AI Profit Leaders

The AI Revolution: Adapting to Change

• AI Profit Systems with Lindsey Badillo & Chris Wiser

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In this episode of the AI Profit Leaders Podcast, host Chris Wiser sits down with Adam Walter, founder and president of Humanize IT, soon transitioning to Humanize AI.

Adam shares his journey from engineer and critical infrastructure security director to strategic advisor helping MSPs and business leaders move beyond “tickets and tools” and into real business conversations.

What started as a mission to help engineers have better conversations with clients has evolved into something much bigger: preparing companies for the AI acceleration wave that’s already here.

After initially believing he was ahead of the AI curve, Adam discovered he was significantly behind — and within just two months, pivoted his entire development cycle, redirected company reserves, and rebuilt his roadmap around AI integration.

This episode explores the difference between operational thinking and strategic thinking, why AI will massively augment high performers, and why companies ignoring this shift may not just stagnate. They may disappear.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

  • Why AI will augment great teams instead of replacing them
  • The difference between operational IT and true strategic advisory
  • Why many leaders think they’re ahead on AI — but aren’t
  • The risk of ignoring AI adoption in competitive markets
  • How “vibe coding” creates opportunity — and technical debt
  • Why strategy must come before tools
  • How listening to clients unlocks more growth than selling hardware

Key Takeaway

AI is not a technical trend.

It’s a business accelerator.

Leaders who adopt it strategically will multiply their capacity.
 Those who ignore it will be outpaced by competitors who don’t.


Episode Highlights

  • Adam’s shift from engineer to fractional CIO to AI strategist
  • The “avalanche” metaphor — realizing how far behind he actually was
  • Why AI turns a team of 10 into a team of 50
  • The difference between fixing tickets and solving core problems
  • The school internet story — doubling bandwidth solved 10 years of stagnation
  • Vibe coding vs strategic development
  • AI as augmentation for visionaries and implementers

Quote from the Episode

“AI is going to take your team of 10 and turn them into a team of 50 — while your competitors keep doing things the way they always have.”

— Adam Walter

Guest Spotlight

Adam Walter
Founder & President, Humanize IT (transitioning to Humanize AI)

Adam has over 20 years of experience in engineering, security, and IT leadership. Through Humanize IT, he helps MSPs and technology professionals move beyond technical jargon and into meaningful business strategy conversations. His current focus is helping organizations responsibly integrate AI to accelerate growth without sacrificing security or clarity.



Connect with Us!

SPEAKER_01

Four, four, three, three, two, three, one, one. Welcome to the AI Profit Leaders Podcast. My name is Chris Weiser here with Adam Walter, founder and president of Humanize IT, soon to be humanize AI. I'm really excited about that. Adam, tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, my name's Adam Walter. I I've got a long history in engineering. I originally was a bachelor of science, computer science on an art scholarship.

SPEAKER_01

Personally, I was kind of an art student too. That's crazy. They're the best creative types. I didn't know that about it.

SPEAKER_00

The best engineers I've known had PhDs in trumpet. And so I've been even going there. I was an engineer for 17 years. I rose through the ranks. I was a critical infrastructure director uh for security. I was top-tier engineer. I was an Apache admin. You name it, I've done it.

SPEAKER_01

And uh Apache, that's like the old web server, right? The current web server, yeah. The best web server. Old web server. I was an old VSD guy. Oh, that's old. Yeah. Yeah. I was a Vax VMS guy. But we had Apache back then, too. Vax VMS was what I learned the code on. That's real old. Okay. Anyway, so welcome to the AI Profit Leaders podcast. Super pumped to have you here. So what so what does Humanize do? Talk to me a little bit about that and how are you transitioning into AI? We got some more stuff that we could do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we got a lot to cover here. Yeah. Humanize IT's mission is to help engineers have better conversations with their clients. We noticed a problem back in around 2020 where MSPs were talking about tickets, speeds, and feeds. And I was going in as a fractional CIO with my years of experience and helping companies understand how to use technology better. I wasn't fixing things, I was done with that. I made 36,000 MRR just advising companies on agile and on best practices for IT. This is money that MSPs could have had. So we ended up buying a gap analysis platform called Managed Services Platform and transitioning it into something called Humanize IT to help engineers identify where the gaps were and what they should actually talk to their clients about to help their clients succeed. And that's to humanize it. Humanize IT. So rather than talking about technology, you're talking about the human behind it.

