Prompt and Circumstance

Episode 4 - Agentic AI: Strategy, Costs, and Change Milestones
===

[00:00:28] Mark Redgrave: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode four. We're episode four. I can't believe it when might even get to the end episode. Episode four of Prompt and Circumstance. Thanks for joining us this morning. our whole thing here is there's four of us and we want to help CEOs and leaders who are trying to navigate this AI thing. And, there's a lot of uncertainties, a lot of things we need to understand, and we want to go on that journey together.

So, look, I've got. three amazing colleagues on this morning. Just want to introduce them again so you know who everyone is. firstly, Tom, uh, serial innovator, ai. Amazing person. Tom, one word that sums up how you're feeling today. One word.

[00:01:09] Tom Adams: I am feeling, um, exploratory.

[00:01:13] Mike Richardson: Oh, nice.

[00:01:15] Mark Redgrave: I'm worried. Okay, that's good. next up Ryan, uh, c-level executive forward thinker, prompt, expert. Um, one word. Ryan. Gimme where you're at.

[00:01:25] Ryan Neimann: Energized. Let's go.

[00:01:27] Mark Redgrave: Alright. and last but v absolutely not least 'cause he is got the microphone of all microphones. Mr. Richards, Mr. Mike Richardson. Um, incredible coach, executive, gimme the word Mike.

Where are you at?

[00:01:40] Mike Richardson: Excited.

[00:01:41] Mark Redgrave: My word for this week is, confused and, and I didn't wanna disappoint anybody. Um, but, uh,

[00:01:53] Mike Richardson: Well, at least he wasn't depressed.

[00:01:54] Mark Redgrave: no, no.

[00:01:55] Mike Richardson: making

[00:01:57] Mark Redgrave: Yeah, no, I'm, I'm wonderfully confused this week. So, so that's, um, I think that's good. And, uh, looking forward to this discussion. I missed the last one, uh, because I was actually on, on vacation, which was amazing.

Um, but it sounds like you guys had a, had a excellent conversation last time. Today. We're gonna, we're just gonna change the, the gist a little bit because I wanna talk about. Business. Right. So we, and we'll, we'll angle into that in a second. 'cause obviously the business of AI is, I think where, a lot of our contacts and our network where they're really starting to lean into this.

So that's interesting. But let, let's do the usual format. So, um, let's go round the room and just say what's caught our attention this week. We'd love to do that. Let's do it in reverse. Mike, why don't you lead us out? What's caught your attention?

[00:02:38] Mike Richardson: Yeah, well actually some things that I've been doing over the last couple of weeks with my CEO forums, inspired by the book, the AI driven leader that Ryan introduced us to. You know, in there he talks about. You know, get out of feeling overwhelmed by choosing one thing that you can sort of lean into and tackle as a project.

So I facilitated a little sort of template that I put together using the old adage of better, faster, cheaper, I invited, the members to brainstorm firstly. What do you wish was much better in your business? It's just falling short of what you wish. What do you wish was much faster? It just takes a heck of a lot longer than you wish. What do you wish was just cheaper? It just costs way more than you wish it did. Brainstorm those things sort of independently then see what triangulates. Into the middle, as you know, a, a project that can shuffle its way into the middle, and you can now bite off just begin to put a game plan together, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 where you're gonna truly tackle this thing.

You're not gonna tickle it. I love to ask that question. Are you tickling this?

[00:03:44] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:03:45] Mike Richardson: this?

[00:03:45] Mark Redgrave: yeah. I love that.

[00:03:47] Mike Richardson: gonna tackle this thing, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and really lean into it. So that's what I've been, uh, that's what's been catching my attention. Mark.

[00:03:54] Mark Redgrave: That's, that's smart though, right? Because one of the conversations we're having with of these CEOs is, is not sure where to start. So I actually love that idea of, on those three dimensions, like the overlap, right? The middle. If something comes up in all three places, that's a good, that would be a good place to start looking right.

[00:04:11] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Exactly.

[00:04:12] Mark Redgrave: It's a good approach. Ryan, what's caught your eye mate?

[00:04:15] Ryan Neimann: I would say agentic ai. Cost for code development caught my eye. So you we're seeing some I immense advancements in agentic code development. and our team really started to dive in on a recent release from one of the majors, and it blew the budget quickly. you know, it was released that man, the agent will run for 200 hours and I thought. Running for 200 hours is gonna rack up the bill. And sure enough, it wasn't more than just, maybe 45 minutes in and we started to see woo, just the meter starting to

[00:04:51] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.

[00:04:51] Ryan Neimann: Uh, but we were equally

impressed and satisfied to watch. The development of the application agently and, and equally like, okay, we gotta retool and rethink how we're approaching it and kind of diversify our tool set. 'cause we had other subscriptions that were, you know, more con not not as consumption based, um, but just absolutely fascinating. To see the advancements continue to make it ridiculously easy to continue to build, uh, valuable applications or refactor, , old applications and code bases that are out there.

But, yep. Cost man, that, that just really just started the meter to a new, a new level.

[00:05:32] Mark Redgrave: So, so, in the interest of, of buzzword bingo, right? Like agen ai. Okay. Because I, I know we've mentioned it in, uh, already, but like, just remind people who are tuning in,

what is that?

