The 2 AM AI Mistake That Can Destroy Your Business Overnight

The 2 AM AI Mistake That Can Destroy Your Business Overnight

There's a version of AI that quietly grows your business while you sleep, and a version that sends the wrong message to the wrong client at 2 a.m., and nobody catches it for a week. Same tools. Different outcome. The difference is what you keep a human on.

In this episode, Chris Hutchins sits down with Ethan, founder of Overclocked AI, to talk about building AI-powered growth systems for consulting firms and small businesses, and where those systems quietly break. Ethan walks through the three-part "AI growth engine" his company builds (outbound research, AI sales response, 24/7 booking), why most AI failures trace back to messy human processes rather than the AI itself, and the exact line between what an agent should handle and what still needs a real person: judgment calls, objections, negotiation, anything with relationship risk.

They also get into the governance side most agencies skip entirely — the inflated growth promises floating around AI marketing right now, why "we'll grow your business to $800K" means nothing without a real diagnostic first, and Ethan's blunt rule for any founder deploying AI: you built the system, so you're responsible for what it does in your name.

In this episode:

• Why agentic AI isn't the risk, ungoverned AI is
• The 90-day rollout most AI implementations skip
• How to spot inflated promises from AI agencies
• Where human judgment can't be automated, no matter how good the system is
• What actually breaks first when a business removes the human in the loop

Transcript

Chris Hutchins 0:00

There's a version of AI that quietly grows your business while you sleep. And there's a version that sends the wrong client the wrong message at 2 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I've seen it where it's like we will grow your business to $560,000 or $800,000. Like these are huge numbers, and you're making these promises before you even talked with the company owner. The agent should never own anything that requires real judgment or carries relationship risk. And the unexpected objection, something emotional, an actual negotiation, those are all things that don't need a human. If we start adding to those broken systems, you're just going to create more of a mess on top of what you already have. You built the system. So you're responsible for what it does in your name.

Chris Hutchins 0:39

Welcome back to the Sigma Room. I'm Chris Hutchins. Here's a version of AI that quietly grows your business while you sleep. And there's a version that sends the wrong client the wrong message at 2 a.m. And nobody notices for a week. Same tools. The only difference is what you keep a human on. My guest builds these systems for real operators. Today we find that line. Ethan, welcome to the Signal Room.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Hey, Chris, thank you for having me.

Chris Hutchins 1:01

It's a pleasure. Really enjoyed having some conversations with you over the last couple of weeks. I'm like, we gotta do this for everyone else so they can actually listen in. Fascinating stuff you're doing. But why don't we kind of start with really who you are, what you're about, and tell us about what overclocked AI does.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, absolutely. Uh my name's Ethan. I am 27. I live in Canada right now. My path that is uh that's gonna be more the east side. We like to bug them about the uh the Canadian accent. Uh there is a stereotypical accent. It's on the east side, not the west side. Yeah, I do. But uh yeah, Chris, my my path here wasn't uh exactly a straight line. Uh just to to back it up a little bit. I spent a lot of years, uh, my early years in the restaurant industry starting at 15. Was there for many years after COVID hit, my town? It was uh it took a long time to to build back up. I moved out to the Okanagan for a year uh around that time to chase a commercial pilot's license uh after getting out of the restaurant industry. And uh I've always been wired for adventure. And flying felt like a way to to make travel and freedom a permanent part of my life. Very quickly, that didn't work out due to uh hitting a wall on the medical exam. And uh I ended up having to go back home and you know figure figure things out what was next for me. After that, uh I had an opportunity with a national group benefits consultancy as a sales consultant for a couple of years. It built good skills, and I come from a family of business owners in in that space. So I knew early on it wasn't where I wanted to be, but I did want to build something of my own. And uh I was always, you know, raised to be ambitious about creating something and building something of your own, but also being passionate about it. So what really shaped me where I was at, you know, during COVID, uh, I was watching a lot of people working from a laptop, living in incredible places, building income without asking anyone's permission for you know two weeks off uh in a year. That really hit something in me. And uh it took time to find the actual path. But AI was one of the things that clicked uh around when it started getting you know more popular and just being talked about more. It very quickly for me for me, I believed uh that it would be, you know, the next internet boom in a way, the way it would shape work and just the world going forward. I was uh very confident in it. And uh that was a few years ago. We've obviously seen how uh AI has come out of that. Uh, there's some some companies that are going way and beyond with where they're at, right? Uh Tesla, building robots, crazy stuff. So we're nowhere at that level. But uh yeah, just believing early on that it was gonna be uh a really big thing, I believed it was important to get into it early on. So that brings us to uh where we're at today. That's what became overclocked AI. What we do is help consulting firms build a predictable pipeline instead of relying on referrals and manual outreach. We call it an AI growth engine, and uh, we can get into that in a little bit. It's three pieces it's an AI agent uh that handles outbound research and personalized outreach. There's an AI sales department representative that takes over once someone replies. And answering questions, uh handling objections and booking meetings straight onto the calendar 24-7. You know, that's uh that's some of the things that we uh try to focus on.