SPEAKER_01

It's so funny because almost almost all of your tech people, especially your IT service providers, for anybody that's not in IT, when he says MSPs, it means managed service provider. That's your outsourced help desk, your outsource, you know, all of the outsourced IT guys. That's kind of where Chris Weiser came from. That's how we know each other, is that world? It's really interesting that you mentioned that whole thing because so many IT people, it's kind of kind of like the thing about IT people in general, is we're techie dorks that aren't humans. Yeah. And that's a really cool take on it.

SPEAKER_00

I think you said it earlier today, even was to hammer everything's a nail.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so when you're in tech and you're so used to being the person who knows everything about tech, you think that your solutions will solve every problem. Yeah. And so you think, oh, if they just had a new computer, if they would just do what I say. The number of times I've heard of a technical person say, if the if the client would just do what I say, they'd be fine, but they won't listen to me. And you know, to me, that's a key indicator that you're not listening to your clients. You don't actually know what their concerns are. And so you care about is your agenda. Yeah. You care about your agenda, you want to sell them that firewall, you want to sell them that PC, and they're over there struggling to make payroll, or they're struggling with hiring more employees. And a technician can help with that, but they need to understand the problem so they can provide a solution that will help the client. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So uh you mentioned talking earlier today. We are here in Austin, Texas at my headquarters. Got a bunch of people here. We're kind of recording a bunch of different content, having a little mastermind day. It's kind of a lot of fun. Uh, and I, you know, heard a little bit of your journey and and how some of the things are are moving around. We mentioned this in the open with humanize IT moving to humanize AI. We talked a little bit earlier about how fast AI is moving and how these things are transitioning so quickly. And you said, I thought I had more time. Yeah. Take me through that journey a little bit.

SPEAKER_00

So this year, we go through a plan build run cycle on our business. So during the build phases, we roll back on our marketing and we build our product that we're gonna go to market with. So this year we pushed a bunch of our cash because we're an independent software company. We're not backed by any VC or PE firms. We are our own entity. Pushed our money into building out a product that was gonna be better. That's humanize IT. We made uh better integrations, better processes so our clients can have a better experience. We closed out that process in October, and that's when I call budget cycle. I start planning out my next year. What am I going to lean into the next year? And so I started investigating AI in the marketplace. Everybody seemed to be adopting it. I thought they were rushing to it. Like there's going to be some security problems. So I need to get familiar with this from an architect standpoint. So you kind of thought you were already an early adopter at that point. Yeah. I I mean I'm ahead of the game here. I did an open letter to the community. You can read it on my website at humanize it.biz, and it explains my concerns about AI based upon what happened during the dot com bubble and the security breaches we saw there. And so I started investigating this and I came up to a horror story. Like I wasn't ahead of the game. I was way, way behind. And so I really started leaning into, you know, learning things like Replit, learning things like Claude, and trying to figure out what the difference between the different AI solutions were out there, different terminologies and the field had passed me by by light years. And I started thinking, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get buried next year. And a lot of people are gonna get buried next year. They don't see the avalanche that's coming. This isn't the dot com. This is way, way more impactful. I went through the dot-com. I remember it.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and the dot-com was was more about okay, there's a bubble there, there's stuff there, but but it was more about loss than it was about an opportunity that I mean there was there was stuff that people missed, and I totally get that. But I think, you know, and I remember the dot-com stuff too, because it was it was pretty in, it was very, very impactful. But it was more about, you know, from my standpoint, it was like my business might go under because of all the reduction. This is you're gonna stay where you're at and you're missing out. Would you agree with like that's what that's what I see the difference is now is like it's not like I don't think there's gonna be this huge reduction and all this other stuff. It's just that everybody that's kind of like hanging out and just doing what they always did, they're gonna pretty much stay where they're at.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. I I see it as you're gonna see some companies that have really great employees that have a real passion for their clientele, and they're gonna get augmented by AI. And when it comes to the customer trying to choose between two competitors, they're gonna go with the person who's going to be more intuitive, who's gonna listen to what they have to say, who's gonna process their orders faster.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so I see AI as being it's gonna take your team of 10 and turn them to a team of 50 or a team of a hundred, or a team of a hundred.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