[00:05:44] Ryan Neimann: Yeah, you bet. So I would delineate it this way. So ai, you know, a lot of people we've talked about actually prompt engineering and working with AI and large language models, and you start to add in agents which actually do work. Uh, so you can think of, you know, actually go and complete this task for me, uh, and come back with a response.

And then you get into agentic ai, which is more like setting a goal and allowing the agent to go accomplish the goal. , This was asked to me just recently, and I, I often think of it this way, you know, we're all familiar with using a routing software or like Waze or Apple Maps or Google Maps. I mean, you don't really sit there and say, well, go down to the street, go to the stop sign, then take a left.

I mean, you just say, I need to get to the airport. And it says, great. Here's the best route. Pick your route and I'll route you there along the way. and avoid traffic obstructions and, and things of that?

nature. And so a agent to AI is like saying, I need to accomplish this goal. And it's able to self resolve, take actions on your behalf, and then many cases and really good systems that'll have human in the loop.

Meaning like, is this what you meant or am I still doing the right thing? You say yes or no, and then it adjusts accordingly.

[00:06:59] Mike Richardson: Oh.

[00:07:00] Mark Redgrave: So I think that that's a great description. Like for me, the, I don't think ages a very good name by the way that that's. But it, it, it feels like, because the whole point of ag agentic is like it's end-to-end like outcome, right? You're trying to do something as a series of events and decisions that, like you say, get you from your house to the airport. That's what AG agentic is, right? So, super exciting and I spoke to a client, a month or so ago and, and they were saying how you, we can expect companies in the not too distant future. Not to be running three or four Ag agentic agents. They will be running 20,000 agents. Right? so there's an order of magnitude here, which is really, pretty hard to, um, to digest, right? Thank you though. Great, Tom, this week. What is it, man? What's

[00:07:51] Tom Adams: Yeah, well, what's got me going this week is I went off off the grid this week like you did a couple of weeks ago. And um, what I noticed is those of us who are in AI or talking about AI are very aware of it. but outside, I think. There's so many places where you go that, that it's clearly evident.

There's an AI use case, a, an agent use case, an assistant use case, and nobody's using it, like notifications, um, information, uh, access to stuff that's happening behind their company. Walls like restaurants and hotels and all kinds of stuff. And I, I keep going, my goodness. With those of us who are sort of inside, keep going, the opportunity's immense.

But a lot of people, AI to them is the chat bot that sits on their desk sometimes and they ask it to help them, you know, clean up some, some copy. That's about the extent of what I see in the world, and I, and I, I keep going. Yeah. We're all going, oh my gosh. You know, the world's caving in and, and costs of, uh, coding and all that, but like, there's this tiny little percentage of us that are in the game.

who, are seeing it more than just the chatbot. And granted the chatbot has gone exponential. Like it's, it's an amazing tool, but it's not really where this whole thing's going. It's just the doorway drug. And I don't know, there's that old line in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

And uh,

it's kind of cool to be a king every so often. So.

[00:09:22] Ryan Neimann: We got a, we got, we've got a limited amount of time here, so. I would tell you this, you know, So.

I actually remember somewhere in the nineties being with a friend at a Starbucks. Talking about internet, like, and everybody in the Starbucks was talking internet.

[00:09:39] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:09:40] Ryan Neimann: I, remember this distinctly, he was pitching me a business

idea.

We're really kind of going back and forth. And I was reminded of that feeling because I was talking with a friend of mine who lives in the Bay Area, and he's like, we we're just talking agents and everybody in Starbucks is talking agents. And, and he was feeling this compelling sense of, man, we're just, how, how do we stay ahead?

And, and I said. Hold up. No one outside of San Francisco is feeling that

[00:10:07] Mark Redgrave: Yeah,

[00:10:08] Ryan Neimann: like, Like

[00:10:08] Mark Redgrave: true.

[00:10:10] Ryan Neimann: Tom, like what you just

described there, there are people that are working at a Marriott that aren't thinking about this. At, at,

[00:10:16] Tom Adams: No.

[00:10:17] Ryan Neimann: I just picked up on, you said Marriott doesn't, it don't,

apologies to the Marriott folks. Someone, someone in a Marriott. But, but just, just, I talk to people every day that, that just are not thinking

[00:10:28] Tom Adams: Right.

[00:10:28] Ryan Neimann: things. But if you are, and you, you mentioned Ed,

uh, Schmidt earlier, uh, in the San Francisco consensus, you are feeling it. It is. It is. It is in your vein

[00:10:39] Tom Adams: Yeah.

[00:10:40] Ryan Neimann: now.

Um, but everywhere else, not, not

as much. Not as

[00:10:44] Mark Redgrave: isn't Ryan is, oh by the way, any legal send them to, to.

[00:10:49] Tom Adams: Yes, prompt and Circumstance podcast.com.

[00:10:54] Mark Redgrave: Yeah,

[00:10:57] Ryan Neimann: we'll know. We've actually hit an audience. If someone from Marriott reaches out and says, hold on.

[00:11:03] Mark Redgrave: but, but Ryan, this is the role of Silicon Valley. Like,

[00:11:08] Tom Adams: Yeah.

[00:11:08] Mark Redgrave: I was in the valley in 2011 to 2015 running a software company, and that's what the valley feels like and that's why it's so awesome. And that's why all of the, ideas, the technology, the impetus, the drive, the focus comes out of San Francisco, right?

It's like it, that's why it starts there and it's totally unique, right? Well, no, not completely unique, but. I've never seen any at at at that scale in any other major city oration on the planet. So I think this is the role of San Francisco in this whole thing.

