S1:Ep79 From Tony Robbins Stages to Founding Innovative AI Solutions: Redefining Leadership & Unlocking the Next Frontier of Business Impact

The journey from Tony Robbins’ stages to founding innovative AI solutions - and how redefining leadership can unlock the next frontier of business impact.

My guest, David Asarnow from Georgia, USA, was one of Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes Top Business Speakers, inspired thousands of leaders worldwide, and built multiple successful companies. As CEO and Founder of Business Nitrogen, he focuses on conversational AI innovation and AI-powered marketing solutions – helping clients scale impact and revenue with precision. David is scaling 8-figure businesses while standing at the very frontier of innovation.

David is also a transformational business leader, speaker, and mentor with decades of entrepreneurial success. He has served as a Breakthrough Trainer and Master Coach for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes, empowering leaders to achieve extraordinary results. Recognized as an award-winning CEO and founder, he has scaled companies into multi-million-dollar success stories and continues to guide leaders to unlock new levels of performance.

🔑 Key Topics Discussed: 

• How speaking on Tony Robbins’ stages shaped David's understanding of human potential and leadership
• The qualities leaders must develop to move beyond AI adoption and redefine business in the AI era
• Combining human transformation with the technical power of AI to build thriving company cultures
• Real stories where AI innovation created entirely new arenas of growth and impact
• The most dangerous myths and misconceptions about AI in business today
• Overlooked high-impact AI opportunities that will redefine industries in the next 2–3 years
• What business owners, executives, and board members must unlearn to thrive in AI-powered transformation
• A powerful piece of advice for today’s AI builders to succeed in the new business landscape

🔗 Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidasarnow/

🔗 TEDx Emory | The New Secret Superpower for Entrepreneurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdvtXQmlXA

🎁🔗 Bonus from David: https://nerve.businessnitrogen.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening, Guest Intro, Context
• 2:48 David’s Origin Story and Mindset Shift
• 9:30 From Tony Robbins Training to Top Closer
• 15:45 Small Shifts, Compounding Growth, Into AI
• 21:00 Voice AI, Consistency, and Empathy Design
• 27:40 Using AI as a Sparring Partner
• 33:15 Workshops, Raw Prompts, and Self-Insight
• 36:40 Beyond Adoption: Leading in the AI Era
• 42:10 AGI, Singularity, and Near-Term Shifts
• 46:30 Vision, Communication, and Tiny Teams

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for Humans with your host Amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation, and most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch, nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence, and building resilient teams. Today's conversation is one I'm truly excited about. We are diving into the journey from Tony Robbins' stages to founding innovative AI solutions and how redefining leadership can unlock the next frontier of business impact. My guest, David Asarno from Georgia in the United States, was one of Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes' top business speakers, inspired thousands of leaders worldwide, and built multiple successful companies. As CEO and founder of Business Nitrogen, he focuses on conversational AI innovation and AI-powered marketing solutions, helping clients scale impact and revenue with precision. David is scaling eight-figure businesses while standing at the very frontier of innovation. David is also a transformational business leader, speaker, and mentor with the case of entrepreneurial success. He has served as a breakthrough trainer and master coach for Tony Robbins and Chad Holmes, empowering leaders to achieve extraordinary results. Recognized as an award-winning CEO and founder, he has scaled companies into multi-million dollar success stories and continues to guide leaders to unlock new levels of performance. Welcome, David. I am so happy to have you here in the studio today.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:53

Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. If you are interested in connecting or collaborating, you can find more information in the description. And don't forget to subscribe for more powerful episodes. If you are a leader, business owner, or investor ready to adapt, thrive, and lead with clarity, purpose, and wisdom in the era of AI, I would love to invite you to learn more about AI Game Changers, a global elite club for visionary trailblazers and change makers shaping the future. You can apply at AIGamechangers.club. David, to start with, I would love to hear more about your journey, about yourself. So many interesting facts in your career. Please share everything you would love to share with us.

SPEAKER_01: 2:46

What would you like to know first? Tell me. And I'll go wherever you like me. What would you like to know?

SPEAKER_00: 2:52

How did you find all your talents and how did your journey of self-discovery and this business success unfold through the years?

