The Undeniable Leader with Rob Cressy

AI Agents Are Here. Here's What You Need to Know Right Now.

• Rob Cressy

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The AI agent era just went from "coming soon" to "it's live." In this episode of The Undeniable Leader, Rob Cressy breaks down what Claude Managed Agents and Notion's latest AI integration mean for entrepreneurs who want to build digital employees into their business. He walks through his actual builds, shares the Gold Vault infrastructure that makes AI agents possible, and explains why being agent ready comes down to clean data, clear systems, and a willingness to do the work. You don't need a tech background to capitalize on the biggest opportunity in business right now.

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What's good? It's Rob. If you vibe with this show and you're a high performer who has a standard of personal excellence, the biggest thing that you can do to help us out is to share this with a friend who needs to hear this. Whether you text them or you just share this on social media, that's how this show grows and it helps others at the same time. We really appreciate this. Enjoy the show. The AI agent era is here, and today we are in a big moment in the world of AI. And what I wanted to do was share some perspectives for how you can be thinking about designing AI agents into your business. What needs to be happened? What are the prerequisites for you to do this? And how you do not need to be a tech person in order to capitalize on all of this stuff. So in the last 24 hours, two things have happened. Number one, Claude released managed agents. And essentially, don't overly worry about what that means. Just know that Claude is now in the agent game. And if you've been listening to anything that I've been sharing over the last month, I've gone from 100% chat GBT over the last three years to 0% Chat GBT and 100% Claude. And the next thing that I've done that has been a massive level up for my business is I'm using Notion, which connects directly into Claude, and I call it my gold vault, aka my single source of truth that documents every system, process, build, field note, transcript, level of intelligence for it. Because one of the biggest holes in the boat for so many people, and this is definitely a prerequisite in the AI era, is having clean organization and structure in the way that your data and your knowledge flows for your business. And yesterday, Notion came out and said, guess what? We're bringing out the next level of agents into what we're doing, and we are one of the partners with Claude. So I got back from uh being with my family at Siesta Key Beach last night, and I see both of these things drop, and it's like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Alarm bells are going off in my head, being like, okay, this is a thing, this is a moment. And I spent this morning digging a little bit deeper into this. And what I wanted to do was peel the layers of what I'm seeing right now, what my first moves are, and how you can do the same. And this does not mean that you need to start integrating AI agents into what you're doing. What I wanted to do was plant the seed of possibility for you, of what's happening right now, as well as what's on the horizon, so that you can prepare yourself, your team, your business for being AI agent ready moving forward. So, what I'm actually gonna do here is I'm gonna share my screen because um I was cooking on this inside of Claude, and one of the things that I ended up doing here, and I'll actually start at the top here, is I started a brand new thread, and I've got a project called Claude Code, where I am dropping all my thoughts and the things that I'm building inside of Claude. And I said, I'm going to start using Claude Managed Agents for the first time. This is picking up off a thread that I previously had in VS Code. This is how I started. So essentially, I just started to go down the process of installing managed agents into what I'm doing. I'm using VS Code, which is called Visual Studio Code, to run Claude Code. And what it did is it just worked me, gave me the step by step for what to do. What is this right now? So uh what managed agents actually is. Think of it this way right now, when you're using Claude Code, Claude runs on your machine and your terminal. Manage agents flip that. You define an agent, a model, a system, a tool, define the environment, start a session, and Claude runs it autonomously. It's like, okay, cool. And remember, I don't have a tech background, I don't have a coding background, so I need translation from Claude in order to do this. So what it ends up doing for me to install all this on my local computer, I just go step by step by step in helping understand what I am doing here. And side note, one of the things that I always do for my clients, whenever I'm going through a process of installing something new, and this is day one, I will then do it for myself first, and then I will tell Claude, hey, let's turn this into a field note where my clients can follow the same roadmap step by step so that they can do it for themselves. And then I drop that in Notion in my field notes library. So I'm just going step by step all the way through this thing here, and then I get to a point where I'm like, I feel like this is a big thing. Help me understand what's actually going on right now. So what it really said is up until now, every time you use Claude, it's been a conversation. You talk, it responds, it talks again. And even in Claude Code, it can do some of the work while you approve, and I'm in the loop. Managed agents has this bad boy cooking like it is a digital employee. So now this is like the holy grail of what we've been working for for three and a half years in the world of AI. So the thing that really helped me unlock this thing, and I'm gonna get to where this is, is it said something to me, and I'm trying to find it here. Um, here we go. So in year one with AI, we were like, oh my god, chat GBT can write a blog post or copy for something. And then in year two, it can start to think for itself. You're like, whoa, this thing's getting significantly better. In year three, it can start to connect to tools. Here comes Canva, here comes integrations with Zapier, N8 Enter, these other things. Now in year four, AI can actually do the work. And for