"The Essential Role of AI in Modern Operations" with Nick Pope

Summary

In this conversation, Nick Pope, Chief AI Officer at Train in Your Lane, discusses the transformative role of AI in business. He emphasizes the necessity of AI as a co-pilot for organizations, the importance of training teams to use AI responsibly, and the need for businesses to overcome hesitations surrounding AI adoption. Nick outlines practical strategies for automation, the significance of prompt engineering, and the metrics that can be used to measure AI success. He also shares insights on future trends in AI and how organizations can prepare for the evolving landscape.

Takeaways

• AI is essential for modern business operations.
• Businesses should automate content creation, meeting notes, and brand voice consistency.
• AI intuition is crucial for effective tool usage.
• Prompt engineering is a foundational skill for teams.
• Training is necessary to ensure responsible AI use.
• Small wins in AI implementation build confidence and momentum.
• AI tools should be evaluated based on real use cases and trials.
• Human oversight is critical in AI processes.
• Metrics for AI success include time saved and employee satisfaction.
• The future of AI will involve more integrated and intelligent systems.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to AI and Business Growth
• 2:10 Nick Pope: The AI Expert
• 5:29 Understanding AI's Necessity in Business
• 7:12 Top AI Automation Strategies for Businesses
• 9:19 Evaluating AI Tools for Effective Implementation
• 11:45 The Importance of Prompt Engineering
• 14:37 Training Teams for Responsible AI Use
• 17:46 Championing AI Across Departments
• 22:03 Prioritizing AI Implementation for Small Wins
• 23:44 Future Predictions for AI in Business
• 26:29 The Role of Strategic AI Consultants
• 33:51 The Unique Value of Human Experience
• 34:50 The Balance of Automation and Human Touch
• 35:11 Measuring AI Success Beyond Time Savings
• 37:08 Future Trends in AI and Business
• 39:01 Advice for Embracing AI in Business
• 40:52 Connecting with Nick Pope

Transcript

Chantel Soumis (00:48.225)
Buckle up, brain trust. Today, we're unleashing the guy who makes Jarvis look like Clippy. Meet Nick Pope, CFE, the freshly minted Chief AI Officer at Train in Your Lane, and the human Swiss Army knife behind our smartest automations. With more than 18 years during Fortune 40 Teams and a certified franchise executive badge on his utility belt,

Nick has one obsession, dragging businesses from AI curious to AI ingrained without a single buzzword casualty. Nick's resume reads like a sci-fi highlight reel, MIT conference pit stops, workflow automation war stories, and a brand new mandate to turn everyday professionals into prompt slinging cyborgs. Train in your lane, snagged him.

And we put up all things AI training and fractional CAIO strategy because when you're saving companies 240 plus hours per employee every year, you're basically printing time and revenue. Here's what we'll unpack. AI is a business co-pilot, automation playgrounds,

and fractional marketing superpowers with AI. So grab your favorite large language latte, open your notebook to mind blown, and get ready to translate AI hype into hardcore growth. Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Pope (02:26.881)
Thank you, Shantel. It is a pleasure to be here, and I am so excited that you brought me on to chat about my favorite subject, which is AI.

Chantel Soumis (02:35.516)
Is it your favorite? Cause I thought it was dragons, but I didn't want to.

Nick Pope (02:39.295)
No, it's not dragons, despite the fantasy books on my bookshelf here, I primarily read things without dragons. But that analogy just seems to follow me everywhere I go since I spit it out.

Chantel Soumis (02:46.058)
Thanks.

Chantel Soumis (02:50.485)
Thanks for the clarification. Yeah. So I would love for everybody to get to know you a little bit better because you are seriously a genius when it comes to AI. And I know that it's your curiosity that really propels that insight forward and that skill forward. But before you were a chief AI officer, what moment really convinced you that AI would be the next indispensable business co-pilot?

Nick Pope (03:15.819)
It happened pretty quick. I would say I spent, I wasn't like day one chat GPT. It was the Christmas to New Year's break. I didn't have anything planned, but took the time off and I sort of fell down that rabbit hole. And I would say it was less than a week of just diving into these subjects, starting to follow in the very early phases on TikTok. Some of my favorite followers and influencers that are now in that space. And it became very evident to me how it's going to touch everything.