SPEAKER_01: 3:04

Great question. And I believe nothing happens by accident. And for me, my I'm gonna talk about the human potential and transformation because I believe that everything that I'm doing today started 41 years ago when I was 16 years old. So basically I just admitted that I'm an old guy. And so 41 years ago, I was not in a really good place. I was 16, I was depressed. Um, I was going through a really bad place, thoughts going through my head that you don't even want to talk about. And I walked into a bookstore in a mall. And for a 16-year-old boy walking into a bookstore, back then they were smaller than they are today. And they used to have, maybe they still do, had titles above each of the rows on topics. And I went into an aisle that said self-help. Now, not many boys, especially teenage boys, are going to be going into a self-help aisle. And I just started perusing through some of the books. I caught off to the corner of my eye um a rack that had cassette tapes. And one of them was increasing self-confidence. And I bought it. My dad had driven me to the mall that day. I hid it so he wouldn't know that I bought it. Because obviously, you don't even want, at least me, I didn't want to have that conversation with my parents, what was going on with me. I sort of kept it to myself. By the way, that that is something when so many times kids do things and hurt themselves, and parents don't even know I didn't know anything was going on. It's like you're embarrassed. You don't want to talk about it. But at least I was willing to explore this myself. And I listened to this cassette tape. It was a guided visualization, hypnosis, and subliminal learning. And I listened to that cassette on my Panasonic tape recorder every night when I went to bed. And all of a sudden, 30 days later, things changed. I went back to that same bookstore and I'm like, what else can I learn? How else? And and I used to run track, and I did the 400 hurdles, which is once around the track, and I did the 110 high hurdles. And I bought a book on sports performance using psychology. And I remember, like it was yesterday, reading it, and it was talking about the Russian athletes. And back then, Russia really dominated sports. Now, we'll know today that they had some other enhancements that they were using, but overall they were dominating. And it was talking about how they used power visualization combined with practice in order to get better results. And they were talking about the pentathlon and especially they were, you know, how did they get their heart rate down? How did they get their focus so that way they can shoot at the targets that they were after just running? And so I said, okay, let me see what I can do. And I did. I was did the exact same thing. I visualized my race. I took a stopwatch. I'd run my race in my brain. I'd go over the hurdles and go through the finish line and I stopped the stopwatch. And I'd look at the time on the watch. And if I didn't like the time, I'd run the race again. And nine times out of ten, I would finish the race within tenths of the second of whatever I was able to run it in my mind with my eyes closed. It's funny, I had some friends at one of my high school reunions saying, Can I ask you a question? I said, sure. He's like, Did you always pray? Why did you always pray before every race? And I said, I was meditating, actually, running my race in my head. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing. I was just doing it. Fast forward, I was graduated from college. And a friend of mine that, a good friend of mine, we were playing tennis, and he told me he was leaving Atlanta and he was moving to California. He was working for this guy, Tony Robbins. I had listened to Tony Robbins' uh personal power. I believe it was personal power, yes. And it's the first time I ever heard him, I bought it from this group, Nightingale Conan, used to own the personal development market. And I listened to it on the way to my job interview when I was 21 years old. And I by the time I got to that interview, I'd left at three in the morning to drive five hours for a job interview. Seriously. I was sitting there pounding my chest, going, There's no way this company's not hiring me. And they hired me. And that's what I got an opportunity up in Atlanta, and that's where I moved from Florida to Georgia. And on that tennis court, Jim told me that he was going to work for Tony Robbins. And Jim and I, you know, 30 something years later, are still really good friends. In fact, we were messaging each other this weekend. He invited me to a Tony Robbins seminar in Atlanta because he got me a free ticket. And I was sitting there in that room saying, one day I'm going to be on that stage. One day I'm going to transform people's lives like this. And there was one challenge. I was scared of getting up in front of the room. I got to see in public speaking in college. It was the last course that I saved to graduate, and I needed to see her hire to graduate. And I got to see in public speaking. And I resigned. I called the board a board meeting. I resigned. It's all part of my TED Talk if anyone wants to see that story. And I said, they said, what are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to be a motivational speaker. By the way, I don't think I've ever become a motivational speaker. I'm a business speaker. People do say they're inspired by it because of the stories that I tell. However, everything is all about how do I get from where I am to where I want to grow to and what practical steps, psychology-wise, and business strategy and then tactics to implement, do we need to put into place? And so, how did I get there? It was so funny. It was hard to do it by myself. I went to a business, I was at a speaker training. So it was all people who were speaking and speaking the cell. I learned how to speak from the stage in cell versus just motivational keynote. And I remember it, Ted Miller, who was the vice president of Tony Roberts at Shout Holmes at the time, said, Has anyone ever been on one of our business breakthrough workshops? In the entire room of about 100, I was the only person that raised my hand. And in fact, Ted started asking questions. Say, so tell me, tell me your name. And I did. He said, I remember you. This is the name of your company. I'm like, how do you remember that? He said, I remember everyone that's on my workshops. Anyway, they ended up hiring about 12 speakers, and you were speak for free. So when I worked for Tony, they didn't pay me a salary or anything. We would speak for free. Tony and chat, we would speak for free. And then if we sold business coaching, consulting strategy or the ultimate business mastery system, we got paid a percentage of that revenue that was generated. And they hired 12 out of that, three of us lasted, and I became their top closing speaker. And I got to learn a lot. I got to serve a lot of people. And that's what I realized that one of my strengths is hearing someone's problem and being able to solve it right there. And so uh, you know, fast forward 16 years later, I'm still doing the same thing, just under my own brand. I do business growth strategy mentorship. I've got a marketing agency that does implementation, I've got ownership in a bunch of different companies these days. So that's how I got here.

