁓ so yeah, absolutely. If I was rushed for time or for some reason, I I could ⁓ review my book. briefing document, which I put a button in the app for. But ⁓ I'm using it as a way to kind of kick start my day. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's I think that that's a great way to use it. ⁓ you know, I I do think again, like it's it's how it's like, do you take the action? But you kind of answered that question.

15I mean, if it's saying, Hey, not only take this action, but like, listen, brother, you this really isn't just a good suggestion. It's the suggestion, you should do it. ⁓ I don't think it'll always be right in that because you might have because it doesn't know that you've got to take somebody, you've got to take, you know, one of your children to a recital and you've only got 15 minutes and pressing the button requires you to remember a bunch of things and you've got to get an email out to a client. But it like ⁓ that d that morning, ⁓ you know, I I told you that ⁓ last year we moved my parents here from ⁓ North Carolina, so they live about 20 minutes away from me and and ⁓ my dad had a ⁓ follow-up doctor's appointment. ⁓ I I needed to take him in the afternoon. It was on my calendar. So when we started the morning briefing, Cyrino said, Hey, right, this is what you've got on your calendar today. Looks like you're only and and it it made the inference.

16It was like You've only got a half a day to get a whole bunch of stuff done because you've got to take your dad at one o'clock. ⁓ so let's get you know, and and it and it is, it it's got this like so let's get started, don't waste any time. What's one or two things that you can get accomplished today? And I think as I continue to work with it and and and tweak the the prompt injection that's going to it, it's gonna get better. ⁓ the first time I used it, it ⁓ Because one of my prompts, pieces of the prompt baked in there was help me see things through to completion. It took the morning briefing and turned it into almost like a co-working taskmaster type of a like, hey, Veer, like dummy, go do it right now. And I'm like, ⁓ okay. Like I needed to say that, but then I needed to let it go, right? And say, okay, well, let's let's finish the briefing and then you decide what you want to work on. So I had to tweak the fact that. Its job isn't to guide the actual things on the list to completion. It's to push me to make the choice to put that on my list for completion today.

17⁓ and it was subtle, right? It was a nuance that I had to to to ⁓ manage in the in the prompt. you find I mean you you haven't been using it that long, but are you at all maybe the better way to say it is since since you don't know, are you worried that relying on the AI to tell you what to do is going to you know, dull your own prioritization like instincts. It's gonna change it because I think over the years we've all right. I I started with a with a day runner and then it was Franklin Covey. ⁓ you know, and using the the the A's and the B's and the C's and having the little check boxes and ⁓ I and I would have and I I would probably still argue that the the kinesthetic piece of like writing it with a pencil on a on a page, like there's something that grounds it in your head. And ⁓ 15 years ago I stopped using that. R ⁓ right. We used ⁓ Tasks and flags and outlook. And then it became using like a getting things done method with a check ⁓ with a checklist app. And so I think I've lost certain pieces, right? As I've evolved over, you know, over my career.

18And now I'm trying something new. So maybe. I don't know if it'll dull me as much as it it would maybe dull that piece and sharpen something else. So you built this It's new. So I know you've had some, you know, hiccups, and it's sometimes it's like, hey, give us a second, something's not working. And I'm not picking on you, I'm just telling you. Like that's reality. That's reality in software. If somebody creates this, how much time do you think that they realistically spend maintaining it over time? How often does it break? How many times do you add new surfaces that need to be ingested and then Culture. That's a good How long does that take? Well, those are one time sunk costs, right? Once you do them. I mean, th there's a certain level of like we're gonna hit some level of ⁓ maturity with the app. But I've often I think I told you long ago when we were working on a project that, you know, that's why there's that twenty percent ⁓ maintenance fee when you buy software ⁓ or you buy a software contract, there's an annual maintenance fee.

19Twenty percent is kind of the the the pay to play. ⁓ you know, it's it's a good number to think about. Like that's what it's gonna take to maintain something over time, right? That is the overhead that you pay for software at some level if you're building it yourself. Yeah, I I think this is it's it's probably a little bit unfair of me to ask this of you right now. But in the future, you know, six months, a year down the road, there's a lot of people, I think what we'll see is articles. I do. I th I I I can just in my mind's eye I see some medium or substack blog about my open brain took more time to maintain than You know, it that's gonna at least be somebody's take. I'm not saying it's gonna be true, but somebody is gonna have that take. My open brain took over my life, but not because it tells me what to do, but because I'm always fixing it. Right. And until the ⁓ until the like if there's gonna be the peace that, you know, you and I and and others are tinkerers at this point, right?

