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He Almost Became the Bottleneck: Bob Ruffolo on Scaling His Personal Brain into a Company‑Wide AI Operating System
Episode 4219th September 2026 • Lead With Trust • Hannah Eisenberg
00:00:00 00:31:23

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Bob Ruffalo unpacks how Impact has turned AI from a buzzword into a practical engine that powers faster, cheaper, and often better marketing and sales work. He explains Endless Customers — a repeatable playbook that tightens content, websites, sales activities, technology, and culture — and how AI supercharged their Deep Diagnostic roadmap so they can deliver a superior strategic product for a fraction of the historical cost. He emphasizes that the technical outputs (data pulls, competitor scans, review analysis) are table stakes now, while the uniquely human contribution is judgment: spotting the 10–15% that needs refinement and asking the right questions to shape AI output into a real, prioritized plan. Humor peeks through as he likens agents to tireless teammates who keep working while humans sleep, but he never loses sight of the coaching-first philosophy that keeps clients self-sufficient. The conversation also zooms into content strategy shifts. Bob argues that many learning center pages should be optimized for AI “readers” — concise, Q&A-driven pieces that answer queries for search engines and agents, while flagship human-facing content (think thought leadership or brand stories) should still be crafted by people. He stresses transparency with clients about when AI is used and why: sometimes the insights matter more than prose quality. Practical takeaways include a simple daily rule — ask “can AI do this?” for every repetitive task — and a laddered approach to adoption, moving from curiosity to competence. In short: use AI to scale the 80%, apply human judgment to the 20%, and double down on what differentiates the brand and the person behind it.

Takeaways:

  • He explains how AI lets Impact produce far superior, faster marketing diagnostics at dramatically lower cost.
  • He describes building a second brain using Obsidian, Claude, and agents, learning that making it company-wide avoids creating a founder bottleneck.
  • She and he discuss that AI will handle roughly eighty percent of routine white-collar tasks, leaving humans to apply the critical final twenty percent of judgment and decided truth.
  • He recommends a ladder approach to AI adoption: take small, curious steps daily, ask whether AI can do each task, and iteratively increase reliance.
  • He warns that content strategies must shift because search has become AI-driven, so build learning centers that answer every buyer question even if AI writes much of the copy.
  • They emphasize transparency: for low-importance outputs AI-generated reports are fine, but higher-stakes work should be human-reviewed to preserve authentic voice and trust.
  • He quips that agents are now so persistent they’ll chase tasks for hours like caffeinated squirrels, proving automated workflows can actually pursue goals unattended.

Links referenced in this episode:

Companies mentioned in this episode:

  • Impact
  • HubSpot
  • EOS
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Obsidian
  • Claude
  • Codex
  • 2XU

Transcripts

Speaker A:

Welcome to another episode of Lead with Trust.

Speaker A:

Today I have Bob Ruffalo with me.

Speaker A:

He's the CEO and co founder of Impact.

Speaker A:

And Bob, you and I have known each other for a very, very long time.

Speaker A:

We've worked together in different capacities.

Speaker A:

Why don't you share a little bit about your background, what you do at Impact, and I would love for you to share a little bit more about how Endless Customers fits into that.

Speaker B:

That sounds great.

Speaker B:

Well, Hannah, it's an honor to be on your show here today.

Speaker B:

So.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Bob Ruffalo, founder and CEO of a company called Impact.

Speaker B:

We're based out of Connecticut in the United States.

Speaker B:

Our company has been around for about 17 years and we've gone through several iterations.

Speaker B:

But one thing that hasn't changed about our business is our mission.

Speaker B:

We've been all about helping business owners achieve their visions.

Speaker B:

Our purpose statement is to create heroes, grow businesses and change lives.

Speaker B:

And that's one thing that hasn't changed in our business.

Speaker B:

But the, the way we do that has changed dramatically over the years.

Speaker B:

Hannah, when you and I first met, it was in the HubSpot community.

Speaker B:

And that was probably about 10 years ago.

Speaker B:

And that was when our company, Impact was mostly an inbound marketing agency and we were a top tier HubSpot partner.

Speaker B:

And what we would do is we would help clients implement the inbound marketing playbook with HubSpot and they would get more traffic, more leads, more sales.

