Welcome to another episode of Late Boomers, the podcast for those of us who are redefining what it means to age, work, and thrive in this fast-changing world. We’re Cathy and Merry, and in this week’s episode, we dive deep into one of the most talked-about topics in business today: artificial intelligence (AI), especially how it can help boomers like us not just keep up, but lead the way.

Are you still personally handling every task in your business? Do you feel buried in emails, invoices, and social media posts, all while wondering if AI is only for the tech giants? This episode is for you!

We sit down with the incredible Antonio Thornton, founder of Aixios and a systems expert who’s generated over $113 million in revenue for clients across 19 industries. Antonio brings 27 years of systems engineering and 30 years of direct response marketing to the table, and today he shares his actionable, real-world strategies to help boomers leverage AI without getting lost in tech jargon.

This episode is packed with honest stories, practical frameworks, and a fresh perspective on how AI can rescue (not replace) seasoned business owners, consultants, and entrepreneurs.

Key Takeaways

• AI is for all of us not just techies: Antonio debunks the myth that AI is out of reach for boomers and small businesses. In fact, now is the perfect time to embrace it (35:08).
• The $15/hr trap: If you’re stuck juggling endless low-value tasks, you’re limiting your own growth. Learn how to get out of the “CEO bottleneck” and focus on high-value, revenue-generating activities (04:24).
• Fix the foundation first: Don’t automate dysfunction! Discover why building solid operational systems before implementing AI is crucial for success (10:41).
• Practical frameworks: Simple exercises like Antonio’s “Time Bank” can quickly reveal where your time (and money) are leaking and help you identify what to automate or delegate immediately (28:57).
• AI as a business partner: Real-world examples of custom AI operating systems that drastically cut down on busywork, prevent burnout, and even enable owners to finally take vacations without their companies grinding to a halt (22:05).
• You’re not too late: AI moves fast, but plenty of the early obstacles have been worked out. It’s not about being replaced by AI, it's about leveraging it to outpace your competition (34:22).
• The best tools to focus on: Out of hundreds launching daily, Antonio recommends prioritizing useful, ethical, and powerful platforms, such as Claude AI, for tangible business results (37:35).

Are you ready to see where your time and revenue are leaking? Start today by trying Antonio’s Time Bank exercise: set a timer for every 15 minutes, write down what you’re doing, and categorize each task as revenue-generating or not. You’ll be amazed at what you discover!

Want to learn more and get practical resources to kickstart your own AI-powered reinvention? Head over to aixios.ai/boomers for a free AI quick-start guide just for our listeners!

If today’s conversation energized you, don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share this episode with a fellow business owner or entrepreneur in your circle. It’s never too late to reinvent your business or yourself.

Let’s keep thriving,

Cathy & Merry

Mentioned in this episode:

Late Boomers is part of the eWomenPodcastNetwork.

eWomenPodcastNetwork

Welcome to Late Boomers, our podcast for people who are redefining what it means to age, work and thrive in the second half of life. I'm Cathy Worthington.

And I'm Mary Elkins. We talk about everything from health and relationships to money reinvention and staying relevant in a very fast changing world.

Today, we're tackling a subject that's everywhere right now. Artificial intelligence. Some people hear AI and think robots are coming for their jobs. Others feel overwhelmed and assume it's only for giant tech companies.

Yeah, that could be true. But the truth is many boomers are still running businesses, consulting practices, coaching companies, family businesses, or they have passion projects. And AI may actually be one of the biggest opportunities available to. To help them work smarter, not harder.

Exactly. If you're spending too much time answering the same emails, chasing invoices, posting on social media, managing client data, or trying to keep 12 different systems talking to each other, AI may not be replacing you, it may be rescuing you.

That would be great, wouldn't it? And many business owners in our generation built their companies before automation even existed. So they may be carrying years of patchwork systems, manual processes, and habits that worked great in 2008, but not so well in 2026.

That's why today's guest is so interesting. He doesn't just talk about shiny new AI tools. He focuses on fixing the operational foundation first, then implementing automation in ways that actually generate revenue and reduce stress.

And he's generated more than $113 million in revenue per clients across 19 industries, built 13 businesses himself, and combines deep systems engineering with decades of direct response marketing experience.

Please welcome Antonio Thornton, founder of Axios.

Antonio, glad to be here. Glad to be here.

Great here. Great. Great to have you.

You've generated over 113 million in revenue for clients across 19 industries. So what is the single biggest pattern you see in businesses that are stuck, and how does it connect to operations?