20I mean like we are in the garage, you know, building the ⁓ building that that computer with with with with parts and a soldering iron. That's that that's the f the stage that we're in right now. ⁓ and you know, we We kind of always are gonna be those guys, right? I mean, we we talked a little bit ⁓ just in the last couple of days about ⁓ well, you know, what would it be like if ⁓ if we bought ⁓ the ⁓ NVIDIA Sparks and ⁓ started using those? It's probably not our it I yeah. It's up on my list. And so what happens when we do that? Well, I'll probably rewrite parts of this because I'm gonna use local model inference. I'm gonna rechain I'm gonna change my pipelines. It's probably gonna happen. That's getting really nerdy again, ⁓ like we did at our on our last episode. But all that to say that there is a price that we are paying for trying to run at the front of the race. Yeah, some of it is I'm not getting enough sleep. Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

21Like it's like the world gave me this huge toy box and I'm and I know I'm not as far ahead as other people, but I'm also those other people are like five percent, maybe ten percent. Like ⁓ most of the world isn't isn't using it as deeply as you know, or thinking about it as deeply as what you and I are. There is a a group of people that are, so it's easy to like get caught up for me. looking at the internet and thinking, ⁓ I'm so far behind but then when I go and I talk to people, we're still we're still teaching prompting. Like any good AI training course really needs to start with prompting because you don't know who's in the room. So we're definitely ahead of the curve. And yes, you know, being an early adopter, everything that we said, you're gonna pay some there's some overhead for being an early adopter because you're always trying to figure things out. There will be an app for that at some point, right? And we're building some pieces here, but okay. So we talked last time about like physical building things.

22Here we're talking about using either the full, you know, like like that use case, what I described is like a full, I'm trying to use all the pieces of that open brain architecture. And and there's a it it it it culminates in that morning briefing. It uses all the pieces because it the updates go back into the brain. ⁓ you know, it has context, it does all these things. But you said prompts and doing the work. ⁓ that's going into it. Your usage patterns, things like that are going into your open cognition and it's going into ⁓ you know, this repository. And how do you extract value? You've talked about that, you know, you're using your history of your conversations and you're looking at the work that you're doing, but you're doing like It's not that this is one big thing that t fixes everything. Like you're taking that and using it as a as a repository of knowledge, but then you're doing some things with specific prompts, right? For for direct finance and accounting related like analysis. Yeah, definitely.

23Before before we maybe talk about some of that finance stuff, what I you know one of the things that I have been realizing, so I'm starting this training. So one of my clients wants AI training. Part of the reason they want AI training is because they feel like they'll use it internally, but they also want to be seen as a thought leader. in their industry. ⁓ and I'll I'll just leave it there because I don't want to divulge too much about the client, but it's a great idea. So I'm I'm training their staff on trends in AI, what to be looking for with hiring and and some things like that. As a part of that, I had them do an exercise before it's pre-work for the first meeting. And that pre-work is I'm I'm calling it I'm being really simple and trying to be authentic, but we can get to that later. But I just called it your five tasks. And it's simply a I did it on Microsoft Forms. It goes through and it says, here's the first task. What do you what do you do that you hate? Tell me what that is. How often do you do it? I did it myself. So I took it myself.

24I wanted to test that the Microsoft Forum worked and all this other stuff. But in testing it, I said, ⁓ well, I'm gonna actually do it and see what it says. And that's that's I think what you're you're kind of talking about, because I have all these ideas and I've built this system, and this is this is pulling out of me, okay, you've got the system. Now use it. Here are the use case. I mean, like they're like plain as day. When you sit down and you just take time and say these are the things that it caused me the most pain and that I'm not getting to, or you know, don't let me show up as well. If you sit down and and do that, it'll well, one, I think it'll kind of like ⁓ slap you in the face, but that's where you can get a lot of value out of these, you know, transcripts, these meeting notes. One of the things that it told me was, Hey, you need to You need to follow up on your meetings. I think that that would be that would be a good idea. ⁓ you spend a lot of time on meetings, but a follow up is a little bit of a differentiator because not too many people follow up from meetings.