While the your competitors are gonna sit there and they're continuing to do things the way they are. They're still taking weeks to process orders. They're still taking a long time. They're not being as intuitive because they're not looking at conversations the same way. AI helps me drive dive through all of this noise and get to valuable information much faster because I'm not spending all my time reading and digesting and analyzing data.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I think we're speaking the same language because it's just, you know, I think the opportunity here is absolutely insane. Uh it's probably, you know, not only for the managed service providers that might watch this, for the IT cybersecurity folks that might watch this, but any of your traditional businesses. I mean, there's a massive, massive opportunity to make more money more efficiently. And so many people are seeing the AI thing as like it's gonna replace employees, blah, blah, blah. No, it's gonna like you said a very key word there, which I love and we don't hear enough of. It's going to augment. And and the people that are good, it's gonna make them absolutely freaking amazing if you allow it to. I also think there's gonna be a whole group of business. We were talking about this during the mastermind. I kind of started the mastermind stuff, and we were a group of you know, 10 people talking around a room as we did this stuff, and I talked a little bit about that. There's definitely people out there, a good chunk, that are like, this is a fad. I don't like, I don't believe AI as tech, especially in the IT MSP industry. We're we're definitely seeing that where it's like, nope, I'm not gonna, I'm not an expert in that. You know, yeah. I don't know if you saw my research. We were talking about a Facebook post earlier today. I know you're in my big Facebook group that had that there, and you said you lurked and you saw it. But there was some guys in there that said, I'm not an expert on that, so I'm not gonna talk about it, and I'm not gonna talk about AI and focus on AI. And what's funny about the IT MSP industry is how many MSPs are security experts? I would I would say less than five percent, probably less than two percent are really truly secure. But you know what they all dabble in? They go play in security and they risk management and they and they play in risk management. And I don't know what what's what's where's your thoughts on that whole thing? Because I feel like we're on the same page.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think I think uh just to speak real world here. So I started researching AI and its implications on my business and how I was gonna roll this out a year from now. I got so scared when I started seeing where AI is and what its potential is that I stopped my dev cycle, went into my savings as a company, and I started burning through my savings to implement AI and rewriting. And in about two months, now I'm a computer science background, so I've got a I've got a little bit of head start, and I have an entire coding base that I launched off of. In about two months, I went from knowing what I thought was a lot about AI to realizing that I was way behind to now where I'm a thought leader in two months.

SPEAKER_01

I would I would agree in the room today. Yeah, you were definitely the thought leader around all of the, you know, all of the coding back end stuff. You were sitting there and the guys were looking at you like, holy crap, this guy's an expert.

SPEAKER_00

It's just that that's how fast you're going to learn. And I even if you're even if you're a regular business owner whose expertise is you're an attorney, so your legal jardin, or maybe your expertise is dental hygiene, you're even going to learn at this accelerated rate because that's what AI does, is it enables you to accelerate, it augments who you are.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I kind of said I've said this uh I on stage all the way back on my first AI event to the IT industry was in April. So back, and I said you guys need to change this, you need to. That's kind of where we launched this whole the whole idea for the book and all the stuff came from that show, preparing for that show and doing that. And I said on stage that day, I've always been a great idea guy. Like it, I've always been really good about that, and I was always here, but my challenge was always getting idea to implementation, full execution on that, and AI is doing that for me. Yeah, and it's you know, so I I think the term augment is such a good I'm I'm stealing that. Sorry, it's mine now. That it's such a good phrase because it takes anyone that has ideas, any business owner, any forward thinker, dental hygiene, like uh literally anybody that's and it helps you implement faster and better.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I would say like for you EOS people out there, EOS if you're an implementer, it's gonna make you implement faster and it's gonna give you better data to make decisions off of. If you're a visionary in your in your company, it's gonna allow you to see more opportunities to help direct your company. That's what AI is gonna do for you. And like I read through this entire book today, because I don't throw it for the box. I finished it. That was just a big confirmation bias for me. Like, I'm like, yes, yes, yes. Oh, that's a great, yep. Read through this. That's if you want Adam's thoughts after diving in and spending 16 hours a day on AI for two months with a computer science background with over 20 years of experience in IT. This is a distilled version of what I was thinking in last school.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. And so go go do a review on Amazon, please.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, all right out there. But yeah, like, but it's from a business standpoint. You're not gonna see, like, hey, what is you know, an MCP, what is Replit, what is level, you're not gonna see any of that technical jargon, but you are going to get a feel for how impactful this is. And I don't think there's a single number in there I disagreed with. I went in my software and I created several calculators because, oh my gosh, yes, and you are hitting it right on the head there. I need this calculator to help people understand the impact of this on the world today from a business standpoint. This isn't a technical thing, this is a business item empowered by technology.

