The Growth-Drive Hot Seat

(00:00)
Hi, this is George Samman. I'm the founder and CEO of Growth Drive. Growth Drive is the number one best -selling business advising platform, and this is our podcast, The Business Advisor Hot Seat. Now in the hot seat, you're going to hear from industry leaders, thought leaders, your colleagues who are going to share tips, techniques, war stories about building a thriving advisory business based on delivering client wins. We're going to get into it. We'll get into it about the Growth Drive methodology, the clarity software, what we see out in the world.

so much more than just the system. And I'm also the author of The Growth Driving Advisor, which is based on over a decade of being an advisor to advisor, working with you and your colleagues, helping them build their practices, helping them through client engagements. And it's really proven strategies for leading businesses from stuck to best in class. Check it out. So strap in. We're going to light this up. Here we go.

George (01:03)
Our guest this week is Benjamin Bowman. Benjamin is an AI thought leader at the absolute forefront, not just of AI, but what AI means to us as business leaders, as business advisors. We have a fantastic conversation. So strap in, here we go.

(01:22)
This week's episode is brought to you by Growth Drive, highlighting the Growth Drive Summit, held this year in Charleston, South Carolina, September 23, 24, and 25. The theme is business advisory and quantum age, harnessing technologies and delivering client wins. This is unique content. You can't get anywhere. And to learn more, go to growth -drive .com. Look under events.

Thank you. See you there.

George (01:54)
Well, welcome ladies and gentlemen. And in this episode, I'm excited to have a conversation with Benjamin Bowman. Benjamin is the founder and CEO of Stratasheild. Benjamin is an absolute thought leader on AI. And you know, our upcoming conference is business advising in the quantum age. And we're going to focus hard on AI and technology. And so I'm really excited to have Benjamin here. Benjamin, you know, you can do a better job of introducing yourself than I can.

So please let the folks know who you are and why this is going to be an interesting conversation.

Benjamin Bohman (02:26)
you

Some of George, thanks for having me on. First of all, I'm really excited to have this conversation. I think the conversations about AI with it being so new, it's really where we're at right now. It's just having as many conversations as we can, as much thought leadership wrapped around it as we can. But like you said, great job introducing myself. My name is Ben Bowman. I'm the CEO and founder of Stratoshield AI. I feel like I've done something really unique with Stratoshield AI, and that's not focusing on one tiny aspect of AI, but really building an ecosystem.

ecosystem around artificial intelligence. So if a business needs generative AI or data integrity or data analytics or custom AI or conversational AI, I've really built what I feel like is one of the largest AI ecosystems in the industry right now. And I can really pinpoint a customer's needs. Is it relevant?

Is it even needed right now? Because some people are rushing into AI too quick. And funny enough, even though my business has revolved around AI consulting, often I'm like, slow down. Let's not jump into anything too quick. And we can talk about that later maybe. But yeah, I think that's where these conversations are fun. It's not looking at a single aspect of AI. It's not getting into the weeds of AI and into all the nonsense and the overall technical stuff of it. But how is it relevant to the business? And why do they need it? And when can they use it?

George (03:52)
Yeah, exactly. Getting to the why. And you're right. I hear a lot of people knee -jerk and like, it should be AI, it should be AI. And it's like, yes, it probably should, but why? What's our direction? And people, do you find this? That folks are lumping sort of all things that are AI into the same pot, which I think is a beginner's, maybe a beginner's curse.

Benjamin Bohman (04:17)
Yeah, I think what's happening right now is everyone's trying to figure out AI. And so the first trend that you saw after about November and definitely starting in 2024 is suddenly everyone was an AI company.

Right, and technology. Everyone just suddenly was like, AI this, AI that. And the funny thing with that is that we've been using machine learning and the framework of AI, particularly since 2012 when we were able to process bigger data sets and larger sets of data and get into that deep learning neural networks and everything. And so a lot of these companies in cybersecurity have great AI implementation into their product.