Yeah, that's a. It's a wonderful question. The. The biggest thing that we see is fundamentally, most people go into business with the idea of, I'm good at a thing. Maybe I worked at a corporation and did the thing, I want to go off and do the thing myself. They don't really think about really building a business around it. What they're doing is really just created a glorified job for theirself for themselves. So there are no systems in place, there's no operations, if you will.

It's just really one person doing a bunch of things, and then they start hiring people with everything still flows through them. So if I could say one thing, it's the, the, the infamous CEO bottleneck. It's that owner is the one who's kind of doing everything and, and, and trying to have the, the business or run, run a business like, like a job.

That's kind of crazy, isn't it? It's an awful lot to do with one person, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Especially when you think of all the different things that you have to do in a business. You almost have to become an expert at everything. You know, you've got your widget that you've got to do, the thing that you do, then you've got the legal, then you've got the web design and you've got sales copy, then you've got all of these things. And, and that's a big part of what I find holding a lot of companies back from growth is, is that one operator trying to do everything.

And you talk about a $15 an hour trap. Can you paint a picture what that actually looks like and especially like on a Monday morning for a typical small business owner and how, how do they cope and what changes when they finally escape it?

Absolutely. So the $15 an hour trap for most CEOs is, is a lot of what you guys talked about at the very beginning is, is responding to that same email that you've gotten from multiple clients. You're responding in every, you know, every time it's working on a Canva document where, you know, file was, oh, let me get this image just right, et cetera. And you know, this five minute task turns into five hours and then that, that time has gone away. So it's, it's really just looking at the, the low value tasks that tend to occur in business. You know, even if, let's, let's take invoicing, for example, changing the numbers on the invoice and trying to do all these other things. These are $50 an hour activities. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, you look at the high value activities, those are things like closing deals.

So when you think about, here's an hour that you spend on the phone with someone talking about your service, talking about your offering, this turns into a $10,000 project. That one hour is really fundamentally worth $10,000 for you compared to the hour that you spent on Canva trying to get your YouTube banner to look just right, that's kind of the biggest difference.

That's true.

Well, many of our listeners are boomers who may still personally handle everything because that's how they built their businesses. So what are some signs that they've become the operational bottleneck without realizing it?

Yes. So there are a lot of things. And I'll even tell you a quick story about myself. I, fortunately, was able to survive a mini stroke, and I'll talk to you about that a little bit more about how AI fits into that. But what happens with most entrepreneurs and owners is that you find yourself not able to take a vacation. You even find yourself not able to. To get sick without things falling apart. What a horrible way to live.

You know, when you think about just the fact of getting sick, I remember joking years ago, people say, you know, you never get sick. And I'm like, I can't afford to. And. And that was a real thing. It's like, because I could not afford to step away from my business long enough to. To. To be sick and to get myself well. So I would work through having colds, and I would work through all types of other things.

So, you know, when you're really looking at, how do you identify if you're the bottleneck? Well, does your business fall apart if you step away for a week, for two weeks, for three weeks? Do things come to a grinding halt when you decide to go on vacation? Do you find yourself losing clients because you have to step away for a serious situation? Even asking yourself, do you find yourself having to juggle between, do I respond to this email or do I spend time with my kid? So these are some of the things that really, like, tangibly show up to let you know that you as the business owner are probably a bottleneck.

Yeah. Or even to sleep at night. You forgot that one.

Ah, there's the thing. What, what's that?

Right?

I mean, wondering when you first started out, when there was no AI or maybe you started out after. But I mean, were you losing sleep at night?

Absolutely. Absolutely. That was. You know, I say that jokingly, but that's really a part of what led to some of the health challenges that I had was because I was not getting rest. And one of the challenges, I think, particularly from. From. From our age and our era, is that we, I think, carried this kind of badge of honor with the amount of hours we worked and the amount of grind that we did. You know, I was grinding last night.

I put in 14 hours. And, you know, you get this, oh, hey, you know, you're really putting it in. And the thing is, is that we kind of created this grind, this hustle culture that we kind of felt like the more we worked, the better we were doing for ourselves. But we found over time that, you know, that was causing damage in a lot of ways. And sleep was. One of the things that I gave up was because I thought, you know, who was it? I think it was Tony Robbins or one of those guys, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead or something of that nature. But we buy into that and buying into that philosophy can, can be detrimental even for business growth. That's the irony is that we think we're doing it to build our businesses, but we're actually hindering our business by not giving ourselves the proper rest, the proper recovery in order to do the, to do our best.

