What happens when someone who’s been a firefighter, CrossFit coach, nutrition entrepreneur and LinkedIn strategist finds his stride in AI? You get Brian Maucere — part tactician, part teacher and one of the most grounded voices in the field.

In this episode, Brian shares how his varied background made him unexpectedly ready for GenAI. We talk about what it means to be prepared for a future that’s already here and how Brian helps sales teams and enterprises build the practical side of AI readiness one task at a time.

𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀:

• Why “being ready” is more powerful than being an “expert”

• The difference between AI literacy and AI strategy and why both matter

• How to start change management by solving one annoying problem

• What Brian sees working across industries when it comes to team adoption

• A fresh perspective on AGI and why we might already be working with it

𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗜𝗻:

If you’re trying to get your team or yourself ready for the fast-moving changes AI brings to work, this episode is your new favorite meeting. Whether you’re in sales, leadership or just trying to stay ahead, Brian breaks things down without dumbing them down.

𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁:

Brian Maucere is co-host of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘈𝘐 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘸, a weekday morning series with more than 500 episodes on GenAI. As an AI consultant at Skaled, he helps sales teams and enterprises apply AI in ways that work. A former firefighter, CrossFit gym owner and LinkedIn strategist, Brian is known for making complex ideas clear and guiding organizations toward AI readiness.

𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲, 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝗶𝘁 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲!

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘐 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 airs every Wednesday at 3pm Pacific, hosted by Anne Murphy of She Leads AI and Kyle Shannon of The AI Salon. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and join the conversation helping people prepare for what’s next.

**Kyle Shannon:** Oh yeah. Good day to you. Ann Murphy. You, you're, you're looking very truck, truck stop today. I

**Anne Murphy:** do. I I doth my cap. Well, you know, it's a Sunday recording day. We do our best. You know,

**Kyle Shannon:** we do our best. We do, we do. I think you look great. You look great. Thanks. Uh, how, how's, how's the week been?

**Anne Murphy:** This was a really, really busy week.

**Kyle Shannon:** a shame. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a crusher.

**Anne Murphy:** That's a crusher. That's a crusher. I do like Friday night date night on TikTok with a pair of social friends.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Hanging out with your pair of socialites. Um, that's, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, um, yeah, for me, one of the things that I, I know, uh, happen, happened to you that, that I am, I'm avoiding dealing with is, is you brought on some professionals in the social media marketing arena. Oh dear.

Oh dear. Yes.

And you were telling me that, uh. Doing that is, is taxing. And it's, I've been avoiding it. And your your, your comments to me were not comforting. You were like, no, it's worse than you think. No,

**Anne Murphy:** no, no. It's uh, I mean, we all knew right? When we started making content, we did know Yeah. That we should organize things.

**Kyle Shannon:** we knew that There were books written that say You should

**Anne Murphy:** that. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. But we thought, there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be a better way. And it just hasn't arrived yet. So we'll just keep putting stuff in 17,000 million different places.

**Kyle Shannon:** That's it.

**Anne Murphy:** Well, now the grownups show up and they wanna know, oh, well, where's your content library? Where's your, where's your content management system?

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are, how are you turning these into clips and Yeah. How

**Anne Murphy:** are you turning these into, so, well, let's, let's not talk about

**Kyle Shannon:** that. That's too depressing.

So here's what I'll do. I'll, let's

**Anne Murphy:** talk about fun things.

**Kyle Shannon:** I'll throw it to you first. So, so, uh, social media marketing aside, um, where, where's your head? How, how ready are you for AI this week? What's, what's been, what have been the big themes for you?

And then changing back, and then changing again. And everyone really feeling like they have this, like, they have a desperate need to know. And we are never going to know. We don't know, you know, we don't know what's real and what's fake. We don't know what's, what's. History and what's right now. Everything is gonna be confusing for a very, very long time, and we just have to be okay with not knowing stuff.

So I feel like being ready again, more than literate, more than trying to be an expert, but being really ready to roll with the punches is the name of the game.

I can adapt to it. But there's also an emotional component to it of like. Oh God. Like I got, like, I was actually pretty good at 4.0 and I could use 4.0, but if I just go back and use 4.0, then I'm not learning 5.0 and I'm not learning what's different and how it might be better or different or this or that.

And so, so there's also an emotional component to this. So I think part of readiness is a resilience to go Yeah, that's sad. Feel your feels. Yes. And then if it's appropriate, you know, move on. Don't, don't get stuck, you know, on, on clinging to an old model just because maybe you liked its personality or whatever, but at the same time it, that might be not pleasant and that's okay.

It's not,

**Anne Murphy:** and it's yes, and it's, and it's okay. And it has to be okay and it's really good practice and it's the way the real world is anyway. So.

I watched an interview with Greg Brockman today, um, that the, the big, the big noticeable changes in these models is now happening at the upper end of human knowledge.

**Anne Murphy:** Yeah.

**Kyle Shannon:** Meaning, you know, these things were certain, you know, they weren't good at math and they were good at then, they were good at math, and then they were good at advanced math, and now they're getting really good at, you know, super advanced math and physics and things like that.