25So how do you take these transcripts? I give you the information. I like to type still and talk. I I mean I talk to type, but I mean I like to type still because I I really want to be authentic. I don't want my stuff. I'm really anal about it looking like AI. So that's kind of that I mean, for me, that was like a really good use case. And it was like, hey, you built some stuff, now do something with it. So writing emails or writing responses ⁓ to meetings as both a differentiator personally, but then also getting coached to do it. And then this is where you've asked me several times before, right? Is is it doing all the thinking for you? And I'm like, no. I I mean, sometimes it's just the nudge, right? Hey, you need to do this follow-up. And then it's hands-on keyboard because there is a desire to be authentic in the response. Yeah, I I'm hands-on keyboard. I do not like I'm working really hard on a skill that will get me at least eighty percent of the way there, my voice exactly the way I like to do things, not AI.

26Because I want people to understand that I understand. I'm not just I'm not just putting a bunch of stuff out there. Like I want them to know I'm leveraging something to be better, but I'm already pretty good. Does that make sense? A buddy asked me the ⁓ like it's it's been about a month, maybe a month and a half, but I I sent him some material that I'd, you know, kind of culled together using tools. And ⁓ you know, his question was, you know, how much of this was written by AI? I'm like, well, that's a that's the wrong question, right? Because it's not, was it written by AI? It was polished by AI. It was, you know, there was there was mutual back and forth, you know, kind of conversation and then formatting and stuff like that. was done by an AI, getting to him the point of like, a lot of your stuff, a lot of my stuff is going to be, whether it's touched or polished, it's gonna have a component to it. So it's not how much of it was written by AI. I think that's getting very like dis you know, kind of, you know, kind of like it's ⁓ it's taken over.

27I'm like, that's not, that's not the point. It's it's ⁓ it's allowing us to do more. I I get to move faster ⁓ and hopefully I'm being thoughtful, like you're being thoughtful about like maintaining a voice, ⁓ so that when people get it, they do. Maybe they wonder, Well, did he use AI for this? Well, if it's written well enough that they have to ask that question, then maybe it it w you you we're we're doing a good job of walking that line. Yeah, I've been mulling over is something that is AI touched, is that becoming table stakes rather than just a differentiator? I think it is. I think people who don't believe that that's true, and the way that almost every software company has baked it into every place where you're typing text. And if we're being like just a little bit honest with ourselves, it's been there the whole time. It's been there for like 10 years, right?

28If you were using Grammarly, I I mean I've used Grammarly for I mean I turned it off, but I used Grammarly for a long time and paid for it because it made me it caught grammar and spelling and gave me better suggestions. That's right. It's been touching it, right? It's touching it at a maybe a little bit deeper level or a higher level now, but still, you know, the the folks kind of I think folks who aren't paying attention or maybe who want to jump on the sensational side of this are like, ⁓ everything's changed. I'm like, no, things evolved. Yeah, it they did evolve. And so back to your question earlier about finance and my okay, what do I do with this? Right. So every month and every financial professional will tell you this too, is and and it and for me it's boring.

29It's like the least my least favorite part of the month is the month in close and like the boring, looking through all the data and trying to remember it's just a lot of cognitive Expense on a task to go through and say, okay, just to give an example, office supplies, just pick a that's kind of a bad one, but we're just gonna pick a random. So office supplies, fifty thousand dollars more, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars more this month than the prior six months. I kind of held that in my head. as a CFO. And then if I didn't remember, like when something popped, you know, one month and I didn't remember what happened in the prior months or the prior year, then I would pull up a spreadsheet. And then I would pull up another spreadsheet because I probably need one to look at the last six months trend. And then I probably need another one to look at year over year. Hopefully I don't, depending on the level of maturity of the company. But a lot of times you walk into companies that don't have both on one page. And then I have to kind of go, okay, well, what's the forecast look like?

30Was I supposed to be up at this point? You know, I I don't know. So all of these things. So it's like I'm looking at trend analysis, year over year, month over month, versus forecast versus budget. To triangulate. And all of that is what you're doing in your head when you sit down and look at financials. So what I'm trying to do is codify or codify, however you want to say that, all of that logic and that thinking. So starting with my wife's business, which is ⁓ small but growing, for those who don't know, I'm a franchisee with her. And We have almost five units. And so every month, in addition to all the other things I'm doing, this podcast, client work, those type of things, I'm also reviewing her financials and helping her communicate with the bank. I mean, that's my role. I started though on each line item each month. I'm recording all my thoughts. So again, I'm I'm not doing it with a keyboard. I'm doing it with ⁓ my voice, but I'm creating a markdown for each individual GL account. So I'm telling AI, hey, go look at the year over year, month over month forecast.