[00:11:40] Mike Richardson: And that's always that,

[00:11:41] Ryan Neimann: we should take our podcast to the Starbucks next to a hyperscaler and just, broadcast from there. I think we just, just kinda let

[00:11:50] Mike Richardson: Nice.

[00:11:51] Ryan Neimann: the environment just kind of swim in it for a little bit.

[00:11:53] Mike Richardson: and look, there's always a bell curve, isn't it? Right? There's the, there's the very, very, very, you know, early adopter leader. leading edge, if not bleeding edge kinds of people. And then there's, you know, the early majority, the late majority, and then there are the laggards. So listeners, we are in no way, shape or form recommending that you are in the laggard category or even the late majority category.

We are here to help you stay in the early majority category, be keeping up and be moving along and just be, you know, chipping away at this and, and making progress.

[00:12:26] Ryan Neimann: Brian, the CEO at Starbucks is thanking us right now 'cause we just ushered in a whole bunch of people to go spend time in a Starbucks

[00:12:33] Mike Richardson: AI podcast.

[00:12:37] Ryan Neimann: that, that

[00:12:38] Mark Redgrave: And, and maybe, maybe some of the commission payments from that will pay the legal bill for you, Sandra, who knows? Who knows?

[00:12:44] Ryan Neimann: that's right.

[00:12:45] Mark Redgrave: Okay. So look, my turn two things this week, caught my eye. The first is I realized on, LinkedIn and stuff I had a 10-year-old photo and I'm, kind of bored of meeting people who look very different from their photo. Like, is extraordinary something. So, so I used arrogant AI to update my headshots, and I'm telling you, it was really good. so just a thought for all the listeners out there. If you're thinking, if you're thinking like, oh, I, I need to actually need to update some stuff.

Like some of these tools are brilliant. I'm not recommending arrogant. I've used it, I think it's great. It costs me 35 bucks. Um, you know, so, um, so that was interesting. But the thing that really caught my eye. Was actually an article which I shared with you guys, which was around Fiverr. And their CEO who's made a like a really. bold decision around transforming five for what he says is an essential move for them to keep pace with what's happening. I wanna talk about that for a few minutes because I think it's like, you know, I said at the beginning, let's have a, let's have a conversation about the business of ai. Like, I think there are, you know, a number of, leaders and CEOs. That are starting to think about, goodness me, like, This actually has quite big implications, right? Implications for how we do things, how we organize teams, how we think about the future. And I wanted to just dig into that for a few minutes together and look at like, what did the CEO say? Ryan, you, found some brilliant stats actually this week, which you shared, which I thought would be great just to kind of, to kind of prop up the conversation. But I wanna start with just. sharing with everyone what Fiverr announced this week. Now set the tone of the business. $400 million revenue business in 24 growing, depends on analysts expectations, but somewhere around nine to 12%. quite a sizable business, listed on Nasdaq. Now, Analysts are concerned about growth. Okay? So that's insight number one because if you're the CEO and you have an analyst to please, those growth numbers become very, very important.

[00:14:50] Mike Richardson: remind us what Fiverr

[00:14:52] Mark Redgrave: Sorry.

Yeah, good point. Okay. So it's basically a marketplace for freelancers. Okay. It's

[00:14:56] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:14:57] Mark Redgrave: only one. but there are, it's a place where you can go and you can hire people to do very specific things. And if you are a freelancer, you are an, a copywriter, an art worker, a photographer, it's for the creative, it is mainly based for the creative industry.

It's not like TaskRabbit. It's like, I'm not gonna hire somebody to fix my sync, but if I need somebody to build an AI agent, Ryan. Like Fiverr would want you to go to Fiverr to find that person and, and you, and you hire the mike, um, based on jobs.

[00:15:24] Mike Richardson: Right.

[00:15:25] Mark Redgrave: go, I want this thing, I need a logo designed, I wanna spend 350 bucks. And you find somebody who'll help you. So.

so it's a community, it's a listed business quite good, right? anyone who can, create a $400 million revenue business, in my mind has done a great job. Now, Misha Kaufman, who's the founder, and CEO, he made a decision today to, to basically transform the business, right?

And what he said was, and I'll just read this out, but he said, you know, we've got to build the next Fiverr, right? By the way, I thought. communication, which was shared on LinkedIn, I thought was good actually. As someone who's been involved in transformation for the last 15 years, I thought it was clear and I thought, you know, that was a good communication, right?

Like, never easy but good communication. He said, we need to accelerate and build the next five. He said we're, we're, we need to create small, productive AI first teams. and he said, like, to do that, we're gonna have to go back to startup mode. and then the painful bit came 'cause he said, right, unfortunately, like 250 people are going to leave. the reason is we have to, create smaller, faster, flatter, leaner organization. Quote, quote from him. and he said like, this is a, this is a painful reset.

[00:16:40] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:16:41] Mark Redgrave: So I kind of, I kind of think like, I thought it was interesting 'cause it was public, so it was a, you know, like here's a CEO who's gone public with what is an important transformation for the business. and, and I think it's. of what these companies, these companies are gonna have to do, which is they're gonna have to reimagine their business. Right. That's kind of what this comes out now. Now what that, the impact of that on personnel and stuff is, is very specific to the, to, to the business and where they're at. because you guys all read the article, like, what came to mind when you read?