Um, there's a point at which these models get good enough that all of those answers get saturated and they're all basically good enough. And where, where the models are advancing is above where most people are interacting. And so what that says to me is we, we as Normies, right, we as non, you know, quantum physicists, um, or engineers, um, may not notice as big a difference when we go from model to model to model.

Mm-hmm. And I think that's okay because, because it's good enough, right? It's good enough. Like even if you're doing fairly advanced business analysis and business processing and problem solving, um. These models at this point are, are good enough to do it. And, and one of the improvements in GPT five is that it hallucinates less.

**Anne Murphy:** because we're not like, 'cause we're we're, you're calling us Normies, by the way.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah, well I'm just, I'm just saying if you don't have like world class Yes. Like, like high end problem solving needs, like if you are a PhD, if you are a physicist, if you are a mathematician, trying to prove out some unprovable theorem.

You are

**Kyle Shannon:** likely gonna see bigger changes than we will asking for it to give us a marketing plan for the pizza shop, right?

Yeah,

**Anne Murphy:** exactly. '

And there's like all these people making these declarations about how good or bad these models are. Um, but like, I don't know, like, I don't know how they're framing it. I don't know what problems they're trying to solve. I don't know where the, the, the opinions are coming from right now. 'cause I feel like it's still too early to quite have an opinion, but,

**Anne Murphy:** right.

Well, but you, yeah, I mean I think that's part of it also is that we're in an, an environment where people are. Making money by having opinions. Right. And it's not just like, like you and I talk about, you have to have a point of view and everything, but you know, they're like hauling ass to get their, their point of view put together and put it up on X before everybody else does.

Like, your experience is not, there's not as much that translates between your experience and mine,

**Kyle Shannon:** right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because, yeah, because you're gonna be doing your specific thing and you'll figure out what's, what's better for you. In fact, this, this week, um, I think it was Wednesday or Thursday night, I did an exercise where I did a creative writing prompt and I used GPT-4 oh GPT five thinking mini, and then thinking, so I did four different models and I had a hypothesis of how it would be, and the hypothesis was that five, like five fast, the one that's just like four Oh, but the next level up, my assumption was that's gonna be better at writing than four.

Oh. Was. Five Fast is horrible at writing. It was like, one of the things I learned is that it's bad at writing. Oh.

And

Right. Because I'm like, like, you're either sort of in you, you want a reasoning model or not. And I sort of skip overthinking, right. But in doing that exercise, like thinking was the one that just did it, did really good writing. And so, yeah. So, so again, I think that. The idea of play first that we talk about a lot.

Like, it, it feels really, really important with these new models that you may assume that the default model's gonna be as good as what you had before. And if it's not, you're like, oh, the whole thing's bad. Well, no, maybe just that model's bad and, and you do need to switch to another one I like. But I don't know, again, I think it's too early to have strong opinions.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah. Well, and to, to be clear, like, to call this testing like this was, I put, I, I essentially put one prompt in, you know, four models and, and quickly looked at the output and sort of snap judged them uhhuh.

So it, it may not be the case, but what was absolutely clear. Is that the five fast model, the one that's just like the next level up from 4.0 is not a good writer. Like, that was clear. Everything I tried to do in it, it was generic and boring and just not interesting. And all the other models were, were some version of good.

And then the fast, the thinking mini one was really good, which it just, it totally shocked me.

We have a shared common language and understanding around it. Gosh, it's hard. It's,

**Kyle Shannon:** well, I, I think it, I think it becomes some weird level of impossible because Yeah, if you think about an it an an IT migration plan, they're like, okay, we've officially rolled out GPT-4. Oh, okay, now they came, now they came out with a new model.

Let's, um, let's, let's get the, uh, let, let's upgrade to the new model. Right? That's the official model. We're gonna, sorry, my light went out, so Understood.

Um,

Right. And so the same model might be a good upgrade for some departments and not good for other departments.

**Anne Murphy:** That's what I'm saying.

**Kyle Shannon:** How do you deal with that? How do

**Anne Murphy:** policy for

**Kyle Shannon:** a does? Yeah. Who does that testing? What's the policy for, if you're gonna upgrade, who's the one that determines should we upgrade?

Why should we upgrade? If we upgrade, what's the benefit of it? Yeah. Um, and, and I don't, I don't have a good answer for that.

**Anne Murphy:** It's, uh,

**Kyle Shannon:** just don't,

**Anne Murphy:** yeah. It's like, well, it's overwhelming. I'm officially, I'm officially overwhelmed just thinking about doing that on a, on a larger scale than even like five of us, you know? Yeah.

So, so one is what you just said, that it's probably worth your time to carve out, like even if it's an hour. To just take the different models and take something where you know, kind of what the out you that you have decent predictability with, with the current four oh model or, or O three, whichever one you use the most.

And test that same prompt in the different models. So, so one thing is just go play with the different models, explicitly play with them on something that you actually understand the dynamics of. And then the other one is this, within chat GPT, now they've added this thing called personalities. So if you go to customize your GPT where you put in your custom instructions, there's now five different personalities that you can switch between.

Like you might have a markedly better or worse experience with one of these personality changes than you might think. Like you might get much better writing or much better answers depending on one of those personalities that you pick than, than you might otherwise think. So a again, I, it's not just.

