Michael, welcome to the show. Would you please
introduce yourself? Hi, Sue. Lovely to be here.
Good to have you. I'm Michael Ramsey, CEO and
founder of Talk AI Global. And we are an AI strategy
implementation firm. And what we do is that we
help companies move from AI curiosity to ROI
on their AI investment. Talk to me a little bit
more about what's your vision for those you serve?
Yeah, sure. So my vision is exactly that, to
ensure that companies are able to get tangible
returns from the AI investment. As you have said,
what I've noticed in the market is that there
is no structure to the implementation of AI.
I've been on that side where I've been approached
by many companies and I've built proof of concepts
and different MVPs for companies. And what tends
to happen is that it's usually coming from...
the technology or from a siloed approach. And
that approach generally does not work for something
like AI because AI is expected to disrupt workflows.
And by doing that, it needs a more structured,
holistic approach to the organization, starting
with the leaders of the organizations having
an appreciation for what AI can do. and then
tying it to tangible business objectives. So
my vision for the people I serve is that they
begin with their vision when they think about
AI. So instead of thinking technology first,
they think business first. What am I trying to
achieve here? And how can I leverage AI to get
there? And by doing that, you ensure that AI
is used only in the areas where it can give you...
the maximum returns. So as you know, a business
may not necessarily need to put AI everywhere.
And if it does that, it may be in problem. And
what I've found is that, as I said, oftentimes
the approach to AI comes from a place where a
technology partner approaches a firm and they
demoed something and it looks shiny. Because
it looks shiny and it looks like on the surface
it can do something, especially in a demo stage
or maybe when it gets a proof of concept, they
are interested in it. So they invest some money
in it. But then when you talk about the scalability
element of it, it's not there because it wasn't
fully thought through to say, okay, do I have
the structure? Do I have the data? Do I have
the people? Do I have the right tech stack? Right.
Some of that tends to happen because I've had
those conversations where those process have
had to help to help put some of those things
in place. But when you have already been approached
by a company and they say they want to do a particular
project, it's very difficult for you to tell
them what to do in their business. Right. Because
they have made up their mind. They have done
a business case sometimes. And nothing is wrong
with doing a business case. Did you do a business
case, for example, on all the potential areas
that AI could be using in your business? That's
the issue, right? You may just be doing the business
case just as a rubber stamp just to ensure that
your board sees that it was done through a process.
But that process ought to start with vision.
Where are you looking to go as a business? And
when I talk to companies now, and I wrote about
this in the book that is to be released in August,
So when you're looking at revision, the focus
ought to be on four strategic pillars, right,
generally speaking. And these are four areas
that most activities under business cover. It's
either revenue, your operations, customer experience,
or compliance and risk. So one approach they
need to take is, which one of these areas am
I going to? look to where I can use AI in. And
it could be based off of existing initiatives
that you have. Maybe you currently have a compliance
issue because of a change in the regulatory environment.
So now there is additional paperwork to be filed.
So now, because you have that, you could potentially
then look and say, okay, how can AI help me?
to be able to can complete some of these regulatory
requirements submit these things to the regulators
faster more efficiently while not necessarily
taking up more time for the business right or
can i improve my regulatory scores so that my
brand perception is higher in the market it's
one year on the regulation then you go to operational
efficiency we can just look generally i think
even though there's a crossover but what you
look on the operational efficiency you can think
about um finance. You can look at other areas
of the business where you can crunch down the
times it takes to complete certain activities.
For example, a lot of businesses spend an inordinate
amount of time doing reports. So these are areas
that AI can enhance the workflow. So that reporting
can be done faster and decision making can happen
quicker because there is more relevant data.
So, for example, you know, sometimes you're doing
accounting function and it takes a long time
before you know exactly where the financials
of the business is because there's so much paperwork
to be done in order for you to get an up -to
-date picture of your business. These are some
of the areas that AI is being used to streamline.
Oh, that's great. Yeah. On the customer experience
side, it is being used to improve the customer
relationship. With that being said, I don't expect
companies to fully automate customer experience.
It needs to be augmented with human touch. But
what AI does, it enhances this experience. Yeah,
it's amazing. And I love that you've thought
that through so much because, you know, I'm used
to dealing with entrepreneurs, you know, smaller
visionaries, you know, not big corporations,
but I know, you know, that shiny object syndrome
is real. Like you see a new tool, must have it,
you know, this is why AppSumo does so well. It's
like, you know, buy this, buy that. This looks
really cool. Hey, I'm going to, and then you
end up with this Frankenstein of your tech stack
that. You know, and it may not have ever even
addressed anything that was really important
to you. So starting with that vision first, like
you're saying, you know, where do you want your
business to go? And then, you know, what do you
need? What do you what's the main next step that
you want to tackle so that you're able to be
strategic rather than just have a really cool
collection of neat AI things? Exactly. Exactly.