And that was the tip of the iceberg for me. So I never saw it as just this quirky thing. My curiosity, I instantly was able to figure out that I could use it for this and this and this and this and this. And the list just kept growing. And that's where it began.

Chantel Soumis (04:01.994)
I feel like AI for you is like a sandbox, like for kids, right? As soon as something new comes out, you get in and you play and you figure it out, and then you're so quick to become proficient in it.

Nick Pope (04:15.401)
Yeah, I would say I've had to limit my sandbox time as I've continued down into that space. But absolutely, yes, right? I think one of the biggest things is finding the right ways to stay up to date with all of this. And that is next to impossible, even for someone like myself, even hearing the head of Microsoft's AI department say, he can't keep up. That was a nice moment for me to be like, okay. So it's normal.

But really finding the right news sources and sort of that morning cadence of digging in and just reading and interpreting, highlighting things that I want to go dig in on. But I have limited my ultimate exploration because I could waste all of my hours of the week trying all the new things that are coming out. But try to stay up to date on pretty much everything and testing what looks good.

Chantel Soumis (05:01.929)
Well, good for you for controlling that and being self-disciplined. When businesses hear AI, right, and they're looking for some help from somebody like you, they often think like they're hesitant, they think it's a big investment, cybersecurity risks, there's so many red flags and concerns that come into play. But how do you explain what AI really means for businesses, especially now that we're halfway through 2025?

Nick Pope (05:29.547)
I say that it's simply not optional. It's really what it boils down to at this point in time. That was a different story when I was telling it two years ago. But where we're at right now, you can see whether it's you're in Microsoft or you're on Google, you're on one of the two, and they've injected AI into everything. But the hesitation is still very real. So once you get outside of this AI bubble, the majority of the population is still not up to date on what this is. They might have used Chat GPT.

but there's still lot of fear, lot of hesitation, a lot of just kind of ignorance around the space, whether that's willingly or unwillingly. And so here's the thing, you're already using AI every day, whether it's your Netflix recommendations, whether it's predictive text on your iPhone, Amazon suggesting what to buy next, that's all AI. And what changes isn't the technology,

It's that we now as consumers and individuals have direct access to this instead of being hidden behind giant company paywalls and corporate curtains. So when people are nervous about AI, I remind them that you've already been using it. It's already recommended your next binge watch for years. So now you just get to talk to it like a person, which is weird and different and super powerful, but ultimately, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of. It's not going to burn the whole place down.

Chantel Soumis (06:49.384)
All right, well, let's hope it doesn't burn the whole place down. I know everyone's still got that fear looming in the back of their mind, but well, okay. You said that we're already using it, right? How can businesses, like what are the first top three things that businesses can automate with AI to save time and increase ROI, especially if they're just getting started?

Nick Pope (07:12.139)
So top three things I would say first is content creation, right? Letting AI handle first drafts so you can focus on strategy and refining. The last thing you want to do is be staring at a blank screen. That is so 2020, right? Second, meeting notes and transcription. This is a must. Stop frantically scribbling down notes while trying to participate in a conversation.

You can connect more at a human level. You can pay attention. You can listen more. Rely on these tools to take those transcripts down and you can do so much with it on the backend from summarization to action items to holding people accountable to literally just pulling out actual insights about how the overall vibe of the meeting went. It's impressive. Third, for any organization out there,

Brand voice consistency. I can't say it enough, right? This is critical for a lot of the franchises that we work with where you have a big voice that people should be following, but you've got so many pieces of the puzzle and so many different people interpreting that in different ways versus if you can control this, when you nail these three things, you know, in the trainings we're doing, we're seeing a minimum of two and a half hours per week, save per employee, with many hitting that five to 10 hours per week range. And so

These three action items alone aren't just time savers. They are going to have a massive improvement on your consistency as well as the quality of the work that you do.