Yeah, makes sense. You have this term that you say, automating dysfunction. It sounds like you might have just described it, but it's a really good phrase. Can you tell us what it really means and how does someone know if they're doing it?

Well, automating dysfunction is, is, is what I see coming up a lot now, particularly with, with, with AI and doing what it's doing. Now we have a philosophy called Fix the Foundation first because really AI does a few fun, fun fundamental things. AI will automate, AI will augment and, and AI will also amplify. And the great thing about that is that when it works, it works, but when it doesn't, it really doesn't. So when you think about amplifying dysfunction, you really just breaking your business faster. That's really all you're fundamentally doing.

Well, at least you know, it's.

Yes, exactly, exactly. And that's one of the things that drives us really, really focusing on building out the proper systems before we even talk about AI.

Yeah, because I did read that you have this philosophy called Fix the Foundation first. So talk a little bit more about that and why people should not implement AI until that step is complete.

Yeah. So, you know, when, when you, when you think about, let's say an automobile, like we'll just say like a powerful car, like a Lamborghini or Bugatti or something of that nature. You know, you, you wouldn't take that car and, and, and put a seven year old in, in, in that driver's seat. They're just going to find themselves, you know, putting themselves in a lot of danger. And I think that's kind of what happens a lot of times with AI and is that, you know, we're just, we're tapping into this big monster, if you will, with, without the proper education, without the proper foundation in place. So if your invoices are going out late, if you are, you know, not following up with your clients. If you, if you find that you know this person that you're working with is not getting along with that person, there are a lot of foundational things that are keeping your business dysfunctional. And if you add a on top of that, it just makes things go faster.

So here's another example. Let's say you aren't really good with communicating your product or service, your offerings, but someone convinced you to get an AI voice agent. Well, if you were to get an AI voice agent installed and you don't even know who your ideal client profile is, if you don't know your messaging, you're going to have an AI out there telling a whole bunch of people the wrong thing about your business. So that type of thing is what can be more detrimental than beneficial just by not having those foundational things in place.

Yeah, I see. So there's a lot of homework involved before you put these tools into your system.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And I would think that every company is quite different with their dysfunctionality. And I'm sure you learned that early on because you have 27 years as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and 30 years in direct response marketing. It's an interesting combination. So how does that background change the way you approach AI as compared to, say, a typical consultant?

Well, I, I, I, I say this as, as respectfully as I can, but the, the majority of people that I see in the space right now are folks who watched a couple of YouTube videos and maybe even bought a $500 course, and they're calling themselves AI consultants. And it's unfortunate because I'm seeing them do a lot of damage in the AI space because you've probably heard the phrase no code and low code and those types of things. And fundamentally, no code is a fantastic concept. But what people don't take in consideration is what happens when that code breaks. If you don't know what's behind it, you're doing your clients a disservice. And I say that with the utmost respect to people who are out here in the space and trying to make a living as AI consultants. But it is something that I have to stand behind. Being in this space for almost 30 years, I see business and technology very differently than most.

My nickname is the profit engineer because of my background in engineering, being a Microsoft systems engineer. So when I work with a client, I don't sell products, I don't sell services. What I sell is solutions and results. And I get to that through what I require from every single client that I work with which is an AI audit. We do this with every client we work with. And I always liken it to going to a doctor. You know, if you went to a doctor and said, hey, you know, doc, my back hurts, and the doc says, okay, great, here, take these and you know, call. Take two of these and call me

in the morning, what would that entail as far as an AI audit? And I'm. And also, I'm not sure our audience knows what the no code code definitions are. Can you explain?

Yeah, yeah, I'll explain both of those. So what would I. What no code means is the ability to create applications, to create websites without having to know how to program. And again, those things are fantastic on the front end, but there is real code on the back end of those applications. And that's where the disconnect tends to come in when people are selling what we call no code solutions. And with that AI audit, like I said, I kind of liken myself to a doctor where I'm going to diagnose, I'm going to triage, I'm going to ask you questions about what's working in your business, what's not. Where are you seeing the dysfunction? Where's the pain coming from in your business? Just like a doctor would ask, hey, you know, how long has your back been hurting? Does it hurt all the time or just some of the time, does it throb or is it a very sharp pain? And by asking those questions and doing that deep diagnosis, a doctor is able to identify, well, you know what, you may have this other thing you or this thing here. We'll do some tests, but I think this is what it is.

