Adapt or Get Left Behind: The New Rules of AI & Business

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If you really want to become a leader in this space,

you have to know the tools and you need to understand, you know,

where we're at today, where they're going, and how to utilize them.

Right now, the biggest thing that everyone's talking about is AI and where it's going.

It's the best tool that's ever existed.

There's so much that's coming from it, from building

an agentic environment that's a whole new world of its own,

and mind of its own.

If you're not going to be a builder in AI and be a problem-solver in AI,

then your AI will disintermediate you.

This new iteration of language models is if we go from

sub-average to better than humans,

add a lot of things, or capable of being better than humans,

if you know how to work with it.

It's not just a big shift in the way in which we do business.

What is also supposed to be to change?

Even the PC took about two years to reach mass adoption.

Changed it, it took 10 months.

When you combine the two of them,

it just makes it compelling for everybody to get on the van live as soon as possible.

People think too much about AI being only an automation tool,

and I think it's so much more.

Maybe we'll tap that.

We do as well, but we see, even though we say AI coaching,

it's so much more than just coaching.

This is right about now with Ryan Alford,

a Radcast Network Production.

We are the number one business show on the planet,

with over 1 million downloads a month.

Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes.

You ready to start snapping necks and caching checks?

Well, it starts right about now.

Hey, what's up guys?

Welcome to right about now.

We're always talking about how you need to stay ahead of business, tech, AI.

Anything and everything that is happening in the business and marketing world,

we're here to tell you thank you for making us number one.

I am Ryan Alford, your host.

I have friends that in high places,

sometimes they introduce me to friends in higher places and cooler places and all those things.

This is one of those instances where it's both a pleasure and insightful for you

because we've got Thorin.

He is the CEO and founder of Brain One.

Talk to me, Thorin.

Why Brain?

What got you into this longevity space and the brain space?

What kind of was the fundamental thing that started you down this path?

So I've always been very fascinated by just the idea of biological optimization.

I began doing triathlons in my 20s and that went all the way to full Iron Man's

and what I saw is that when I was wearing a wearable and so in that sense,

we had the big chunky garments back then.

But through the use of data,

I could ultimately optimize my biology period.

And then the devices have only gotten better and right now I'm wearing three,

I'm wearing a wolf, I'm wearing an aura, I have a garment.

But that concept of, again, using data to optimize your biology.

And so as I was going down that road, but I saw, you know,

relative to my training and my racing is that I could attenuate my

lactic threshold by doing X or Y.

And ultimately started to get faster and stronger in all of these things.

And that was through the use of a structured framework or a protocol.

And so I think it's important to kind of start there.

What is a protocol?

A protocol is just your daily routine at the end of the day.

When you get up in the morning, what are the things that you do on a regular basis period?

And if you take a quick step back and you look at all of the protocols that are out there

around things like longevity, it kind of comes back to really key areas.

It's nutrition, it's exercise, it's stress, and it's sleep fundamentally.

And at Brain 1, we've fed every protocol from

Cuberman to Peter Atia to Brian Johnson to Caleb Barnes, you know, into our AI.

And ultimately, it's kind of in those four major categories.

And then the protocols are comprised of microhabit.

What's a microhabit?

A microhabit is a small incremental change

that ultimately you can measure, theoretically, ideally.

So it's an example, cold plunging.

Again, being a triathlete, we've been doing red light,

cold plunging, I mean, for like decades.

And it's cool.

Now, like these are all the rage.

It's a great mechanism to help, you know, manage your autonomic nervous system.

So cold plunging, though, you look at that as a microhabit as part of a protocol.

You're looking at temperature of the water.

You're looking at duration in the water.

You're looking at frequency per week, when so forth.

And so those are all essentially the variables within that microhabit

as part of the protocol that you're optimizing.

And so what I saw on the triathlon side

is that following this structure framework,

you can really optimize your biology.

And about two years ago, I was doing some work

with a group out of Columbia University,

focused in the protection of neurological data.

And that's actually a very important area for me personally.

We were the generation that gave away all of our behavioral data,

especially you talk about marketing.