[00:17:10] Mike Richardson: I'll, I'll jump in a little bit. I mean, yeah, so, in the middle of the article, he unfortunately reveals the fact that we're gonna have to let 250 people go, which means, of course, in some of the comments, you know, he got the kind of normal reaction that you would expect him to get, which is, well, this was just, this is just a layoff in disguise.

[00:17:30] Mark Redgrave: Right, right.

[00:17:31] Mike Richardson: and you put, you put money more important than people. You got all the, you know, you're starting to get the normal kind of stuff, but. But yeah, my reaction Mark was, I, I agree with you. I thought it was. He, he, he threaded, he had a needle to thread and he did it quite well. And for me, what this is, everybody is, this is an example of what we always say. Let's self disrupt us before the world does for us, because that's what he's basically saying.

[00:18:00] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.

[00:18:00] Mike Richardson: If we don't self disrupt us, we will be disrupted probably bigger, faster, sooner than we think. Possibly bigger, faster, and sooner than our worst nightmare. So let's do it to ourselves before it gets done to us.

That's what I took away from it.

[00:18:17] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. I love that. Love that. Yep.

[00:18:20] Mike Richardson: And that was such a drop the mic moment that, Tom and Ryan are just,

[00:18:25] Tom Adams: didn't know what to say after that. It was brilliant.

[00:18:29] Ryan Neimann: Yeah. Yeah. We, we, I.

[00:18:31] Mike Richardson: what he said.

[00:18:32] Ryan Neimann: I, I think what we're feeling right now is empathy. It's like,

yeah, it's a huge transformation a CEO leaders in organizations to undertake right now. And it's having a prolific impact. I think we're only at the start, mark, you've often said whatever you've heard, AI is under hyped and I think we're just starting to see this continued role, which is. creating an immense amount of anxiety, uh, with a number of executives. Am I doing enough? Am I doing the right things? anxiety from an employee perspective. am I staying ahead and, still gonna have my job, whatever that is, uh, in, in, in the future of this, uh, AI agent world. Um,

[00:19:19] Mark Redgrave: Yep.

[00:19:20] Ryan Neimann: came to mind to me was I think it's very

interesting the. Forbes had an article that was the case for ai. Agentic AI is not working right, that, that 95% of these projects are, are not working. only 5% of them really have significant impact. And, um, it was interesting. The next stat was that 80% of organizations explored piloting. Generative generative AI or, or LLMs, but only 40% of deployment. And, and that really struck me. 'cause anecdotally, I am seeing individuals seeking other employment because their generative AI access at work was taken away.

[00:20:10] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.

[00:20:12] Ryan Neimann: Like

[00:20:12] Mark Redgrave: Yep.

[00:20:13] Ryan Neimann: there are 20 year

olds going into the workforce,

and then they had ai or they asked

for it, and then it was taken away and they're like, okay, well I guess I gotta leave I need and want that.

It makes me a much better employee. But broadly across the organization, they were only one of seven, one of 10 were actually using it. And so it, it didn't. Pass that filter or muster it

[00:20:37] Mark Redgrave: Yep,

[00:20:38] Ryan Neimann: level. But

you know, I think it's an

interesting dynamic right

now where top down, you're looking at efficiency, you're looking at skills gaps, you're making tough decisions on your workforce at scale. And interestingly, bottom up, there are those that understand the technology and can put it to work that are demanding access to it and feeling that they are gonna be left behind. Don't have access to these tools.

[00:21:05] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Tom, what was your, what was your re, your just initial reactions when I sent you that Fiverr article? What, where did your head go to?

[00:21:13] Tom Adams: my initial reaction was, this is a, critical attempt to lead the PAC somehow, um, to make a, a directive that, that, um, I, I, I think CEOs generally make statements to the marketplace and public forums like that 'cause they're trying to do something, whether it be to investors, to the um, to whoever the marketplace.

Uh, as saying we're, we're making deliberate steps even to get reaction to it, even to get publicity to it. But to me it was, uh, I'm taking a, a step here and historically I've used tons of those services, right? I've used tools like, or companies like Fiverr and I've used many of them over the years, and what I saw was, okay, we're saying we're doing something different here.

We're we're moving faster. And to me, as a potential customer, not just an investor, it was like, oh yeah, this, this company's gotta make some moves happen in order to have a position in the marketplace because

it, it's all eroding in some weird way. I mean, things are changing so dramatically.

[00:22:17] Ryan Neimann: those comments from the CEO were definitely, we gotta control the narrative.

[00:22:22] Tom Adams: Yes, yes.

[00:22:23] Mike Richardson: I, I'm just looking at Fiverr's share price and, um, of course, way back when, you know, they were a darling of the markets. They had a share price up in the hundreds then it, almost became a penny stock. Right? But sure enough, you know, over the last, week with this news coming out. You know, the share price has taken a bump up and I love to use share price as an analogy. You know, I'm always asking people at the end of a meeting, whether it's a board meeting or a peer meeting, or one of their internal meetings, I ask them what happened to our share price? As a result of this meeting, of course they look mostly look at me with a blank face asking, what the heck are you talking about?

We

[00:23:07] Tom Adams: Hmm.

[00:23:07] Mike Richardson: a share price. You know, we're a private company. I say, no, but if you did have a share price and the analysts had had wired this room for sound and they were listening in to our conversation, uh, would they, you know, if they like, if they don't like what they hear, oh my gosh, these guys should be talking about this, this, and this.