Speaker B:

As you know and we know, that Playbook has dramatically changed and no longer works the way it used to.

Speaker B:

And the strategies that businesses have to do to become the most known, trusted and recommended company in their space or in their market look very different today than they did even just three years ago.

Speaker B:

And of course, that is about all from AI, which we're going to talk a lot about today.

Speaker B:

And so the way we help companies today is we have a system that's called Endless Customers.

Speaker B:

And companies will implement Endless Customers into their sales and marketing operations.

Speaker B:

Much like if any of your anyone in your audience knows eos, it's like the EOS for your sales and marketing and Endless Customers helps strengthen five key areas of your sales and marketing.

Speaker B:

It strengthens your content, your website, your sales activities, your technology, and the overall culture of your sales and marketing teams.

Speaker B:

We are all about helping clients become self sufficient, meaning that one day they might not need us.

Speaker B:

Because we are a coaching and training organization first and foremost.

Speaker B:

And we really believe that is the fastest path to helping businesses become the most known trust and recommended companies in their market.

Speaker B:

And get all the great results from marketing that they want to see.

Speaker B:

And everything we do is based on the principles of Marcus Sheridan.

Speaker B:

So I imagine some of your audience is familiar with Marcus, and based on the principles of they ask, you answer, which is his first book.

Speaker B:

And we did the second book, Endless Customers, together.

Speaker B:

So that's impact, and that's what we do.

Speaker B:

And I'm very excited to dive into AI and have a great conversation with you today.

Speaker A:

Awesome.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

The playbook certainly has changed, and largely not only because of AI, but definitely a lot with AI So first, I would love to dive into what are some areas or some things that you have accomplished with AI, let's say, in the last three or so months that you're genuinely proud of.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And I think, you know, when I think about what we're most proud of when it comes to AI, it's the stuff we're doing this week because the technology changes so fast.

Speaker B:

We learn things every week.

Speaker B:

We're implementing things.

Speaker B:

So I think that's something that most of your audience will probably see too, is that things we're building this week are the stuff we're most proud of.

Speaker B:

And overall, I think our mindset has been this.

Speaker B:

AI is here.

Speaker B:

It's not going anywhere.

Speaker B:

Our clients know we have AI.

Speaker B:

They use AI they know we should be using AI.

Speaker B:

So there's work that we used to do that was way more time consuming, way more laborious, and way more expensive to our clients.

Speaker B:

And because of AI, we've had some really dramatic shifts in the way we're able to do work.

Speaker B:

For example, if a client were to hire us to do a marketing strategy, call it three or four years ago, and we would do it, it was very manual.

Speaker B:

We'd have to do our own research.

Speaker B:

We were being paid for what we knew, the strategies, the ideas, the plans, the order of operations.

Speaker B:

That was all very manual.

Speaker B:

There was no place to go and send an agent to go do deep research and come back with a BUN information or process information for us and synthesize it in a way that's really digestible and easy to understand.

Speaker B:

But today we're able to do a strategy, and we call it the Deep Diagnostic roadmap.

Speaker B:

It's a product that we have, and it's how we start many clients.

Speaker B:

And it's about $5,000, but is the deliverable is superior to what we used to sell at more of a $25,000 price point.

Speaker B:

So we're able to lower the cost for our clients.

Speaker B:

But what it used to cost in Terms of time for our staff to produce one of these would have been 40, 50, 60 hours.

Speaker B:

Very expensive, very time consuming.

Speaker B:

And it was good.

Speaker B:

It was not perfect because we were limited by hours.

Speaker B:

Today, you know, we can do a far superior diagnostic and really understand the entire landscape around that client.

Speaker B:

Go deep into their website, go deep into their competitors, see how they're showing up everywhere, look at every review they're getting, and where are all the trust signals that could be holding this company back?

Speaker B:

We can analyze that so much faster and generate a report like that.

Speaker B:

But that's not the real value that we bring, because anybody can do that.

Speaker B:

The value that we bring, just like you, Hannah, and us as coaches, what we bring to the table is that we could see the plan.

Speaker B:

We can see the 80 to 90% of it that we know is like flawless and great.

Speaker B:

And we can check it off and say that work is actually done.