SPEAKER_00: 11:07

Incredible. And this is so inspiring. And I hope that at least some of our listeners and viewers can feel the energy in the room because this is absolutely amazing. David, let's dive a little bit deeper. You have worked closely with Tony Robbins, inspiring thousands from the big stages. How did those experiences shape your understanding of human potential? And how is that now reshaping the way you build and lead businesses in the AI era?

SPEAKER_01: 11:42

Great question. I can't say that I actually shared stage with Tony. I worked for Tony and Chad. And so how did that impact me? What did I learn? I learned, and it's not just that, it's studying Tony and his psychology and methodologies for over 20 years. I learned that it doesn't take a big shift to make a dramatic result. It's making very small shifts intentionally and doing them consistently. And the biggest challenge that so many people have is they look for that big thing versus making small intentional shifts. I mean, one plus one doesn't equal two. If you just get one percent better every day, it's greater than 365%. If you just get one percent better every month, you're growing more than 12%. It's compound that I don't have the number off the top of my head, but it's over 30 something percent. Why? Because growth compounds. Most people give up way too easily, give up way too quickly. Now, how did this apply to artificial intelligence? Here's what I can tell you. Over the last 40 plus years, one of the things that I've seen, and I say 40 plus years because I ended up my grandfather became an entrepreneur when he was 50 years old. He sold everything. He and my grandmother sold everything, bought a small little business, and then started growing it. And I grew up in that business. So I've seen little shit, I've seen things over the years. One of the things that I realized that the biggest pain challenge problem that most businesses have, and people listen to this right now, it's following up on leads, making sure that every lead that you get is communicated in a way so people raise their hands and getting them to take that action to buying. And when I heard artificial intelligence, voice AI for the first time a little over three and a half years ago, I said, this is going to change things. Here's why. Most people aren't great at training their phone people. Most people aren't great at training a sales development rep. And they usually have one person who's really, really good, and then you've got okay, and then you've got the rest of the people. And it's getting that consistency. Here's what I realized with artificial intelligence, you can train it at the highest level right from the beginning. And when you train at the highest level right from the beginning, you have predictable results. And I said, this is going to change things. Let me dive in and figure out how we can do this. And one of the things that I realized is, and people like, well, AI doesn't have empathy. AI doesn't have this. Well, in a nutshell, it doesn't. However, because you can train it how you want it to listen, how you want it to respond back, you can give it the perception that it does have empathy. It listens, it acknowledges what it heard. And I want people to imagine, you know, if you could actually take your best person and clone them, you can today. And yeah, that's one of the things that I realized that I always thought that one of the reasons when we with our voice engine, I thought it was our technology, but as an experiment, I started playing different voice technologies, and then I implemented our core instructions and thought process for the AI, and I was able to create predictable results. So today I'll take, you know, when we implement for someone, we'll build out the core psychology of how the AI thinks, what it's supposed to do, how it gets the results, and then we can pretty much plug it into any framework and it will work, which is amazing. And so it goes back to that understanding human psychology that started when I was 16 years old. And it's been that lifelong journey of understanding why people do. I mean, I graduated with a degree in advertising, and people often ask me, you know, why? I said, advertising is just the psychology of why people buy. It's no difference than why do people take actions. And the more we understand that component, the better we're going to be able to communicate our products, good, and services and create that message to market match. And today, we can automate so much of that through artificial intelligence. This is just in the sales and marketing side. Like when I was speaking this past week to several hundred entrepreneurs a couple of times, this was talking about how do we implement AI in all different areas of our business to create leverage? How can we do it? Not just in the sales and marketing, how can we create leverage for ourselves? How can we make ourselves better? When you talk about potential, we as humans have so much ultimate