The AI Trust Crisis: How Transparency Builds the Business Your Clients Won't Leave

Your clients already know you're using AI. The question is: do they trust you with it? This week, I sat down with Vinnie Fisher, founder and CEO of SiteTrust, a former M&A attorney with a 26-year career, and a leader who has built and exited three 7-to-8-figure companies generating over $400 million in sales. Vinnie isn't theorizing about the AI trust crisis. He's building the solution to it. What started as a simple transparency watermark on an AI ad turned into one of the most clicked elements on his clients' websites. The result? Higher conversions, stronger engagement, and a certifiable competitive advantage, not because they added AI, but because they disclosed it. In this conversation, Vinnie breaks down the four pillars of responsible AI adoption: disclosure, legal compliance, governance, and workforce clarity, and why AI trust transparency isn't a compliance checkbox; it's your next growth lever. If you're scaling a digital agency and using AI in your client delivery, your operations, or your marketing, this episode will challenge how you think about integrity, adoption, and what your clients actually need to stay loyal.

📚 Books Mentioned

• The Five Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell
• Predictable Success by Les McKeown
• The Trust Gap by Vinnie Fisher (forthcoming)
• Beyond Your Shadow by Vinnie Fisher
• Legacy Through Multiplication by Vinnie Fisher

Connect with Vinnie at SiteTrust.com and search "Vinnie Fisher" across social platforms; he's accessible and wants to hear your story. Be sure to check the his website for free resources from Vinnie, and get on the waitlist for his upcoming book, The Trust Gap.

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Transcript

Dr. William Attaway (00:00)
I'm excited today to have Vinnie Fisher on the podcast. Vinnie is the founder and CEO of SiteTrust, solving the AI trust crisis by providing independent verification and certification for organizations. After a 26 year career as a corporate business attorney, Vinnie built and exited three seven to eight figure companies, generating over $400 million in sales. Through his work helping businesses navigate complex challenges,

He identified the urgent need for credible AI transparency solutions, leading to the creation of SiteTrust Author of Beyond Your Shadow, Legacy Through Multiplication, and three other books, he's currently writing The Trust Gap, how to use transparency to win customers in a low trust environment. Vinnie lives in Akron, Ohio, married to Debbie for 30 years, and the father of four, he demonstrates that extraordinary achievement integrates faith, family, fitness, finance, and fun. Vinny, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Vinnie Fisher (01:05)
Dr. Attaway, thanks for having me, buddy.

Dr. William Attaway (01:28)
I would love to start Vinnie with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Vinnie Fisher (01:39)
you know, that's like, what's the age of the earth, right? So like, you know, I try to always like, like, look at that answer that question from like today's lens. And honestly, I'm so thankful to have pursued a career as a professional. So getting credentialed in my case as a lawyer, like that was a important part of my journey. It was like, there was like a lot of personal things I was solving for there, but like, I really had an excellent legal career and I still have one.

Dr. William Attaway (01:56)
Mm.

Vinnie Fisher (02:08)
That was a real big part of it. It was during that though that I started to see that maybe I was built for some other things, my tolerance for risk and my attention to certain other problems. And so, you know, my whole thing, Doc, is I'm somebody who like in my career sees a problem that I have. And I'm the classic person who sees the problem but has enough tolerance for risk that I choose to go out and try to solve the problem.

not just maybe buy someone else's solution to the problem. Now, if I can find a solution that works, I'd prefer to buy it, but if I don't find one, I go and build it. It's what I did in my last company called Fully Accountable. It was 2014, we were working through stuff and I'm not an accountant. I don't even like log into QuickBooks confidently today correctly. Like, it's not the thing. And we built this great company that we ended up selling and it sold again recently. But I...

My whole career has been this like from a professional standpoint, as I equip myself as a professional, I'm always looking at like, what's the marketplace and my skillset like asking of me. So this is like a today conversation. This isn't like, what did my grandma want me to do and become a lawyer back in the day? And that's true. But I think what I'm always doing is I'm probably doing something that most people don't do. I'm continually up leveling my professional career.