Chantel Soumis (08:40.742)
You know, when you imagine just getting those hours back in your work week, like, why wouldn't somebody want to do that? Why wouldn't somebody want to get two and a half, maybe five hours in their work week back to really work on something that they love doing or that's super fulfilling? It's just a no-brainer if you think about it. So there's a lot of tools out there when we're talking about meeting recordings, right? Like Otter or Read AI.

How do you evaluate which AI platforms are actually worth the investment versus just shiny distractions?

Nick Pope (09:19.349)
So there's a lot to this one. I would say first and foremost, before we talk about tools, and I will in a second, is really developing the concept of what we call AI intuition. And that to me is where the biggest value is versus just collecting tools, right? When your team and your executives understand AI fundamentals, it's not even about tools and they're isolated, but really as an ecosystem. It's about all of how these things can work together.

And when I think of the word tool, I think of, see a screw, I pick up a screwdriver, I see a nail, I pick up a hammer, and that doesn't really teach you really the benefit of what AI is. So that's my first starting spot before you go into tools. But once you have this holistic understanding, it actually helps you identify the best actual use cases that drive real ROI. So do your homework on these tools, look into actual use cases, review their white papers, check independent reviews.

But most importantly, always advocate for trials or demos before you commit to anything. Run a proof of concept with your workflow, measure the results, and then make your decisions. So when I really look at a tool, once I've done that legwork, it's, can this actually solve a real problem we have today? Can we measure the impact quickly? And will the team actually use a consistency? So...

Ultimately, before you can do that evaluation, have to have understanding, so it's not just feature comparison.

Chantel Soumis (10:47.502)
That's fair. When we do our trainings at Training Your Lainer, remember the first one that I saw with you sharing about AI intuition and how many horror stories there were with people using AI in the wrong ways because they weren't informed. They didn't have the education or the understanding of the depth and breadth of these tools and where that information goes.

It was just mind-blowing. So AI intuition, definitely a plus. But that also leads me into my next question, which is on prompt engineering, right? We've heard it over and over again. People know it. People think that they've mastered it just by entering a question into chat GPT or perplexity or whatever it is. But what's your take on prompt engineering? Is it a passing trend or a foundational skill for modern teams?

Nick Pope (11:45.381)
It is absolutely a foundational skill, but it's not engineering in the technical sense, right? You don't need a degree for it, which I think feeds into that scariness of AI or intimidation if you're not tech forward. So I like to think about it like Google search, right? There's a massive difference between someone that knows how to find something

versus someone that's just typing in ridiculous queries, right? And I think that was a previous generational thing, right? Where I felt like when I talked to my mother or some of her friends and they'd be like, I can't find this on Google. And I'm like, how? And you hear what they're searching and you're like, okay. And I feel like that extrapolates directly into prompt engineering or prompting, right? And what I see a lot of people doing is using it like Google, using it like a frequently asked questions, right?

And that simply is just not good enough, sort of garbage in, garbage out. Same thing where you had a problem finding something on Google, you're finding that AI is not that useful or you're not finding that it gives you good results. And ultimately it just comes down to what you're inputting on there. Right? So the way I like to try to get people to think about it and it's different and it's difficult, right? But at its core, you're explaining just like you would to another person, what you want them to do, being incredibly specific about the outcome.

Right? It's just like if you're a leader, right? If you ask something vaguely, you get vague results. If you ask precise, you get precise results. So it's more about communication than it is about code.

Chantel Soumis (13:17.525)
That's fair to say. It reminds me of the there's this video that's gone viral of and I think first grade, second grade, when kids are first learning how to write, they have to one of their assignments is to write detailed instructions on how to do something super simple like brush your teeth or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And this dad is sitting in front of a camera and he's got the bread and the ingredients right next to him.

And his son is reading the instructions that he wrote and it is completely backwards because as he starts doing it, he's like painting the paper instead of the bread with peanut butter. And it's hilarious. And I think it's literally giving this engine, this AI engine, a detailed, detailed description of what you're looking for because it can go so many different ways. Or like asking a genie.

for your wish, but not being clear enough. And then all of a sudden it spits out something totally random that's wasting a wish. So thank you for that detail in your prompt engineering. So how do you recommend companies train their teams to use AI tools responsibly, especially with concerns around ethics, data, and accuracy?