Speaker B:

And then we also know from our experience and our judgment that this 10 to 15% is not right.

Speaker B:

Yet we know to ask the right questions and the challenge of AI.

Speaker B:

We've all had moments where we knew what AI outputted was wrong.

Speaker B:

And we could say something like, hey, chat, you missed this.

Speaker B:

And it would just write back, oh, you're right, I should have done that before, too.

Speaker B:

And then it corrects its mistake.

Speaker B:

Or maybe you say, hey, it's still not right.

Speaker B:

You got to adjust it.

Speaker B:

That's what humans bring.

Speaker B:

That's the judgment, that's the experience, and that's what I think we bring to the table.

Speaker B:

I think that's probably the thing I'd be most proud of, is how we've been able to lower our price points, do higher quality work, do work faster.

Speaker B:

And honestly, because of that, we can help more people, we can help more businesses.

Speaker B:

Which goes all the way back to our mission of helping create heroes, grow businesses and change lives.

Speaker B:

We could do a lot more of that.

Speaker A:

And that's certainly an amazing example.

Speaker A:

And I love how you pointed out that the last 10, 15%, the human judgment.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

Like everything I do right now with context layer is all about human judgment and a decided truth that company has to.

Speaker A:

I'm going to loop back to that in a second.

Speaker A:

I just want to dig a little bit deeper on, is there another example of your team using AI?

Speaker A:

Maybe in the sales and marketing?

Speaker A:

Because we have a lot of sales CEOs listening to this that are struggling to figure out how do I use it effectively in a way that actually has a compounding business impact.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

A lot of times we just layer AI on top and make content production faster or email writing better.

Speaker A:

But, you know, you and I know, and a lot of CEOs out there know that it's very linear games, it's.

Speaker A:

You can only save that many hours.

Speaker A:

But is there a way that you currently are using AI in your sales or marketing that isn't just faster content, but really something you're proud of?

Speaker B:

Well, I think, you know, the, the advice I would give for anyone in the audience is saying, hey, I know AI is important, but we haven't fully got the most out of it yet.

Speaker B:

I would say, first off, take a deep breath, relax.

Speaker B:

It's okay.

Speaker B:

Many people still are not using it.

Speaker B:

Many business owners are still not using it.

Speaker B:

This is still very new for a lot of companies.

Speaker B:

I wouldn't think of it as like, I have to use it 10 out of 10 or not at all.

Speaker B:

Think of it more as like, steps up a ladder.

Speaker B:

And every day you just use it a little bit more.

Speaker B:

Use a little bit more.

Speaker B:

Use a little bit more.

Speaker B:

Ask better questions of it.

Speaker B:

Start saying, hey, I hear companies can do this.

Speaker B:

How do I do that?

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker B:

Just lead with curiosity, which is a lot of what you teach, Hannah.

Speaker B:

Lead with curiosity.

Speaker B:

And if you do that, you'll start finding that you go from a level 0 to a level 1 to a level 2, to a level 3.

Speaker B:

You keep working your way up, and all of a sudden you're doing things that most business owners aren't doing.

Speaker B:

People are ask question saying, how are you doing that?

Speaker B:

Just like the conversation we're having today.

Speaker B:

And Hannah might have you on her podcast.

Speaker B:

So I would say that, and I would say the other tip I would have is anytime you have to do anything at work, just take a few minutes and say, can AI do this for me?

Speaker B:

And the answer might be no, but at least you're.

Speaker B:

You're thinking the right way about building an organization around AI by at least asking the question, can AI do this for me?

Speaker B:

And if you don't know if it can or can't ask it, just go to chat or go to Claude and say, hey, is it possible for AI to help with this task?

Speaker B:

It'll work through it with you and say, we can do these parts.

Speaker B:

We can't do these parts any.

Speaker B:

Anything like that.

Speaker B:

Now, this is going to lead to, I guess the next example of what you're asking here or something that I'm proud of that we're working on.

Speaker B:

I don't want to say we fully rolled this out, but I've been watching a lot of videos around Second Brain or an AI operating system for your business.

Speaker B:

I got really into that, probably in or so and watched a bunch of videos, worked with AI, said hey, how do I build a second brain for myself?

Speaker B:

Which I now think was the wrong question.