But now they're really focusing on it, but they were always using machine learning and behavioral analytics and cybersecurity, especially after virus protection was replaced with endpoint detection and things like that with behavioral analytics. But I think that's probably the most interesting thing to me right now is everyone's an AI company. And in reality, there is almost no true AI out there right now. We're still operating within the framework of AI and still at the, which is exciting, but at the very beginning aspects of what true artificial intelligence is.

George (05:24)
Yeah, absolutely. And you and I, I couldn't agree with you more. And the deeper I get into it, the more you start seeing the possibilities and the more I start asking myself questions, which isn't how you and I met. You and I met because a mutual friend, I have a book that's been published by Forbes and you were looking for someone to talk to about your upcoming book.

Benjamin Bohman (05:50)
Right.

George (05:50)
And that's how we met. A mutual friend said, hey, George has some experience. Maybe you should talk to him. And can you take a couple of minutes and share what your book's going to be about and why people may find it interesting?

Benjamin Bohman (06:02)
Sure. Yeah, I think one of the things that I'm finding...

right now in these conversations that I'm having with, whether it's executives or just people about AI, there's a lot of fear around AI. There's a lot of fear around people and people being replaced by AI. There's a lot of questions of how does a business ethically implement AI into the business? And really what I decided to do instead of talking about the technology is I'm working on a book that talks about that intersection of AI and humanity and really talking about what does it mean to be human first of all? What does it mean to be human?

What does it mean for AI to become human -like? What does it mean for human to become more machine -like? How do we keep our humanity? How do we not be scared? And how do we adapt in an AI environment? Then how do businesses, which I talk about this all the time, how do businesses keep the humanity in their approach?

to their business while implementing AI because what I am finding and I think most everyone will agree who's in the AI spaces, humans are better with AI and good AI applications, but AI is so much better.

with human and with the human touch or with humanity attached to it. So that's really what I wanted to explore is just the psychology, if you look at philosophy and different aspects of artificial intelligence, which leads into somewhat of the business and everything else, but that's what I'm interested in and I think it's really relevant.

George (07:35)
Yeah, it was fun. Our first conversation, we ended up getting into a conversation about consciousness and machine learning. And yeah, and we won't go, we don't need to go down that rabbit hole, but a fun conversation. And I'm really looking forward to seeing your book when it is published. Well.

Benjamin Bohman (07:52)
I appreciate that. And well, it is the fun thing about AI though, just so you know, what I love about this conversation, I think we're talking about this is we can have a technology conversation. We can have a business conversation. We can have a consumer conversation. We can have a psychology conversation. We can have a philosophy conversation. AI right now, because it's so new, it's just fun to talk about because we're really just hypothesizing about so many different things.

George (08:15)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting in the coffee, we have a weekly coffee clutch, which is just an impromptu meeting of business advisors. It's open to anyone. And it's every Tuesday morning at nine 30 and nine 30 Eastern. And we were talking this morning about AI and a couple of the pitfalls. You know, you have you have senior professionals. So a lot of our customers and a lot of their clients are.

kind of my age, 50 to 75, or our age, 50 to 75, I think I'm a little older than you, and really looking at I very pragmatically, how can I help it? How can AI help me scale my time? And what are my responsibilities when it comes to AI? And I shared the story of trying to vet a statistic, and had I not clicked on the link,

Benjamin Bohman (08:51)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

George (09:09)
and looked down in the footnotes, I got my statistics, one of the stats I was trying to vet, absolutely it said, yeah, this is spot on. Well, it turns out it was spot on because it had gone out. I may publish a thing or two and it had found me and yeah, you're 100 % spot on. So it was a circular, you know, sort of a circular reference. And, but guys using this and you can see it, we have, you know, you get emails in your inbox, marketing emails.

Benjamin Bohman (09:21)
All right. Yep.

Mm -hmm.

George (09:38)
that are clearly AI generated with barely any human touch put to them. And they have good information, but they're not as effective as they could be had a human really put some time into taking that first draft. And disagree if you please. I'm here to learn as well. But you put the time in and.

Benjamin Bohman (09:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

No, so.

George (10:08)
Yeah, so how do we deploy AI? And then we got into this morning the ethics. Like if you're using AI, how much should you share with your client? How much do you have a duty to share? And it really, we came down and settled that our duty ethically is to make, no matter what the source is, to make sure that it's as accurate as possible. And yeah.