Nick Pope (14:37.791)
So first and foremost, not just because I work for a training company and highly promote this, but get actual training, please. Like actually get someone come in and really level set across your organization, right? So in every organization, you're going to have people who have fallen off the AI cliff of enthusiasm and talk about it all day. And all of their coworkers roll their eyes when they see another email come out from that person. You're gonna have your middle of the road folks that could go either way. And you're gonna have many who are hesitant.

or anxious or flat out afraid. And that's gonna only stoke the problems and not really help and it's not gonna help you move forward. So effective training brings the fundamentals across the board. So everyone speaks the same language and that level sets with equity, not assuming anyone knows everything, right? So the biggest thing I would say when it specifically comes down, once you've got that basis covered is that you always need to keep a human in the loop. And this is absolutely critical, right?

human eyes reviewing everything before it goes out, before it gets published or represents your brand. So this not only protects your organization, but also addresses people's fears about AI running wild. On the input side, you need to teach teams what data is appropriate to share with the AI tools and what could put the organization at risk. And when companies skip this training or jump straight to AI application tools, injecting them without context,

there's resistance, there's hesitation, and that's when your risks go through the roof. What's even worse is if you don't do any training and you don't tell them about it and you do the opposite and say, you shouldn't be using AI. Guess what? Your employees are, and now that is your risk goes up exponentially compared to actually using it in a safe way, right? So really, you'll never get the adoption needed to make ROI happen.

without this type of training and understanding. So resist the urge to go right into tools. And again, I'll circle back to get training first. It will help you drive faster every single time.

Chantel Soumis (16:44.674)
You've unpacked so much there that I want to dig into deeper because like a conversation that we had yesterday where we went into all the different stakeholders and a company that really have to advocate for smart usage of AI, I can share from my experience being a fractional CMO when I come into work for a business and they don't have like a branded GPT to use for their content strategy. It kind of makes me cringe, then I'm like, okay, well, I can dazzle here pretty easily. This is low hanging fruit.

But getting a champion, as we can call it, in every single department to really engage and inspire their teams to be smart and savvy is so important. So where should that fall on the priority list for their, with their budget, their operations budget, or every company should have a training and engagement budget, I would hope, in HR. Is that where you think it should start, is it HR, or is it the CXOs?

Where do those conversations start?

Nick Pope (17:46.67)
Yeah. Personal hot take is I think HR is optimized for the AI world, right? Because at its core, when you think about what works so magically with this generative AI wave that we're seeing is that they speak and talk.

like humans, that's how they were programmed, that's how all of this works. And that is the department that is optimized to be able to do human interactions, change management, things along those lines. So I think that's really where you're gonna get the best mindset around this. And I know plenty of IT people that are all in on this, right? But I know way more IT folks that are like, this is the worst thing that's ever come about and we can't control it. There's no zeros and ones and...

codes that I can program in, and thus these variables are my arch nemesis, right? And they, I often find tend to be a little bit more of a barrier than an inhibitor or than someone that's encouraging this. But you can have champions all over the place. Where we were talking yesterday around different champions in different departments is this is an early mistake I made, which was trying to show people you could use it for this part of your job and this part of your job. But that was my interpretation of what would be beneficial for them.

And the superpower with AI, and when you get AI intuition and you understand it holistically, the use cases for you are the lowest hanging fruit for productivity out there. So I'm never going to be able to tell an operations manager the best operations workflows because I've never worked in operations, right? Same thing goes for sales or marketing or engineering or any of these different verticals. So giving holistic training around the whole organization,

And then you will see the cream rise to the top and the people that are super into it and get it. You really want to empower those individuals twofold. One, because they're probably going to leave your organization and go do something wild with AI in the next six to 12 months. Or, you know, you're, really going to just fall flat and you're not going to see the productivity that you're looking for. So you really need to empower them because if you don't, they're going to leave. And if you do.

Nick Pope (19:55.069)
you are going to see crazy gains inside of your organization.