Right. And to be honest. The process works for
small businesses as well as large businesses.
What tends to just happen is that the solo founder
or a smaller team, they're able to go through
the process a bit quicker, right? So the larger
team may need a one or two day workshop in order
to really get the team together so that there's
consensus. Because one of the issues with larger
companies is that there's no consensus, right?
And without consensus, the vision will never
scale. So you need consensus because if you have
one executive who is of the opinion that the
business isn't ready for AI, then that executive's
presence will cause a team to not necessarily
buy into what's happening. So his idea for using
AI is in operations, but another executive believes
that the low -hanging fruit is in sales or compliance.
Right. So without that prioritization and that
buying, you tend to get conflict. Yeah. Right.
It happens with other projects, too. But with
AI, it's a lot more sensitive, as I said, because
it's with a lot of technology. It's the ultimate
in some process. Now with AI, it's almost like
you're bringing in a human into your operation.
You're expecting it to operate in a dynamic environment.
And when you bring someone in your organization,
you need them to have the full buy -in. In a
dynamic environment, things need a lot more unity.
This is not just a tool. If it's a tool, you
could have some difference of opinion and still
get something out of it. But this is something
that's expected to transform your entire workflow.
Yeah. And if at some point in the workflow there's
a major hurdle, then you won't get the benefit
from it. Right. Right. So suppose one executive
refused to respond to an AI bot. Right? Yeah.
Now what? Then what? That's right there is a
roadblock. Right? So you need a unified approach.
And as I said, with a smaller team, what tends
to happen is that it's easier to get a unity
because everyone is basically there. They're
on the same page. There are less potential use
cases to have conflicts around. So you just get
through to the vision. The same thing. You go
through the vision. You get a prioritization
of your use cases, right? You look at your data
infrastructure. Again, it could be a simpler
architecture, right? So therefore, you could
also be able to then move to the building phase
a lot faster. But it's still important to understand
where is the best use first. Yeah. Rather than
just letting a tech demo determines that. Right.
Oh, that's so great. I love that. I love that.
And at its heart, here we're talking about one
of the most futuristic things that we've ever
had come into the marketplace. Obviously, it's
fairly new on a larger scale. And the longer
vision of time, you know, AI has been a very
recent development, but it all still boils down
to the vision. It does. It does. Right. And that
is that is coming from just my strategy background.
Right. Which I believe is unique in the tech
space where when they talk about strategy for
them, sometimes it's just about the data on the
tech strategy. But at the end of the day, it
does come down to people. Right. So therefore,
you have to start with the vision for business
because the business is still a group of companies,
still a group of people. Yeah. So it starts there
and then trickle down to the other areas of the
business. And with a transformative technology
like this, there is the additional fear of displacement
that if not managed correctly, you will never
get the return that you expect from the business.
Because if you're taking it from the approach
that, okay, because I'm maybe thinking about
using two less people, so I'm going to quietly
implement this thing. No, that's naivety, right?
Again, I've seen that in institutions where if
people decide to put up a roadblock, they can
put up a roadblock. So therefore, you better
be able to articulate a vision for them and to
figure out how you can include them in the process.
not just know but in the future so so the um
the company that's thinking primarily about just
cutting stuff may not certainly the best company
um to go forward using ai right what you can
think about potentially scaling without adding
any additional people yeah that's a different
approach right but you keep your people and you
can enhance their roles with ai yeah right so
because there's still going to be people in the
loop Certain rules, what you used to spend the
entire eight hours doing, now you're only going
to do it for two hours. So therefore, the company
needs to figure out what are you going to do
with the additional six hours that's going to
benefit the business in a major way to justify
still keeping that person. I love that. It's
so important because I think, you know, everybody
has heard that phrase, oh, AI is going to take
our jobs. Well, yeah, it could take, I don't,
I can't even think of any job it couldn't do.
Brain surgery, no problem, you know, down the
road. Maybe not yet, but eventually. But there
are things that only a human can do right now.
And I think if we allow, strategically have AI
help us do the things that it can do just as
well as a human, it does free us up for that
extra time. Like you said, what about those extra
six hours now? Maybe we can do deeper work that
humans only could do. Exactly. And when you talk
about the deeper work, it's about the relationship
side of business, right? Yeah. I believe too
many organizations have too many people in back
office shifting papers, right? And I'm not saying
that to advocate for them getting rid of those
people. I'm just saying an organization's life
breath is based on getting new business. Yeah.
And oftentimes you don't find the people who
are focused on getting the business. being put
at the limelight of the business. And what AI
will do is to put those people at that center
where their value is being understood at a larger
scale. Because one of the last things AI will
be able to do is sell convincingly, especially
high -ticket items. Because there's a trust element
in sale. Just like how there's a trust element
in brain surgery where... I may trust the guy
to do it than AI, unless AI can show me that
he has done it maybe a thousand times. Brain
surgeon maybe just needs to graduate from a reputable
university. But eventually, with enough reps,
you will trust AI. So you're right, AI will get
there at some point. But the last thing it will
do is to replace relationship building and trust.