potential, right? We don't know how powerful we are. And yet, one of the things that I was training people on, and the takeaways that people were saying was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I said, I want you to look at Chat GPT. Just forget. I know that there's Gemini, and I know that there's Grok, and I know that there's all these different things, but most everyone has Chat GPT, so we'll use that as the standard. I said, before 5.0 came out, you were talking with something that you were communicating with the something that measured at about 160 IQ. And I said, I venture a guess that most people in this room don't have an IQ higher than 160, which means this technology that we're communicating with is smarter than probably everyone in this room. And now that 5.0 came out, it hasn't been measured yet, but I guarantee you that it's a lot higher. And based upon the results that I see, I guarantee you that it's a lot higher. Now, the reason that most people aren't able to harness the power of it is they don't think through the process. They don't have an organized structure in how they go about doing things in order to get results. They say, write this for me. They just ask a question, which is very surface level. However, one of the things that I like sharing when I do a workshop is going through the process to harness the power of AI, to look at it as your most valuable collaborative partner. You challenge it, it challenges you. There's some studies out there now that talk about people who are using ChatGPT, their PFC or prefrontal cortex, the the that part of our brain that is analyzing and discerning things is going to sleep and people are getting brain dead, so to speak. And the fact of the matter is, it's because they're not challenging it. But if you literally made 160 IQ or higher person your sparring partner, your collaborative partner in business and life, do you think you're going to get better results? Do you think you're going to get smarter? Do you think you're going to now look at things from different perspectives? The answer is yes. And that's what I encourage people to do, not just putting in, write this for me, do this for me. How do I get better? Here's my business. Here's what I'm thinking I'm doing. I want you to ask me questions, challenge me, help me look at things from all different angles so that way I find out all my blind spots and communicate with those with me raw in a raw and authentic manner. So that way I can make sure that I've got the plan in place. And then all of a sudden it's it's going to do that. And it says, Well, now that you asked me to be raw and authentic, I will. You may not like everything that you're going to hear. That's the power of artificial intelligence. I did an exercise. It was literally one sentence in the keynote. And when we I had everyone take out their computers, I put it in there. I said, by the way, you put in this sentence, it's going to shock you. It's going to be raw. And you may not like everything that you see. And people were like, Well, you just should have told me that how truthful it was. This thing knows me better than my psychologist. This thing knows me better than my spouse. How does artificial intelligence, so-called, know us better? Because how we ask questions, how we communicate with it, the things that we're asking it to do, it understands who we are because how we communicate, how we ask questions, how we utilize a tool says so much about us. And it's not only what we say, it's what we don't say and what we don't ask that it knows so much about us. And the more that we utilize the technology, the more it knows us. And then people are, I have people asking all the time. Well, I mean government knows everything about us. I don't know. They say that they're not sharing the information with the government. Who knows? But the government right now knows everything about us that they want to know about us anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 20:49

So you know, when I'm listening to you, I'm just getting more and more amazed about how much we have in common in how we're seeing AI, how we're seeing the co-creation between AI and humans. And just last week, I've been also running a masterclass and an event with a keynote around exactly those parts. And the board members who participated in the events, both times they recalled what they discovered, the insights eye-opening, thought-provoking, and uh everything staying outside of the conversation in the boardrooms. And I think it is so important to create the space where we can really discuss these questions and what you are sharing with us today, it is invaluable because it opens up exactly to the next step on how we can co-create with AI without degrading ourselves. And I saw those studies and results. But if you use AI in the right way, it can help us tap into our inner power and becoming stronger and more powerful as individuals, as humans, and as business owners, business leaders as well.