Chris Hutchins 4:33

Wow, that's that's fascinating. I I I really uh appreciate your resilience. Obviously, you've you're heading down a pathway and then all of a sudden, like, oh well, I've got a pivot. And you've kind of been kind of in that mindset that that's what you're gonna do. Um, not everybody pivots like that. Uh kudos to you for for making the change. Uh, sure, for somebody who really was kind of passionate and wanted to fly airplanes, it kind of stung a little bit for a bit, you know. But exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

And yeah, and and some of those uh those you know, early on stories, um, I I know are completely not uh a part of what we're talking about today. But I like to paint a picture that, you know, for me, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Uh and I think there's so many people in this space that are sorry, not in this space, but just out there that, you know, they just go one thing to the other, not figuring out what is meant for them. So you're not alone out there. There's many of us, and you'll find what you know works best for you.

Chris Hutchins 5:29

I'm glad you put it that way. And it, you know, it just it reminds me of something I heard Gary V talk about on one of his podcasts. He tells people this a lot. He said, Look, you're young. The one thing that you have, it's the most valuable thing, it's time. And in your 20s and your 30s, you've got plenty of time to figure stuff out. So if you haven't figured it out, don't sweat it. You're in a really good spot. You've got the time to learn. One of the things that I was inspired by is when I first heard about Colonel Sanders launched his business after he was retired. It's six over 60 years old. So that there's hope. Don't get too discouraged, folks. You're doing just fine. So let's kind of get into a little bit more about you know, how did you get into this mode that you're in, you know, working with overclocked AI? How'd you get here? And what's an AI growth engine really for a consultant or a small team?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

The idea that I had when I when I took this on was uh just jumping back to the COVID days, there was a big boom of uh obviously everyone was at home. So a lot of people started working from home. Uh and coming out of COVID, things stayed that way uh for a lot of companies. Uh, many companies also switched to a hybrid model where, you know, you're at work some, but also still working at home. And I think a lot of people built an appreciation for, you know, being being in a place that I guess wasn't work that they were like forced to be. You know, they got to spend time around their families, they got to, you know, focus on their health, right? Like how many people were uh had access to uh, you know, be cooking at home uh instead of you know going a full day without eating or having to pack lunch or something, or you know, having half hour for a lunch, right? So it really, in a way, we were uh we we were a little spoiled and then we realized that you know we can take work wherever we go. Going back to uh you know the COVID days, there was also a big boom of uh people on Instagram, right? You had content creators that were posting videos that, like I mentioned before, where they would just be, you know, on a beach somewhere working a couple hours a week. I knew that it was possible. I also, you know, like I like I mentioned earlier, having to, you know, request from a boss to have your your two weeks uh in a year. I I just started to really struggle with the idea that, you know, you get one life, you get to, you know, you you you can live it how you want, right? So that's what got me into this space. I wanted to not only have financial freedom, but freedom over my time and uh be able to live my life every single day, even from a young age, exactly how I wanted it to. Uh, I believe that answers one of your questions. I uh forget what the other question uh was there.