Dr. William Attaway (03:24)
So what does that look like? Like, you know, what does it look like to go from a very successful M&A attorney in your practice there into the entrepreneurial world of fully accountable and now SiteTrust ?  that requires different skills, that requires a different leadership level. How do you continue to level up and stay on top of your game?

Vinnie Fisher (03:45)
You know, I'm really thankful to have like this internal drive and I'll refer to risk a lot. Like I, I take quick action. So my two superpowers, you know, so like I'm friends with you. know people like you who are highly intelligent. You can remember a lot of things. You like, there's a reason why people want to work with you. Just highly intelligent.

My super weapon isn't the ability to remember things. My super weapon is my thing spins fast. So this thing up in my head spins really fast. And so I've always been a decent problem solver. So that's the first thing. And then my Spider-Man thing is I just, maybe because I lack a little bit of intelligence that the super intelligent have, I just tend to outwork everybody. And so part of that was a chip on my shoulder.

Dr. William Attaway (04:13)
Mmm. That's good.

Vinnie Fisher (04:34)
Doc, I made a decision early on in my life, like through brokenness in our family, through shame, that like, I always thought like people didn't like want to be around me or I wasn't likable. I had made a subconscious decision that later on I realized was a very conscious decision that if I was really good and I was able to do something really well, then you had to deal with me. Like.

Dr. William Attaway (04:55)
Hmm.

Vinnie Fisher (04:57)
It wasn't like you made a choice because you wanted to deal with me. I was an immovable force that you had to deal with. And so that's always kind of been like in health and to be real in when it's not so healthy, it's the same thing. If I can't be moved out of the way, then you got to deal with me.

Dr. William Attaway (05:09)
Hmm.

Hmm. That's really good. I get that. I think I have more than a little bit of this in me too. You may disagree with me, but you're not going to outwork me. You know, we're going to put our shoulder into it and we're going to get things done.

Vinnie Fisher (05:24)
Yeah.

And it took me a long time to realize what a driven personality is, because not everyone has it, right? And so I get the privilege to, I don't seek the front of the room because like, I want to be in the front of the room. I typically move to the front of the room because of the drive of my personality.

Dr. William Attaway (05:31)
Yeah, no, that's true.

And I think that helps explain some of these leaps, because I mean, I think about an M&A attorney with a successful practice. The last thing I would think of that you want to jump into is starting something like fully accountable. Right. And then jumping from that into SiteTrust which seems completely unrelated to the first two. Like, what is this journey? Is this part of the drive? Is it seeing an opportunity? What's driving?

Vinnie Fisher (05:53)
You

Yeah, you know, I just got a super great compliment the other day. I'm going to go with it for a while. A friend of mine, Kent said, Vinnie you're the guy who goes out in the rain and you can find things in between the raindrops. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, why I liked that compliment is this is something that someone else could see. And I just happened to like see it and like,

Dr. William Attaway (06:18)
that's so good. I love that.

Yes.

That's good.

Vinnie Fisher (06:29)
as I'm figuring it out, put up a broken website, as I'm figuring it out, like get version one of it up there, where I, what I would like to encourage everybody is sometimes we can over iterate before we get moving. And I think it's a, oh, it's a protection mechanism of professionals. Like I don't want to be seen as less professional because I, it's not exactly the vision of what I have. And so I have this,

Dr. William Attaway (06:41)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Vinnie Fisher (06:55)
this gift, I think it's a gift, I like to treat it as one, where I don't need it to be in its exact phase three version to go. And I think that's a lot of it. And so honestly, fully accountable, never, that was solving a problem that I'm not good at keeping what I make.

Dr. William Attaway (07:03)
Mm. Mm. That's good.

Vinnie Fisher (07:14)
I was great at driving. I'm always revenue first, revenue first, revenue first. And so fully accountable was to solve like, we keep some of the stuff we're driving through? And so that was really a solving that problem. If you look at every one of them, their personal nature. So SiteTrust today for me, Doc, like, see this like lack.

of integrity in the marketplace, that we're hiding behind how we use AI and it's moving so fast as we go through adoption. This is an enhancement to the workforce. This isn't a replacement of it. And so I want to encourage people to up level, to how do we adopt it from, and think of this as a leadership opportunity, not as a tool opportunity.