any of us who have been using Claude over the last two months, one of the things that's been so impressive is it has turned into a builder where you're just cooking on something. It's like, boom, here's an interactive artifact. Or if you're using Claude Code, boom, here's a brand new website. Goodbye, WordPress. Hello, your own self-hosted version of this. So that's a maturation of this. And the vision for me has always been in preparation for the moments in which we can integrate AI agents. Because one of the things that's always foundational for me is what am I willing to do that other people are not? One of the things that I saw immediately, I used Chat GPT the first week it came out, and within the first minute of using it, I saw the next decade of business. I was like, I'm all in. There is no ceiling to this game. Everything is possible. Let's go. And when we started to hear about agents, a lot of it was a bunch of BS and smoke. It was these heavily N8N automations with just lots of step and very technical. And you're like, this doesn't really seem like what everybody's talking about, right? 2025 was supposed to be the year of AI agents. I didn't buy it. Then uh at the end of 2025, we see OpenClaw come out, and everyone's like, holy smokes, Batman, this is the new good, good. And I've been using OpenClaw, and it does have a lot of agenting behavior, and you can do these things there. And it's one of those things that I am always gonna be willing to invest in anything that's gonna allow me to thousand X my scalability, especially if you have the right systems and infrastructure and processes in the way that you are doing things, which is why I use Notion as my gold vault. And with this, and I'm gonna see if I can share this on this screen right here. Um I don't believe I can, so I'm gonna flip back to this right here. Uh, that's what makes this so um exciting is that those of us who are willing to put in the work and show the receipts are going to be able to reap the biggest rewards moving forward. So here's what actually happened is this week Claude launched the managed agents. So this does not mean right now you push a button and your entire business is automated, it just means the game just got significantly better. And right now, from a user perspective, there might be a slight technical barrier for many people because you're gonna need to create a Claude API key and you're gonna need to use Claude code. And part of the reason why I do these things is so that I can understand how this works, so then when this becomes significantly more seamless and integrated inside of Claude natively, like many people are seeing with co-work right now, or uh inside of Notion, you're like, oh, I understand how these things work. Because remember, you cannot fake experience. And in the AI era, one of the things that gives me so much confidence for me and my employee, not my employees, my team and my clients is we do the work. We've got the receipts. A lot of people talk about these things, not a lot of people have the receipts to back them up, and this is one of these things that is going to compound if you do, but also compound if you don't. So, with this, digital employees in the next 12 months are here. So when we talk about or here, wow, here comes the gap. There's people who are losing their jobs. Oracle lays off 30,000 people. Then you've also got the guy who built a$1.8 billion company with two employees in all AI. You're like, well, wait a second. There's something happening right now in the world of AI that is significantly shifting everything. There has never been a better time in the history of the world to make your dreams happen than right this moment right now. And if you knew on the other side of you learning how to integrate AI agents into your business is millions of dollars, and it's actually super simple, and it's all based around everything you're already doing in your business right now. Would you be interested? I certainly am. That's why I'm doing this, and that's why I've got these receipts right here. So, and what I actually did is I had Claude build me the beats for this podcast because I'm super excited right now. I actually stress tested into Claude right here. I said, This feels like a big moment right now, something I've been working for for three and a half years, but I almost want you to tell me where I'm not seeing things correctly, where this isn't a moment. And it essentially said, Rob, this is a moment, but it's not just push a button and everything's good. This is the start of the moment for the next 12 to eight to 24 months. So, right here. The nuclear moment you're sensing isn't wrong, but it's not one explosion. It's a chain reaction that's starting now. It will compound over the next 12 to 24 months as the models get better, the tools get more connected, and the platforms make it easier. You're on the front edge of that curve. So, yes, trust the feeling this is the moment, and you're not early in a speculative way, you're early in a the infrastructure just went live and I'm building on top of it today. That's a different type of early, right? So that's why I'm even doing this podcast right now. Is everything that I'm seeing and my intuition is like this feels like a thing, it's a thing, I'm building with it. Now I'm sharing this, and I'm about to do some client calls immediately later today, where I'm like, listen, guys, all that stuff we've been building and talking about, it's happening. Let's go. So I then just said, be help me create the podcast script so that I can do this in a more organized manner. So, why are most people in businesses not going to be ready to take advantage of the AI agent era? It's because you need to be able to understand how to build systems and processes and infrastructure and prompt correctly in a way that an AI agent can do something with. And this is something that I realized a long time ago. And it was a very easy thing for me. I don't have to know anything about AI agents to say to Claude, design this so that an agentic AI in the future can do something with it, right? It's a very simple philosophy. You don't have to know how to do anything in AI. All you have to do is ask AI or tell it to do it. So, for so many people and companies, and I hear this a million times, and I was even this person, even though I am trained in something called personal