Speaker B:

And I'll tell you exactly why in a second.

Speaker B:

But that's what I did.

Speaker B:

I set up Obsidian.

Speaker B:

Never even heard of Obsidian before, but I built Obsidian.

Speaker B:

I connected it to my Claude and it helped me build a file structure and started saying, okay, well you know, we're going to build these agents over here and all the skills and you're going to have this thing called Canon, which I never heard of before, but now I know what it is.

Speaker B:

It's the bank of all my core knowledge and information.

Speaker B:

It was doing personal things for me, it was doing business things for me.

Speaker B:

But the more I used it, the more rich the brain got, the more connections I set up with it, where it was pulling in transcripts, it was pulling in Slack messages, it was pulling in emails, and it was really processing all the information.

Speaker B:

I set up a Hermes so it would automatically pull information even if my computer was off and just filling all that into my brain.

Speaker B:

My brain was getting richer and richer and richer and richer.

Speaker B:

And therefore my work was getting way more efficient, getting through my emails faster, getting.

Speaker B:

If I had a question about an account, I would just ask because all the information is being pulled in.

Speaker B:

I would have it build skills that I can go and do things.

Speaker B:

Now.

Speaker B:

Here's where I was very wrong in this.

Speaker B:

Second Brain for myself means that I am the bottleneck in the company right now.

Speaker B:

And I should have said, how do I build a second brain for my company or build an operating system for my company?

Speaker B:

How do I get all the core information in a place for AI where AI can use it?

Speaker B:

But everyone in my company could tap into that brain based on the permissions they should have for the certain information.

Speaker B:

So if we're going to say this is company wide information, this is only available to my finance team, this is only available to my HR team, it's only available to whoever and then have the skills set up in there so all the AI systems so that my marketing team has access to the same skills I was building for myself to build out web pages and my services team had the tools to build out the deep diagnostic and roadmap and so on and so on.

Speaker B:

So that's the process we're going through.

Speaker B:

And part of it is like undoing what I did.

Speaker B:

But the Other part of it is doing this at scale when you have 40 people.

Speaker B:

And as we're starting to bring on more coaches to the business, maybe at one point, 100 people, how do we make sure everyone has the right permissions?

Speaker B:

So this is what we're learning right now.

Speaker B:

I'm sure other businesses, I'm sure even people listening to us have been like, hey, we have this all figured out.

Speaker B:

Why do you have this AI guy on that doesn't even know how to do that?

Speaker B:

Because I think we're all still learning.

Speaker B:

That's just the world that we're in right now is that we're all figuring these things out.

Speaker B:

That's.

Speaker B:

That's the other thing I would say I'm proud of, that we have a roadmap for this.

Speaker B:

And I'm hoping within the next 30 days, we'll have this fully rolled out to our team, where they'll all have the power of this second brain connected to their coworks or their codex, and are able to execute much faster in all the work they have to do because they have all this information in their systems.

Speaker A:

This is so funny that you bring this up, because this wasn't planned, but you and I should definitely have a separate conversation around this offline, because that's literally what I do now, right?

Speaker A:

That's building.

Speaker A:

I don't call it second brain, but I call it the context layer.

Speaker A:

But it's exactly that, because what I've seen is exactly the journey, and I had to laugh that you went through, because a lot of founders are, until like 10, 15 million in annual revenue are the bottleneck in their company's growth because they just walk in somewhere and they just know how to adjust the conversation because they are the only ones really, you know, having that intuitive, tacit knowledge or sometimes implicit knowledge.

Speaker A:

But if you're just codifying your brain, you're still the bottleneck.

Speaker A:

Bottleneck, yeah, definitely.

Speaker A:

Definitely a conversation worth having.

Speaker A:

And one thing I will.

Speaker B:

I will say that the one thing, the one benefit of me doing that by myself, though, was it.

Speaker B:

Was it allowed me to see what was possible.

Speaker B:

So then it shaped my vision for what our company can do.

Speaker B:

And if I jumped right into the company first, I'd be like, I wouldn't know what any of this meant.

Speaker B:

And I wasn't doing it in my own little system, which is, I think, again, that's just how we all learn and grow, right?

Speaker B:

They talk about be an expert in something takes 10,000 hours.