SPEAKER_01

And I think, you know, first of all, thanks for the for the props on the book. That's really cool. It's really cool to sit there and watch you read it all day and to actually have you actually complete it. But the thing that we really focused on in the book is how you need to put AI into your daily mindset, but you need to focus on the strategic side. And so many people, especially business owners, are just thinking tool, tool, tool, tool. And you heard me, you know, you heard me say today to a to a hammer, everything's a nail. And to people that lead with tools, it's gonna turn into, and we're kind of already seeing this, people that are like, ooh, I can go vibe code this. And if you don't know what vibe code, what vibe code means, if you don't know what this means, it's I want to speak an idea into or type an idea into a platform that will write the back-end code for me. It doesn't do like it's typical, like even ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or any of these ones, they kind of hallucinate at times. Well, so does vibe coding. Like it doesn't do a great job putting the finishing touches on anything. And I think what we're gonna watch happen over the next hours to months to years is we're gonna watch a ton of people in small business, ooh, vibe code, vibe code, vibe code, they're gonna get the instant gratification. Yes, and they're gonna put stuff in and it's gonna explode things, and there's gonna be this whole level. And if you're an IT person or even a consultant or a project person, you're gonna run behind a lot of the stuff and be clean up mode on a lot of these things. And it's wise.

SPEAKER_00

A lot of money will be made in what we call refactoring. That's cleaning up code.

SPEAKER_01

Yep, and and so much of it is gonna be lead with strategy, not and I have no problem with trying to throw a tool at an idea, but I think you gotta be really careful about just like well, I'm gonna I'm gonna yes and that.

SPEAKER_00

So take that concept and you hear your employee saying, I want to vibe code this for our team. And if you hear that word, vibe code, right? Stop just for a second and say, tell me your idea, and then go find somebody who has a programming background to create it, or find an MSP or a technical provider and have them vibe code it. You're still gonna get it, it's gonna cost a little bit more, but it's gonna be done correctly. It's not gonna cost you the $30,000 it would cost if you had a professional dev team do this from scratch, and it's gonna take days. Yeah, but now you've got a key business solution. Maybe it's something that helps you process customers better. And make sure it solves a problem first, too, I'd say, right? Make sure it solves a problem.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Uh, one of the things that I've kind of noticed as I as I built out my AI dev team and all like all the stuff that I have, there's, and I want to get your take on this because it's kind of a different thing, and it's and it's something that I think everyone watching this can this is a good piece. What I've kind of seen is your traditional coders are they still kind of want to traditionally code and they really have a hard time determining, like they're like, ooh, vibe code bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And it takes a rare person, which it's had it's taken me a while to find them, to say, okay, I'm gonna look at this project and I'm gonna choose whether to tradition code or combine code or vibe code and get me there faster. Because they don't want to, like the old school guys are like hours for dollars, I need to have billing, bill of blah, blah, blah. And it's probably not a whole lot different than the legal industry. Cause I think we're gonna see that happen there too, because there's they're all like hours for dollars, hours for so anybody that's trading that, I think it's kind of hard to determine for them where AI is a benefit. And I will tell you, I very good friends with a die with a dev shop owner. He had to cut multiple guys because they just flat out refused to look at anything AI because they're like, no, it's it writes bad code. Like they're like, no, it no, no, it writes bad code. The browser wars are back, people, right? Yeah, it's it's the same. So do you agree with that? Where's your uh do you disagree with that? Where's your head on that?

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna take a quick story jump back in time to the 90s. Do you remember the mosaic browser?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Do you remember all the different Netscape? We had an in this Google, or not Google, Google came out with one later on called Chrome. And we had Internet Explorer, was this new thing, and it became a race because Netscape was really good at rendering good code. Internet Explorer was really good at rendering bad code. Which one of these browsers do you know today? Because the Internet Explorer took the world as it was, and Internet Explorer is now edge, right? Internet Explorer took the world as it was, and Netscape took the world as they wanted it to be. So you have these coders who are Luddites, and that's a really good time. They're falling behind because they're resistant to change. These are this Luddites. This has been around for millennia. People who are resistant to change. Now, imagine an artist saying, I don't want to use tempera paints because they're not oil, they're not real. Well, you're missing out on an entire medium. You know, I am a potter, I only work with clay, I do not work with porcelain. And so, okay, you're gonna make all of your stuff from scratch and you're gonna put it together. You're not gonna use anything prefabricated. Now, how are you gonna build something bigger? You're limiting your artistic ability by refusing to use the media that is available. Yeah, a good artist knows we use the media that's available to us to build the thing that's in our mind.