knowledge management, which is all around capturing, organizing, distilling, and executing any digital information that you see. What I call this is tending your digital garden. So many companies or entrepreneurs right now have thoughts in their heads, stuff in Google Drive, stuff in Dropbox, stuff in Evernote, stuff in Canva, stuff in Notion, stuff in Trello, stuff over here. There's an intern over there who's got some stuff, and their data and their structure is all over the place. Not only do they not know where it is, they can't access it and it's slow. Well, here's the problem: if you don't know where all of your structure and your organization and your information is, or if it's not written down, you know who can't do something with it? An AI agent. So that's why I built what I call the gold vault. And let me see if I can pop this bad boy up right now so that I can see this. Is um inside of here. All right. Welcome to my gold vault. So, what this is is essentially a build tracker that I have right now that I designed that allows me to capture, organize, and still, and execute all of the various things that I'm building right now with Claude. As you can see, and I've only been running this thing for about, I don't know, six weeks. This just absolutely compounds. At the same time, anytime I've got an idea, I drop it inside of here. And then here's the one that I really love my field notes. And this is I'm gonna turn this um entire day one build of AI agents into a field note. This is my ability to essentially open up one of these things, and it is a note of the big idea, the story behind this, what I built, what makes this work, the daily flow, how it connects to anything. And I can give this to my clients and I can give this to an AI agent. So by design, I have infrastructure that is designed on receipts. Because when I do something in my own business, I'm like, wow, this is valuable, but it's super valuable for my clients as well. So let me make sure I turn this into a field note. I understand how to log it, and all along the way, I knew AI agents would one day be able to do something with this. So rolling back here to this, the challenge is most people aren't gonna be ready for this because there's data all over the place. If you're looking at this and you're like, wow, Rob, I don't understand all of this, but I do see that AI agents are gonna be a thing and data and infrastructure is going to be a thing, then I got you. I have no experience whatsoever in Notion, but I had AI design all of this for me. I ended up turning it into a product called the Gold Vault. Go to RobCressy.com backslash gold vault. This legitimately will change the next decade of your business. Once you get this workflow integrated into what you're doing, it's not just a Notion template, it is something that is a completely scalable infrastructure for you. So the next thing, and actually the last thing for you to think about right here is what does being agent ready actually look like? And this is where you're gonna want to get very specific on the context of your business. What is your um operating standards for your business? What is the business details? What is your brand voice? What are your 2026 goals? What is your soul data? Because we want AI to be able to understand everything about us. And oftentimes the only thing stopping us is having this thing written down. So let's go and get all of that stuff written down. And then the next layer becomes what's your infrastructure layer? Is it Notion? Is it Asana? Is it Trello? Is it Obsidian? Is it something else? If you're like, Rob, I have no idea what those tools are. Well, that should be alarm bells going off on your head saying, huh, I have not designed an infrastructure to where I can take advantage of AI agents. Because the big challenge for 99% of people in the world right now is they are platform romantic. Rob, I can't switch over to Claude. I've got three years of data inside ChatGBT. Well, that's a problem if everything's living in ChatGBT or living in Gemini or living in Claude, because they could go out of business tomorrow, aliens could come here and wipe them out, and then you're like, well, where's all my data? That's why you want a single source of truth that lives outside of the AI, but then you want the AI to be able to talk to those things. So I'm sharing this out of a place of service. I feel like Noah and Noah's Ark for three and a half years. I've been sitting there being like, it's gonna rain. We're building a boat over here. Who wants to come on board? Because success in the AI era isn't hard, does not mean you have to be technical. It just means you have to be willing to number one, learn. You want to grow, and then you're going to do the work. And all of those things, when you're a high performer or an entrepreneur, that's just like a regular Tuesday for us. So now just apply that lens to AI and understand we are about to enter a thousand X quantum leap when you can start to design systems and processes that a digital employee can do for you. And then imagine you just being the orchestrator who's like, this can go here, this goes here, this goes here, and then you start to manage your business in that perspective. Today is day one with Claude in Notion saying this stuff of, hey, here's what's on the horizon there. We know open clause's been a thing, but this is now mainstream. This is what we're gonna see over the next 12 to 24 months. And for so many people, myself included and the other AI uh peers that I have, we are legitimately operating with a sense of urgency because the advantage and the opportunity is right now. Design that infrastructure, understand how you think about the way you design prompts and outcomes and everything into your business. And if you vibe with everything that I'm saying and you're like, wow, Rob, I want to go on this ribe, hit me up, shoot me a DM at Rob Cressy on Instagram or LinkedIn. Let's have a conversation. I'm doing this every single day with my clients. I actually have to jump on a client call right now in three minutes, but I had to get this out because it's one of those moments. I'm super excited. You're gonna see more of this from me moving forward. So, this is just marking the beginning of all of this. So, sending tons of love and good vibes your way. Have fun building, and uh, let's have an amazing rest of the day.