Speaker B:

And that's.

Speaker B:

That's true.

Speaker B:

I probably have about 10,000 hours of this project.

Speaker B:

But that's, that's where we're going.

Speaker A:

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Speaker A:

Just one, one tip I want to share for someone who's listening to this and thinking, I would love to do that too, I would if I was to.

Speaker A:

To give you one tip of how to build this and then we move on.

Speaker A:

This conversation is not about this is to really have a context engine running underneath those are your like 85%.

Speaker A:

And that's generated by all your call reports, like everything that happens from daily activity.

Speaker A:

But that's the easy part.

Speaker A:

And that's what most people think.

Speaker A:

That's it.

Speaker A:

But you have to have that thin layer of decided truth on top of it, that human judgment that, that really very hard to capture.

Speaker A:

Why do I do this and not this?

Speaker A:

So just for someone listening, really important to put that in the package there as well.

Speaker A:

All right, so moving into the next question I was going to ask you, but it's really nice segue from what you just said, is how do you make sure, and maybe that's the answer.

Speaker A:

How do you make sure that anything that goes out, whether that's a proposal or an article or any, not just a piece of content, but anything AI does for you actually sounds like you, acts like you, behaves like you.

Speaker A:

How do you make sure that you can trust that process?

Speaker B:

Yeah, really, really good question.

Speaker B:

I think it all depends on the importance of the output, the purpose of the output and probably the appetite for to be okay to be a little bit more on the AI side and sound a little bit more like AI versus it needs to sound like a human.

Speaker B:

So first off, AI brings so many efficiencies to our clients, as we talked about already.

Speaker B:

So I think number one, we're just honest and transparent about it.

Speaker B:

And if you're not okay that we're using AI or that something's going to come out and sound a little bit like AI, if there's benefits to it, then we're probably not the right firm for you.

Speaker B:

So when we talk about when we do our diagnostic, we say we're going to do this 124 point inspection.

Speaker B:

These are all things we're going to look at.

Speaker B:

But AI is going to do this for us and the report's going to come back, it's going to be produced by AI and we're going to analyze it, we're going to work with it a little bit, but we're not going to make this report sound human because it's not worth the time and effort for it, it's the information that matters, not the writing quality.

Speaker B:

That's one area, I would say.

Speaker B:

Another area is, as we think about our learning center, we just had a very interesting conversation with our marketing team the other day about the state of learning centers.

Speaker B:

Who's consuming this information primarily and who's the real audience for this information?

Speaker B:

You're gonna go back four years ago.

Speaker B:

It was humans that were doing research.

Speaker B:

They were reading these articles that would, you would write these articles, they'd show up in Google, you'd be optimizing for a keyword, and you'd hope that buyers, humans would land on that page from Google and would read your article.

Speaker B:

Well, I think the audience in just the last four years has dramatically changed for who the learning center is for today it's much more for AI robots.

Speaker B:

Because when we have a question now, if we go to Google, we get an answer from Google.

Speaker B:

We don't even click on pages as much as we used to.

Speaker B:

That's why most business websites are seeing a dramatic drop in website traffic.

Speaker B:

0 Click.

Speaker B:

The amount of searches that end in zero click because they just get the answer is skyrocketing.

Speaker B:

So that means less users are going to our website early in their research process.

Speaker B:

And many of our learning centers are developed for people that are early in their research process.

Speaker B:

And they're actually, whether they know they're doing this or they are delegating the entire research process to AI.

Speaker B:

Instead of going to Google and saying, who is the best roofer for me, just pick a roofer or whatever.

Speaker B:

We used to go and read the reviews.

Speaker B:

We click into the reviews.

Speaker B:

We'd read it manually.

Speaker B:

We'd then go to a website.

Speaker B:

If we liked what we saw, we stayed.

Speaker B:

If we didn't, we'd hit a back button.

Speaker B:

We go to another website.

Speaker B:

We look to see, do they have awards, does the quality of the work look good?

Speaker B:

Do they look professional, do they look credible?

Speaker B:

We might want to read some of their articles, get an understanding of how they do things, their process, all that type of stuff.

Speaker B:

Today, when we say who's the best roofer, what actually happens is AI is taking context.

Speaker B:

Everything it knows about you.