Chris Hutchins 8:02

I I love the answer in and it it's fantastic to me because I I remember going through the same kind of transformation or in transition during the during the pandemic. But one of the things that I found so remarkable is that the resiliency and the way that people seem to be able to step up and just navigate that difficulty. I had I was working in New York and had some team members, managers and directors, people are all responsible for teams. And both spouses were home working, we had to work from home. There's all the kids, all the pets. And honestly, that was one of the best parts of it that I re that I like to think about. I mean, I got to know people in a very different way. Except when you're in an office environment, I mean, you can do the you know, uh a random stop by at somebody's desk or whatever and chat, but it's a whole different thing when you're not able to do that. And you see people in their own element and you and you're seeing them differently. And I I loved it. I got to know the team on a level that I probably wouldn't have any other way. So there was a uh a silver lining in there. Um, not to say that there was much else that was positive about the experience other than just the people part of it. And understand obviously heroism for all of us probably got redefined during those years. So let's just you've kind of teased up the the growth engine a little bit. Um let's kind of go past the demo and what actually becomes the a true reality when an agent is doing the work. Um we're talking about agentic AI minus the hype, essentially, but AI is an the agent doing some of the outreach and the follow-up. Where does it earn its keep from your perspective and where might it quietly break?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, um, agentic AI uh just means that the system doesn't just answer a question, one input, one output. It it takes action across multiple steps to uh to get something done, like you know, handing a task to uh an employee and letting them run with it. In our world, that is an AI agent, uh, researching and uh reaching out on its own, then handling replies, objections, and building or sorry, booking uh uh meetings without a person actually having to touch each step. Uh it earns its uh its keep on repetitive, you know, it's uh it's time sensitive, it's low judgment uh work. The follow-up that never uh it's a follow-up that just never goes cold. So what people misunderstand is thinking that AI is some separate, unpredictable thing. Uh it's not, it's uh it's an extension of the person who built it, uh, I believe. There's definitely, don't get me wrong, there is definitely AI systems out there that are intelligent, uh especially like the large language models like uh Chatchipity or Claude. I do believe they are at the the place of you know being able to research and learn uh on their own. But uh as far as like the systems that we build for for companies, we make sure that they are predictable. Uh the the systems that we have are they're trained to respond the way that you would want them to, uh, or you know, how how you would. If something feels off, that's just uh it's a guidance gap, not really uh the AI going rogue uh on its own. So uh yeah, just on on the oversight, we run a 90-day path like like most would in this space. Month one is is usually an integration built around the specific business. Month two is where we watch the performance and make fine-tuning decisions on that. Uh every industry responds differently, but then uh month three is going to be you know largely hands-off and uh your first month where you know you're actually pulling in the best results. So you can see results as early as month one in in the the you know, the work that we do. But uh just getting to your your other uh question there, the part about you know that that no one demos, honestly, it's uh it's almost never the AI itself. Uh, I find it's what it's working with, you know. Uh if a firm's process is inconsistent or nobody agrees on what a qualified lead is, for example, uh, or even you know, looks like, automating that just makes the mess move faster. Uh, before automation actually pays off, you need to have clarity on who you're targeting, right? What a good fit actually actually looks like and what it means for your team, and uh what your process is when someone actually says yes. So uh the AI amplifies whatever is already there, uh, whether it is good or messy.

Chris Hutchins 12:21

So one of the things that's like I've been kind of thinking about over the last uh several months, and more even recently, when we think about building a business, uh traditional business, there are career level commitments that people make for the types of roles that we would typically hire for. And they're not all the same. And it occurs to me that what you're doing is very similar in that way in how you're building your your business and you're building the functions. All agents are not the same, right? I think most people just start, you know, playing around with the prompts. But maybe talk about that, how how different that is, because if you're trying to use it as a Swiss Army knife, that's where you're gonna run into some trouble. And I think that's something that you're really solving for.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah. Um there's one key word that I uh uh love to use in this space. Um, and it's probably gonna be surprising, but relationships, uh, relationships, the human factor of things are still so important. Right. Especially people that that aren't even uh looking at AI or just think that AI is bad. Yeah, I can absolutely see, you know, why why it would be taken that way if you don't understand it or or know what it can do. Yeah, you know, it's very easy to just assume that AI is gonna take over. There's not gonna be any work for people, you know, it's uh this or that. There's so many, so many different ways that you could go about with AI to give it a bad name. But right at the end of the day, the agent should never own anything that requires real judgment uh or carries, you know, relationship risk. And the unexpected objection, something emotional, an actual negotiation, those are all things that uh, you know, still need a human. It's easy to lose a relationship rather than to build one, you know. So for what matters more right now, I would say relationships, you know. Uh I've talked to a lot of founders about what their day-to-day actually looks like. And the most common answer that they've been giving me is that they're spending a huge chunk of their time calling around businesses, writing outreach emails, chasing leads themselves. That's one of the biggest bottlenecks we see uh in business, uh, the business owners right now is uh, you know, they're trying to scale, but they're spending so much of their time on something that they could either get a staff member to do or um, you know, even just uh use an AI tool for. I want to be clear, we're not uh, you know, AI, AI can, you know, replace employees. It is at that point, unfortunately. But you know, that's not what we're in the the business of doing. We're trying to make you know the staff that you already have more efficient. Take a sales consultant, for example. People, people want to do business with other people, right? Uh we're giving them the tools to improve their skills, cut the repetitive stuff, and uh just free up their time for what actually matters, uh, which is the relationship, right? So automation should create space for more human connection, but definitely not less.