Dr. William Attaway (07:44)
Yeah.

Hmm. So so what problem is SiteTrust solving?

Vinnie Fisher (07:57)
You know, as I started, my first thing I was solving was, like, I was around young people in the marketplace and they would, they, I would, one day I was home and we were testing an ad for a previous company we had and.

My team didn't like that we were using avatar Vinnie versus me. Like we were being deceptive. I'm like, it's me. It's like my words, it's everything. We just wanted to get an ad up and they're like, well, it still isn't right. So we went under the hood and put a watermark and just said, you know, made with AI and our conversions went up. So I brought this home to like my kitchen table and a 20 something who's got a little business going, they're working in. like, well, that makes sense because if I know it's AI, I can deal with it differently. If I don't, I don't trust anything.

Dr. William Attaway (08:28)
interesting.

Hmm Wow

Vinnie Fisher (08:39)
So the first thing we set out to

go for is, wait a minute, this is classic 101 and customer engagement. We are eroding trust.

by making people question what it is. So we started like, wait a minute, when I deal with customer service now and it says AI Robbie, I just deal with it for what it is. If I'm wondering what it is, I'm on the phone or I'm like, this person isn't listening to me now. like, what is it? And all of a sudden I'm frustrated for these reasons that aren't necessary if I had just disclosed it. So that's where we started. And we got a bunch of companies where like, we totally want that. We see it. It's way ahead of the market. They're like, do we have to do it? I'm like,

Dr. William Attaway (09:05)
Mm.

Vinnie Fisher (09:16)
Okay, now we're having a compliance discussion. Are there specific rules that say I have to do it? I'm like, what about the trust with your customer? Like, why do you want to be seen as somebody who's blowing your integrity for this? And then it came down to simple, basic things. We don't have as like terms and conditions and privacy policy. So we want to solve for the first basic legal issue, make a workable AI policy, give you something that gives you credibility with your customer. It was only then that we saw the other elements of

Dr. William Attaway (09:37)
Hmm.

Vinnie Fisher (09:46)
responsible AI, which how do you deal with governance in your company? How do you actually get ahead of compliance? Because the rules that are out there now are clear directive of where this thing is going. And then finally, our workforce, where we were seeing these like role confusion. And so we just decided to build out the entire four pieces of how to have accountability across all four of those pillars for responsible AI.

Dr. William Attaway (10:10)
brilliant. And I would agree with seeing between the raindrops. That's so good. I think that you are actually getting your forward thinking ahead of what a lot of people are discussing right now, which is how do we regulate this industry? I this is the Wild West in a lot of ways, you know, and what you're talking about is kind of getting ahead of even the regulation discussion.

Vinnie Fisher (10:27)
Yeah, it is.

Yeah, you know, it's funny if you track and this is where like I'm excited in the sense that I'm a highly experienced lawyer. This is my world corporate. What do you disclose? What are the risks you're taking? Like this is like Tuesday for me. I think about this kind of stuff very regularly. And so, you know, when I sit and look at the landscape, I want to start out with something very intellectually honest. This is the fastest disruption I've ever seen to business in the 30 years I've been in business. So I want to start as a society. we are moving lightning fast.

The phone doesn't touch this disruption. Like the internet itself, not even within the concept of the level of speed of disruption that AI is having. I want to start there. But I also like realize that if you track all regulation, it's typically mostly defined by the marketplace.

So we're heading towards self-disclosure. In case anyone's wondering, like that's where we go with this stuff. So why wouldn't we, as the marketplace, try to adopt a standard for accountability that would be acceptable to the customer company engagement process? So we're trying to battle in that ethics leadership discussion and give tools so that when we get to the point of states and federal governments regulating, that it's built on the back of what the marketplace has been setting as the standard.

Dr. William Attaway (11:23)
Hmm.

Hmm. You know, one of the components that I think makes a leader truly catalytic is to live a life of integrity, right? Where all the parts of your life are integrated together. There's not this one part that's walled off over here where you're like, we don't want what happens over there to touch anything else or, you know, there to be any cross play. Well, that's a cute myth. But the reality is that we're one person. And to be a person of integrity means every part touches all the other parts.