But instead of which. They're really talking about rearranging the deck chairs

[00:23:33] Tom Adams: Right.

[00:23:34] Mike Richardson: here, right? These guys are gonna be roadkill very soon. Share price is going down. Or if they're listening in thinking, wow, these guys are really up against it, but they're really leaning in, they're really grappling with, they're really tackling this and they're getting courageous and they're gonna self disrupt themselves and get after it.

Then share price is going up.

[00:23:57] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. agree Mike and I think. You know, like as someone who, well, all of us work with CEOs, but it's like, when I read the Fiverr announcement, I thought for all the, all the points you guys have made, I thought, okay, they're leading the narrative.

[00:24:10] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:24:10] Mark Redgrave: it ahead of it. Like they need to, they, they want and need to transform the business.

So I, I actually thought it was, um, I thought it was,

[00:24:17] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:24:19] Mark Redgrave: thing. Now here's what, here's what I wanna talk about next. Right? So it's like. are moving, people are moving. Right. And, and for some, some of these companies, it's meaning they're having to change their teams right now, whether it's because they're like from an OPEX point of view, they need to be able to fund this development or whether they already can imagine a slightly different size and shape of organization with the technology involved.

By the way, risk always, and it used to drive me nuts as an executive of a big public company where they want the benefit. Immediately and before you've had a chance to build anything. So you're in the, you are in the room and you say, oh, we, we could maybe, you know, if we did X, Y, and Z, we could maybe save 25 million a year.

And the CFO goes done, take it. And they change the spreadsheet in the meeting and you go, no, wait. What, we, we have, we have some technology to build, but the CFO's already taken the benefit. So, um, so anyway, uh, uh, I, I digress, but it's like, so, so, so, Ryan, you sent a super interesting thing this week, which was, um, an article you found, um, from Pragmatic Coders.

And it had, it actually had a, a, a selection of. Like how companies are doing. Right. Based on the ones that are moving. Now let's get some of those stats. 'cause I thought they were great. So I, I've got it open in front of me, but like, which ones? 'cause some of them are interesting because they're amazing.

[00:25:41] Mike Richardson: like a, it was like a compilation of

[00:25:44] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.

[00:25:45] Mike Richardson: coming out of all the big firms. Right. It

[00:25:46] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. we'll post guys, we'll post that on the channel, Tom, somehow

[00:25:51] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:25:51] Mark Redgrave: me what to do, but we'll post a link. 'cause I thought it was

[00:25:53] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:25:54] Mark Redgrave: But what, what's what stood out.

Yeah.

[00:25:56] Ryan Neimann: So I, I focused in on the, the Boston Consulting Group Statistics. 'cause I think as excited as we are and. As urgently as we believe CEOs and executives we work with should take this seriously. There's still some challenges, right? It's, it's not just like, Yeah. AI will solve it. , And that what I mentioned earlier about a number of these. Having failures. BCG still had some, you know, they, they noted some great stats in there that there's gonna be a 45% compounded annual growth rate. Right. It's just gonna continue to compound over the next five years. Okay. Um, they had some really salacious stats. I mean, and, and probably likely true, like one of them was, agents creating blog posts, reducing 95% and improving speed by 50 times. I was like, well, yeah, of course. I mean, we kinda see that,

[00:26:52] Mark Redgrave: If they're half right,

[00:26:56] Ryan Neimann: Oh yeah. yeah. No, I, I totally think that one's on on par. This one was, virtual agents to interface with customers in banking and cus caught cussed by 10 XA biopharma. Company, reducing cycle time by 25%, gaining 35% efficiency in drafting clinical study reports. Yep. That all that all starts to line up. Uh, then an department using AI agents to modernize legacy technologies, much kinda like what I, I talked about earlier, that increasing productivity by 40%, which. Personally, I could say seen numbers that are much more salacious than that, still, I come back to, you know, if you're an executive, you're gonna read like Forbes report that 95% of these aren't working

they're not hitting the mark. Another

statistic, 50 to 70% of AI budgets are going to sales and marketing, and yet the more demonstrable ROI is coming from back office.

[00:27:52] Mark Redgrave: Interesting.

Interesting.

[00:27:54] Ryan Neimann: So where, where,

are you focusing this attention and how as an executive and a leader to drive demonstrable benefit from AI or agentic ai, or how are we really being thoughtful in the way that we're planning for the next phases of our company's evolution?

[00:28:15] Mark Redgrave: That last stat, Ryan makes no sense to me because the way to increase your EBITDA line, the easiest way is to run at cost. The hardest way is to run at revenue. Again, just, just an opinion, but like, it, it, so it makes no sense to me that all the invest, well, I, it does make sense from a. a, like, that's where the loudest voice is within the organization. Maybe like the sales and marketing team probably have more of the ear of the CEO than the, than the op, than than the ops team. I dunno. I mean, we're guessing here. Right? But I think that's interesting. 'cause I, I'd wanna take the cost out.

That's what I'd wanna do.

[00:28:54] Ryan Neimann: yeah, you just hit on something so. We've talked about the mindset shift that needs to happen and there are certain internal blockers within an organization that aren't ready to make that mindset shift typically around I, I'm, I control this, or I don't trust this, or I immediately see the problems with this.