31And you know, trend analysis. Look at all of that for me and come back and tell me what you think, like flag some things for me right away. Now I'm still gonna be eyes on the PL. I want to go down the PL and I wanna look at it because that's how I am. But I can speed up that variance analysis by an order of magnitude just by making sure I'm Leaving myself breadcrumbs. And over time, I can't imagine in a year or two of doing that, I bet you it is a very rich set of data that becomes a bit of an operating system for, you know, the financial processes at my business. My wife's business. I need to say that. I need to make sure that it's hers. I'll hear about that if she sees this. It's her business. It's her business. But what you said, like as this grows, as it s matures, as it, you know, ⁓ you know, has ⁓ time to bake in and you work through it, not only does it build a lot of value for her and you and this business, ⁓ you know, like you said, you're a franchisee.

32⁓ you know, this is something that you might be able to share or ⁓ license if any if other Like you know, i if they're if they're running their business, it may not be something that you can like just hand off to somebody, but it might be that there is a way to run a business that is ⁓ repeatable. Well, I think that's what we're I think that's what we're really attempting to do is take all the things that we do. That's what that form that I talked about earlier was really trying to do. And it's hard. How do I take what I do every day, every week, every month, you know, yearly? Those are the typical cycles, maybe quarterly, you know, depending on the size of the company. Like how do I take all of that work that I do that I don't even think about and get that on paper somehow? I think if I can do that, I mean there's books on this. You know, there's plenty of books on, hey, you've got to make processes and systems.

33But now I think if it it it becomes even more Apparent to me that I should be doing this because a lot of this with AI can be systematized if I do it the right way and I kind of think out of the box. Now you mentioned can I license this, sell it? Yeah, I think there's companies that are trying to do it. I also think though it's a value add that I can bring to each client. So I'm starting to work, my client work is starting to be like this too. That's that's what I'm trying to instill. That's to me, this is the new way of working. It's an operating system, and I am trying to put it in place as I build a cash forecast, as I or have somebody build a cash forecast. I am at least documenting our conversations and making sure that I'm capturing everything so that in the future the answers are very easy when the CEO. Comes to us. But what you're describing there is ⁓ it is it's experience. It's it's having the the actual ⁓ depth of knowledge, you know, not just the knowledge, right? A system that you could license out.

34⁓ I think you and I have spoken with several companies ⁓ over the last couple of months as we've talked to folks that have built systems and they're really great systems and and they have ⁓ I w I think that a lot of them they drive value in different competing industries. ⁓ and they're, you know, have got different degrees of AI poweredness. And there is a danger that we've talked about of these guys looking at it going like, well, and ⁓ so it right, it's a it's a field of dreams, build it and they will come and and ⁓ once they see it, they're gonna love it. They're gonna eat it up with a fork and a knife and ⁓ ⁓ and and it'll be great. And I'm like Not unless they've got somebody who has taste and experience that can take that and make it something that's not a generic version of how companies are run. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I like about it is it's flexible. So right now when you build something in Excel or in a database and you create business logic. It's really hard to pivot. It is.

35I mean, like you have to have like four meetings, you know, the ELT or the steering committee needs to get involved and say, okay, yes, we approve changing that metric or this way, this methodology of forecasting. We all understand, you gotta bring everybody along. So it takes a it takes a lot of time. Now I think I see, hey, here is everything that we've here's the body of work. on this partic on this sales forecast that we've done over the last two years. If we want to change it, I see having all that in the background, it's easy for me to say, hey, AI, we're proposing a new thing. How does that go back and look at everything? How does that change what we're doing? And then once we align on the business logic, give me a really good handoff to the IT team, who hopefully is using AI as well, so that they can begin to adjust the pipeline. So that this business logic becomes fast to market, right?