So the different personalities, the different models, and then just kind of mix and match those and just see what you get. Because you may discover in that, oh my God, if I put it in this personality, on this model chat GT's exactly what I've always wanted it to be. You may not.

**Anne Murphy:** I'm so glad, I'm so glad you brought that up, because when I first heard about the personality things, I just listened to it for about a half a second and let it go in one ear and out the other too.

I forgot that I actually do have to pay attention to it.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah, listen, you don't have to, but again, like a lot of the feedback I've seen on X is they're like, oh, well they changed the personality. Like, you know, the, the personality's different and open AI's now said that they've brought a little bit of personality back to 5.0 or five oh.

**Anne Murphy:** it's too early to judge.

And it's also like such a big reminder that we are at the mercy of these large companies that do not. Give a shit about what we think or how, how well our lives go. Like, I dunno

**Brian Maucere:** about, I'll push back a little. Oh,

**Anne Murphy:** come on back.

**Brian Maucere:** A,

**Kyle Shannon:** he at least gave us our 4.0. Our four oh girlfriends. He did,

**Anne Murphy:** yeah. He gave you Quin back. Congrats on that. But then the same week meta gets busted for having guidelines that say that it's okay to speak romantically and sensually with children. So,

**Brian Maucere:** yeah, exactly. You know,

Yeah, we're on our own. We're, no, the cavalry is not coming. People, if you think you need to fiddle around with like little personality on your, on your Chad GPT account, like you think about big deal stuff, who's in charge of who's talking to your kids? Right. Yeah, making some of these decisions,

**Kyle Shannon:** you know, I, I mean, it's also the kind of thing where you can get outraged to the point where you're like, okay, I'm gonna boycott them.

And then you're cutting yourself off from using this profoundly powerful technology that might actually change things. And we do have more power, like in our, in our custom prompts and changing personalities and things like that. We actually do have a decent amount of control about how these things behave.

Or if we really want to go down that rabbit hole, you can go to, you can move to open source. So there's all sorts of options, but I think your point's a really interesting one that some people, you know, something's gonna happen with meta or OpenAI or whatever, or people are gonna be like, that's it, I'm done with ai.

**Anne Murphy:** Increasingly harder to get back on you. We had this, this really important conversation not too long ago when she leads AI about would we ever take money from, and then, you know, insert lists of, you know, big tech companies.

Um, 'cause there were a couple of 'em that were like up to some serious, no good business at that moment. They all, you know, the, they all ebb and flow. They're all doing bad things. They're all doing good things. And sometimes the media is focused on one particularly horrible thing. Yeah. So we had this conversation about, would you not take money from whatever, whatever company.

**Brian Maucere:** Yeah.

**Anne Murphy:** We would've missed out on when they were doing, they were at the front of the good guy, you know, competition, and then they became the bad guys again.

Then they, they're all gonna be good and they're all gonna be bad. And it, and it, it, it goes back to like, what is it like for you? What are your own rules? Your own red lines. Yeah. Like you doing your own research on what is best.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah. The, I mean, the other thing about, about them being good and bad is no one including them.

Really knows what the implications of this technology is on anything. Like, we don't know what's gonna be the, the implication on work. Like we know it's gonna replace jobs. We know, you know, capitalism's gonna do its thing and try to cut costs and increase productivity. But like, how does that happen? You know?

Right? Like, like completely new territory. So, um, so I think there are gonna be lots of mistakes made in the, in the next five to 10 years, but hopefully. There are responses to that. And, and you know, back to adaptability, it's not just about us as individuals adapting, it's about the companies realizing that, oh, we put this thing out in the world.

Mm-hmm.

**Kyle Shannon:** That, that, that, you know, yes. It's, it's easy to demonize these big companies and say they're evil and they're doing this and they're doing that. Um, they, they don't know as much as we don't know, like mm-hmm. Like the, the implications of these technologies. No one, if, if anyone thinks they're sure about, you know, what the future looks like.

I just. I can't, I can't imagine that there is some master plan somewhere where people have a clue. I don't, I don't think it's possible.

**Anne Murphy:** There should be just like, I don't know, millions of people learning how to be this, a specific kind of mental health care provider around what happens when technology like goes away or changes in some horrible way.

I know it's crazy. There's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna need help.

**Kyle Shannon:** It's crazy. I'm, I'm finding myself getting depressed now. I'm like, oh my God, there's so

**Anne Murphy:** much. Sorry. Leave it to me.

**Kyle Shannon:** No, but I know, I think it's, I think it's right. I think it's, it's something we're gonna have to deal with.

**Brian Maucere:** I'm gonna have to deal with it.

**Kyle Shannon:** Well, so I want to get Brian up here 'cause I want get his take on this. He's, he's thinking about this stuff on a daily basis as well. I'm super excited to have him here. Um, why don't you tell the good people about, she leads ai and then I'll tell them some things.

**Anne Murphy:** Yeah. So here's something cool. Yesterday we had our social Saturday.

So we got to learn about how our brains work and how specifically AI and our living in this AI bubble is contributing to that, which was really cool. And then we, we did a meditation with a woman who, um, studies AI and business, but also is, um, meditation. Specialist expert and a yoga trainer or whatever.