Chantel Soumis (19:59.871)
Why miss out on those crazy games, right? That's gonna directly impact your bottom line. It's a no-brainer.

Nick Pope (20:06.699)
I see it regularly, right? I was at MIT and they had three hour session with 90 second startup pitches. And I can say almost every single one of them followed the same format, right? I was working at X company and I saw this problem and I found this solution that fixes this problem. So now I'm here pitching my company for X amount of millions of dollars and I'm looking for investors in this space.

And to me, that just strikes the chord of that company clearly didn't have the right mindset to encourage that person to speak up, to empower them, to push that forward. And that company just lost out on an insane amount of productivity. To the individual users out there, more power to you, man. I think we're in for a future where there are more solopreneurs and there are more people chasing their dreams with AI. But if you're an organization, it behooves you to keep that in-house.

Chantel Soumis (21:02.988)
That's a scary thought to think about people, know, your culture is more important than ever essentially because of the hustle, side hustle culture and every single millennial and Gen Zier who almost has to have a side hustle and it's becoming more and more thought after and they're becoming their individual businesses and they're leaving because of a lot of those cultural instances and starting their own things. So that's a huge lesson for leadership.

in general, not just in CXOs, but managers, supervisors, create the culture that really encourages and celebrates people going the extra extra mile. So for those businesses with limited bandwidth, because let's be clear, like every single business talks about how they're limited on resources or money.

How do you prioritize AI implementation? Is it better to go deep in one area or spread small wins across departments?

Nick Pope (22:03.061)
So I like small wins. I always say start small, then get bigger. You want to look for low risk internal processes where errors aren't going to make headline news. This builds confidence, solves small problems, and creates momentum inside the organization. These small wins will help you graduate up the ladder as you see success. And remember that wins look different for different teams and different minds. So that's why holistic training

getting your entire organization to understand the options will help you create a list of priorities. And once you have that list, that's where you can dive in, analyze the risks and potential returns and create a framework for what to tackle first, second, third. You know, without this approach, you risk focusing on, like you mentioned, flashy tools rather than valuable ones. And my rule of thumb is a 50-50 investment.

when you can analyze what that ROI is and whatever that savings is that you get for the organization, you take 50 % of that and whether that's going to profits, whether that's going to the owner, whether that's going to shareholders, whether that's going to employees, but take that other 50 % and use that budget to continue the flywheel of AI. So not only are you bringing money back in, but you're continuing to fund the next step and that grows as your organization grows with its AI usage.

Chantel Soumis (23:28.619)
Beautiful, spoken like a true engineer. That's insane. Priorities, right? Make that list, stick to it. So what's one prediction you're willing to make about where AI is headed for businesses in the next like year or so? And how should companies prepare now?

Nick Pope (23:44.787)
It's terrifying when you ask that question, when anyone asks that question. So I'll be lucky if I could predict the next six months, see it alone the next year, year and a half. I always joke that AI years are like dog years. It's like seven to one ratio. The time is just exponential. And that's what's wild about all of this. But I would say short term, six months, agentic AI is coming quickly. while

Chantel Soumis (24:00.704)
Yeah.

Nick Pope (24:11.261)
everyone is using the word agents, just like every business is saying they're an AI company, just because they use chat GPT on the backend, they're not. But actual agents are coming. And when I say agents, I am saying multi-step agents talking to one another to accomplish goals. So in this space, you are still gonna need humans in the loop, but ultimately the days of tabbing between different tools,

is going to start to dissipate as platforms either bundle capabilities inside of one platform or seamlessly start working together. So you're gonna see this come out very, very quickly and this is going to be a big shape up in the space. Beyond that, on the other side, you touched on it earlier, AI is going to be injected into every single tool and every single platform and every single piece of tech that you use.

But the big caveat is the quality that's gonna come from that is going to be wildly variable. So we're going to see a lot, and we already see plenty of it, I think it's gonna get worse, a bland, boring, mediocre output from people who are having AI thrust upon them, but don't have an understanding of how to harness this power, right? To go back to the dragon needs a rider.