And I remember back in the day when the Facebook API,

you could download every thing,

same with Twitter.

You could literally with a fire hose around the data.

Now it's a wild garden, of course, all the stuff quite well.

But, you know, that said, that concept,

we gave away all of our behavioral data

under the guys that were connecting with our friends

from junior high and high school.

But really, what we were doing, we're training models

for these large technology companies.

And so we're also on the cusp for neurological data.

And so I was doing some work with this group

called the NeuroRide Foundation

and focusing on the protection of neurological data.

And what does that mean on a state,

federal, international level?

And what I saw was that there was just such a lack of resources

around brain, a lack of resources for education

and ultimately lack of resources for protocols.

And so that was kind of the initial impetus.

And so we went down the road of focusing on unbrained

and building essentially the noom for neuroscience

is how we would frame it.

What does that mean?

If you're familiar with noom,

so this is a behavioral weight loss,

essentially platform using CBT,

so cognitive behavioral therapies.

And they've been incredibly successful

because what they do is they focus again

on that concept of cue rewards in microhabits

optimizing your behaviors as opposed to just calorie counting.

And it's interesting,

because noom is now valued at $4 billion,

whereas like two weeks ago,

weight watchers just filed for bankruptcy.

Why?

Well, weight watchers is falling,

you know, these older methodologies,

your calorie counting, you got the colors.

And honestly, it's just obviously mismanaged as well,

but it's just an outdated mechanism

and something like noom for neuroscience.

That's really where we have been focused.

And so the idea of again, these small incremental changes

that ultimately impact the whole human

with ultimately essentially habits

that they can learn and integrate

and it's not like a fad.

So that's really what we've been focused on.

Related to that kind of approach, ultimately to brain,

which has never been done.

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Before we have the lovely Veronica Shelton.

She is the co-founder of Oak Theory.

What's up, Veronica?

What's up, Ryan?

Hi, are you?

I am fabulous.

I imagine you're on the forefront of seeing

different technologies,

platform, software.

Is there anything you're seeing that you're excited about

that is going to make the things you do better

for accessibility and diversity and things like that?

Are you seeing stuff that would blow people's minds?

Or is it more practical than you think?

Right now, the biggest thing that everyone's talking about

is AI and where it's going.

It's the best tool that's ever existed.

There's so much that's coming from it

from building agentic environments.

That's a whole new world of its own and mind of its own.

My excitement honestly goes into something that

we're not going to get to for a while,

but it's AR.

It's quiet right now on purpose,

but AR is probably where I'm definitely focusing

a lot of attention to know about

because that's going to be the future.

We're going through this evolution

and that's probably going to be the big one

that's going to be the cell phone

of just having augmented elements

and reality in our rural world.

That's probably what's making me excited.

I can go down the deepest tunnel

with accessibility features and why that's great.

It's going to change the game for a lot of people

whose brains and skill sets

we haven't been able to experience.

AI in general is doing that.

I have an amazing team.

I have a team of brilliant people.

We started Oak Theory five years ago.

We had designated spaces for them.

Designers were designers, engineers

or engineers, developers or developers,

sales or sales.

Now that we're in this new place for the past year,

this is where we're seeing this huge shift in Dops

and what people are capable of.

Designers are now able to develop a lot easier.

Sales, coffee writers, people who weren't naturally creative

are able to create.

It's creating such a fluid space

in work environments that it's ridiculous.

On top of that, I've been struggling as a founder

with the integrity to keep your team

and not replace them with AI

because AI is coming in and doing a lot of things

that project management lies and things like that

are just no brainer.

You don't need it anymore like you used to.

But you still need that human side.

There's this really cool area that I've been playing around with

where it's being very transparent with a team like,

hey, jobs are changing.

We need to adapt.

Creative person.

Now that you have AI, what else can you do?

Suddenly our designer is able to write things.

We're able to have copyrighting done by them

and they can finish projects easier.

Suddenly our developers, our engineers

are running across the board on in every area.

I can't even go in to how vast our skill set

or how wide range our skill set is now

is because of this one tool.