Mm-hmm. Um, so that's the kind of stuff we do. We have social Saturday, every weekend we have our, she leads AI Society where we have Member jams. We learn from each other. Um, we have a, we're on Mighty Networks, just like the AI salon is. And, uh, we are, we do cool stuff. Like we have a conference in October in Salt Lake City, October 11th through 14th.

The AI salon is taking part in it and we'll be able to tell you guys about that a little bit. Exactly. Um. Uh, so we like to bring, we like to bring a scary number of women in AI together, so that

**Kyle Shannon:** us a scary, a scary number of women in ai. That's awesome. So if you're a scary woman in ai, you should join. You should join

**Anne Murphy:** us.

**Kyle Shannon:** bunch of badass women, it actually is. It's really cool. Mm-hmm. It's, it, I, I, it's just, it's just amazing, you know, the, the, the amount of talent in, in your organization and the is pretty

**Brian Maucere:** incredible.

**Kyle Shannon:** It really is. They asked Salon, you know, I'll share a similar thing.

One of the things that we've got, so the, the, the salon has been around since the week after chat. GBT came out. In fact, I actually went and I looked at the original email I sent to Leah Fasten was the week before chat, GBT launched is when we decided to do this. Our first meeting. Before, after, yeah. 'cause we were talking about stable diffusion and we were just talking about getting people together.

And then, um, and so that's available to everyone. And then there's a subscription area of the salon called the Mastermind, um, where there are, you know, areas to, you know, learn and interact and, and, uh, connect with people in a deeper way. So, um, so the Salon is just an amazing place to, uh, to connect. And as you and I both believe, uh, you know, being in community of.

People that are on this AI journey is, is really critical and getting more so is really

**Anne Murphy:** important.

**Kyle Shannon:** Complicated, really

**Anne Murphy:** important.

**Kyle Shannon:** Uh, why don't you tell people about the AI readiness Training program, and let's get Brian up here.

**Anne Murphy:** Well, the AI Readiness Training program is out on the streets and ready to be purchased.

We had no idea that that's exactly what, that was what we were doing When we did AI Festivus, it was about people's. Like state of being, state of mind, their approach to using ai. And that's what the readiness training program teaches. Not, you know, you're not gonna like be able to predict the future of what, you know, what chatt BT six is gonna be or whatever.

But you are gonna know how you personally approach new technology. How do you learn, how do you, how do you move through it? And um, I'm just excited to have it out on the streets.

**Kyle Shannon:** I know. And we have, we have the official, uh, the official kickoff is, is coming up. Uh, by the time you're watching this, that will have happened.

**Anne Murphy:** Well, Brian was one of the very first people I met in my AI journey. He was one of the fellows in the AI exchange, uh, community run by Rachel Woods.

And so he was one of the faculty who actually taught me like the hard

**Brian Maucere:** skills.

**Anne Murphy:** Yeah, the hard skills in ai and has definitely been. Well, let me put it this way, when, so Brian and his, uh, colleagues have a show called the AI Daily Show. The Daily AI Show,

**Brian Maucere:** daily AI Show.

**Anne Murphy:** Love it. And they've got hundreds, hundreds of episodes under their belt.

And we got to know each other and we were like thoughtful and we poured into each other and then like we all went and did things, and now we get to include each other in whatever we're up to. And so when they've invited me to be on their show, I've just been like so excited because they're kind of my role models.

So. Beautiful. Yeah. Brian, well

thanks. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the, the, uh, the sweet intro and I appreciate that. And I obviously, I feel the same about both of y'all. Yeah, it is, it is very cool to think back to our early cohorts, uh, and, and who we were, who we were talking to at the time. And then to see where people from, see everyone

**Anne Murphy:** now.

So anyway, happy to be, be here. Uh, thanks for having me. I've enjoyed your guys' conversation at this point. Um, as I was listening in the, uh, in the green room there.

**Kyle Shannon:** Well, why don't you officially introduce yourself and tell folks what they should know about you, maybe your background, you know, what are, what are the important things you got going on?

Yeah, like a lot of people, uh, not ai, you know, so not there, I think. Um, but it's funny, you know, I think we would all, we could talk about this too. It's funny how a series of. Missteps events in life all sort of seemingly lead you to the right place. And that's, that is definitely my journey with ai. But it was certainly not, it was certainly not through school and, you know, uh, computer engineering that route.

Then we ran, my wife's a dietician, uh, a wonderful dietician. So her and I ran an online nutrition business for several years. Um, that ultimately led us back into the corporate world. Um, after doing some traveling in Europe and things like that where we were, we just sort of realized. We can run our business from anywhere.

And then I did LinkedIn strategy. I still, with some clients do LinkedIn strategy for, uh, people. But like a lot of people when, um, you know, uh, not even chat GBT 3.5, I would really say Dolly two was the first thing that caught my attention. Mm-hmm. I remember bringing it to my daughter, and now this is several years ago, so my daughter's.