Speaker B:

I see it, you live in Southington, Connecticut, you're a CEO, you probably have a house of a certain type.

Speaker B:

Maybe I might ask you a question or two of like, are you looking for a cheap roof because you're selling your house soon?

Speaker B:

Are you looking for one that you're going to be staying in?

Speaker B:

You want to do a really good job, but outside of that, is doing all the research on its own.

Speaker B:

It's looking at every review, every page, everything.

Speaker B:

And it'll come back and say, based on what I know about you and the type of roof that you need with conviction, it would say you should go with ABC Roofing company.

Speaker B:

And if you don't go with them, maybe here's a couple you can go to that some backups.

Speaker B:

But I picked this company because they have the best reviews, the best reputation.

Speaker B:

They say that they work in your town and all these things.

Speaker B:

And I looked at their articles and I feel really good that this is a company you should go to.

Speaker B:

What most buyers do, they say, great, I'm going to call that company.

Speaker B:

And they never even go to the company's website.

Speaker B:

Massive change.

Speaker B:

So I think a lot of the content in your website, which used to have to sound like a storyteller, like a brand person, today just really needs to answer the questions.

Speaker B:

You have to make sure you answer every question.

Speaker B:

It's okay if it's AI generated.

Speaker B:

Now your service pages might be what people go to when they are actually deep in their research phase and they're much closer to making a buying decision that may want to sound more human written and have more videos, more proof points so they can see you and see your people.

Speaker B:

But I do think a lot of learning center content, it's okay if it's a little bit more AI ridden.

Speaker B:

And that's the philosophy that we're seeing we're testing out right now.

Speaker B:

I think everybody's different and there are still blogs that are read by humans because they're written for humans and people really value that.

Speaker B:

I think of a piece like what Matt Schumer put out six months ago whenever it was something big is happening and it was his perspectives of what's going on in the AI world.

Speaker B:

And that article was shared tens of millions of times and so many people I know read it and they actually read it that was written by a human for humans.

Speaker B:

I think if you're going to have great staple pieces of content like that and there's no promise, anything that's going to go viral, you're going to have great piece of content like that should be written for humans.

Speaker B:

But I think the far majority of what we can do, it's all about just being efficient.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

So if you were to think back 12 months ago, what is something that surprised you thinking now, oh, wow.

Speaker A:

That went totally different than I thought with regards to AI.

Speaker B:

I think 12 months ago I was still getting my head around agents that they could actually complete tasks.

Speaker B:

I think 12 months ago, I would say I knew this was coming.

Speaker B:

I didn't really fully know what an agent was or what it can actually do.

Speaker B:

I think we were just probably starting to dabble with skills.

Speaker B:

I'm trying to think even 12 months ago if those were out yet.

Speaker B:

I mean, this is how fast the world's changed.

Speaker B:

But now I can't even imagine not having agents and skills completing tasks on my behalf.

Speaker B:

I would say, again, this is not 12 months ago.

Speaker B:

This is probably five days ago.

Speaker B:

I'm playing with Codex and this is the first time I saw this again.

Speaker B:

I might be late to the game here, but it would say, and I'm going to pull it up on mine right now.

Speaker B:

So I read it the right exact way here.

Speaker B:

It says pursuing goal at the bottom.

Speaker B:

And this goal has been working for nine hours.

Speaker B:

I've never seen it do that.

Speaker B:

And what was happening was, even though it might be waiting for me to respond to something, it would say, I'm just going to keep going on the next task until you respond to me and I'm not going to be stopped by anything.

Speaker B:

I'm going to go and pursue and get this thing done all the way through.

Speaker B:

That didn't exist to me.

Speaker B:

I never saw that until this one project I'm working on.

Speaker B:

I only.

Speaker B:

That was around a few months ago.

Speaker B:

So I was going to go back a year ago.

Speaker B:

I couldn't even imagine that that would be where we are today.

Speaker B:

It's just that it was just going to go and complete tasks, control my desktop, do this, whatever, wherever I need it doing.

Speaker B:

So yeah.

Speaker B:

Cause I would say 12 months ago I was probably still like many people, using it as either a search engine or just writing content for me without that context layer you were talking about.

Speaker B:

Today, it's just a different world.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

And now we're gonna go the opposite direction.