Our sales is able to put together their own pitch decks

without having to go to design.

That seems a lot of money a year.

That's something that I really find interesting

and I'm working on processes after processes.

We've replaced our team in the past year.

I will be honest.

It saved us mid six figures in that we've been able to do

so much more and our team has become so more

that it's almost like a new kind of core

where our team works together in such a fluid way.

Our Mondays and Thursday meetings are the most amazing things

I've ever seen because they're touching so many things.

Now it's not so horrible to be a jack of all trades.

It's not so horrible to say I have a team that does a lot

because it doesn't feel like they're caring as much anymore.

In fact, they're like learning and having fun with it.

That is a place where I think is really fun

and having them work with agents is really interesting.

Watching them work with the agents that were built.

Hybrid environment is stoping as hell.

But that's the right word on that.

It's wild.

I own multiple companies.

I worked in New York and I had a team of 100 people

work to the Add A to See World.

This is way before AI.

And it will build exactly the thing you're talking about.

I was always sort of a jack of all trades

in the Add A to See World.

And it was not the most popular thing.

Because the Add A to See World especially

likes putting people in boxes.

You're the creative person.

You're the writer.

You're the account person.

You're the strategy person.

You're the media person.

And how there are the account person

ever be creative.

Process over.

Strategic.

And I was the strategic creative account guy

that made the agency a lot of money

but wasn't always the most popular.

And I started my agency radical

with the intent to create sort of a flat environment

way before AI and agents.

Because I knew you're not extracting the best out of people.

Yes, you need specialization

and you need to know what your job is

and what your functions are.

But I always believed you weren't always

extracting the best out of your team

when you limited them to only one function.

Yes, disparate.

No one's behold.

That proved to be successful.

And then AI has come around

and I had the exact discussion with my team.

I had close to 20 employees four years ago.

We have less than a quarter of that now

and only fired one person.

It's just been natural evolution

of leaving and going other places

and me not replacing

as some of these technologies have come along.

And now we're as lean as ever.

But I had that exact discussion that you did

and that I think a lot of business owners

are having to have this discussion

with their teams to go.

This can do a lot of what your job was.

I believe in you and you are talented

and I need you to embrace this.

And I'm not going to fire you.

But you need to understand

that you need to be doing

not just more.

We just got to work more.

No, you don't have to work more.

Work the same hours.

But the output should be 10X.

But because of what these agents are doing

and you're no longer just this,

you can be the writer and the designer

and the developer.

And your agent can help you do these things

with product task management

and a litany of other things.

If people aren't embracing that,

they will be jobless.

But if you embrace it,

it will be just fine.

We've got Matt Britain.

He is the author of Generation AI.

There's nothing more right now than AI.

The trade skill,

get more valuable.

If you're not wanting to be a

white collar guy that's tech forward

using these things,

they're really just a boardroom,

executive, whatever that is.

But at a high level,

then get really good at a skills trade.

Become the best builder, plumber,

whatever it might be.

We've had this knowledge economy for so long

where people were compensated for possessing knowledge.

And that could be knowledge in knowing how to code,

knowing how to write a contract,

knowing how to read next-ray,

knowing how to do someone's taxes.

But those are all things that AI

is going to take the place of workers.

AI arguably can already do your taxes better,

write a contract better.

In most use cases,

then the professional services world can't.

If you're not going to be a builder

in AI and be a problem solver in AI,

then AI will disintermediate you.

At the same time,

what you've aptly point out

is if you're a problem solver in the physical world,

that that becomes a skill set,

that becomes even more in demand.

Yes, the trade skills,

like we're going to have a boom and they already are.

The issue is that many parents aspire

to send their kids to these higher education institutions

that are predicated on facilitating the knowledge economy.

And they're teaching kids skills

that I would argue are going to be no longer relevant

once they get out.

I spoke at the end of last year

and from 700 college professors

who kind of know this

and are just mind-boggled

about what it means to be an educator in this world.

When they're using textbooks

that were written long before

Chatchee BT ever even came out.

You just gave me either the greatest

or worst analogy I've ever had.