14 now, so she would've been 11. I was like, uh, look at this like a lot of people. Um, and then, um, yeah, that, that kind of kicked off this wonderful journey that's been the last two and a half years. I worked for a company called Scaled, um, and Scaled is a sales consulting agency. I was running the, the LinkedIn strategy arm of Scaled, but, you know, I know this will get into your questions later, but, you know, quickly realized that this was not just a pivot.

Every single, always meant to be not really so much a podcast, although that it's a term. It's always meant to be like a morning show. That's the way I've always envisioned it when I started it. And so that's been really wonderful. Um, and obviously having Anne on it and, and guest hosting was really wonderful.

So sales teams, um, training them, building solutions for them. But even some, I would say re more recently has, has expanded as it does. Um, 'cause we'll do maturity assessments with our clients and then of course you find out, well, sales has these issues, but so does marketing, you know? Yeah. And then so it's a bit of a land and expand because that's, we sort of found that that's worked best.

So we come in and we make a big impact one place, and then that trickles, you know, to the next area and the next area. And so then, you know, we've had, we've had the opportunity to work with multiple different departments and stuff like that, which is a lot of fun.

**Anne Murphy:** Is there, what do you, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Closer to the latter right now.

**Anne Murphy:** What do you, what is the, what's the secret sauce? Like, how do you guys keep doing it? What makes you different than the 99.9% of people in the world who cannot do that?

Yeah. I mean, we, we saw that, right? I mean, there's some statistic out there saying that like. You know, you're already in the, I mean, it's definitely in the upper 10th percentile of all YouTube, uh, channels once you pass like a thousand subscribers, right?

But really the answer and is consistency. There's just no other answer. It's like, show up if you set the standard. Yeah. That. The way I look at it, I can't speak for all my other co-hosts, but the way I've always looked at it is, um, it's never happened. We've come close where we thought one person would have to run the show for, for black communication.

Things happen stuck at a doctor, stuck in a car. It's never happened. We've always, ever, always had two hosts. Um, but my whole thing was like, well, you always prepare for the show, even if I'm not the main host. Um, as if I had to run it and talk straight on for 45 minutes, which has never been my downfall. I could talk.

Um, but my point was like, it's still gotta be a good show. If I did a morning show and there was a snowstorm and I was the only one that showed up at the studio, well life goes on, get on the radio and figure it out, you know? Uh,

**Anne Murphy:** and

I'm not always on 'em. That's the, that is sort of the nice part is that we always came at it. There was originally seven of us and now there's six of us. And so there's, there's a, uh, you know, there's always overlap and good conversation and, and people, you know, as you guys know, I don't have to tell you the amount of work that goes on outside of producing five shows a week is substantial.

Yeah. Um, and so, uh, we try to divide and conquer and, you know, but like you guys, I, I, I spend my Friday nights a lot of times writing newsletters and Right. New shows. And, and Beth, quite literally while I was in the green room, was putting together our shows, uh, for the next week. And I was creating assets for her and things that she needs in order to help us out.

**Anne Murphy:** out.

Oh, interesting.

And I like the idea that we didn't have

**Brian Maucere:** Yeah.

That you don't have to have it figured out. Right, right. Yeah. Just, just start. Yeah, because, but like how that, how are you ever gonna be prepared for AI ever? You know, like you'll always be something shifting, moving, whatever. Yeah. So like there is no gr perfect time.

So when I propose this in the, the AI exchange and, and Rachel Woods' community two and a half years ago, um, I said, I'm just looking for people crazy enough in a Slack message. I'm just looking for people crazy enough. Not weekly, not monthly, daily, daily. It's the only way I'll do this. Um, and I just, that was, that was that I had people who showed up and these are still the same, six people are still the same.

**Anne Murphy:** it's

awesome. Get ready, you know, be, be prepared. That's awesome.

**Brian Maucere:** Yeah,

exactly. Well,

**Anne Murphy:** well, well, welcome.

You are one of our guests in, in what we are affectionately referring to as season zero. We'll start season, we'll start season one when we know a little bit more what we're doing. Yeah. But Season Zero right now, we'll

**Brian Maucere:** bring you back to season one 20 in or something.

Yeah. I love that. I love, I love that you guys are bringing your, your perspectives to this and they're, they're so valuable.

I mean, like I said, I was just listening to you guys in the Green Room before I came on and just listening to how you both look at it and it's, and you know, there's two different perspectives and you have a conversation and you hash it out. And that's sort of the same thing with our show. It's like we don't presume to come on there and teach anybody anything.

And like, that's kind of my whole thing is like, no, no, no, I, you'll. Just like you guys come, come along. Yeah. It's not like, let me stand on the stage and preach. It's like, come along with us. We need to learn this too. And we're more than happy to have a, a group of people who are, who are interested enough to do it along with us.

Yeah. You know, and I, I love that aspect of it. It is, it's never been about trying to put ourselves above, uh, yeah. Because it's a live show, so of course we mess up all the time on it and, you know. Yeah. I, I, I, uh, famously can't, you know, pronounce words and now it's in my head. Uh, and, and, uh, Andy, who's one of our co-hosts is, is phenomenal with his vocabulary.

**Anne Murphy:** Oh dear. Oh dear. And that was

stuck for a while. I would think through it and it would still come outta my mouth the wrong way.