What you're describing is a way to operate in this new Wild West space with integrity. That's what I'm hearing.

Vinnie Fisher (12:27)
Yep. And we don't, I think if you say to yourself as a leader, lock in, if you can't see me and you just hear me, then lock in. we don't, when you ask the question, do I have to do it? Like, is the rules requiring me to it? I might argue that you're asking the wrong question. Like, is this a good move for my company as it relates to our customers?

Dr. William Attaway (12:43)
agree.

Vinnie Fisher (12:48)
Like, what's the thing I should be thinking about doing? Is this the good, is this something I should be considering as my workforce is being the most disrupted it's ever been disrupted? I feel like those are better questions. And so if we're going to live like within like this, so to speak, greater good of society and do things that are ROI positive, then those are good questions to ask. Compliance is there. We're always going to have to deal with it. If your, if your SiteTrust doesn't do certain things, then our friends at the FTC or you fill in your three letter agency, aren't going to like certain parts of that.

But I feel like we are at a part and I get it I get me and companies like us are a little bit ahead of the curve on this But this is where we're going So do we the humans want to drive some of that or do we want to let it be? Driven for us and I think people like me who are a little bit more mavericks and a little bit more driven I feel this social responsibility to take a few of my bucks Maybe more than a few and go and see if we can try to solve for a problem

Dr. William Attaway (13:44)
Well, and I think it is a problem. And like you mentioned, when people don't know what they're dealing with, there is a wall that goes up. But when we take what Maxwell calls the high road leadership, and we do the disclosure, and we say, hey, this is what we're doing, this is why, and this is how. Man, it really causes us, I think, not to repel, but to lean in.

it starts to build that trust, which I would imagine is why you have the word trust right there in your company name.

Vinnie Fisher (14:16)
Well, it's funny, in all fairness, I've owned that wonderful name since 2012. I've always been around this thing because people ask me, how much did you pay for that domain? Like today, I would have had to pay a couple bucks for that, right? That would have been sitting in someone's library. But I've always been around this issue as it was to marketing and things. And what's really interesting to me is like we got our badge live. It's a core part of our thing. Like you stand for this. It's the most clicked thing on our client's website.

Dr. William Attaway (14:21)
⁓ ha, nuts.

Wow.

Vinnie Fisher (14:45)
And what we track now in our whole analytics portal, it's driving engagement and trust. Like, we are a converter. We're helping.

Dr. William Attaway (14:52)
Hmm.

Vinnie Fisher (14:56)
We're actually increasing. You can't get rid of that gap, right? You have clients, you have a whole company. You're not going to get rid of that gap between you and who are there on your team or who you work with, but you certainly can reduce the size of that valley. And I think things like this are doing that. And so this isn't a compliance issue. This is customer stuff. if I, with great integrity, say I do this, I've been able to prove math-wise and customers

Dr. William Attaway (15:11)
Mm.

Vinnie Fisher (15:24)
even show you in our testimonials, like we've increased engagement. If nothing else, like it's a competitive advantage to you as a business leader.

Dr. William Attaway (15:33)
Why do you think trust is in such short supply when it comes to people's interactions with businesses?

Vinnie Fisher (15:39)
Look at the

society,  of the story arc where we are right now, right?

We are, we have, we have for the last X amount of years, like I'm a big study of history. Like we swing in pendulums. Like we have times where we were at work, we're united and we have times where we're like kind of on our own and we're doing our own thing. Well, for a period of time, we have been in this like loud, you're, you're, you're yourself, do your best thing for yourself mode. And so society is probably about the least United it's been in a long time. And so unfortunately you, you usually.

need some large existential thing to start to drive unity again. Well, I think one of them is this AI. Like we might not realize this. It's like we're telling a pre-story, but so we get to 2027, 2028, you know, we were using language like 2030, but now people are, it's moving so fast. Like, oh, when we get to 2027, well, that's like next week. Like, like I think that we are actually driving.

Dr. William Attaway (16:31)
Right.