SPEAKER_01: 22:22

Totally. In fact, you want to talk about getting lost in AI, making ourselves better. I was speaking on Tuesday. It was my first 90-minute, it was um a 90-minute deep dive in artificial intelligence and harnessing the power of it. And I did a dry run. So a lot of times you want to check your slides and your automations and exercises. Well, this statement that I used, I did it a long time ago, many months ago, in 4.0. And I wanted to say, does 5-0 have different answers? And I ended up spending the next 90 minutes lost in deep dive in that one powerful statement. And it I was I was just amazed. It was shocking. It was actually shocking how well it knows us. And in fact, I'm more than happy to give away that process because I created um, it was for the event I was speaking at, but I'm more than happy to give everyone here. I'll give you the link at the end if you want to share it with people.

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

Amazing. Thank you so much. We'll place the link together with the description of the episode. Find it in the description below. Truly appreciate it, David. And I'm sure our listeners and viewers are going to find it very valuable. We often hear about AI adoption, but you are building from the ground up. What qualities should leaders cultivate today if they want to move beyond adoption and actually redefine business and leadership in the age of AI?

SPEAKER_01: 23:54

Great question. I ask people all the time, and if you're listening right now, I'll ask you, how many of you are a little bit scared because of AI and that we're going to be replaced? And the answer is people nod their heads and they're like, Yeah, I don't, it's the fear of the unknown. And the fact of the matter is, I don't know where it's going to grow to. You don't know. However, we're in a fifth industrial revolution. And in every industrial revolution that happened before us, people were disrupted, jobs were disrupted, and new opportunities came out of it. And I believe that the same thing is happening here and will continue to happen here. I remember three years ago having a meeting with my entire team talking about artificial intelligence. And this is my company business, nitrogen. And I said, I can tell you this AI is not going away. It's going to replace a lot of what we do. And I remember people on the team saying, Well, I can't do this. It's never going to replace writing, it's never going to replace this. And I said, I know you believe that to be the case. And I know you believe that to be true, but I'm telling you right now, it is true. And I was right. And here's what I said. I said, so what's going to happen is either you and every single one of us on the Zoom meeting is going to harness the power of artificial intelligence, or we will be replaced by people who do. And I said, so you can choose to step on the train and become a master of it and utilize it to create leverage, not have it do your job, but have it create leverage so you can focus on higher level things. Or I could tell you this, and this is coming. We we were ranked three years in a row, one of the top companies to work for with no turnover, very low turnover. And I said, you know, but we've had turnover now because I said, you don't harness the power, you'll be replaced by someone who will. And there are people who kept saying, well, it's going to take my job away and make me less important. No, it's going to make you more important. The people who harness the power, one person can do the work with creating leverage of two to four people or more. And you have to learn as things change to do that better. And you know, I that's that's where we are today.

SPEAKER_00: 26:21

We are moving into a space where those who don't harness AI are going to have hard times. At the same time, I still believe that AI is so much more powerful than anything else we as humanity have been through because it is impacting us on so many different levels. And even in the times of industrial revolution, there was only one aspect of transformation, more or less. And today AI is transforming our ways of being, thinking, navigating, it impacts our behavior, it even impacts our bodies and everything else around it. So I think it's much, much bigger than that. And I would love to hear, just in two words, what do you think about AGI and everything that's done in after that? How close are we, do you think? I think what about singularity?

SPEAKER_01: 27:25

I think we're closer than people imagine. And that's scary. So, with that being the case, we don't know what we don't know. And I don't know enough to project what's going to happen. I do think that humanity, when you feel like you're losing something, what do people do? They start grabbing and grasping harder and stronger, which actually creates more of a rift and a separation. And I think that we're going to see some of that happen in the next four years are going to be some are going to be the most transformative and shifting of our lifetimes and probably that we've ever seen in recorded history. I don't have any projection to be able to say because right now my brain can't even fathom what we're going to be seeing, but we are. We have a lot of competing technologies all aiming to do the exact same thing, which is going to be interesting in and of itself, because there will be multiple technologies that accomplish this almost at the same time. It's like who invented the light bulb? Was it Thomas Edison? No, someone else actually probably did it at the same time, independent of him. But Edison got credit for it because for whatever reason, but he he got credit for it.

SPEAKER_00: 29:27

I agree. And usually that's how it happens. Several people in the world, more or less at the same time, are tapping into that new idea and develop it, get the credit for it. But uh usually, typically, like historically, it was many more than just one person. So, what are the main quality leaders need today in order to meet these exciting times in the right way and thrive instead of just Surviving or even getting lost in being a space.