Chris Hutchins 15:13

I like how you put it. You know, just the context is such an important thing for people. If you're if you're uncomfortable with something like that, it really helps to start to understand that what makes AI valuable is when there's a human being actually operating it effectively that has good judgment, has the ability to it to learn, has the ability to adapt. It's not gonna be stuck on one idea that they actually can actually, you know, to your point, the AI's not gonna negotiate. Well, human being can't. There's just a lot of value to learning how to use it. And I like how you're how you're talking about it because I think that's where people need to really stop believing in the hype and just you start start playing around with it yourself just to kind of see what it what it is and then what it can do. And you know, I I would also you know ask for your your thoughts on this, Ethan. Um, what should organizations be doing to help people? Because I don't I think we often try to do things as a hobbyist, uh to make these things really work, I think there's an investment that needs to be made in upskilling. Don't do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah, I absolutely do, Chris. I'll I'll use an example. Um, I'm sure everyone, oh actually, uh I know my Instagram, for example, all the ads, because I'm in AI, is uh it's full of you know other people advertising uh AI solutions or you know their agencies. Uh and I'm sure other people listening to this have at least come across an AI ad from time to time. So the thing is, most of those ads now are being uh AI generated and uh uh uploaded. Um, that's where we're at in this day and age. Uh, very rarely do you actually still have uh humans making custom posts and you know all the graphics for that. There's still some out there, but a lot of it has been taken over. You're gonna see a ton of people uh or agencies out there, especially on Instagram where it's just easy to upload and add, they're gonna be making promises. They're gonna, you know, be sugarcoating things. It's gonna be nice graphics on it. And it's gonna be promises. It's gonna be something like we guarantee X amount of blank, whatever you know they're they're promising, let's say lead generation within you know a certain amount of time, right? I've seen it where it's it's like we will grow your business to like five hundred and sixty thousand dollars or eight hundred thousand dollars. Like these are huge numbers, and you're making these promises before you even talked with the the the company owner or or anything like that. Yeah. So as far as the the governance part of things and uh just being careful, it's it's definitely a space that you want to do, you know, a lot of research on if you're considering services. Uh you can hop into ChatGPT or Claude and just start working with it, just start talking with it and and all that. And that's not something you really get to research on unless you want to learn how to use it. But as far as knowing who to trust uh in in the space, there's gonna be a lot of people out there that are just kind of uh throwing around uh different different ideas, right? So just on the the government's part, uh for a small shop, uh the government isn't the the policies or or the committees, you know, it's it's knowing what you'd never let the AI say or do unsupervised. And and this goes for the actual business itself. If if a business is gonna incorporate AI, this is some of the guidelines uh in a way that they should be uh thinking about, uh especially when they are you know considering their customers and how the customers are gonna think or feel about them having AI, right? So you don't want to, you know, there's certain things you don't want unsupervised. You want to be as a human uh checking in regularly, especially early on. Uh it's less about the bureaucracy of the of the company and more about the integration, right? You built the system so you're responsible for for what it does in your name.