36⁓ it it goes from ideation in an ELT where we're we're you know we're recording the meeting securely and internally, and then we're using that information against all these this repository of our decisions and analyses that we've done over the last two years, and then now that's easy to see. Here is what will change if we do it. I don't have to spend hours thinking through or modeling out, okay, if I make this change, what does that do retroactively to twenty twenty three? Right. Because maybe it's a maybe it's a restatement in accounting or something because we're changing an accounting policy. So that's kind of where I see this is this could be really powerful. I don't see it as like hemming me in. I see it as like really flexible because I can overwrite once I have the file for a GL line or something, whatever the smallest grain is that you want to work at, maybe it's vendors within a GL. in some cases, but all of that can live inside of one file and then it can be overwritten and versioned and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

37So I see it as like another layer of data that you can put to enrich your financial data in the database and make and bring analysts up to speed. I mean, there's so many applications in my mind of, you know, doing this right. Yeah. I think I I I feel like I got you a little bit on that one. I didn't You looked up at the ceiling, I think that's like behaviorally like you were really thinking. I was like, you know, if I'm watching your body language? Yeah, like it's like yeah, like you're having that yeah. ⁓ we started this saying, like, well, you know, Aaron saying that the AI was creepy. And then, you know, Jim's, you know, all of a sudden singing, you know, the police to me. And our last episode, we took people to the factory, we built the car. This is how you put piece together you know, kind of a concept of an open brain and kind of what some of those concepts were that can allow you to get some of these.

38competitive ⁓ you know experiences or or or start to build this competitive moat of, you know, making yourself, I keep saying, a better version of yourself, right? You know, it's it's it's it's more Jim, it's more Veer. It's just Jim and Veer have got time to self-reflect a little bit more, to ask those questions like you asked as the pre-work to people, like, well what, how, you know, what do I dislike doing and what could I do better? I mean, this is the the I don't even know. Now now we'll have to look it up at some point, right? Who was the sharpen the axe guy? You know? 'Cause I mean, you know, ⁓ so Yeah. I mean I you know, we've talked about this. I think I think that what you're gonna see is, you know, there's gonna be people that just dump large volumes of stuff at you without thinking much about it. And then there's gonna be people that I hope everybody who listens sees that we're thinking deeply about this, you know, how it's impacting us as people. How it's impacting us as you know executives that that run businesses.

39But AI makes it really easy to just churn things out, you know? And so in in our line of work, you know, when you think about consulting, working with clients, I think a lot of people can do variance analysis. I think a lot of people can review PLs. I don't think as many people can do that and say, Well, that doesn't look right, or that doesn't feel right. Or and that's based on my experience. That's based on twenty years of experience and also knowing that you just lost a VP of business development. Because that doesn't always I mean, like not everything is gonna make it in there. So Read what this AI is saying. And it takes time because it's producing a lot. So there's a lot of tips and tricks on that too. But it's producing a lot. You've got to read it, immerse yourself with it, and let it make you better. That is what I think is the separation. A lot of chatter right now about like taste, judgment layer. That's the human piece. Well, it's right. Like you still have to be able to understand what you just built and then. Make decisions off of it. Yeah.

40I mean, what we're seeing is The folks who this has always been true, right? I mean, a ⁓ a master craftsman who ⁓ works and hones his ability or her ability to build and and develop something, whether it was art or something else, they get better over time. They've they they build ⁓ skill and ability that that you you just can't replicate. You can come close. You can get close to it, and and and I think AI brings people closer to, you know, I think a lot of artists have have have had, you know, take issue with some of the ability to recreate ⁓ art form, music, ⁓ pictures, you know, paintings. But here where we're working in organizations, ⁓ Rather than quality, what we're seeing is volume. ⁓ a hundred percent. I mean, I you know, I I kinda like watches. I don't have a big watch collection. I'm not I don't have you're not gonna find me doing that. But I really appreciate watches. One because I hate that the Apple Watch tells me every twenty minutes what to do. I don't like that anymore. I decided I tried it for a few years, I'm out. I like old school.

41I've got enough bells and whistles going off just sitting here at the computer. But I really appreciate watches. And I think what you just described was I can go to Walmart and buy a Time X, or just about any place and buy a Timex. The people that are building the Time X's, and I don't know everything, but I would presume they're on a factory. A lot of parts come into the factory, and then there are people that are just assembling them. And then there are Switch Swiss Swiss watches. And There is somebody with thirty, forty years of experience, a magnifying glass and the tiniest tweezers ever, putting all these things together by hand, and they started with a sketch and then they sent it out to get the pieces exactly the way that they wanted them. And they've got an innovative new balance wheel, you know? And they've they've got All these new complications that they thought of. That's kind of the difference in it for me. It's like you're gonna have a lot of people that are building time X's and just cranking out variance analysis.