And that's kind of what we do with the AI audit. I'm going to ask questions about your operations. I'm going to ask questions about your marketing. What I ask. And even for those who have employees, we do interviews with the employees and we ask, hey, listen, we won't tell your boss, but hey, what. What's going on in the business. And a lot of times we get so much great information talking to the employees that the CEO has no idea what's going on. And that's where we start because that's where we're able to deliver real value.

Yeah, they're out there in the field,

especially if it's a real big company, right?

Absolutely.

You got to do that step. Yeah. A lot of owners are juggling like eight to 12 different tools for CRM, email, payments, calendars, social media, and all that. So what is that fragmentation actually costing Them that doesn't show up on a

spreadsheet, it's costing them time. And that's the biggest, that's the biggest cost that I can say. It is costing most CEOs time. And if I have to take it even a step further, it may even be costing well being, whether it be mental well being or physical well being. Just as I mentioned earlier, I had a TIA years ago, which is pretty much a mini stroke, and I lost a little cognitive functionality, I'll say. And I had to really get, get back through, you know, going through some training, physical training and, and, and get myself back, you know, functional. And AI was able to help me with that by, by filling in a lot of the gaps. There was a time where I would be having a conversation with someone and I'd hear the words that were coming in, but it was just scrambled in my head.

It was almost like a word salad. And what I was able to do was using technology. I was, you know, particularly on a zoom call, I was able to take someone's live transcription and run it through AI and get what is this person actually telling me? So over time this was able to help. So, you know, when you ask the question of what are the costs? The cost can be tremendous. The biggest cost is going to be time finding yourself doing a lot of those $15 an hour activities, finding yourself trying to patch systems together. This thing doesn't work now, and now this thing is over here. That, that's the biggest issue. But like I said, one of the biggest, one of the side effects is the mental cost, the mental strain that you deal with trying to manage all of those things by yourself as, as an owner or founder.

So how long ago would your TIA have been that you had access to that good of an AI?

Yeah, this was three years ago. Yeah.

So, okay, so right at the advent of when people were just starting to use it on a, on an everyday kind of basis. Right.

Well, yeah, I was, I was actually using AI in a, in a well. And I always like to say AI has been around for a lot longer than most people know. Right. You know, when we think about Siri, we think about those types of things. That is a form of artificial intelligence. So I was using a lot of artificial intelligence for quite some time before ChatGPT became as popular as it is, a lot before people were utilizing it. And a lot of that just came from my technology background of being out of Microsoft. I had access to a lot of that technology before the general public did.

Actually, that's in a Way very hopeful for our listeners who are getting up there in the years and they're wondering how am I going to keep going with my business when I don't really feel like I have the energy or the understanding of all the new technology? So it's hopeful. And on that note, can you walk us through what it looks like day to day when a business owner goes from doing everything manually to, to having AI and automation doing all the heavy lifting and tell us what that looks like and what the first week might look like?

Yeah, Mary, that's a great question. I'll say this in all honesty, the first week is pretty chaotic. I'll say that what we're doing usually that first week is kind of digging up some of those bones and open up, getting those skeletons out of the closet, finding out that the business was actually run with, you know, held together with, with duct tape so we really get clear and, and get honest about what's going on in the business. So that first week is typically a lot of cleaning up and a lot of figuring out where things are. But when you start looking at week two, week three is when we start implementing some of the systems. We start getting some of the things out of the, of the founders and owner's head into an actual system. And once we started doing that, the system starts becoming smarter and understanding, well, this means this, and that means that this person does this, et cetera. And then over time, we can, we build what's called an AI operating system where now the company can, can, can actually sustain itself without the owner having to be involved in every single decision that's made.

So, for example, you may find employees are always asking questions about different things. Well, all that stuff usually is like in this beautiful, magical database that we were given called our brain. But the downside to that is that no one has access to that brain. So we have to get a lot of that stuff out. And we do that through a lot of fun and creative ways. So for example, if people do zoom calls with their clients, we can take those transcripts and then turn that into a second brain for that client or for our client if they do calls with their team on a regular basis. Those transcripts can then again be a big part of that database. But we do a lot of interviewing.

That's the other side of it. It's like we ask questions like, hey, what happens when this thing happens? Oh, well, so and so and such and such. That becomes raw data that now can instruct the AI on how to handle those things. We even will grab their email. So let's say their clients are sending them questions via email and then they send the response back. That now becomes raw data that can instruct the AI on what to do and what not to do, how to answer questions. And that's where we end up putting chatbots on a website. Instead of someone having to pick up the phone and call and ask a question that 19 other people have asked that same day, they can get that question live right there on a website.