Speaker A:

So one of my favorite statements in the last six months, probably.

Speaker A:

Well, it's just about six months ago, Microsoft's AI CEO Suleiman mentioned that in 12 to 18 months AI it will be capable of automating 80% of the white collar work.

Speaker A:

Right now we're six months into that statement.

Speaker A:

So we have about six to 12 months left.

Speaker A:

And a lot of CEOs that I talk to actually who really think of themselves as AI forward and as doing really well and have a high adoption rate from their company, push back and say, well, I don't think that's going to be possible.

Speaker A:

But I always still like to ask the question to people, what they think of it.

Speaker A:

Because I think it's such a fascinating statement.

Speaker A:

Because it.

Speaker A:

For me.

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker A:

It doesn't really matter if you believe it or if it actually happens at 80% are automated.

Speaker A:

I don't think that will happen.

Speaker A:

But that AI has the capability, changes entirely the game.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

So I would love to know what you sort of think where we're at in like 6 to 12 months.

Speaker B:

Great, great question, Hannah.

Speaker B:

I would like to think of this, look at this.

Speaker B:

A couple different perspectives.

Speaker B:

For starters, we live in a very competitive world.

Speaker B:

And even though not every company has fully embraced AI to its fullest, every company I know has embraced AI to a certain level.

Speaker B:

Their staff have all embraced AI to a certain level for the most part.

Speaker B:

Which means the average worker in this space is probably two to three times more efficient than they were just a few years ago.

Speaker B:

And that's across the board.

Speaker B:

Will we replace all those humans?

Speaker B:

The great debate.

Speaker B:

I think some Ford companies most certainly will.

Speaker B:

I think the average company probably won't because the average companies competing with other companies are also average and they're all rising at the same level, meaning all their outputs are probably a little bit more.

Speaker B:

But to stay competitive, they have to be performing at a higher level.

Speaker B:

So therefore they're going to still need most of those people.

Speaker B:

Although I do think that there will be some cuts across the board.

Speaker B:

I think the cuts sadly are coming from junior people that are not AI wizards.

Speaker B:

If they have gone to school and they haven't really embraced AI, AI automations, AI workflows, and I would also say other technologies, whether it be just being a tech whiz at what you do, could be social media content and videos or YouTube or something like that or anything else might be industry specific.

Speaker B:

If you're not a tech whiz like, you just figure stuff out really, really fast.

Speaker B:

If you just went to school and you thought you're going to have a job like a typical paralegal or somebody just graduated with a marketing degree and it's like, I just took my marketing class and I'm ready to go work for a marketing agency.

Speaker B:

I don't think businesses have as much of a need for people like that.

Speaker B:

That's where I think agents can really replace their work.

Speaker B:

And why bring on a junior person that we have to train how to be in a business environment?

Speaker B:

We used to bring those people on because we need them to do things, but AI can do those things.

Speaker B:

So I think that's where a lot of disruption will happen.

Speaker B:

So now going to 80%.

Speaker B:

I think it speaks back to what we were just saying before.

Speaker B:

AI will do 80% of the work and will replace 80% of the work that white collar people are doing.

Speaker B:

But I wouldn't think of it like, here's 100 jobs, 80 of them are going to go away.

Speaker B:

I think we look at it as here's 100 jobs and what those 100 people do, AI can do 80% of each person's job, but that person still has to do the other 20% because AI can't get it over to the 100% point.

Speaker B:

It really is blocked at that 80% where then the human still has to come in, whether you are an operations person, a lawyer, accounting person, marketing person, and say this 80% was right, but you're missing this other 20% and still has that job to do with AI.

Speaker B:

That's how I see it.

Speaker B:

I've been wrong before and I could be wrong, but that's how I'm seeing it play out right now in my world.

Speaker B:

And again, I'd always be curious if anyone else listening to this has seen anything different.

Speaker B:

But sometimes I will say, for many businesses, sometimes 80% is okay, and maybe we don't, but we don't need to pay the role, just get 80% of the way there.

Speaker B:

And that's good enough.

Speaker B:

And sometimes good enough is good enough.

Speaker A:

I had Leanne Labaka on my podcast a few weeks ago and she is the CEO of 2xu.