Chris Hutchins 19:04

That's exactly the the way it is in the in reality. If you're running a business with people, you don't there's certain things that you just you're gonna be monitoring. If you're running a business, you want to have people who will represent you properly and know where the barriers are. Don't cross this line, don't see these types of things, don't do these types of things. But here's here's what I want you to do. Those I think we we forget sometimes. We're we're really still trying to address the same the same challenges, and your AI needs the same boundaries you would put around an employee. It's really that simple.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, it really is. And uh this actually ties directly into how we built our uh our growth engine in the first place. Uh, we don't just install some off-the-shelf, here's a tool that gets uh gets you more leads uh set up. We don't do that. We do a deep dive into the business first, uh, you know, how they operate, who they sell to, what their process looks like, uh what the numbers, right? The revenue that they're bringing in. You know, you can't make an accurate prediction of where you can bring this company if you don't know where they're at right now. So you know, making just getting all the information for what you need, and that becomes the blueprint for the whole system, uh, or where the whole system is built around, using precision from you know, past data and similar case studies to set realistic targets uh instead of uh generic promise. Uh, but real quick, Chris, here's where the government piece comes in. Even though the the build follows that blueprint and it's meant to, you know, give to a company, and we we would manage everything that we integrate, uh, and and that company would basically follow uh the plan that we put in place to get them to where they want to be.

Chris Hutchins 20:44

Can I get you to talk a little bit about this? Because you're you're talking about some of the foundational things that I think people need to understand a little bit better. When you're implementing and this is around the governance piece of it, where do you see things kind of usually bump into some some barriers? Is it the AI itself or the messy data and the processes that are sitting under it?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah, in my experience, I find that a lot of uh like what's going wrong uh in in you know the systems is uh going to be uh on the human side, right? Yeah, in my experience, uh, you know, especially when working with with founders and uh you know the key decision makers in the space, they have a way of of wanting, right? And uh how they want to run the business. And you know, coming in as a strategic partner with them, we absolutely want them to be running things. We want them to be in charge. Uh, they tell us how they want to do things, but uh at some point you also have to let if you've hired somebody for a you know a a reason, right? You have to let them do what they're there to do, right? So we can make suggestions, uh, but we're not gonna run the company for you. We just manage what we what we put in place and uh you know. In the case of our company, we would, you know, usually have like weekly, weekly calls with uh whoever we set it up with. And uh we want to do weekly check-ins, you know, just make sure that you're getting the results that you want. If we're behind on something in the project, we will be up front with you about that and you know, tell you where we're at and where we're going. I think I got a little off topic there. Uh, but I think you wanted me to more dial in, you know, the AI compared to the human factor, where does it usually fall apart? Was that the the question?

Chris Hutchins 22:27

Yeah. Well, yeah, where there, where are some of the barriers that you get to? Because I mean, ultimately, I'm I'm just thinking about this from how you do an implementation and where you've had the best success. What are the things that were in place that the uh the the your clients had started to deal with that made them ready for you to be able to help them take things to the next level? Uh there's definitely some that are really good. There's some that are maybe struggle more than others. But I'm just I just want to make sure our listeners are hearing. Um, if they're thinking about doing this, what are the things that you you're gonna hope that they're thinking about and doing it? So they're ready for you.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Yeah, that's a that's a good question. Um, the thing with our our company is we are, you know, we we do offer uh custom solutions. So if there was something that we wanted to do a deep dive on, uh we could, you know, absolutely do that. So I think I've talked a lot about like the lead generation of uh side of things. But you know, for example, uh a question would be like, how do we track all that, right? What happens if this company doesn't have certain systems set up already? So there would definitely be, we can come in and we can work with the the current systems and operations that you uh are working with, but it would be a different conversation if there was things that were not working and needed to be changed. Uh so we could definitely set up some systems there and then you know get get you on our systems, we get all of your information moved over, make sure it's all organized. It would be like a big data transfer in a in a way. And then from there, that's only if your your current system is just needing an upgrade. But uh for the most part, the the main bottlenecks are going to be more on the the human side of things, right? Like I said, we would be there to to help you scale uh and get your company to where you want it to be. Uh, and that's that's assuming that you're not happy with where it is now, or you are just ready for that growth. So it definitely speeds up the process if you have been managing your operations well and your team well and and you know you're you're you're happy with where you're at. But uh if there's you know, if you're needing to make changes within a team, uh that is going to be one of the bigger uh bottlenecks uh that will that will slow you down.

Chris Hutchins 24:35

Yeah, you're you're you're kind of leaning into some of this already, but maybe we could just touch on where's the line in terms of what where you need a human to be you know remain in the loop and what happens and what have you seen happen when you know somebody actually removes that and there's no human in the loop? What are some of the types of things that you've seen and what would you tell people um in terms of thinking through where they need to put those lines so that they don't end up undermining what they're trying to accomplish?