I'd be like, I even slowed down and thought about that. I still messed, you know, you

**Kyle Shannon:** still messed it up. You, you thought in a circle enough to come back to the original. Yep,

yep. And still didn't, and my brain said, you got it. And then I said it outta my mouth and Beth went, no,

**Anne Murphy:** no, no. Keep trying. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought I had it that time.

So, yeah, it's, I,

Like Ann said, oh yeah, it's got those personalities. Maybe I should go look at those. Mm-hmm. Um, I think it's just being in the conversation, right? A hundred percent. Um, yeah, so, so what I'd like to do, let's, let's shift gears and we'll shift to our, our, our famous three questions famous in our mind anyway.

Um, but these are the same three questions we asked all of our guests, and you teed this one up really good. You said, um, not only did I get ai, but it got me, um, I, I would love for you to unpack that a bit. So the question is this. What was the tipping point where you knew that you had to go all in on ai?

You're like, I don't think it's gonna be firefighting. I think it might be this AI thing. Right, right. Yeah. What was the tipping point where you knew you, you had to go all in a on AI and then, and then you know, what happened next, and particularly that it got me thing has me intrigued.

Well, I don't know about you, Anne, but the first place I saw Rachel Woods was on TikTok and she was making tiktoks, and I just thought, who is she and mm-hmm.

I thought that I, I don't know who Rachel is, but she's like, she seems to be talking through TikTok to me. Yeah. Yeah. This, this makes sense in my brain of like a lot of people. And then she, uh, built the community. And then her and I got to know each other and, um, we would have side conversations and, um, I said, I think, I think your community really is like itching for training.

That's sort of like, you know, my love language, for lack of a better term. It's how I get points across. So I, I get laughed, you know, jokingly and stuff on shows, and I'll say, this reminds me of a firefighter story. And they'll be like, firefighter story, here it comes, you know, but whatever it is, CrossFit firefighter or some past thing or something that happened with my daughter or whatever.

And so it just felt so natural to immediately start having long form conversations where I felt like, oh, this is, this is a other, this is. This is this assistant now that I can start communication even early on, of course I've gotten much better. So yeah, that's, that was for me, like the first sort of like, this makes sense and it, and it, man, I don't want to be behind, you know?

It's that fear of like, I do not wanna miss the boat on this. Yeah. The worst idea. That's why I did the show. That's why it was like literally so that I had no excuse to be. Passed by. I just didn't want AI to zoom past me. You know, that was, that's

**Kyle Shannon:** exactly why I started the Salon and AI Learning Lab. Yeah.

It was like, I, I, 'cause I was there for the early days of the worldwide web and I didn't think I'd see another one of these in my lifetime. Right. I mean, holy crap. Here's another one.

Right? Right. And so like, oh, and my first job ever was a cruddy instructor. I, as a 14-year-old, I taught classes and I, so I've been on this weird wave that seems to have placed me here.

**Anne Murphy:** Yeah. Oh God. And it was like,

you just want to be open and aware to that and go, well, if not now when you know there's no other time.

This is the time. And also I'm like mid-career, let's be honest. I mean, this came out like I was 45 and 47 now. I got at least another 20 years of probably corporate life depending on what I want to do. Yeah. What are you talking about? Like my daughter isn't even gonna get to college before this changes three more times again.

Exactly. College graduation, let's just say, is eight years away. Can any of the three of us you imagine?

**Brian Maucere:** I mean it's what the job

market is for her eight years.

**Brian Maucere:** Oh God. Right.

Insane.

**Brian Maucere:** It's it insane.

**Anne Murphy:** did. You did.

You did there. So feel free to edit down for,

for time.

**Kyle Shannon:** Don't do that. That might season two, we might get to editing.

**Anne Murphy:** The one thing I have to bookmark before I ask the next question is I have to just point out how many people who've been on the show have said that exact same thing about like, well, and all of that brings me to perfect time for gen ai.

Like all of us who've had, we've, you know, we've got these storied careers where we've done a little bit of this, a little bit of that, where we used to kind of like be a little bit cheapish about talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've done a couple things, you know, you, and you try to make it form it into something that looks more palatable to boomers.

And here we are now, where all of a sudden it, it makes sense and it's not something that, uh, it's, it's a, it's a huge feather in our cap that we've done so many weird ass things.

My brother's been with his same company, uh mm-hmm. 20 years now going on. And it's just the way it worked out for them. Yeah. And I don't wanna say I ever felt like the black sheep of the family clan or anything, but I, like, I just, it just wasn't happening for me like that, you know? Yeah. I got out, I left at, uh, DeKalb County Fire Rescue after five years.

And I, this guy Clay, who is a medic and a and a buddy of mine at my station couldn't even understand why I would leave after five years because in just 23 short more years I could be retired. And I was like, clay, it's 23 years now, now at 47. Do I wish maybe I had stayed because I'd almost be retired.