And it something you said that just triggered maybe. It might be because as you get into the back office, the criticality, the 30 years of experience I have, there's no way I am letting this agent run with it. But yet on the sales and marketing side, they're like, Yeah. less critical, can kind of make some mistakes.

We can still kind of work around

[00:29:30] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.

[00:29:31] Ryan Neimann: productivity gains, but they're not as demonstrable on the ROI and it takes a bit more time Bit of experimentation where there's low risk and I can avoid fear of messing up to get it right, but there's a lot of people in that mix that have been doing it for years that aren't ready to release this to an agent.

I

[00:29:53] Mark Redgrave: Yep.

[00:29:53] Ryan Neimann: yet. It's gonna happen, but in these early

stages, it's

like, yeah, let's sales marketing around that. Well, we'll, we'll get to it here in s in a bit.

[00:30:01] Tom Adams: Well, it's interesting, I, I've seen that in, uh, smaller businesses because it, you know, you can see it really clearly from the people. It's not just a department, it's people and. I've said, Hey, that seems so obvious to make an AI driven automation. And they go, oh, wait a second. Right? Like, they'll let their marketing departments do it, like, and the marketing department is a person who's got a right copy and they're, they're just doing it on chat, GBT, but the

the finance department goes, no way in hell are you touching my spreadsheets.

[00:30:36] Ryan Neimann: I think that's it

[00:30:37] Mike Richardson: Until, until, three months, six months, nine months,

[00:30:41] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:30:41] Mike Richardson: 24, 36 months, there's no choice left

[00:30:45] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:30:45] Mike Richardson: because the leaders have tackled that stuff and they're just moving so much better, so much faster, so much cheaper that the laggards have no choice now

[00:30:55] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:30:56] Mike Richardson: to come along.

[00:30:57] Ryan Neimann: in my viewpoint that that is actually actively happening. there are definitely CTOs that are not making that mindset shift as exciting as AI native AI

first, like, Yeah. but look

at my code, my code base.

[00:31:12] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:31:13] Ryan Neimann: we're, no, we're not gonna do that. and I

actually had this conversation.

I said, it's much like shifting from. Horses to cars. I mean, right now there's a number of horse wranglers that are saying the only way the beer's gonna get delivered is with these Clydesdales. That's it.

and So.

they're, they're not gonna make the change

to, to automobiles to deliver the beer, because that requires different skill sets.

It breaks down, it has a max speed of 25 miles per hour or whatever that is. And So.

we're gonna continue to use horses. In this case deliver the beer with Clydesdales. But,

[00:31:47] Mike Richardson: which means we need

better,

[00:31:49] Ryan Neimann: transition where there's others, you know,

[00:31:52] Mike Richardson: which means, which means we need better buggy whips rather than transitioning to the next technology.

Or we might call that a Kodak moment. We, we've talked about that.

[00:32:03] Ryan Neimann: people that.

are on the call that.

don't know what is a buggy whip.

[00:32:08] Mark Redgrave: You know, I, um, I remember.

[00:32:10] Mike Richardson: and a whip that you need to move things along. Giddy up. Giddy up. Anyway, when we put this link in the show notes, everybody, it is really worth going there and taking a look because I'm just scanning the, the sort of contents list on the right hand side here. And you've got Microsoft Gartner, BCG, McKinsey, Stanford, uh, PWC. Uh, Google, Accenture. I mean, gosh, this is such a great compilation, and

[00:32:34] Mark Redgrave: Yeah.

[00:32:34] Mike Richardson: is I scrolled all the way to the very bottom where there's a sort of fictional prediction of 2027.

[00:32:42] Ryan Neimann: Oh no.

[00:32:45] Mike Richardson: And, repeatedly throughout this whole stuff, there's read text saying This is not a real statistic. This is not a real statistic.

It's a prediction, and the one that caught my eye is by June, 2027, projected that there will be 200,000 AI agents thinking at 30 times human speed.

[00:33:07] Ryan Neimann: Yeah, so, so we need to, we need to actually warn our users. Uh, so, uh, Mike just found AI 27, and if you know what AI 27 is, good. If you've never read AI 27, woo. Get ready. 'cause it, it will scare you. It will just scare

[00:33:25] Mike Richardson: So

make sure you scroll to the very bottom of that, of that link. Everybody.

[00:33:29] Ryan Neimann: a reason why it's in Red Mike.

[00:33:31] Mike Richardson: Yes it. This is not a real statistic, but it might be.

[00:33:36] Tom Adams: Well, and, and I, I, I, I mean, my response to that is I'm running, if you pull up my machines, I'm running probably 30 agents right now

[00:33:45] Mike Richardson: Yeah.

[00:33:45] Tom Adams: personally. Like that's like, I've got that many going myself. Yeah.

[00:33:51] Mike Richardson: Keeping in mind everybody that Tom does not know how to code.

[00:33:57] Mark Redgrave: that, there's a couple of things we've touched on that, uh, that I think are really interesting for our listeners to think about, right. Which is okay. when considering opportunities from AI in your business, okay, like. fall into the loudest voice trap.

[00:34:15] Tom Adams: Hmm.