Speaker A:

So she has operational virtual assistants and she literally her go to market or her difference is she trains all of her virtual assistants massively on AI.

Speaker A:

But I love her approach.

Speaker A:

She's like, virtual assistants are relatively easy to replace with AI, but they are.

Speaker A:

All of her virtual assistants are constantly working themselves out of a job, eating themselves up the value chain.

Speaker A:

And I love that because they're not going to be replaced.

Speaker A:

You're not going to.

Speaker A:

That's what you mean with the AI wizard.

Speaker A:

But it's not necessarily that you have to have crazy technical skills.

Speaker A:

You just have to have that mindset of what can I do?

Speaker A:

Which part of my process can I do differently?

Speaker A:

That AI can actually handle that.

Speaker A:

And I thought that was such a cool way of thinking about it, you.

Speaker B:

Know, and this is probably the best advice that you can give anyone in this world right now is the greatest skill you can have is to be agile.

Speaker B:

You know, we hired a content manager for Impact.

Speaker B:

Austin was our content manager.

Speaker B:

He got promoted, he became a coach, and we brought in Ashley.

Speaker B:

The job description that Ashley was hired for, not Even a year ago is dramatically different than what we need her to do today, just night and day.

Speaker B:

And we just had this interesting conversation as a company about this because we couldn't have forecasted this is where it's going to go.

Speaker B:

And if Ashley wants to continue to grow and have her job, she needs to be incredibly agile.

Speaker B:

And she can't say to us.

Speaker B:

And she doesn't.

Speaker B:

She's great, but she can't say to us, this isn't what you hired me for.

Speaker B:

I'm sorry, but the way the world's going, as fast as this technology is changing, how companies are going to be embracing it, all of your roles, everyone listening to this, whether you're a CEO, leadership team member, or anywhere in the organization, your role is going to change dramatically in the next few years.

Speaker B:

Your ability to what?

Speaker B:

Hannah, you just said, be curious.

Speaker B:

Go ask AI.

Speaker B:

How can I do my job better using you?

Speaker B:

How can you help me get more out of my role?

Speaker B:

Learn this stuff, watch videos, try things that alone will put you into a different level than the average employee.

Speaker B:

And if you're willing to let your job continuously evolve what your organization needs from you, rapidly evolve and you do your best to keep up and have better conversations internally and be willing to try and do different things, you will grow and you'll thrive in this environment.

Speaker B:

But it's those people that, hey, I've been doing this way for the last 10 years and I don't want to change.

Speaker B:

And you know, this is the way we decided we were going to do it.

Speaker B:

And don't break that.

Speaker B:

It's like that's the stuff that is.

Speaker B:

Those are the people that are going to get displaced.

Speaker B:

Just the reality of it.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I'm absolutely convinced that there's going to be more jobs lost by companies going under that just not go with the flow and go of AI than AI actually replacing them.

Speaker A:

All right, So I want to thank you so much.

Speaker A:

There are so many amazing nuggets in there, so many valuable and practical tips that people can actually apply right away.

Speaker A:

If someone wanted to get in touch, where would be the best way to reach out to you?

Speaker B:

Yeah, the best way, my LinkedIn is good, but I get a lot of messages.

Speaker B:

Sometimes things get lost in there.

Speaker B:

So I will not attract you to message me on LinkedIn, but go to our website, impactplus.com, hit the talk to us button, fill out that form, and just in the form, just mention that you heard me on this show and that you want to have a conversation with me and my team will make sure that.

Speaker B:

That.

Speaker B:

That meeting gets set up.

Speaker A:

Awesome.

Speaker A:

I really, truly appreciate it.

Speaker A:

Thank you so much.

Speaker A:

And I really would love to follow up with you and hear how that second brain is going.

Speaker A:

I think it's fascinating.

Speaker B:

No, sounds good.

Speaker B:

And, Hannah, you are.

Speaker B:

You are such an inspiration.

Speaker B:

You're so brilliant, and it's an honor being on your show today, and I love the work that you're doing and how much you keep pushing, and it's just an honor to be able to be part of your community.

Speaker A:

Thank you.

Speaker A:

Thank you so much.

Speaker A:

Until next time.

Speaker A:

Bye.

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