So now organizations will now be looking to transform
our distributed stuff. Yeah. More people will
be focused on relationship building. More people
will be focusing on sales, right? So if people
are not, so that's what I'm saying. If people
are not comfortable with sales, you may have
to get a little bit more comfortable with it.
Or you can get more comfortable without actually
building these systems for companies. So if you're
more tech savvy, you can also learn because the
material is out there now to learn how to do
the thing on the technical side. But staying
in the middle now and trying to shift papers.
those days are going quickly. And you have seen
it happen now in anything related to writing.
Because that is what it has transformed over
the past three years. But that is not the only
use case for it because there's a lot of development
happening now with agentic AI. And with agentic
AI, what it's going to cause is that there's
going to be an entire transformation of back
office workflow. So the workflow is going to
be designed with AI in mind, meaning all the
processes are going to be mapped and AI potentially
doing all those steps. And what you're going
to need now is people to more or less monitor
and do what I call reinforce those systems. Because
AI, just like what you see sometimes use chat
GPT, and it asks you a question like, the feedback
it has for feedback up or down thumbs up or down
many people will be doing a lot of that for for
different um roles right it won't start there
might start with additional things being done
but a major part of it is going to be reinforcing
those systems to say it's learning from the nuances
yeah right because it's it's training and um
it might be trained on the existing workflow
it may be trained on outside data for a company
that is similar to your industry. But every company
is nuanced. And therefore, once it is implemented,
you may need people to be able to reinforce that
it's made the right decision under each conditions.
And the more nuanced the environment is, the
longer you'll be dependent on people for that.
And trust element as well, right? So even when
it becomes great between what potential policy
regulations, Or otherwise, there is still going
to, and just for your own safety in terms of
protecting your brand, you're still going to
want to have AI, sorry, a person to ensure that
there is some guardrails to prevent one major
hiccup from damaging your brand. Oh, yeah. Because
it could happen. And it has happened in the past
where when even Google, that is what caused Google
to miss out and come in first to the market.
Because Google for years was seen as the leader
in AI development. But between Google and I think
Microsoft, they released some products prematurely.
And it showed some biased information out. And
they had to peel back. and those technologies
because they are major brands and they could
not afford for any slip -up of sort to happen
because they are public companies and one bad
sentiment and the stock price is down 3 % and
the market cap is down 50 billion. So you find
that they missed out on it for that. Companies
are cautious because of that. So therefore, proper
guardrails are being done, which makes a lot
of sense. Doing all different testing under different
conditions just to ensure that whatever you put
out there, it is safe and it is representative
of your company's brand. Now, as you're building
your business, we've talked about your vision
for the people that you're serving. What is your
vision for your actual business? Where do you
want this to go? I want this business to continue
to scale. i want my frameworks to be household
names right i want i want when i talk about the
abc framework or or when i hear about abc framework
it not necessarily coming from anything i wrote
so when someone is on your podcast for example
they're talking about using the abc framework
to implement ai in their business so that that
is part of where i want to go i want the the
systems that i've developed to become also names
and by doing that then it will continue to build
my business brand around what it has achieved
for different companies. So I want to move, so
you're talking about long -term vision. The long
-term vision is that the effect I have on companies
move from outside of the companies I've worked
with directly to the point where it is from other
companies using systems. Basically, I've trained
people and they've read my book. And they're
now using that in other industries and in other
areas and people that I've never met. I like
that. What do you imagine the greater ripple
effect to be that all of this could cause as
your vision starts to take shape? So what it
will cause is a faster adoption of AI and in
a safe and equitable manner. So what I want is
that the people move from hype to action fast,
right? So by having clarity about how AI can
be used, we prevent many major public and private
cases of AI being a flop and then having both
individuals and companies turning their backs
on what AI can do and then being caught. caught
behind when they realized that those one -off
incidents should not have been used to be turned
off from the technology. So I've been doing education
piece outside of just for the business because
I want people to understand that changes are
happening fast. And what you don't want to do
is that when your company comes and sits ready
to move to the next level, you have to upskill
yourself to grow with that company. So part of
my vision is also to help bring people along
so that what I foresee is potentially without
that, there will be a major displacement in the
short run. And I want people to understand and
companies to understand how they can scale so
that when they use AI, they're not just thinking
about cutting costs by people. They're thinking
about how they can grow their business. So the
vision is really to protect. the next five to
10 years, which I believe is crucial in terms
of how AI will affect our lives. Thank you for
being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned
in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to
seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and
more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show. And thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.