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yeah, uh like I mentioned before, um it the biggest thing and the the most simple thing is going to be if you have broken systems right now and we don't know that, we would obviously need to identify those. But if if if we start adding to those broken systems, right, um, such as lead generation, if we start filling your calendar and what you have currently is already not working or things need fixing, you're just gonna create more of a mess on top of what you already have. So, you know, just going back to where I just mentioned uh that we could, you know, upgrade those systems and things like that, it really is all about it's not about like just giving you more services, more things to pay for, right? Um, it it really is if we're gonna optimize this for you and manage things and get you to the targets that you want to hit, let's do it right. Let's let's not start right in the middle. Let's not, you know, start, you know, a couple steps ahead. If you're not ready to be bringing in more business, we need to identify that first, uh, rather than you know, just piling on more leads, more business to you that will just get scrambled.

Chris Hutchins 26:08

Yeah, that that's that's hugely important. I think it actually leads into this, you know, the some of the ideas around how does this free people up? You know, if we're putting these agents in place and we're using them properly, it creates capacity, you know, you know, presumably anyway, for for for human beings to be able to do much higher level work than they can do today. Maybe talk talk a little bit about that and what you see perhaps with some of your clients, where all of a sudden they're they're they they're able to tackle things that were never even be, they weren't close to getting to until some of this things, these things were automated.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah. Um, I it's hard to it really is uh case dependent on uh you know what what's going on in that business. But if example, I I I mentioned earlier that uh, you know, we I've spoken with a lot of people and like these are these are the business owners, right? Like they have so many things to worry about, to to you know, work on, especially when they are in the mindset of wanting to grow the business, to be spending all your time calling or sending emails. Uh, I I talked to somebody who said that he had to research his own leads, I guess. And I was just thinking like how time consuming that would be. Imagine if the leads were coming in on their own. Yeah, I can't even think of an example of what a business owner uh would do uh in their spare time. Maybe they'd go golfing, right? But uh at the end of the day, if we could fix one task that you're spending all your time on every day, most of your days in a week, all year long, that is so many hours you could be putting towards other things, uh, you know, building your relationships. You could even, you know, you could even still do all of that if you really wanted to while having the automation and you could be just bringing in so much. So it's it's not necessarily about taking the task on and now what task can they do now that that first one is done? It really is you have all this time now. What do you want to do with it? And uh what do you think is gonna be the best you know move for your business? Where do you want to be?

Chris Hutchins 28:14

Right. It's it's so fascinating too because we're we're hitting some some things that are uh pretty much universal um across multiple industries and in in healthcare in particular. So if I've I've talked to a lot of clinical clinical people, doctors, nurses, and one of the things they've always been a little frustrated by is we when we're bringing new technologies, the conversation always tends to center around the productivity. But as I've listened to them, they've echoed very loudly something that you just talked about. Is what you're doing going to give me time back? And that's a massive, massive uh challenge that we've got to do a much better job with. And I'm glad that you're thinking about it that way. Because you're right, you know, it is a lot of work that you're doing, and you know, being a CEO yourself, that iPhone out that means chief everything offer. So I mean everything's on my plate. And if I don't do it, no one's gonna do it because I'm I haven't hired anyone to do it. So that time measurement is one of the things that I think is a really, really big deal. And kudos to you for realizing it and amplifying it, because I think that's a really important thing for us to aim our attention at as people who are trying to improve the lives of human beings and improve the value of the work that they do, make it easier and more enjoyable. So you're not just putt pressing a button for eight hours. I mean, those are those things are not they're all that attractive for a human being to be doing. But I I love that. Given time back, kudos, man. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

I I love what you just brought up, Chris. Uh, you know, just talking about like looking out for uh uh you know uh other people and and all that. It's really easy to start your own business and you know be driven by money and success and you know what you want for your own life. But in my journey of figuring out where I wanted to be or work, I didn't want to just be a you know another number to a company. I felt like I wasn't making an impact, I guess uh is is how I would put it. So I I always wanted to be in a creative space. Uh and I love you know working in tech. It's uh, you know, I built my own PC. So just getting back to uh we had a conversation earlier about like what overclocked means. Uh overclocked is when you just like boost your your PC and uh it's uh you know, you just ramp it up, uh all the specs on it. So uh we want to do that with companies, but uh just getting back to the the human factor, it was never about like getting a paycheck. You know, it's uh I always want to be doing something that helped others in a way. And maybe some people don't see it the way I do, you know, some people just hate AI or think that we're you know taking taking jobs or whatever. Um, I want to come in and I want to help people and uh free up their time and and hopefully just give them the perspective of what it would look like to to have a bit more of your time back and and be able to spend it how you want to. Maybe that is like diving headfirst fully into your business, doing more tasks that you could let uh you get where I'm going with that, Chris. But uh yeah, you know, it's all about looking out for each other there.