I'm going to go down this road, Matt.

You could be critical as you need.

Or if it works,

you can tell me it works.

If you're like,

yeah, right, put this in the bag.

We used to cook.

By rubbing flip together to get a fire.

Yeah, the skill of starting that.

And then in today's world,

we have my growing.

The equivalent that I'm thinking,

oh, I still don't have to stir up this with flint.

That's great.

I'm using this microwave stuff.

Four other things while it's going on.

Is that a good analogy?

That's a good analogy.

The best analogy I use is photography.

You used to need to know how to develop the film

to be a photographer.

You used to need to know how to operate

these technical DSLR cameras

and knowing stuff like ISO and F stop.

And now 99.9% of all pictures are taken on the iPhone.

And you just need to know where the point the thing to

and pick a filter and how it looks.

Are there still use cases professional photographers

for weddings, for special events of short?

Are they dwindling?

Yes.

What makes a great photographer right now

is not known to technical skills.

I've had to turn to knobs and dials.

I had to develop film.

It's actually having an eye on where to point a camera to.

And AI is the ultimate analogy for that.

Is where do you point AI?

How do you unleash its power?

You no longer need to know how to do the knob and dials

because that's all beneath the surface.

I think I took it one step.

You could be nine more.

Let's talk about the agent's agent AI.

You've got prompts and asking to do things now.

The agent AI.

We've got them actually.

I would almost call it the implementation.

The acting upon what it is doing.

There's really three levels of AI

that most people need to understand.

The first, the 101, if you will,

is the call and response,

which is you put in a prompt, you get an answer.

And that's just like a better version of Google in a lot of ways.

And it's obviously it's conversational and does a lot

but anything you need to know in any format.

You could ask chat GPT or crock or Claude or Google's Gemini

and you're going to get the answer back.

So that's kind of the 101.

201 is automation where you can use a tool

zappier for make.com or NAN.

Where basically you can say,

I want you to take this Google Sheet, extract these three lines

from the Google Sheet.

Write a blog post about that and post it.

And that's kind of an automation.

Where basically you build these steps

where AI is the blood, if you will,

in between the organs of the individual applications

that you're using.

And I'm talking about any application.

Google Drive, Google Sheets, Instagram.

It could even create content for you.

And I've done a ton and built a ton of automations

for my company using tools like that.

Agents are the next level because

automations are deterministic.

You're basically setting out what it should do.

This is what you do step one, two, three, and four.

Agents, you're giving AI autonomy.

We're based upon the inputs.

You're letting it decide what tools to use

and how to accomplish things for you.

That's one and the other things agents do

is they actually can interact with the outside world.

I want you to plan a trip with my four kids somewhere

where it's at least 80 degrees

and there's a 10% chance or less of rain.

And here's my budget.

And here's a part of the world.

And I want you to book the entire trip for me.

And it will then take agency, if you will,

based upon everything it knows about you

to not only do the research for you,

but actually book the entire trip for you.

And if that actually involves

it making a phone call and using an AI agent

to speak to somebody at the Ritz Carlton,

it's going to do that for you as well.

And when you start to think about the implications of that

and AI agent,

it could also take over your computer for you.

And it could start actually doing things

under your computer.

And it starts to really replicate

a lot of what you and I do all day.

It's both scary, but incredibly fascinating.

And if you use the right way,

it can make us way more productive.

We're about to talk about all breaking it down

with our good guest, Rob Linnon.

The AI whisper startup guy.

We'll find out in the mid of Rob.

Good to have you on the show, brother.

Hey, thanks for having me.

I get all your posts and everyone else's AI posts.

I'm in the AI vortex now, clearly.

Let's just go right at it.

Number one, you were using it early.

You've been an early tester user of the technology.

You've seen the evolutions that are happening.

What do you think the average person

should think and know and feel about

where we're at right now?

In terms of what was available to the general public,

everything changed.

We went from having useful tool in some places

to do certain things that didn't always do a great job.

A lot of below average results

to a phenomenally capable tool.