[00:34:15] Mark Redgrave: Because, because yes. Like for, for, as we've just discussed, like they will like the easy low risk stuff probably looks like sales and marketing. Yeah. Like the ops stuff for, for a number of reasons feels scarier. But like how do you, so, and I don't know the answer to this, but it's like, as a CEO, how do you make sure you are having a. conversation around where opportunity is

[00:34:41] Mike Richardson: that's where I'm trying to get my CEOs to with that whole better, faster, cheaper exercise that we mentioned earlier, which is, look. Don't try to boil the ocean. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew. choose one thing that seems doable and learn the skills of how to then lean into one thing, one process, one workflow, one task. And., Apply a progressive AI strategy to it. 'cause you're gonna learn, you're gonna learn a lot by doing that first thing then learned as you, as, as you've gone along, now you can come back around and tackle a bigger thing and a bigger thing and a bigger thing.

[00:35:29] Mark Redgrave: Yeah, it's not though Mike, right? Like, um, this is not just a technology conversation. Like, like we've, we've got, like, this is, this is about. You know, we just took, we just said like, this is about mindset. Ryan, you said like, Hey, the ops team often, like they're in a different mind space for a number of reasons, and it's like, this is about system.

In my mind, this is about what is the system that sits around this? There's a technology component.

[00:35:57] Tom Adams: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:58] Mark Redgrave: a leadership component, there's a team design component, there's a collaboration component, but it's like it's gonna take you thinking about all of these things if you buy. AI technology and expect it to have impact in your business. Uh, disappointed.

[00:36:14] Mike Richardson: You know, I left the technology field 25 years ago. I was a CEO of high tech companies, software companies, and had a sort of upside down pyramid 10 different layers, the lowest layer of which was the technology. And then there were these nine other layers of all of the culture change, leadership, change management, human aspects, strategy aspects, execution aspects have to get right, for this to work.

And, and the technologies just, you know,

number 10.

[00:36:50] Ryan Neimann: Mike, you, you re you reminded me,

uh, what are CEOs doing and I'll, I'll throw out this number. 700,000. So, um. I started to think through in this journey what this means for large scale offshoring and for instance, what's happening with large system integrators in India. Right? If you think through the Wipro emphasis, T-C-S-H-C-L. Accenture, these are large scale. I mean, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of thousands of employees doing technology. In many cases there's some pressure, not some, there will be pressure what could be accomplished with what you would've done offshoring. But now agents and Agent X could actually, actually do this. Um, financial times. started to pick up on this, this summer. I started to see articles about what the impact is and how the Indian government and how these companies are starting to retool this week. If you think about what is absolutely critical, whether you have seven employees, 700 employees, 7,000 or hundreds of thousands, , Julie Sweet Accenture announced that they are. Retooling and training 700,000 staffers on agentic AI

[00:38:14] Mike Richardson: Yep.

[00:38:16] Ryan Neimann: this week. Like

we have to take action. We need to re-skill, we need to refresh, and we need to refine. Our workforce to be able to be adaptive, competent, capable, going forward in the agent workforce that's skilling. Like as a CEO. You need others around you that understand this better than you do, really to be able to make that transformation in your organization.

[00:38:44] Mike Richardson: your capability building, right? You're, you're building the capability of your enterprise to, to lean into agentic AI stuff. And that's not gonna happen by accident. It's only gonna happen by design, , at scale, at least. And of course, you know, why is Accenture doing it? Well? Because if they don't, and McKinsey and B, c, G and these other guys do, then the end is in sight.

[00:39:10] Mark Redgrave: Yep. Yep. I, um, I heard a really interesting anecdote this week, which was a company waiting for a decision on a. AI investment, right. For a CRM based kind of customer service thing. Okay. Felt too hard. The client shored it. Interesting, right? Like, uh, 'cause they were waiting for a, like $2 million purchase order build the thing and the client went, no, we're just gonna offshore it. I, I, I mean, what? Like, we don't need to talk whether that's a good decision or not, but I thought, wow. Okay. Hold on. Like, that's interesting.

[00:39:50] Mike Richardson: is gonna be the wild west. It's going to, it's going to be like this.

[00:39:55] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Like what, what?

[00:39:56] Mike Richardson: a gun. It's gonna be a gun fight.

[00:39:57] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. And, and it's like, so was that, was that particular leader making a decision that says they're gonna do all the, all the AI stuff there, so if I hand it to them, they can deal with it?

[00:40:08] Ryan Neimann: Yeah.

[00:40:08] Mark Redgrave: Or, were they, you know, so it's, it's really interesting dynamic, right?

[00:40:12] Ryan Neimann: that was actually, I, I think, uh, also part of the Forbes article as well, that there's just an increase of we'll never be able to get the talent we need to be able to do this, right? So we're just gonna actually, so there is a double-edged sword

[00:40:25] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:26] Ryan Neimann: is. There is that sense of, well, what

could we do that was BPO or business process outsourcing or other aspects that we now can do with agents, but there's yet another talent deficit.

Like there are CEOs that would be listening to this saying, well, how do I go hire

[00:40:42] Tom Adams: Right. Okay.

[00:40:42] Mike Richardson: Right.

[00:40:43] Ryan Neimann: those individuals? And they're not easy to find and they're

expensive, so now I'm just going to actually,

[00:40:49] Mark Redgrave: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:50] Ryan Neimann: else do it for me.

[00:40:51] Mark Redgrave: Yep. we're, we're at time here and I want to end up with like, so if we can quickly, ' cause I just thought of one, like, let's think of what, what, what would be something that our listeners could think about? Right? Great conversation and I appreciate you guys leaning into it. Like what could they think about based on the conversation we just had?

What would be a piece of advice.