Vinnie Fisher (16:37)
towards this and there aren't other things going on in our world that do that but we have been the most divided and so it's trust is at a at the lowest level that I've seen in business and it's started with things like fake videos and this stuff and that stuff but I think that all came as a result of we were in a time when all I had to do is put up one testimonial and now no one believes that because I can generate it in four seconds on Claude.

So we have this deficit of belief. So we're gonna enter a phase, and we may already be in this phase, where you need to show me, not just tell me.

Dr. William Attaway (17:10)
You know, as I think about the title of your new book that you're working on, The Trust Gap, you know, that sounds like a lot of what we're talking about here. I expect that's what you're writing and gonna be sharing a lot more on. Yeah. I look forward to reading that. I think that's gonna have a lot of applicability no matter the industry.

Vinnie Fisher (17:13)
Yeah.

Do a lot of research on it. I'm under the hood. That's right. Yep.

Yeah, you know, that's why I'm trying to make it a bigger book than just about like the idea of AI. AI has got a piece in the book. And I think it would be almost intellectually dishonest if we didn't address that piece of it, because it's so in everything we do. But I think this is just the current example of society where we will throw away character and integrity or advancement.

And I just think like we have to address some really hard things and some good things. Like these things are going to be good for business in lots of ways, but because we can't help ourselves, we're going to abuse them too.

Dr. William Attaway (18:03)
Yeah.

Hmm.

throw away our character for advancement. Man, I can think of stories that immediately flashed of mind, and I bet you can too.

Vinnie Fisher (18:15)
Oh my God, I if I'm be real, everyone knows my story if they wanna look. My first thing was to make money, to no longer be a poor kid. It didn't even occur to me that integrity was a key ingredient to doing something well. It was just like, do I have money left? Can we pay our bills? It was only as I start to really get healthy in myself, who I am, who I am in this community, what my obligations are, that I realized you can do both. And you don't have to throw away one for the other.

Dr. William Attaway (18:27)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Good. that's good. I think that's something that I would challenge the listeners to really consider. You know, this is not a conversation that you have had or something that you have really reflected on. This is something that's really good for your weekly review to think through and say, wow, are there areas in my life where I am compromising on a value, a core value for me personally, in order to pursue advancement?

Vinnie Fisher (19:10)
You know, and I'll tell you, Doc, this hasn't always been my story. For me, this doesn't have to be a podcast about faith, but for me, finding out who I am and understanding my gifts, for me, that journey also involved like...

Dr. William Attaway (19:11)
I think that is not discussed enough.

Vinnie Fisher (19:25)
learning and knowing who God is and then learning and knowing who I am in this story of who Jesus claims he is. And so for me, it was such a big deal and me being able to lead other people that I learned to be led. so I'm really thankful for all that because like people like say, oh my gosh, that, you know, no one talks about my nine figure company that I broke, right? They only talk about the ones I sold, right? And honestly, the most loving thing that happened to me was breaking my biggest company because I think it is what allowed me to be who

Dr. William Attaway (19:37)
Mmm, that's good.

Hmm.

Vinnie Fisher (19:55)
I am today.

Dr. William Attaway (19:56)
Wow. That's a gift. Probably didn't feel like it in the moment, but yeah.

Vinnie Fisher (20:02)
it did not and actually it

got even a little healthier. I couldn't even talk about it. I had to like avoid it. And then I realized that like, John Maxwell said this to me once, like failures and successes are like actually the same thing. Like if we don't actually look at them the same way, then all of a sudden we'll do things like puff ourselves up.

Dr. William Attaway (20:07)
Hmm. Yeah.

Hmm hmm

Vinnie Fisher (20:22)
or like we'll give the disproportionate relationship to success, but we'll do the same thing to failure. Like we gotta hide it, we gotta, so they're really the same thing. And if you can get to a point where they're the same, then you can enjoy today for what it is.

Dr. William Attaway (20:30)
good.

Hmm. that's good. All the things that we've talked about have been the vocational side of Vinny. But like I said at the top, you've been married for 30 years to Debbie, father of four kids. How does that play into this? In other words, like it takes a lot of hours, a lot of effort, a lot of mental margin and time to build what we've talked about you building.