SPEAKER_01: 30:04

It's no different than I don't think that the kind of leader you need to be is different than what it's been over generations. You need to be able to communicate your vision that you have and and get buy-in into your vision. If you're not able to communicate your vision, you'll you'll lose your team. So you need to know what you want to do, why you want to do it, and be able to communicate to get everyone on board. And I think that be able to be a good communicator is more important than ever. Being able to nurture leaders to stand up and harness the power of their role is what's going to help you become an even greater leader and be able to go from running a company and everything going through you into having a company that is able to build, grow, and scale. So I don't think anything is changing. However, today, and I've read a lot about this, you're going to have companies that are doing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars with three employees because now you can actually create autonomous AI agents that can do a lot of roles. And that is crazy in and of itself. And that's one of the things we did in our second workshop. One of the workshops I do is you're actually building, you're learning how to build these agents. And I had one lady who sent me a message yesterday saying, I just want to let you know that based on what you shared, I was able to create five agents to create leverage in my company having different roles. And it was just amazing. I didn't know that that kind of thing was possible. And there's so much that's possible. It really is our imagination. It's digging deep. And the interesting thing, I'll just share this and we can go deeper or not. And people say, well, how do I create an AI agent? Just show me how to create an AI agent. And then I asked this question Well, if you're going to hire someone for this job, what are the roles and responsibilities? What knowledge do they have to have? What discernment do they have to have? What would their day-to-day look like? What job description do you have? And here's the challenge. Most people don't have that. And I said, well, if you're not able to train a human, you're not able to train an AI agent. So the same thing that it takes to train a human and get the most out of them, you have to have the same information. What knowledge, skills, and know-how do they need to have? And once you can articulate that, then it's much easier to follow a step-by-step implementation plan in order to create an autonomous agent to do the role or having multiple agents where you have a manager who understands how to communicate, delegate, having different agents doing different things.

SPEAKER_00: 32:55

During my interactive part of the events last week, I had one question around the main challenges or pain points and actually clarity around strategy and around how AI is adopted and considered in the companies. That was exactly what is missing. And uh without clarity, you can't create an agent which is going to be perfect for your needs and meet your business objectives. Because if you don't know exactly what you want, how will you know that that's exactly something that meets your expectations? It is important to have that clarity always. And that was a great example. Thank you so much for sharing. India companies, you combine the human essence of transformation with the technical power of a yi. What has this taught you about creating cultures that don't just survive disruption but thrive at the intersection of humanity and technology?

SPEAKER_01: 34:02

Well, it goes back to something that so many people think is fluff, and yet I think it's so important. And in order to create culture, you need to know who you are and what you stand for. And that goes down to core values. And I want you to think about this. If you want people to rally around a vision, you've got to be able to communicate what your core values are. And I've spoken over the years in events, and I'll ask people, how many of you have core values in your company? And half the room or more will raise their hands. I said, How many of you right now could get up on this stage in front of everyone and communicate exactly what your core values are and how you implement them in the company? And usually it's one or two hands will stay up. And I said, Here's the thing: if you, as the leader of your company, can't articulate your core values, your team can. Now, there's many different ways that you can implement and share this so that way people understand. But if you think about it, your core values are a guidepost on how to think and how to make decisions. Positive, results focused, expect excellence, take action, collaborate, and have a ball all the time. And the interesting thing is when you're training an AI agent, and I'm telling you this because if you train an AI agent, you have to give it a knowledge to operate from how to think, how to discern, how to make decisions, how to communicate. And so if you are very clear on what your core values are and how you implement them within your team, you need to be able to train your AI agent the same way. And then people communicating with your AI agent, it's going to operate very similarly to how you want the humans to. So to me, it begins with knowing who you are and being able to communicate who you are at a very high level.

SPEAKER_00: 36:11

Brilliant. I absolutely love this because this is the core of everything. And earlier today, I had a meeting with a former executive from Amazon. And as Amazon is known for having exactly those core values in place, it just reminds me about how important it is. And every leader should think about that part, even exactly as you mentioned, they consider it being a little bit fluffy, a little bit too soft sometimes, but that's exactly where the magic happens, and from there you can add up whatever you want and any technology, and it is going to give so much better results. David, AI surrounded by hype and headlines. And from your perspective, what is the most dangerous myth or misconception about AI in business today? And what is the truth leaders urgently need to understand?