Yeah. Clay may have had a point. Right. 47-year-old Brian gets what Clay was saying. 23-year-old Brian didn't quite get it, you know, um, and

**Kyle Shannon:** missed the, missed the point. That's hilarious.

Oh. Which meant you could retire at 28 and get 30. And by the way, that was with 85% of your pension. That was like, wow. It wasn't a bad deal if I had stayed 28 years, you know? Right. Yeah. But that's just not where life, you know, led, you know? No, no. It's what, it's

**Anne Murphy:** so, um, you know, you have these various zones of genius that over time have layered onto one another and here you are now doing the things that you're doing and, and I'd like to hear from you were sharing in the pre-show, um, kind of where, where you're spending your time at work now and that it's recently kind of gone, gang gone gangbusters.

And I'm wondering if you could share from that particular point of view what AI trends you're paying attention to.

Some teams are deploying Microsoft, so we've dealt only with copilot. I've done Gemini only trainings, and then sometimes I mix and match depending on what they're, if they're asking for more generalized AI training. Um, but what I really focus on is really not that much different and in those early classes, and that's that, you know, uh, we have a, I have a new, um, certification program coming out for sales reps and then also one for sales managers.

And it's literally teaching reps and managers how to build their first agents. And my thought to that is I want you to understand. Sure basic prompting and how to communicate correctly. You guys were talking on the show about GBT five and how that's slightly different than 4.0 and, um, all true. Um, and then, but then it goes bigger than that.

G custom GPTs haven't really exactly like gotten crazy better right now. Of course we have gems, we have a copilot, which would be very, very similar. Almost identical gems are a little different. Um, so, you know, then teaching them how to hand off a, a job. And how to do that in a basic way through A GPT and saying, look, you're doing this thing 3, 5, 7 times a week.

That's ridiculous. Let's just get it off your plate, you know? Yeah. And we go for small wins, you know, because they're, you know, quick, they're easy. And it's not about boiling the ocean. It's just about like saying, Hey, this is a thing that you're doing that you don't have to do anymore. Let me just show you in sometimes 48 hours how we'll just fix this forever.

And so, you know, typically that, that involves me building inside of N eight N. Um, but we're also building some solutions in Agent force, which is in Salesforce. Um, uh, Foundry, you know, Azure Foundry, which is part of the Microsoft, um, Google's a DK, their agent development kit, and then also above that, vertex and starting to build some solutions in there.

So, you know, look, we're having these clients that are, we're having really great conversations with, and they're saying, Hey, I love what you're doing. We need this, whatever. But this is where our. Our team lives. Can you help us find solutions platform? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Where our team lives and you have to, you have to meet them where they are.

And what I was saying is I wrote a LinkedIn post about it, which is what gave me the idea for the show. And I simply said in the post, like it was yesterday morning, Saturday morning as, as we're taping this. And um, I realized pretty quickly that I was doing multiple. Projects at once, while also managing things in the house.

And, you know, Sam Altman's been saying this and others, and I think it's true. Which is that like Yeah. In a lot of ways though, it's already here if you just slow down and pay attention to how you're working. Yes. Like you might find out that you are in fact working with elements of a GI today.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah. Well I think I, I think your point's a really good one.

I think there's gonna be the official definition, but back to the thing about, you know. Not only did I get ai, AI got me, I feel like a GI is gonna be a very personal thing that if it is now taking things off your plate and you don't need it to do more than that, whether or not we hit the official definition is irrelevant.

Right. For you personally. It is. Yeah. What does it mean to me? It's above your pay grade, which great, now you get to go do those other things and still accomplish what you need to a hundred percent. Which is awesome. Okay. I'm thinking, oh, sorry, go ahead.

**Anne Murphy:** I got a thing, I got a thing. I have to bring this up.

The agent is telling you what to do and you are happy to do it. Sure. When you know Manus is doing a big project for you and it stops and asks you questions and it doesn't proceed until you answer, you are working, you are working for the bot and you're happy to do it. I think it's like that with lots of stuff where we're gonna be looking for some big line in the sand, when in fact it's really, we're just moving, moving through it, moving into it.

We adapt to it so organically. Organically,

Well,

**Kyle Shannon:** it was science fiction. They were science fiction. Yes. Right. And now they're just, we've just normalized them. Like, oh yeah, I can just do that.

Google Storybook was the one this week. Yeah. There's always something. And then my daughter, I showed it to my daughter 'cause I created a child's, uh, book about anxiety, which is something my daughter has always had.

Mm-hmm. And, um, we created this cool little book and it was like Lily and her fancy brain. And it was so well done after a really cool prompt. And then my daughter's like, could we create more of these books? Now me, this is, this is just a good point to this. Right. Good. A good note on this. I said, oh, you know what, the models aren't really good at like keeping the, the, the, uh, characters cons, consistency through the models.

I can't do that yet. And yeah, it can, it passed. It went right by me and I was like, oh, that's on me for assuming that something that I thought because of something Midjourney couldn't do and struggled with a while ago that somehow, you know, Gemini and Gemini's like, yeah, what do you want? 10 books? Let's talk about it.

Like, yeah, let's go. Okay, you want Lily in all the books, let's do it. You know?