Right? Like this dragon is just going to cause catastrophe of the boring and bland and some par. and so organizations that invest in this training are really going to stand out dramatically because they're going to have an entire workforce of people that understand this and are able to push it in the right direction. and I think that gap of people being able to catch up is slowly getting smaller and smaller.

It's a very different story than I was telling two years ago, but we're, think, past the point where if you haven't started this in your organization, it could get ugly really, really quick if you don't do something about that soon. And I'm not saying paying money or buying a tool or anything like that, but just start training, start figuring out this culture for your business, as well as the wellbeing of all your employees.

Chantel Soumis (26:29.542)
So as an external consultant, right, somebody looking in that's an expert that teaches every single day about AI or consults on what to automate. You mentioned earlier that like the IT teams are actually the people that are almost most opposed to these kinds of programs and onboarding them, but it feels like it would be a natural fit for a CEO to say, okay, IT team, know, we're going AI heavy, let's train the whole company, right?

So how do you suggest a company move forward by working with a strategic AI consultant, like a chief AI officer that comes in and trains the team and builds the system? First, doing it all in-house and assigning it to a team member that might already have a full plate, but they might be interested in AI and leaving their fingerprint on the company.

Nick Pope (27:09.739)
.

Nick Pope (27:23.851)
Yeah, so it's a great question. And I would say, I personally, when people come in and say, like, man, I can really use Nick, I'd love for you to come in and just do this type of thing. I still hang back on the educational side of the fence, right? And ultimately, it is about upskilling the entire organization. But I do come in, we do help out in a number of different ways, right? And

Fractional executives as a whole are just natural system thinkers, right? We come in, we assess fast, we implement even faster, and AI allows us to amplify the superpower, right? So I think the biggest difference is that while full-time leaders can get caught up in the how we've always done things, or just get caught up in the different, you know, bureaucracies and layers and drama that naturally happen at organizations,

We can cut through that noise and identify the highest impact AI applications immediately. Plus we bring in cross-industry platforms and pattern matching. So we can bring in all these different insights from all of these different organizations. And I can think something that worked brilliantly at a restaurant and adapted to a professional service in a week. So we're already in the business, we're seeing around the corners, and ultimately AI just allows us to do that a lot faster.

Chantel Soumis (28:47.714)
It's so exciting. This is genuinely one of my favorite topics. My husband teases me about it all the time. But when you think about all of coming from the SaaS industry, right? The tech industry where things are moving really fast, but the developers, they're moving as fast as they could, but they couldn't make it fast enough. They couldn't make the updates, the enhancements fast enough because you have to go through testing and proofing and then product marketing. And it's a slow cycle.

But AI is making it so fast. And then you announced after your return from your MIT conference about erp.ai, which is completely changing the game. And I came from manufacturing ERP systems and marketing those. This is earth shattering and completely debilitating to the industry as a whole because it is so smart.

What do you have any other predictions for us based on everything that you learned recently and where we should be focused on so that we don't fall further behind? Because nobody likes to look like the slow little turtle, you know, in the race.

Nick Pope (29:54.283)
I hear you loud and clear on that one. I would say my other pro tip at this point in time, and this came from Andrew Ng, who's Google beat mind absolute genius in this space, right? So we're talking right now about generative AI and how do I use these tools? How do I upskill my team? How do I make sure that I'm not going to get swept up in this coming wave? So a lot of companies at this point in time are, if you're not using AI and you don't understand AI, that is a prerequisite to even get in the door at these organizations.

The next step, which I thought was really interesting from him, had to do with programming and coding, right? And so it's not necessarily you need to learn to become a coder, but there are tools out there. So whether it's lovable.dev, know, windsurf has some really phenomenal tools out there, cursor, that are what people are calling vibe coding, right? So low code, no code, being able to create websites and applications and things along those lines. So the hot take is,

AI helping actual coding might have 20 to 30 % gains if you're editing code, updating code, doing something like that. But what Andrew said that really resonated with me is the idea that we are going to see every other department getting into that space. And we're going to see 10X marketers, we're going to see 10X HR people, we're going to see 10X salespeople, slowly from the point of ideating around your idea of what you want to see.