SPEAKER_01

And so if you're refusing to do that, if there's a take from today, that's really good, dude.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I really like that a lot. You need to be able to, it's just like just running a business. If you're gonna run a hamburger joint and you can't see outside your current menu, you might go out of business, or maybe even a way of processing, like how did you make burgers?

SPEAKER_01

It's you know, making it more efficient, making it better. Because no, we we do everything the old school way. Okay, that's fine, but I can only serve so many clients a day that way.

SPEAKER_00

Well, look at Wendy's, they've got they got square burgers.

SPEAKER_01

I thought it was called tendies now.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I don't know what's anymore.

SPEAKER_01

They're doing chicken tenders now, so no. They got their whole commercial called tendies, and it's funny.

SPEAKER_00

So they're like, oh, we're now tendies. But I mean, you got a lot of people who think about businesses and they they they look at the trend and think, what does act people actually want? If I go to a steakhouse, I'm not looking for chicken fingers unless I'm trying to attract a younger uh uh crowd that has younger kids who don't want a steak. Yeah, but I want a steak as a dad, but I've got a two-year-old who won't touch anything but chicken nuggets. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna have chicken nuggets under menu because I want that guy to order a $70 steak. You gotta think outside the box, you gotta think creatively. You can't say I am not this.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So we had uh did a few different episodes today with some IT guys uh in the room. They were all like, you gotta have IT strategy. They're they were all, I think, reading my book and kind of stand behind that. Do you agree with that? Where's your head around strategy and and yeah?

SPEAKER_00

So strategy is weird because we in IT, I see a lot of people, they think operations is strategy. They don't see the difference between a CEO and a C O O, which is why I don't call myself a CEO. I know what you people do, and I'm not capable of that. That's not my talent set. I'm really good at working with staff, culture, and crafting that I'm a president. But some of these MSPs think that they're thinking strategically when they're thinking operationally and tactically, and because of that, they're falling behind and they're not helping businesses. A strategist says, Hey, tell me about your business and what you're trying to accomplish. So I went to a school and I said, Tell me about your school and what's going well and what's not going. And this school gave me this long list of things that were going really well, and then they gave me a longer list. All they said they couldn't do because they didn't they had bad internet, because they wanted to get their kids to Chromebooks so they could be like the other schools, but they just couldn't get technology to work right in their in their workplace because the MSPs kept coming in and fixing tickets, fixing printers, and fixing PCs. They never looked at the big issue of what the school is trying to accomplish and making sure that the internet was the right size for a Chromebook program to make sure the teachers were supported and to make sure the system was capable of doing all this art and all this media that the school is trying to do. And so they spent 10 years behind other schools until I came in and it wasn't I did anything special, I just sat and listened and created a strategy around what they wanted to do. I did not know.

SPEAKER_01

Not the operation side, not the because that that all effectively was there, but they never got a strategy that worked.

SPEAKER_00

Correct. So they were missing things like they just doubled the size of the internet. It's a funny story I tell on my podcast all the time. They were from 10 to 20 megs for a school of 170 people. Yeah. And so they couldn't figure out why they were dropping internet all the time. So a technician would show up, they would fix the internet, and they would leave. And no one ever looked into the why.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What's the actual issue here? What's the core problem here? Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, you want to be able to do all this? Oh man, let me look and see if you have the right technology. So, me as a guy, I didn't troubleshoot the internet connection. I just identified that they were having slow internet problems. And I I looked at all these problems and I went to an MSP and said, Here are the three core issues they have. I heard this from seven different key stakeholder interviews I had. Now help them. And within two weeks, we had them running flawlessly. By the next school year, we had a donor come in and donate Chromebooks so they could run a comeback program. Yeah, we solved the problems they wanted. It wasn't about the printers, it wasn't about the PCs, it was about the whole problem of the school and what they're trying to accomplish. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, some really good lessons from you today. Any final words?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. When you talk to customers or when you're if you're a technology person, don't be like me. Listen more than you speak. You need to be quiet and listen to your client. A SBR, a QBR, a TBR, whatever it is. It's about reviewing what they're doing, not what you're doing. From a business standpoint, if you're working with a technology provider who doesn't understand your business, go find one that does, who will listen to what your problems are, what your dreams are, and who will help you build that dream. I love it.

SPEAKER_01

Great, great feedback. All right. I want to thank Adam Walter. Sorry, president of Humanize IT, soon to be a humanize AI. Thanks for being on the AI Profit Leaders podcast, and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.