Vinnie Fisher (20:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I was very much.

Dr. William Attaway (21:01)
How does that play

into a marriage that goes the distance?

Vinnie Fisher (21:04)
Yeah, praise God for that, buddy. So we just got invited to a wedding and last night we were talking, literally last night we were talking about this and this young couple was like, what's your advice for couples? And I said, we give one universal piece of advice. Well, two, for us that we have a Christ-centered marriage and thank you for that. Thank, praise God. But that's our story. Not everyone has that story, but everyone can have the second one. And that is we give each other the benefit of the doubt.

Dr. William Attaway (21:29)
that's good. Assume the best. That's good.

Vinnie Fisher (21:30)
And so that's always our little bit

of like our ninja long time married advice. What would you tell everyone? Just give each other the benefit of the doubt. We're so quick to accuse each other of something as opposed to just trust each other. And so Deb and I, we fight our best for unity. And like, if we don't know something, we try our best to not make it up. And we just assume that we have each other's best interests at heart.

Dr. William Attaway (21:51)
You know, a high level of trust seems to be the theme of our discussion today.

Vinnie Fisher (21:55)
Amen, buddy, amen. I'll tell you, one thing I would say for anyone listening and leader and professional is I was a poor kid. I was the guy who didn't want to live the life that I had of a broken family, broken marriages, a lot of stuff, criminality, sexual stuff, just stuff. And I didn't want that.

what was interesting, I solved for the first problem I thought, which was money, which is one of the most basic functions of society. Well, I started letting it be my thing. Well, as I was in my late 30s and early 40s, really late 30 and very early 40, I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do. I was making success my run and I was kind of leaving my family in scraps. Well, praise God, I made a massive change to that. And the core of like my, and actually I got actually even better at being a leader

Dr. William Attaway (22:30)
Mm.

Vinnie Fisher (22:41)
because I didn't want to change certain things that were important. like I am the guy, I believe in my heart wholeheartedly, we're at something and you're talking to my wife and or my kids, their eyes aren't rolling and they aren't looking away. They see a guy who's put his family at the center of all of it.

Dr. William Attaway (23:01)
Hmm. Hmm. You know, I heard going back to Maxwell, you mentioned earlier that, you he said that the goal that he's had for his life for a very long time is that the people who know him best and are closest to him respect and love him most. It's one thing for people who barely know you, who read your books or something to say, that's, you know, great guy, go Vinnie ⁓ For those closest to you not to roll their eyes. That to me, so good.

Vinnie Fisher (23:26)
I love that. I think I have that.

I actually confidently know I have that. I've had three or four tastes of mortality in the last few years, like legit, almost died in a car accident. Each of those moments, like...

Dr. William Attaway (23:32)
That's so good.

Vinnie Fisher (23:44)
And now, I talk about this with people, can you be the guy where your wife is proud of you? Can you be the dad where your kids are not necessarily ready to throw up because other people are bragging about you?

And so I love it. And I'll be honest, I probably backed into that. I don't know if I was as intentional from the beginning, but I started to see it and I wanted it. And so there I was, I landed in that. So can people be intentional about it? Sure. Was I? No, I probably worked my way into it, but I'm thankful I'm there. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway (24:18)
100%.

I think that's grace. That's right. That's right.

Vinnie Fisher (24:21)
That's great. Mercy. I'll take it. I need more of it. So, you know, as you

listen to this, if you're somebody like, I need all that, you want to pray for me? I probably pray for Debbie because she needs it more than anybody. Yeah. That's right.

Dr. William Attaway (24:30)
Ha ha

You know, Vinnie, a lot of the people who are listening are exploring even just mentally the idea of their next chapter. You know, they've had a career maybe for a decade or two or even three, and they're thinking about their next chapter and what this could look like. And maybe it's something on the side in addition to what they're doing in their day job. Maybe it's a full leap into something different. You you've done this a couple of times. You know, if you had the opportunity to sit across the table,

with somebody who's considering that or looking at that evaluating, what would you love to say to them?