So it's not the coding and editing coding on the backend, it's the front end. And we all know this dynamic and you mentioned it Chantal, where you have the salespeople that say to the engineers, this is what we want. And then the engineers build that and then what they get back is like, this isn't what we want. And the engineers are like, this is what you said you wanted, right? That is a tried and true business trope that we see out there. With these low code, no code, you can verbally, just like you're talking to a person, get your ideation of exactly what you want.

70 to 80 % of the way there, and it might not be built to scale, it might not fully function, but the core bones of it, you can get out of your soul and you can articulate. And then that's what you hand over to the engineering teams. And if that's no longer limited in the space of engineering, and you can do that as someone in HR, this is the tool I'd love to have. If you can do that as marketing, this is the idea of how I want this interface to look at all of these things. And you can get it the majority of the way there.

Nick Pope (32:16.895)
That's gonna be a superpower and I think everyone needs to jump on that train at some point in time within the next six to 12 months.

Chantel Soumis (32:25.709)
Ooh, yeah, let's do it. Let's go for it, go hard. know, automation is a concerning thing for everybody, right? You don't know what to automate, what not to automate, what to leave to humans. So how do you decide whether a workflow should be A, fully automated, B, human in the loop, or C, left blissfully manual? Any litmus tests you swear by?

Nick Pope (32:52.715)
I don't like C very much, just to be honest on that loaded question. You know, I don't claim to be a data analysis engineer, you know, super coding expert in these types of places, right? Anywhere where you need personal judgment is critical to still have a human in the loop, right? If we're simply automating a process of someone clicks on your website and wants to buy something and it automates through to the point where it ships out from your facility, great.

Chantel Soumis (32:56.811)
do that.

Nick Pope (33:22.271)
fully automate that, But if there's a human interaction, if there's something involving any sort of personal information or anything brand related, like still please keep an eye on those types of things. And I think that's the biggest story that I have for people that are worried that, know, AI is going to take their job. There's definitely jobs that are going to be displaced from this. But I'm a huge proponent that if you understand these tools, it's only going to give you superpowers in the spot and your personal

judgment, the years of experience that you have in your field, your experiences, your journey, all of that insight that you have that is very, very unique to you, still holds immense, immense power and is insanely valuable. And it's going to be really hard for sort of any AI model to fully replicate that judgment and that sort of industry depth and knowledge and experience. always critical to have them

be in the loop for the majority of the stuff that you're going to automate. I don't think we're there yet where it's full blown automation. You saw Klarna in the news, right? They were the big one that hired, you know, fired thousands of employees because they said, we built all these AI automations, right? That was about a year ago. Just this last month, guess what they're doing right now? It's hiring a bunch of humans back because the customer, yeah, because customer experience dropped, brand perception dropped. It's not there yet.

Chantel Soumis (34:43.594)
hiring.

Nick Pope (34:50.377)
It's gonna get there, but not right now.

Chantel Soumis (34:53.62)
You know, that's exciting for all of us who've always dreamed about having superpowers. We're almost there. Like we can harness these things and have our own superpowers. But beyond time saved, which metrics do you track to convince CFOs that AI isn't just glitter, it's measurable gold?

Nick Pope (35:11.093)
Outside of time saved, you can really look at clear actual, know, KPIs for your business. You know, one of the biggest cheat codes is, you know, what is the thing that makes your business the most money right now? What's the process that you have that is absolutely crushing? And how can you put AI into that to just increase those numbers? So if you're looking at takes you X amount of dollars to convert X amount of clients and every deal is worth X amount of money.

you can very easily look at that formula and figure out how can I use AI to speed up that time or to reach new markets to generate more things. And that's a very tangible thing to be able to measure the results on of since I implemented this, are we getting more leads, which results in more sales, which results in more revenue. That's super low hanging fruit on that side of the fence. I would also say just overall employee satisfaction. There are phenomenal studies that are out there about that.

as well as AI comfortability. When I think about the importance of your employees, as a leader myself, I always found it critical that they are putting so much faith in you, they are spending more time with you and your company than they probably are with their family. And I always took that very seriously, that we need to help and encourage these people. So the San Antonio Spurs have an amazing white paper out with OpenAI.