[00:41:09] Mike Richardson: go first. listeners, I invite you to do the same exercise. little, uh, brainstorming better, faster, cheaper. Brainstorm each individually at first, and then see where the common threads are and, , which opportunity, sort of triangulates its way to the middle as something you can bite off and chew on and really lean into.

And of course, you know, obviously I'm doing that with all my forums, all my members, which means of course I have to be a role model example myself. I've got to decide what my one thing is to be better, faster, cheaper, because you can be sure when I show up at my next meetings, if I can't show that I'm leaning in, they certainly will feel more permission to not lean in themselves.

So that's what I'm gonna be doing. Mark and I, I invite our listeners to be doing the same.

[00:41:51] Tom Adams: and, uh, I can add to that because I think it's an important add, which is, theory is one thing, but I think what you've gotta do is take better, faster, cheaper, triangulate that down, and then do green light focused experiments. Like what I, what I hear is a lot of people talking about it. But nobody's trying it.

And that's what I keep pushing you guys to do, which is try stuff. And I mean, I, I don't know any more than any of you do, but like, I'm just trying stuff all the time. I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall and it breaks 90% of the time. But, but there's a comfort level in, in experimenting. Right, and that experiment against better, faster, cheaper, gives you results.

And that's in a company of 10 or a company of a million. Doesn't matter. Like what are the experiments you're running? What experiment could you run based on Mike's concept of triangulating, the thing the The,

[00:42:42] Mike Richardson: you, you learn by doing. only can learn so much by thinking, and if you're not careful, you think yourself into analysis paralysis. You are,

[00:42:50] Tom Adams: Yeah.

[00:42:50] Mike Richardson: you're getting ready, you're getting ready, you're getting ready, but you're never, you're never fully ready. So it's like, stop getting ready.

[00:42:57] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:42:58] Mike Richardson: choose something

[00:42:59] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:43:00] Mike Richardson: get into it.

And if it's a dead end street, it's a dead end street, but it wasn't worthless. 'cause you learned by doing

[00:43:06] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:43:07] Mike Richardson: and you can back up the truck, choose something else, and now you'll be better able to move forward with perhaps the second thing or the third thing, or the fourth thing will be a breakthrough item.

And you'll feel like, wow, I've really made a difference now.

[00:43:19] Mark Redgrave: and if you get invited to Tom's for dinner, don't have spaghetti.

[00:43:24] Tom Adams: Do not, do not. It's been on the wall multiple times,

[00:43:29] Mark Redgrave: Ryan, what do you

[00:43:29] Tom Adams: just.

[00:43:30] Mark Redgrave: do you got for everybody?

[00:43:31] Ryan Neimann: right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull some things together here. 'cause it, it just kind of came to me that having these conversations with you all has really enriched me in a number of ways. One, I think of Mike, and I think of, conversation flow is cash flow. And Mark, I think of you and really shining the light on business change.

And I was thinking, okay, if I'm listening to this, what's the one thing I could do one. need to shine the light on it as an executive. McKinsey had a recent report. They said you are two times more likely to impact that business change by actually having a weekly meeting or a quarterly meeting 'cause you're making it a priority and creating that conversation flow.

[00:44:10] Tom Adams: Yep.

[00:44:11] Ryan Neimann: So make it a priority. Get together with your ELT and say, we need to have a regular cadence, a meaningful cadence, not for meetings, for meeting's sake, but a meaningful cadence how do we take incremental steps to get actionable and get going. And I would say that that conversation flow to cash flow, that making it a priority and shining a light as an executive, and statistically it seems that a weekly meeting about it, making it a priority, demanding that we're moving forward. Is the difference of making that change or not?

[00:44:44] Mark Redgrave: Love that. Love that.

[00:44:46] Mike Richardson: that. Yeah.

[00:44:47] Mark Redgrave: mine would be this just on something you said at the end there, Ryan, was like the, the Accenture data. It's like, well, there is going to be a talent war.

[00:44:57] Tom Adams: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:58] Mark Redgrave: Like, do not wait to hire expensive people. Train your people. And we know this, don't we, Mike, from years of doing like big transformation programs for large companies, like there was a role, right?

That, that, that is still super valuable. Like what? Like an agile coach in agile organizations, right? You had to grow those 'cause there weren't any. So, so you know, like, so I, I see that being analogous to where we are now, right? Like, okay, we are all gonna need to hire some really talented people. But you know what? Grow your people.

[00:45:29] Tom Adams: Yeah.

[00:45:30] Mark Redgrave: As Accenture, as Accenture are doing now, like just start, right?

[00:45:35] Mike Richardson: Grow

[00:45:35] Mark Redgrave: Like everyone's gonna have to learn this stuff. So if I'm a CEO listening, I'd be thinking like, how am I going to start to grow my people around ai?

[00:45:44] Mike Richardson: Awesome.

[00:45:46] Mark Redgrave: Good. That's it. We're at time. Um, thanks everybody for a great conversation. I dunno how I'm supposed to end this thing, but I'm gonna say I wishing, EV wishing everyone who's listening a great weekend, a great week. Don't be scared of this stuff. Uh, you know, we're all, um, you know, we're all learning. Uh, learn by doing. Um, and hope this was a, you know, hope you enjoyed this conversation.

We'll see you again next time.

[00:46:07] Mike Richardson: Next time everybody. See ya.

[00:46:09] Tom Adams: Bye.

​