This new iteration of language models

is we go from sub-average to better than humans

and add a lot of things,

or capable of being better than humans

if you know how to work with it.

And so I think we've crossed over this impossible barrier

and it's impossible to turn back now.

And it's actually been accelerating everything.

It sounds like science fiction.

It sounds like no, this can't possibly be true

all these things that they say that are going to happen.

But these models, they have reasoning.

They have memory.

They can think through processes.

It doesn't have a soul.

And it doesn't think in the same way

that the human brain thinks exactly.

But the technology has arrived.

And even if it never progressed any further

than we have today,

that what we have even right now is enough

to completely transform almost every sector of society.

And really like some seismic changes

are coming in terms of what can happen.

Either you're going to be an early adopter

and you're going to benefit from those

or you're going to wait and see

and you're going to ride the wave

or you're going to get destroyed

because you weren't paying enough attention

and somebody else moved faster than you.

We're going to see some really big companies

fall in the next few years

as a result of not being able to act quickly

or act in the right way

within the context of what AI could have done for them.

One of the things that I teach

is thinking through prompting in a progressive way.

Let's say that was the end result that you wanted.

You might first ask,

describe the Instagram algorithm

and then you might follow up with breakdown

each component of the Instagram algorithm

based on the impact to the overall visibility of a post.

And then you might ask,

what search terms are related

to all of the concepts that we've discussed so far?

If you progressively build towards this end result

and then eventually you ask the AI

synthesize everything that we've talked about into an article.

Even if it's the same exact sentence

that other person typed in first

by building up toward this sort of unique set of information

in a specific way,

you've now tuned it to talk differently

to no specific concepts to have different details

and the output is going to be completely transformed.

So just by taking in those few extra steps

that normally you do in your brain,

like you probably do them almost instantly

so you don't even realize where you're like,

I'm going to write about this.

I'm going to think of these things

and I'm going to think about that

and I'm going to do the thing

that's the most useful to my audience and blah, blah, blah.

If you can just figure out

what those brain processes that you would go through

and have the AI walk through them first,

then execute on your command.

Your results are going to be much different

than people who take the shortcut.

It may be really shallow,

it feels really deep.

Is this an answer machine?

Or does this help develop questions?

Because when you think about life

and the most successful people are the most curious people,

they have the most questions

and they meet answers or they develop answers.

Is this an answer machine or a question machine?

Do you understand where I'm going with this?

Everybody's first impulse

when met with a chat,

like a conversational interface

is to ask a question and they get an answer.

It's so obvious,

but it's also a superficial way to start.

There's so much more that you can do

than just ask a question.

And I actually suggest people think

in terms of giving it a command

or a directive rather than asking a question

because it forces you to think about,

what do you actually want?

What do you mean by that question?

What are you really seeking here?

So instead of saying,

what does an SEO-optimized article look like?

We can say, make me an SEO-optimized article

that does these things.

And now we're being way more specific

on what we want to get.

It's actually a matter of the maturity

of the person using the system.

Certainly the AI can lead to many more questions.

And even early studies now

with the current technology

are showing that people are actually smarter.

People who spend more time with AI

seem to get smarter,

which is say the AI is inspiring

their brain to make new connections

that they weren't previously making

to think about things in new ways,

use it enough and use it correctly.

You're actually going to come up with more questions

to ask questions you never thought of before.

And that will lead you down such interesting paths.

It's almost like if you find yourself

in that situation,

you're doing something right

because you're not just getting answers.

You're now unlocking new mysteries to uncover.

I'm pumped to have two guests today.

We're at the forefront,

the CEO of PandaTron,

Dimas Runkin,

and Robert Newland,

the Chief Money Officer,

Chief DeNero Honto,

the efficiencies that your competition can't have

like 60% operational efficiency over you.

Is that what it sort of comes down to?

And the promise of the money savings

combined with human,

combined with right-sizing organizational structure.

I mean, there's a lot of different things,

but it seems like Robert being the money guy

at the end of the day.

Get somewhere grounded in that

for a lot of organizations.

They don't want to get left behind.

Is that what it is?