**Kyle Shannon:** That's amazing. So cool. That's so cool. That's so amazing. And it, you know, it is, it's just like, yeah, don't assume that the thing you couldn't do last week, you can't do this week

**Brian Maucere:** last week.

**Kyle Shannon:** Yeah, yeah, exactly. Literally.

**Brian Maucere:** Yeah. Yeah.

So that's, that's

**Kyle Shannon:** a perfect setup for question number three, which is what does AI readiness mean to you? And then what would you say to someone just, just getting on this train? Yeah,

like it's, it's. Go look at the things as far as if you're just getting on the train, go look for the things that just spike your interest, whatever that is.

Whatever it is, like go find your, your happy place and live in that for a while and, and learn it. What readiness is for me is obviously we talk, you know, not just readiness, but you know, AI literacy and so what does literacy mean? Like what do we mean by that? Well, you do need to be somewhat, um, up on some of these terms and understanding what they mean and how they apply.

So to me it's just about, you know, you don't, you don't have to, there's no on, there's no literal onboard for everybody. It's like, go open up the tool, like we all say and go play. Go play with the things that are exciting to you, with the topics that are exciting to you, whatever that might be, and have and learn AI through that.

So it's always fun to you. It's always exciting. Nobody needs to get stuck learning AI through some boring medium. Everybody can personalize to their Thank you. That's great. That's really,

**Brian Maucere:** really

**Kyle Shannon:** fun. Yeah, no, that's it. Play first is, and I, you know, I feel like that that imperative is there. Un you know, until further notice, at some point the industry will stabilize.

Right? Yeah. And how do you discover that? Well, you played right, and you discovered it,

right? I would, I was at least smart enough to go, I should probably ask. Yeah, I should probably ask him out Zoom. And so that was my, my first thought was go back to the AI and just double check on this. Yeah. And I was like, I was waiting for it to say, yes I can, and then fail at it.

Yeah. And so you can imagine the hubris of like watching Gemini, not just kind of do it, but kind of crush it. Kind would mail it. Yeah. But Gemini, you know, like, it wants me to succeed. So it didn't throw it back on my face. And that's kind of nice. I was like, this was your idea. And I was like, thank you, Gemini.

This was my idea. I was like, we created this together. And we're like, I'm like, well, I'll take it. We did, we did create this together.

If you assumed that it was that way last week, maybe go ask again.

It could,

**Anne Murphy:** but that's a gift. That's a gift. Because, and this is where so much many of us get, get trapped. It's like you have to be able, you have to have the skill to go, I'm gonna put my ego aside right now for just three seconds and, and ask, even though I know all the things, right? Like, we all know that we can't have consistent characters anymore.

That's just what we know. And now we can, no, we can't. But you wouldn't have known if you didn't put your, you have to put your ego aside for a sec, you know?

Yeah, definitely with ai, right? There's no, there's no point to, uh, assuming that somehow you've grasped it. I, I, my ego gets checked, um, daily on our, on the daily AI show, which you have up on the screen, and uh, yeah, that's kind of the fun part of that.

**Brian Maucere:** Oh, that's great. Yeah. That's awesome. You know, so cool. Like, I walked

in thinking this is definitely what everybody else is gonna think about this, you know?

Um, and then you leave the show and you go, not only do, maybe I don't think about it that way, but I now have this new informed perspective that just wasn't there, you know? Yeah. And that, that, that's like literally growing, right? That's literally neurons connecting and stuff. And I, I love those days where I walk away from the show and go, that was unexpected.

But I'm different than I was 45 or an hour ago. And that's, that's

**Brian Maucere:** awesome.

How cool is that when you're able to just like, sort of identify that and go like, I'm a different person 45 minutes later. Yeah. So cool. So good. That's the

**Kyle Shannon:** best. So yeah. So tell us though, so you've got, uh, there's, yeah. Talk about, yeah.

Anything else you want the people to know about where they should connect with you?

But listen. The way they, the way they do things. Um, but we're there too. Um, uh, so yeah, the Daily Eye show, like, you know, like I said, it's not necessarily always me. We have other wonderful people that are co-host, sometimes Anna, they're great. Help us out as well. Great. Yeah, they're amazing. And I can't wait to see where the next two years goes with that show and what it looks like when we hit a thousand episodes or whatever, you know, when we get there in two years.

So that's, that's super fun for me to kind of just like. Watch, like be part of it and watch it. So come hang out with us there. And then obviously, yeah, if you're, if you're working for companies and, and it doesn't necessarily have to be sales, but obviously sales related, uh, and you wanna learn more about the kind of things that I'm building for our clients, um, for them to have success, then, you know, scale.com and that's S-K-A-L-E d.com.

**Anne Murphy:** quest, little side.

Fun. A hobby. Just a hobby.

**Anne Murphy:** Little 20 to 30 hour a week

Quest. Yeah, just a little, just who doesn't have, yeah. Yeah. I think

**Kyle Shannon:** we all share the, uh, the burden of more our side quests are bigger than, bigger than everything else. They start to

**Anne Murphy:** become pretty big. Yeah. Yeah.

**Kyle Shannon:** Well, Brian, real pleasure. Thanks Brian.

Thank you for your time.

**Anne Murphy:** Yeah. It was a real treat. Real treat.

**Kyle Shannon:** Cheers.