So over time, that AI operating system, it does just that. It becomes a fully integrated operating system that can run the business. I have right now, our system is called tonybot and tonybot runs my business. And I talked to tonybot right from my phone, so I can say, hey, send so and so an email about such and such, and it can draft that in my voice, send that email to that person and also wait for the response. So over time it can be a life changer.

It's almost like talking to another person in a way.

Yeah,

we have to give Disney their props. So I can't really say the name, but I'll say the name anyway. But it's like having my own mini Jarvis, if you will. For those of you who are Marvel fans, there's, there's that AI Jarvis that everyone's familiar with. But yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's just like having that, that AI assistant with you everywhere you go.

Yeah, because while you were talking, I was thinking the logistics in learning how you're collecting what's coming in and what's going out, because that all has to be collected so that whatever AI tool you're using knows that went out in that email. And you know, kind of boggles my mind because I don't know what that piece is, how you do that. So that's the learning curve when people are signing on with you or getting advice, right?

Yes, absolutely. And, and the thing is, is that we, we have a lot of, a lot more of that already in place than we, than we typically know. Like I mentioned a couple. You've, you've got email that you may be communicating with your clients, email that you may be communicating with your team calls Slack, you know, Google Chat, all of these things that, that, that typically take place on a regular basis. We don't realize that this is real data that an AI can be trained on. And that's what allows us to kind of duplicate the CEO, to duplicate that founder so that they can slowly but surely start finding themselves stepping away so from a very pragmatic and very. If I want to just give a really solid tip to people, I would say start recording everything you do. If you call on Zoom with your client, record it.

If you're talking with your employee, don't talk to them over the phone. Get them on Zoom and record it. Take all your. And take all your sent emails and start looking at. What are people tend. You know, what do they tend to ask me? That's a really great place to start with, with building out an AI operating system.

That's great. So if someone's listening right now and they're. They've got a business that is doing anywhere from $500,000 to 5 million in revenue and feels like they are. They themselves are the bottleneck, what is the very first thing that they should examine and why?

Why?

Well, as. As Michael Jackson used to say, I'm starting with the man in the mirror. So they would. That's the best place to start right there. Here's a fun exercise that I think a lot of CEOs can do is just start out with a very simple. What does my ideal business look like? Like, really, what does it look like? Because I don't think a lot of CEOs even ask themselves that. They just kind of wake up and do the thing because they think they have to do the thing. So if that's.

I would like to work four hours a day, then I like to take off and do my gardening and, and I'd like to, you know, go for a walk, et cetera, if that's what you're envisioning, then say, okay, now here you have your goal on what, what you're looking for. Here's where I am. I'm working 14 hours a day. I'm not gardening. I'm doing those things. So now you have your gap, your. Your gap, that delta between where you want to be, where you are and where you want to be. So starting there, I believe, is, is one of the most powerful things you can do.

And what that does is it gets you clear on the difference between what you're doing now versus what you want to be doing. So you can now start looking at the shift. Another exercise that I take a lot of my founders through is a process we call Time Bank. And Time bank is a process I created over the years. It's TimeBank GPS. It stands for Growth and Profit System. And it's a very, very simple, challenging, but. But simple activity.

And it's. All you do is you, you take your phone or Some other device, and you set a timer for every 15 minutes. And when that timer goes off, you stop what you're doing and you write down what you've done for the past 15 minutes. That's it. That's it. That's the foundation of the exercise. And here's what that does. By the end of the day, you get, you get a chance to see all the things that you've done for the day.

Now, how many of us have worked 10, 12 hours, and then at the end of the day, we're looking around like, oh my gosh, I'm exhausted. But what did I even get done? What did I do?

Right?

So just starting there, it gives you the opportunity to know what you've done for the day. Now, if you want to take it even a step further, you look at all the activities you've done for the day and you drop it into one of two categories. One is what we call RGAs, revenue generating activities. Two NRGs, non revenue generating activities. So now you see, okay, I've done 30 things today. Of the 30 things, one of them was revenue generating. Oh my gosh.

Pretty shocking.

Yes, absolutely. So that now gives you a clear picture of where you're spending your time as, as an owner. So now you can start saying, oh my gosh, now I need to flip that. And that's really where most owners are. They're spending about 90 to 95% of their day doing non revenue generating activities. So when you ask the question, what can, what can an owner do? Now, the first thing they can do, identify where they are and where they want to be. And then the next thing is look at their day by using that time bank system. And you'll be shocked.