And two of the big things that they measured on there was what is their understanding of AI and how did that improve? And what is their overall daily satisfaction with their job? And both of those things improved over time with giving them wholesale access to chat GPT and really having structured trainings around what they looked like. So for me, I thought those metrics were always a little soft and I was always a little, you know, nervous about really pitching those ideas. But when you see a massive company like open AI and the spurs.

having those as their key KPIs and seeing amazing results from it, I think it speaks for itself.

Chantel Soumis (37:08.456)
Yeah, it's not always the hard dollars, it's the soft dollar savings as well. It's beautiful. Well, OK, I know we got to wrap things up here, but I want to ask you one more question. did ask you, you know, what's the trends for the next year? But fast forward to the year 2030. I know that seems like we should have flying cars. But that's only five years or four and half years away. Fast forward to the year 2030 with the most audacious

AI-driven capability you hope fractional teams like ours will treat as business as usual.

Nick Pope (37:43.211)
All right, you threw me for a curve ball. For fractional teams like ours, I was gonna get ready to talk to you about like robots and advance of medicine and clean energy and all those sort of things. So in the fractional space, I would say just how easy it is to be able to understand in depth the culture, the workflows, all of those sort of things. AI thrives on predictability and on systems.

Chantel Soumis (37:46.659)
Yeah

Nick Pope (38:10.481)
and its ability to interpret all of your systems and your documents and your meeting notes and everything along those lines, that data is gonna continue to be collected and become insanely valuable for organizations. And I think when we fast forward five years, it's gonna take you two seconds because all of that information is gonna be connected. You can come in and ask any question you want and get a clear, decisive answer in a second without having to interview multiple parties inside of an organization. So I think...

Being able to holistically understand an organization incredibly fast will be one of the biggest barriers that gets removed.

Chantel Soumis (38:48.186)
So final words of wisdom then for anybody watching or anybody listening. What is that nugget of advice? What's the knowledge grenade you want to throw their way?

Nick Pope (39:01.823)
the knowledge grenade. I would say if you're not on this train yet, you got to start somewhere. It's not that scary. Go to the GOAT, write the Kleenex of tissue paper, download ChatGBT. There is not a better $20 a month you can spend in any way, shape or form. I will fight you over that. So download that app and start playing around with it and start experimenting with it and really start building that AI intuition.

For those of you that are already on the train and are already using and already excited, I'll just remind you to never look at something or one of these tools and think about what it can do for you right now. You have to be thinking about looking back from the future on these types of things. You need to be a futurist and really understand if this is what it can do today, what can it do in six months? What can it do in a year, in two years? And that's where you need to do your business planning around because that is the reality of where this is going.

So never take something at face value and go like, yeah, this image generation sucks because they've got six fingers instead of five. Like, my gosh, do you even realize the technology we're looking at right now? And that we've seen in image generation, it's disappeared. So ultimately don't get caught flat footed. Really think about where the future of this is going. And anytime you use any tool and you're impressed by it, or even if you're not impressed by it, just remember, this is the worst AI you will ever use.

Chantel Soumis (40:30.325)
I love it. Don't get caught flat-footed or six-fingered. boy. All right. Okay. Well, Nick, thank you so much for the conversation today. I know I learned a lot from our conversation and I hope that our listeners did as well. I know they did. Where can they find you to learn more or to connect with you?

Nick Pope (40:52.379)
In a business sense, primarily on LinkedIn, if you like it a little bit more loose, I do occasionally put out a TikTok, but outside of that, LinkedIn is my primary stomping ground. Feel free to connect with me directly. You can check out our website, traininyourlane.com. I'm always happy to nerd out about it, and I'm probably one of the easiest people to sneak some free billable hours out of because I always am down to chat.

Chantel Soumis (41:18.591)
Awesome, well thank you so much, Neko, it great having you. All right, marketers and machine tamers, that's today's download. Go let the bots handle the busy work while you aim your genius at the moon. Stay in your lane, but let AI pave the road. Catch you on the next episode.