42And then you're gonna have somebody who's like, here's the variance analysis. Great. I've got it a lot quicker. What that makes me think is you don't really have a sales problem because this has been going on for a long time. You actually have a human problem at the front of this thing because I've seen this pattern before, because your volume is dropping, your upsell is going up. My guess is we're pressing too hard on the customer. We're pushing too much on the customer right now. And we need to pivot. And I mean, I think AI could help you come to some of those conclusions, but I don't know that it would it would get to them as fast as as me with just looking at the numbers and really thinking deeply about it. I don't know if that's the best example, but I think so. I think the idea is that the the for folks who we talk to, I I have this conversation like once a week with somebody about, you know, is is it gonna replace people? I mean, it you know, it it's these it's these one-liners that a lot of folks have got about, you know, it's taking jobs and it's replacing.

43And and I'm like, well, you there there there's maybe some truth there, but also it's ⁓ you know, like you said, like there's A lot of volume. You and I talked, you know, about like ⁓ you know, debate. You know, people are ⁓ the gish gallop is the ⁓ debate technique of just dumping a whole bunch of facts out and it takes infinitely more effort to refute an argument than it takes to just dump 10 out onto the floor and then let people deal with the mess and try to have to deal with the sound bites that just got uttered into the ether. And that is in the in the ⁓ you know, in all walks of life, but AI can create an equivalent of volume of stuff. It kind of might look good. It might have quality ⁓ to some degree. Maybe it'll feel like a Timex, you know, or you know, or ⁓ but you know, the the places that we're getting to talk to, we're talking to companies that are trying to to grow and scale and large mid-market companies that we're working with, they need, you know. better, right?

44I mean they need a curated, you know, they need the judgment, they need the ability to get answers that are meaningful. Like you're saying, because of the experience, you can give a meaningful ⁓ conclusion, not just a lot of of of noise and what if and what about type analysis. This is a I've seen this before and I've synthesize what's happening here and I've We we talked about giving the AI a lot of information. You asked me at the beginning about concerned about giving it, you know, your email and your calendar and all this stuff, which, you know, there there's some legitimacy there, but it'll never know everything and it will never have that ability to look across the battlefield and and, you know, catch those one or two things that are happening real time that affect the ability to actually make a judgment call, you know.

45Yeah, are you are you And and I think, you know, we've been working in industries where, yeah, we're making weekly judgment calls because of whatever is going on with supply chain and things like that in the in the marketplace and with consumer behavior. It's never going to be able to do that because it's just never going to be able to synthesize everything. So we've got a spot where this stuff is making us better, making us more useful, making us Better versions of gym, better versions of Veer. Yeah, I so I guess where we are now at least. And I can't imagine we're gonna get away from it is you can't blame the robot. You know? And I I've been using that phrase, it seems to land with people. You cannot blame the robot. It ultimately still comes down to you, and you are accountable for the decisions you make, whether they're AI assisted or not. Now you might leverage AI better than some other people, which leads me to kind of the second point.

46If that's the case and you can't blame the robot, then people are still the differentiator for these companies. It's still people. And I've been using the the you know the same kind of tired over and over again, especially with like new people to the company, to try to get my point across is there's lots of people that can do oil changes, flip hamburgers, there's lots of people that can make water bottles. It seems like there's a new water bottle every three months now. You gotta have a Stanley, you gotta have an Awala, you gotta have, you know, whatever it is, right? It so it's just people, the the people that are making these things and then bringing them to market, they're all doing the same thing, but the people are different. And if they're working together as a team and and doing it right, that's the real differentiator. S. It's not the product. There's a whole bunch of the same product. You could just go on and on listing that. So I think the same is the exact same thing is true with AI.

47It's just another layer that if you give it to people and they're the right people, they're going to use it the right way and then you're going to stand out in the marketplace. Well, that's the thing. I think w ⁓ if we're putting a bow on it is that if you want to stand out in the marketplace, if you're concerned about the impact, not whether something is good or bad or right or wrong. You can't win a game you don't play. And everybody's going to be playing this game. I'm confident of it. Get on board. So this has been Veer. And Jim, and we are that's right. That's what we are. We think we're functional. Functional executives. Thanks for hanging out with us today. So be sure to subscribe where you listen to podcasts, share with friends, call us ⁓ or contact us through the different channels that we put out there. See if you've got questions for us or something that you'd like us to talk about. we'll take feedback. Yeah, well been in the corporate world for a long time. Thick skin. 100%.

48Hate that term, but it's so tri but it's good. Everybody knows it. Ever that's right.