You'll be absolutely flabbergasted to see how much time you're spending on activities that make your. Makes your company no money at all.

That applies to life too.

Exactly.

All aspects.

Absolutely, yeah.

And on this subject, as we mentioned earlier in our intro, you've built 13 businesses yourself. So what's the most expensive lesson you've learned about operations that you can help clients avoid?

Ooh, the most expensive lesson, huh? Ask questions. Yeah, ask questions first. And that just really boils down to market research fundamentally, because one of the worst things you can do is build a business that sells a thing that nobody wants. That's just pretty much what it boils down to. And I think that happens a lot of times with creatives is that we come up with these great ideas and then we want to go do the thing we build it kind of believing in that whole idea of builder, then they will come. Unfortunately, that's not a reality. So I had to learn the, the hard way. And one of my mentors kind of talk was like, no, no, this is like you find the people, find what they want and sell them that thing.

So instead of building, building something around an idea or a concept. So yeah, I've, I've definitely seen a, the, the most expensive lesson I've learned is, is just asking questions on the front end. Does the person really want the thing

that you're selling that's a major sales job?

Yes.

Yeah. Well, what could someone, what could someone do this week without spending a dollar to start seeing where their time and revenue are leaking?

Without spending a dollar time bank? That is the thing that I recommend. I have a full program that I sell, it's a thousand dollars, but I just literally gave you the foundation of it right here for free. It's, it's literally starting with taking those, those 15 minute increments, writing down what you did and, and then qualifying them at the end of the day. Now in my system we have, I have a little bit more than the two categories. I have actually 13 categories and they go into various things about, you know, necessary but non revenue generating activities. And then there's also the difference between high yield revenue generating activity and low yield revenue generating activity. But again that's in my program a little bit more complex. But the easiest and the fastest thing that they can do right now for free is just get that timer out.

Doesn't cost anything. Grab your phone, do it on the computer, whatever. Set a Timer for every 15 minutes, write down what you did and then at the end of the day identify which things are revenue generating and which ones weren't. That is, I can say with, with, with a, to, to the core of who I am. That's probably one of the most effective things that an owner can do in their business.

Yeah, very smart advice. A lot of boomers still feel intimidated by AI because they think they're too late to the game. So what do you say to people, to business owners and people who would like to start a business who are in their 50s, 60s or 70s, who worry that this technology is just moving way too fast for them.

Well, I'm always reminded of the Ray Kroc story. You know, you think about Ray Kroc and the McDonald's story. This happened in his 60s. So this is not a scenario where this is a rare thing that's been done before. So with that, you know, always you come back to, to, to, to the rape, to Ray Kroc and knowing that he built one of the most successful restaurant franchises in the world in, in his, the second half of, of his life. And, and that's a, that's an encouraging, encouraging factor. The other thing is that AI is moving fast. It is, but the, but the reality of it is you're not too late.

If you're listening to this podcast right now, I can tell you from the, from, from being on the field, being in the trenches, you are, you're not too late. This is the perfect time to get into AI. In, in fact, if you would have gotten into it two, three years ago, you might have found yourself in a lot of trouble because we, we, we broke a lot of stuff over the past few years. So, so you're, you're in a place now where, where a lot of the kinks of the newness of AI have been worked out. The security gaps and the problems with AI putting out the wrong information. A lot of that stuff has been addressed. It's been fixed. So now is really a good time to come in because we've already kind of taken a lot of the arrows from that, from that first push.

So, so here you are in the, in a perfect position, particularly listening to forward thinking podcasts like this. You're in the perfect position to, to take advantage of and utilize AI in your life.

Good. I like being lumped in with the forward thinking podcast. Yes, I'm very happy about this subject. What are one or two AI tools or systems that you think are actually worth learning right now for small business owners, and which ones are mostly hype?

Great, great question, because there is a lot of hype. We, we did a, an estimation a few, few weeks ago and we identified that there are 211 new AI applications launched every day. Oh, no. Yes.

That's impossible to keep up with every day.

Exactly. So when you, when you think about just that amount of, of technology coming out, it is virtually impossible to keep up with. And there's a lot of hype that comes out of it. You know, we've heard about things like Open Claw and Deep Seek and all these other things, and a lot of them go down even further, you know, down the path, you know, Seed Dance and you know, Hermes and all these other things. Right. So you, you, you hear these terms flying around, but the one thing, the one tool that I can say is, is probably the, the best tool for any business owner to get familiar with to, to, to just choose to say, you know, I'm going to hang my hat on, on, you know, here is, is Claude. Claude AI is probably going to be one of the best for, for a whole multitude of reasons. I'll just give you a few.