Yeah,

but there's also once in a generation opportunity,

probably even Bill Gates said,

this is bigger than the PC, for example,

because this is not just a big shift

in the way in which we do business,

but it's also a speed of change.

Even the PC took about 20 years

to reach mass adoption,

tragedy took 10 months.

When you combine the two of them,

it just makes it compelling for everybody

to get on the band live as soon as possible.

What's your perspective here?

You guys go to all the conferences, is this, right?

Yeah, people think too much about AI

being only an automation tool,

and I think it's so much more.

Maybe we'll tap that.

We do as well, but we see,

even though we say AI coaching,

it's so much more than just coaching.

Next suddenly, it becomes completely different tool

that we've never had before.

That can also guide all strategy,

because suddenly besides just coaching people,

you can also collect data about what are the biggest topics

that they're talking about,

and what's behind those topics,

what's the roof causes,

and then you can combine all that,

aggregate that and look at the patterns,

and it's something you would never do with human coaching.

People oftentimes think too much of it,

this while I have this process,

I'm going to automate it,

and that's going to be the saving.

That's going to be the first step,

and makes sense,

it's going to go beyond that,

and we're not fully even comprehending that,

like what all those things can be.

There is a quote from one of our uses in Australia,

which is demonosis, my favorite, and she says,

I know this is on a sound kind of weird,

because although I know I'm talking to an AI chatbot,

somehow I'm more comfortable talking to my AI coach

than a human,

because I do not feel judged.

So what we're learning from this,

at least in AI within the realm of coaching,

is that in coaching,

what people are looking for is empathy,

and then reflection,

and we can provide a high level

of consistent empathy to AI coaching.

24-7 availability,

and then deep reflection in meaningful ways.

And it really,

it's one of the areas,

and I want to quote Dima here,

that from an ethics standpoint,

you know, AI coaching is one of the areas in AI

that is not really replacing humans.

I think we help humans reflect better about themselves,

so that it can interact better with one another,

and I think that's a beautiful thing.

It is the biggest point of people think

about the judgment of others a lot,

and if you can remove that barrier,

you unlock some potential authenticity and realness

that never gets unlocked human to human.

That's exactly what we're seeing,

and I've been in talent management,

okay, I'll say that as long as Dima's being alive.

Yeah, but in all these years,

I have not seen something experiential that allows

for this level of vulnerability for a human.

I never thought it would be possible,

even when I first started seeing this comments,

I thought, no, it's got to be an outlier.

Then you see consistently getting this feedback

of the experience.

I don't think this is replacing a human.

This is just helping me reflect better as a human,

so I can be better with other people,

be better on my workplace, be better with my family.

Just fascinating.

I did not expect it, but it's mind-blowing, frankly.

AI, there's a lot of different things

with which sort of the principles,

I guess, of artificial intelligence,

are being deployed in a million different ways.

We're still comprehending what the impacts are gonna be.

For example, it was what we do,

even though we call it a coaching,

I almost feel like this can be

to lead the organization in a completely new way,

because suddenly, in comparison to human coaches,

you can actually align a AI with your organizational objectives,

so it can kind of nudge people in that direction.

You can collect all this data about what are the systemic issues

that can, again, help you adjust your strategy.

And at the same time, you can kind of support people,

so it almost becomes less of an employee benefit to

and more of leadership as a service, if you will.

All that leadership wasn't done, maybe because of like a skill,

maybe because of like of time, whatever the case may be.

Since we're still figuring out what happens

once we scale this thing.

Another example is that all the processes, right?

Like customer service.

There was a Swedish syntax company

that published and they saved millions

on kind of automating, I think 90% of their customer service.

And saying, actually, a lot of it is not that difficult,

and it's pretty repetitive.

Yes, we need to have like a little bit

of a sensational touch there,

and we now can have it with your own AI.

It's been a pleasure having you on the show.

I really appreciate it.

Hey guys, you're gonna find us.

Ryan is right.com.

You'll find the highlight clips from today,

the full episode, and links.

We'll see you next time on Right About Now.

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Thanks for listening.