Vinnie Fisher (25:08)
I think a lot of professionals in our society want to do exactly what you just described. They know they're meant for more. So I don't really believe in the concept of retirement. I believe we may retire out of certain things and then do something else. So I'm an anti-retirement kind of guy, so I'm going to start there. I think we can move in, get more time on our calendar, move into different phases of our career. But the one thing I know is true is so many people come to me as an entrepreneur, hey, I want to start this thing and do this thing.

solving for money or for something and I noticed that like wherever I've done something really well and I've stuck with it I have this passion to do it. The reason why SiteTrust is going to work is because I have a passion to solve for leadership and AI adoption because to do something well

Like that passion has to have this underlying conviction that when things aren't working, that I'm willing to do all, I have this unreasonable expectation that allows me to stick in the game. What I noticed most people is they didn't have that starting passion. So what I would encourage them to do is like as they dream about their talents, their skills, who they can help, yeah, ride the wave of the new stuff, great. Like we're mostly copycats in the marketplace, that's real.

Dr. William Attaway (26:18)
Good.

Vinnie Fisher (26:29)
Like for me, I've had to learn to find what things I'm passionate about. I'll be real. We own this health company. It was one of my eight figure success stories. I was never really passionate about it. And so it kind of ran like a company that...

Like we hit one of them and it worked and that was great and all, but we were never, it never really, so when tough times came, I was quick to jump off the thing. Now we sold it and it was great and all, I didn't want to fight through it. And so I think if somebody's looking at what they're going to do to add, rarely does somebody completely switch.

and they usually add to what they are. And I think when you look at 20 years of your career, that's probably the right posture. And I would say like, if you're not like, if there's not this underlying passion, which then gives you the conviction to stick through the tough stuff, then I might encourage you to keep looking.

Dr. William Attaway (27:24)
Mmm, that's good counsel.

When you think about SiteTrust trust, What is the one thing you want most?

Vinnie Fisher (27:31)
You know, I really want, I want society, I'm pro-AI, and there's this underlying, low-key, undiscussed fear that like we're building this thing to take over our lives. And I just feel like that's a category of fear. And what I hope the most is that,

in the white, I think the most disrupted part of society is the white collar workforce. So that's where I live. I don't really live in the blue collar society. I delightfully want my furnace fixed, but it's not where I live in business. And so what I really hope for is that...

Dr. William Attaway (27:58)
Mm.

Vinnie Fisher (28:08)
that as people up level in society, we change the way the workforce in the white collar society, maybe we can have a healthy approach to the adoption. And maybe we can make a difference about how to enhance the marketplace of work, not be in fear of that it's going to remove us. And so an example would be, don't, now I'm gonna get a little bit weird on us for a second, okay, Doc? And so I don't know that we were designed to sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day.

So could some of this stuff allow us to be more capable, more efficient so we can get back to doing the parts of work that are more valuable to human-to-human engagement? There is a real possibility that this could help us do those things. Now, I recognize in my research that we're adding more work hours right now, not less. I want to be fair. But is it also possible that we could allow a computer to do some of its computer work? ⁓

was supposed to do the work all along.

Dr. William Attaway (29:08)
Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Vinnie Fisher (29:11)
So that's just, I know that's a little advanced out there, but we're gonna need people who are gonna train and deploy in a way that gives humans better options on how to do this right. I don't believe in this job apocalypse. And if it's so, it's gonna be so long after you're pushing up daffodils, that's not a discussion that is for today. Because we are not by humans, early adopters. We just aren't.

So this noise that's going on right now that like everything's going to change by 2027, we need to slow that down a little bit. But in the process, can we see our part in this? And can we actually do it? That's what I desire is just like somewhere in ethics, and I get it, when left to my own devices, I just want to eat and make money in my selfishness. Well, can we somehow marry the advancement of business and improvement of the workforce at the same time?

Dr. William Attaway (29:41)
That's good.

Mm. I love that.

Vinnie Fisher (30:02)
That's my altruistic goal. And it's gonna spend me, I'm gonna have to spend a few bucks to make this work because that's this lofty thing. And most people don't wanna live in the lofty. They need a converting offer. So if you wanna give blood or donate to my children's education fund while I figure this out, please. But we're excited about it. And people realize this is a leadership issue. Now to let me build my next tool.