You know, I don't, I try not to turn things political, but you know, we are, we know what happened with the whole Department of the Defense thing where, you know, Department of Defense wanted Claude to, to, you know, use for their killing machines for the most part, which is a horrible thing, and they refused. So, you know, here you have a company, an AI company with ethics. They're like, hey, you know what? We're here to make the world a better place, not, not to perpetuate war. So I think that's just a great foundational reason to, to, to be a part of the Claude ecosystem. But speaking of that ecosystem, they are building out their ecosystem beyond just chat, meaning, you know, you type a thing and you get some type of response. Claude has developed Claude Cowork. What Claude Cowork does is that it gives you more of an agentic AI experience. And what that means is that you can utilize the AI as an agent to go off and do things for you now.

So for example, if you wanted it to buy your instacart groceries this week, it could do that for you? Yes, absolutely. So, you know, you've got so many different things that it can do now. They just rolled out claw design to. If you wanted to now design a website or design an application that you might have been thinking about for years or maybe there's something that you have going on in your business that you like, help with. Claude Cowork and Claude Design can actually help you create the, the infrastructure or create the technology to support your company. So Claude, to answer your question, Cathy, I think it's a great question because it is, it is impossible to keep up with going on with what's going on in AI right now. It absolutely is. You know, you think about 211 applications launching per day.

It's just astonishing. I mean, we've never had this happen in the history of mankind.

So now, have you ever sat down and examined like say 50 of those that came out all on one day to see. Are, aren't they all pretty similar at some point? How can there be 200 different things every day?

Well, here's the, here's the beauty of the chaos of the 211 applications. They span across every industry, they span across every niche. So when you, when you think about the, the, the implications of that they're very different applications. There, there may be a little overlap, but they're, they're very different applications. I'll give you an example. I think it's Blink AI for example. They are a voice to text AI that works on your PC or your Mac and I'm not affiliated with them, but they have a nice application where you can hit a hotkey on your computer and just start talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. And then it will take what you said and put it into text, into any application.

So if you're in Microsoft Word, if you're on a website, you can just talk. And now all of your text goes into whatever application and it also works on your phone. Now that's an app and that applies across multiple industries, is, you know, you could apply it personally, you can apply it to your business, etc. Now let me give you another example. Really good friend of mine and a partner, if you will. We partner on a lot of different projects, but this gentleman creates what are called mini apps. So give perfect example. He happened to be in a group for general contractors and he asked a very simple question.

What is your biggest challenge in your business? General contracting business. And they all, not all of them, but the, the overwhelming response was doing estimates. We hate doing them, A lot of times they're wrong. So we underbid and we end up, you know, either breaking even or losing money. What he did in a weekend, I might add. But what he did was he did the research on creating estimates, different, 50 different states, all this other stuff. And he put all this magic in an application and he came up with an estimating app for general contractors. He launched it and had 40 customers the first day, which was pretty phenomenal.

So his application was yet another way to that AI, that an AI application was launched into the world with real world value to a group of people. So Cathy, when you ask, you know, are they the same? No, they can vary vastly because of the need and the value that, that, that the individual who's buying that application can, can, would have.

You know, I think you just answered the question I have had which was do you see AI as mainly a cost saving tool or can it create new opportunities in, for revenue and business models?

Yes, yes and yes, absolutely it can. There, there's so many, so many ways. And I have to say, even almost unfortunately, it's almost unlimited. And the reason why I say unfortunately is because when you have too many, too many options, it's kind of like on a cereal aisle, like, what do I choose? What do I do. Right. So when in business, yes, AI can surely be a new revenue model. It can be used to create new income streams, it could be used to create efficiencies. But on the downside, it can also be a money pit.

We, we've seen a lot of companies dump a lot of money into AI just for AI sake, and they find themselves getting virtually no ROI from it. So, so, so to that point, I think when you go in with the right mentality, you go in also with the right support, then, then it, it can create almost unlimited revenue streams for your, for business.

But then you have to carry all that out. It won't carry it out for you.

Right, right. And that's where we come into the equation. Yeah. So we love to partner with our clients. We don't tend to just go in and just sell. You know, here's this thing and see you later. We actually partner with our clients by taking the technology that we developed. Just to give you a perfect example for a financial planner firm, we developed an onboarding form for their, for their company.