Chris Hutchins 31:16

Yeah, I I I I I love it, man. I love it. You know, you've talked a bit about governance, and I think over the course of my years, uh I've seen governance talked about almost exclusively from an academic exercise perspective. Most organizations I've been around had stood up a data governance program and started bringing in all the senior level people when there wasn't yet anything to cover. They weren't asking, there was no decisions to be made. So over time, those things kind of disappeared. But now here we are with AI, and governance is important, as you've already stressed. Uh if you're working with a small group, let's just say it's a three-person shop, it's almost sounds like it's a luxury to do where you know we gotta we gotta create this team. Maybe talk to talk to me a little bit about that. It's not it sounds like a luxury, but I don't know that that's really the case. What does it actually look like for an operator with no compliance department? Why should they care about if something goes wrong or before something goes wrong, perhaps maybe they'd be better?

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Yeah, I'll uh I'll I'll give you an uh uh an example and uh I think I can relate it to this. But uh I just spoke with somebody who was uh they do consulting uh uh in a in a way, but they worked with uh the US government, so they relied uh uh heavily on government contracts. They recently told me uh that they had been doged, you know, during this uh this this presidency, and uh that they actually lost a government contract. So, you know, very quickly after that, they uh they had to go more private. And I think they do still do some uh some government work, but it's just not coming in the same way that it did. So circling back to your question, Chris, the governance part of AI, I think is extremely important. And uh it's even just giving you know the public peace of mind. AI in in spaces like healthcare, government, military, big things. You could even like, you know, say electrical grids, like things that the public really rely on, it needs to be tight. You know, there needs to be people that are overlooking these things and have proper regulations, just because, you know, think about like what would happen if if data got across, uh, you know, got in the wrong hands, right? So that's not something that the public wants, as well as, you know, it just just information, right? Uh, or AI getting to the point where it is running on its own. So it always needs to, you know, in a way, maybe have like a kill switch, right? Yeah. I yeah, I don't know how that would look like uh there, but again, AI has gotten so big in in certain areas. But talking about the small shops, getting onto the the smaller side of things, I think having too much regulation would actually be uh not good for businesses. There's already enough hurdles to to start uh your own company and to you know maybe you're trademarking something, right? It just takes a long time to actually go from the day you decide to start to making a success and getting through all those hurdles, all those uh those roadblocks, right? So if you were to start regulating AI in a way, you could definitely, you know, regulate it a little bit. But as far as having mass amounts of of regulation where you have to check by everyone, uh or you know, go through certain uh streams like government or whatever, there it could just be very, it could hold things up uh very quickly and kill dreams and and and things like that. So when it comes to small companies, it comes to like things like data or whatever, like they should absolutely be exercising extreme caution. But you know, you're implementing uh clients, right? I I would have access if I implemented clients, I would have access to their stuff. So, you know, it really does come down to to trusting people. But uh yeah, it just at the end of the day, you gotta be careful with uh, you know, who what what what you're limiting, but also making sure that it's not just a complete free-for-all.

Chris Hutchins 35:14

No, I couldn't agree more. As we kind of wind down a little bit now, I I just I'd like to have you kind of put your futurist hat on for a second and you know look ahead, you know, maybe for the over the next year. Where do you see things moving uh for small businesses over the next year? Like what you're seeing in in the things that you're you're deploying and building. In fact, maybe you could talk about if there's things that you're that are in the in your pipeline that that you're excited about that you might be able to do to offer clients in the next year.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Yeah, absolutely. Uh so Chris, I'll just say I I think in the next year this stops being a novelty. There's so many people right now that there's three categories, right? There's people that implemented AI from the beginning. Uh, I've spoken with a lot of companies that they don't even work in the AI space, but they have learned AI, they build their own products in shop to use for their own company and maybe the clients that they're working with, but it's not in the sense of an AI agency, right? So there's people that adopted it very well. There's other people that uh have been very skeptical, but they've done a little bit, right? So, you know, they start talking about like, yeah, you know, I started running this project through Claude and I just wanted some feedback on it. And uh, you know, they're thinking about, you know, getting into something simple like lead generation. I would absolutely say that that's like fairly entry level for you know businesses getting into AI, right? Uh, and then you're gonna have the people that, you know, they still hate it, they don't like what's going on. You'll have people that are worried about the the economy, sorry, not the economy, the environment with these uh big data centers going up or you know the amount of water being used for them. So uh things like that, I'll I'll say I hope they find better solutions. Uh I I heard China has been dropping data centers into the ocean. I think that's a much better way of cooling them rather than like near city or something. So that's it, but yeah, it just I heard that.