Dr. William Attaway (30:19)
Good

Yeah, that's well said. Obviously, I like to read and many of our listeners do as well. Is there a book that you would recommend that has made a big difference in your journey?

Vinnie Fisher (30:35)
You know, for me, it's a selfish plug, but I really like the Bible. so, but that's a personal journey between me and Jesus. So I don't offer up the Bible as someone else's. You know, I offer up suggestions of books based on where you're in. So right now I'm in like 3.0, maybe even 4.0 of leadership. So here's what just happened to me. John Maxwell, I have a boy crush on him. I read all his stuff and it's great. And I'm in like a thing with him and it's great.

have proximity to him, but his stuff is great even if I didn't. Years ago I read a book called The Five Levels of Leadership and so I reread things and so we sold fully accountable. I was a level five leader and I know that because I sold it to my management team and then so I like aspired to multiplication within that book. Well just the other day I was reading it and I'm like dang in my new company I'm a level two leader again. I'm back at level two and here I am walking through it. So I'm in this phase right now where I'm going back and reading some of my favorite leadership

Dr. William Attaway (31:26)
Mmm.

Vinnie Fisher (31:34)
books because I'm leading a new team. And so I read in categories and so I would encourage if you want a category of leadership then find the category you're in and maybe go back in your pile of stuff you love reading and maybe not go find the next thing to read.

Dr. William Attaway (31:51)
good. Good advice. And that's a great book. Vinnie last question I've got for you as we wrap up today. You know, I think a lot of our listeners can look at you and say, my goodness, man, Vinnie, multiple exits, building these successful practices and attorneys, successful new business, multiple books he's written. Man, he doesn't struggle like I struggle. He's never had to deal with what I have to deal with. He's never wrestled with the problems that I have today.

We know that's silly, but often from the outside, if somebody's looking at your highlight reel, that can be their perspective. To kind of pop that balloon a little bit, I ask you this question. If I had the ability to snap my fingers and solve one problem right now in your business, what would you like me to solve?

Vinnie Fisher (32:38)
our sales cycle, right? So I have a new sales team. I don't want to pigeonhole myself into it like I historically do in our businesses. so working on our, I'm in the early struggle phase of the, know, when you think of predictable success, classic book, I'm in the early cycle of early struggle of a startup. And so I get to live all the startup things. It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you could, that just means you'll spend it faster. ⁓

Dr. William Attaway (32:52)
Yep. Predictable success. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right.

Vinnie Fisher (33:05)
I'm in the literal startup phase of making my offer convert. And so we all go through this. You don't get to cheat those. You just get to spend money faster if you have it. So we don't get to cheat that process. So people come up and go, Vinnie, I want to do what you do. And I say, are you prepared to do what I had to do?

Dr. William Attaway (33:20)
Hmm. Hmm. What a great question.

Mm.

Vinnie, this has been a master class today, as it is every time we talk really. But I'm so glad to get to share this conversation with our listeners. I know many of them are going to want to connect with you, continue to learn from you, and find out more about SiteTrust and how they can engage that for their business. What's the best way for them to do that?

Vinnie Fisher (33:44)
You can find us at SiteTrust .com, that's an easy way to get us. Vinnie Fisher, everything in social. So some of those I manage, some of that the team manages, but I'm very accessible. If you can't find Vinny Fisher, then it's because you're not looking. And so I'm actually quite accessible and I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear about your story. We have...

some great resources that we'd like to give away. you'll see in the show notes, we'll give some resources away to everybody. Please take advantage of those. This is all about a lens forward in today's society. so get on our list also for our wait list for the book. And if you're on that, then you get all the toys that go along with that. I've written now, this will be my fifth book. I'm not trying to make money as an author. I found out that's not something you do unless you're John Maxwell, but everyone else gets the privilege of that. So we're just trying to help.

lot of resources. Take advantage of this.

Dr. William Attaway (34:32)
So good. We'll have those links in the show notes. Vinnie, thanks for your time and your generosity today.