So it asks several questions and then once it creates, you know, takes all this information, it creates a PDF with the quote and all of this stuff, and it does all this stuff automatically. And this used to take a, for each one of the planners in this firm, it used to take them about three hours to do this process. Now the process is done in, in basically no time because now it happens all on the client side. So here's the thing. This firm said, this is so amazing. I've shown other financial planners this thing and they want it now. So I want to white label this and sell it to other financial planners. So we're partnering with them to actually deliver that.

So it's, it's really having, having someone who has the expertise to be able to bring those types of things to life.

Yeah.

And that's pretty enterprising on the, on the part of the company that decided to sell it too.

That's pretty.

Absolutely. They figure, hey, you know, we needed it, so other, other, other financial advisors would need it as well.

Well, where do you think small businesses that ignore AI will be three years from now?

They won't.

They'll be dead. Right.

Yeah, they won't. This is just the only way I can say it. And I, and I, and, and I have to say this, you know, with, with, with full disclaimer that I, I, I'm not a doom and gloom person. I tend to be pretty optimistic, pretty positive. But the reality of it is in, in about the next three to five years there, there will only be businesses that use AI in, in the, in what they do. AI is going to be replacing almost everyone. And, and, and the thing is, is like we are probably not going to plumbing toilets, right? So a plumber might say, well, you know, robots are going to replace me. You're right, robots are not going to replace you as a plumber.

But what's going to happen is that other plumbers who are using AI to get clients, they're going to get so much business that it's going to run those people out of business who don't. So it's not a scenario that AI is coming for you is AI is coming for your job. AI is coming for your business. It's not that at all. I tell people this, you don't have to be worried about being replaced by AI. You have to worry about being replaced by people who are using it. That's really where the biggest difference is.

Yeah, this is really fascinating for me, but also too what you just said a couple of seconds before you ago about it creating so many more revenue streams and business models that we probably haven't even thought of that would you say that will create more jobs?

There's a possibility. There's a possibility. I think what will end up happening is the jobs will shift. I don't think we'll necessarily create more jobs. It will shift the jobs themselves. So for example, let's take that financial advisory firm. The way they've made money for their years. I think she said they've been in business for 28 years.

28 years. So for 28 years they've made money in this one way. People came to them, they did financial plans and they were paid for that pretty much straightforward. Now here's a new revenue stream that's coming in that has the even potential to supersede the amount of money that they're making with the financial advisory firm. But you know, selling this, this, this, this onboarding application to other advisors that creates a revenue stream that does not have the same cost of doing business that, that the financial plans would. So in an instance like that, that could create a job for a salesperson who's going out and selling that for, for that financial advisory firm. So there's a possibility of that. So there's, so there's that type of shift.

So but to that point, you know, it's kind of one of those things where we have to just be, you know, open minded about what's here, what's now, what's happening. This isn't a trend, this isn't a fad. You know, this is happening right now. So we want to be as prepared as possible.

Yeah, well, you've certainly made AI feel a little less intimidating and definitely much more like a practical business decision and using it for infrastructure.

And I think it's really important for our audience because boomers are not out of the game. We're still building businesses, advising companies, launching new ventures, and looking for ways to work more intelligently.

Right, Absolutely. And I think we're in a really great position, and I, and I say this specifically to the, the boomer generations, that we have a massive amount of intelligence, meaning, you know, we've been an experience. We've been doing this, you know, whatever the thing is, we've been doing it for years. And that's really our advantage. That's the thing. I tell people that that's the advantage is that you have that real life experience. Chad Beat has been trained on the Internet, which is a great thing, you know, but the downside is that it's been trained on the Internet.

Right, right.

Because there are a lot of very smart people out there, but there are a lot of very not so smart people out there, so.

And they're all on the Internet.

Exactly, exactly.

Everybody's. Yeah, everybody's on it. So, Antonio, tell people. Tell our audience where people can reach you and, and learn more about you and your work. Work.

Yeah, absolutely. It's our website, Axios AI. And that's Axios Aixios A I X I O S AI. And you know, what we'll even do is look to put together something for your group, just for your audience and for your listeners. And I'll tell you what, we can have that up and running by later this evening. So if you go to Axios Aixios AI Boomers, what we'll have is a free giveaway for your audience just to kind of help them to get up to speed on AI and get running in their businesses.

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

And to our audience, thanks for joining us today on Late Boomers.

Yeah. See you time. Next. Next time.

And remember, it's ever too late to reinvent your business or yourself.

Absolutely.