Chris Hutchins 37:00

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Yeah, for cooling, right? So yeah, I don't know uh if that's I don't know exactly if that's like eco-friendly. So nobody, nobody get mad at me for that. I just heard it's a little better than uh you know some of the other solutions that that have been uh coming up. So uh yeah, like I said, it's I think it goes from stopping or it stops being a novelty and it just becomes how small firms operate. Uh the ones who adopt it thoughtfully, uh not just the shortcut versions, but the real infrastructure versions, uh, they're gonna outpace the ones still doing everything manually. And that gap is going to widen fast. We've already seen that. It's just gonna get you know more and more bigger. When I started my company this year, uh, I've only been in this space for a couple months, but uh when I started it, you know, everyone was saying like this is the year of the agents, right? So agents, you know, doing those repetitive tasks are gonna be bigger or sorry, uh more common. But uh, I think after this, you know, agents are gonna be not not you know old or anything, but like they'll have been around and AI is just it's it's just progressing like every day. So yeah. I think for me, I'm going to be, you know, really wanting to focus on refining the uh the growth engine. And uh the growth engine again is not one product, but it is more a uh a multi-phase product line. So, you know, we would install different things, right? So once we've finished doing one thing, see how it runs, make sure you've gotten your return on investment there. And then we've started on another one. And the growth engine, it would be completely considered like we do all these things, they're all running smoothly. You're scaling as we keep doing these, more leads coming in, you know, maybe you have more room to hire more people, right? It's all about growth, looking out for each other. Uh, like I said.

Chris Hutchins 38:46

So I I love this. Um so Ethan, if if people are hearing this today and uh they want to learn more, where can where where can they go to find you?

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah, uh my website, uh, it has all my services. You can book a call with me there. Uh, it is going to be overclockedai.net. Uh, and then you can find me at LinkedIn. Uh, that is going to be Ethan Sib, spelt S-E-I-B. And uh, I'm sure Chris will have those in the show notes. Uh, that last name gets uh it tricks people sometimes.

Chris Hutchins 39:21

Absolutely. Yeah, for the audience, you you can count on that. I'll I will make sure that there's all the information that you need to get a hold of Ethan and engage. And I encourage you to do that. So as we wrap, uh Ethan Slim, founder of Overclocked AI, the threat I am taking with me, the agents that are they're the easy part. It's the human beings that are really the irreplaceable component of what we're doing. And I love that you focused on really giving time back for human beings. Hugely important. I'm a big fan. Uh, love what you're doing. And to my listeners, please make sure and go out, go ahead and check out his podcast. The operators who win are the ones who know exactly which decisions to keep their hands on. In the meantime, go check out the operator lab. And thanks, Ethan, for trading seats with me. I've had a blast with you today, learned a lot, and I look forward to hearing more good things. And congrats on this launching your business. I wish you great success. Let's just plan on catching up again soon. And I want to be learning all the things that I should be changing about how I'm operating my business as well. Thank you so much again for being on the show.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Absolutely, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. And uh just one quick note is uh I connected with Chris uh by doing a podcast with him first, where we get to talk about uh everything Chris is doing and give him the spotlight. So if you'd like to uh have another perspective of what's going on with Chris, uh you can check out uh my YouTube channel. I will have his video up uh very soon.

Chris Hutchins 40:51

Thanks so much. That's it for this episode of the Signal Room. If today's conversation sparks something in you, an idea, a challenge, or a perspective worth amplifying, I'd love to hear from you. Message me on LinkedIn or visit signalroom podcast.com to explore being a guest on an upcoming episode.