SPEAKER_01: 37:18

I'm gonna begin with the truth. You have to harness the power of it. If you don't, that's where I would be concerned about your business. And looking at understanding it or working with someone who can help you understand it and help you implement it in your business. I had someone that sat in in one of my talks that said, This is great, but I have a restaurant, so I don't see how I can use any of this. Started rattling off. Well, what about this? Could you use this? Could you do this? Could you do this? Do you have inventory? Do you do adjusting climate inventory? If you knew at the end of the day that you were going to be running out of XYZ in the next two days and you didn't have to humanly think about this, but AI could see the what people are ordering, it could help you potentially come with new menu items based upon the most popular. It could help you order and have less spoilage. That means you can become more profitable. They just looked at me, they're like, Oh, I never thought about that. So, no matter what type of business you have, there's so many different ways that we can utilize it at a higher level versus in, and I'm venturing a guess, in that person's instance, they run a restaurant, a very successful restaurant. They have employees. This is someone's job role. But so many times they're doing the day-to-day interaction, those things come secondary. And when things come secondary, we sometimes rush, which means we're not doing the best job possible. When we have an AI agent that that is their sole role to analyze certain differences components in our business, we can get predictable better results, and it will give us recommendations.

SPEAKER_00: 38:58

So absolutely. Can you share a little story where AI innovation didn't just optimize what was already there, but opened an entirely new arena of growth or impact that you couldn't have imagined before? Because as you mentioned, a lot is around the mindset, a lot is around our imagination. What else can we do with AI if we get that power of technology? So, can you think about a use case or story where it created incredible results?

SPEAKER_01: 39:38

Well, I can say that it's created a lot of incredible results and created a lot of leverage. And for me, it began with understanding what can happen with voice and messaging. People want to have relationships with humans and want to communicate, but they want what they want now. And most businesses aren't open to answer the phones and give people what they want 24-7. I'll give you an example though of something, and it's nothing, I don't think it's to me, the results are huge, but it was simple. And sometimes we have to look at what we can use simply. I have a friend of mine. We went on a hike together. So I'm training. I think I mentioned I'm going to Nepal and I'm hiking in Nepal with my son in a couple weeks. And so I invited anyone who wants to go with me. And one of my buddies went with me. Went on a nice long uh 10-mile hike in the Appalachian Mountains here in North Georgia, which is the foothills of the Appalachians here. And he was telling me about his business. He has a large peptide website that gives people information. And he gets tens of thousands of visitors, actually, over 40,000 visitors to his website a month. He also has a business that sells peptides. And so he's like, I don't know. The biggest challenge I'm having is I'm getting all this traffic, but then getting people to come over to my other website. It's sort of like an affiliate link. And I said, okay, what if you created custom GPT that has a knowledge base? So people don't have to just search your website, they get to your website and they can ask it any questions. And then you build a knowledge base based on the information that's already on your site that can answer any people's questions. And now when it asks people where they can go, give them other companies so you're not just marketing for yourself, because it's obviously more realistic if an AI agent's giving it multiple choices, but your company is one of the solutions. The AI agent that he spent the rest of the weekend and the next week building this custom and he, Dave, this is so amazing. It actually works. So to me, that simple conversation that we had during a hike, I was clear in the possibilities of what it could do. And he spent the time putting it together. And all of a sudden, guess what happened? You're giving people a custom app that they can ask any questions that they want because people want what they want when they want it. They don't want to have to search your website. And if you can make it really easy for people to get information, and then through communication, showing that you're the natural solution or you have one of the solutions, they're then going to choose you. So to me, that is just a quick example of something that's happened recently that was to me, it seemed obvious, but the person who was doing it is like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. He implemented it and then it worked. So that's nothing profound, but what this shows you is that you can have profound impact in small little shifts. Incremental shifts create that dramatic result.

SPEAKER_00: 42:56

This is such a beautiful example, and it just collects so many different dimensions of how we should think around the eye and how we should implement it in a really powerful way. When you are finding the problem and you are thinking about how to solve it, and then it's not about building something extremely complicated, it's just about finding the ways with your own human brain to start with, to apply it to the case in the best possible and the most impactful way, and then you take it from there. I absolutely love this example. Thank you so much for sharing. And looking at the next two to three years, where do you see the most overlooked high impact opportunities for leaders to leverage AI in ways that could redefine entire industries and their own future success?

SPEAKER_01: 43:57

Great question. I think as much as we know today, there's so much that we don't know. And for companies, I would start looking at all the different roles in your company and saying, where am I doing monotonous tasks? Where are people on my team spending 20-30% of their time that is a low-value task? And I would look at how can I automate all of this? And getting humans doing what humans do best, which is thinking at a higher level and communicating with each other and building relationships. Today, more than ever, being human is more important than ever. By that I mean you need to be able to communicate. And that's where we are going to need to do that because people are still going to want, they want answers, but then eventually they want people are all about relationships, and relationships are going to become more important. So working on those soft skills in your company and your business is going to be more important while at the same time looking at every bit and component. So one of the workshops that I did, I created over 50 different potential agent roles from everything from sales to marketing to operations to finance to customer support. And that's 50 different roles that you can have an AI agent do. Does that mean people aren't going to be important? No. So what needs to happen in the next two to three years is you need to understand all the things that are possible and you need to surround yourself with people who are willing to dive deep and look at how they can create leverage so they can spend most of their time doing the higher-level things that humans do best while accomplishing more for your business.

SPEAKER_00: 45:55

The most of what I'm doing is exactly because of this. We need to find in ourselves what is deeply human. We need to find a way to reconnect with each other in a way which is going to be supported by the new technologies so that we can co-create a brighter future together and open up for the opportunities we couldn't even dream about just a few years ago. So this is amazing. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01: 46:29

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 46:31

What should business owners, board members, and executives unlearn if they want to thrive in the AI power transformation ahead? And what is the most effective way to begin that unlearning?

SPEAKER_01: 46:44

What do people need to unlearn? I think that people need to unlearn that everything has to go through you. What we need to learn is harness the power of what's possible. And when we harness the power of what's possible, we automatically unlearn the things that we need to let go of. So we need to reshift and reframe in our mind what the new norm looks like. And that is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and AI in our business. And it will help us unlearn the old stuck ways that we may have done business in the past because what we did a year ago is different than it is today. And what we'll be doing a year to two years from now is radically different than what we're doing today. So we have to get out of the paradigm or frame of the way that we've done things is going to remain the same. We need to be able to adapt, change, and grow very quickly today.

SPEAKER_00: 47:43

I just wonder, do we sometimes that AI solutions, among others, these agentic solutions can override humans?

SPEAKER_01: 47:55

Will it override and overtake humans? There's roles that it can override and overtake and probably do better than humans do and can in some of these areas. Yet we still are humans. And are some of our roles going to change? Yes. Are some of them going to disappear? Yes. And that's why the more that we understand how to harness the power of technology, the more that we're going to be able to be valuable or invaluable in the future.

SPEAKER_00: 48:31

I like this approach. David, if you could give one powerful piece of advice to those building AI solutions today, the kind of advice that could determine whether they succeed or get left behind, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01: 48:48

Well, there's two things. One is you need to be a lot of these tools that come out that pop up, these are the popular 100 tools. You have to be using these tools. Guess what? They're gone tomorrow. And it's the next 100 tools. So to me, it's understanding the frameworks that are applicable in the big companies are going to be growing. And the thing that was a tool, all of a sudden, you can integrate within like ChatGPT. There's one company that I just saw that came out with an integration. It's a marketplace that you can integrate over 500 different applications within ChatGPT. And now you can create autonomous agents harnessing the power of ChatGPT with one connector tool. Well, guess what? That will happen. That just replaced all these other different apps that were out there. So start understanding how to build at a concrete level. Work on discernment and asking the right questions to have AI get you a better result than you could have on your own. And then making sure that you're training your team on how to do this as well. So that way you create predictable results for your company. That's what I would do.

SPEAKER_00: 50:14

Amazing. Thank you so much for being here today, sharing your wisdom, so many invaluable recommendations and such a bright and great vision with our listeners and viewers. I appreciate you, and I totally enjoyed our conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 50:34

I did too. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 50:38

Thank you for joining us on Digital Transformation and AI for Humans. I am Amy, and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature, how we think, feel, and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset, and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. If this conversation resonated with you and you are a visionary leader, business owner, or investor ready to shape what's next, consider joining the AI Game Changers Club. You will find more information in the description. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections, and leading at heart.