Benjamin Bohman (10:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. It's a I love this conversation. And funny enough, just the other day I was talking to a guy named Neil Wilkins, who's a marketing guy out of the UK. And we were we were talking exactly about this.

human touch in writing and everything like that. I think even when you talk about you and I, you've written a book successfully. I'm in the middle of writing a book, but I've had offers and conversations about ghost writing and you know, how often are you disclosed? Not us, but I'm saying people who use ghost writers, are they disclosing that they used a ghost writer to write their book? And AI has some relevance to that. But the bigger conversation we're having was around storytelling and how marketing is turning into more of story.

storytelling and I think it's interesting because AI can't tell a story.

and not with a personal touch and with empathy and all the other stuff. So I founded this conversation really interesting because as you talk about emails that go out, of course, learning to use AI, you're going, I even did it. I started sending out AI generated emails and then I started seeing, these aren't personal. But I think this is where businesses and people need to start telling a story. So a business needs to start telling a story about their technology and how does it...

fit the business, quit talking about the technology, quit talking about just what it does and the product. And I've talked about that for years, quit talking about the product, talk about what it does for the people and tell a story. That's what's missing. There's emails, right? There's no personal touch. Does that make sense?

George (11:54)
Why? Yeah.

That makes absolute sense. And let's zero in on that for a second. I mean, the story is the thing. Why would I invest my time and treasure in doing business with you and buying your technology? And if you give me a list of features and functionalities, you leave me to sort out, to write my own story. And I in all likelihood as a potential customer, I may write the wrong story. You know, the concept of the story,

When we look at Google SGE and perplexity, my current crush, they take the research, you put a simple search in, let's take perplexity. You put in a simple search and it comes back with a narrative. Now, is it writing a, it's story -esque, right? But it comes back with a narrative and I find that much more satisfying and meaningful than when I just get a, you know, in the old Google.

Benjamin Bohman (12:36)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

George (12:58)
you've got a series of links, right? You've got a bunch of hyperlinks and you could sort it out yourself. And using AI to sort through those links and get it right and get it wrong always, you know, perplexity is great because it gives you the follow -up questions and you can ask your own. SGE is starting to do the same thing. Do you have any comments about that?

Benjamin Bohman (13:09)
Yeah.

Yep. No, I mean, just really, I mean, it just continues the fact along the fact that the world is noisy right now.

The tech industry is noisy right now. The AI industry is probably one of the noisiest industries right now. When I do presentation to companies and businesses, I have a slide that shows right now about 50 to 100 AI vendors. Just kind of like, it's a little bit of a messy slide, but it organizes it. But exactly what we're talking about though is how do we stand out?

George (13:28)
now.

Yeah.

Benjamin Bohman (13:48)
And whether you're a business, whether you're an individual, whether you're an individual contributor, an executive, a C -suite, a salesperson, whatever it is, we're trying to stand out. And right now it almost feels like being a needle in a stack of needles. Like how do we differentiate ourselves? And AI is going to make that in some ways more difficult, but also in some ways easier.

George (13:53)
executive, a C -suite, a salesperson, whatever it is, we're trying to stand out and right now it almost feels like being a needle in a stack of nails. Like how do we differentiate ourselves? AI is going to make that in some ways more difficult, but also in some ways easier. And I think as we start putting, as you said, finding AI puts the personal touch into it. We're learning how to communicate with artificial intelligence, especially generic artificial intelligence.

Benjamin Bohman (14:11)
And I think as we start putting, as you said, finding AI that puts the personal touch into it or learning how to communicate with artificial intelligence, especially generative artificial intelligence, that helps us be more personable. I know sometimes when I write, I have about a two page. It's a history of myself, a little biography about myself that I've written funny experiences I've had in technology, my own writing and everything. And I'll put it into AI. Nothing too personal, right? That I don't want to share, but I'll put it into AI and I'll have it learn about me.

George (14:22)
that helps us be more personal. I know sometimes when I write I have about a two -pitch. It's a history of myself, a biography about myself that I bring funny experiences I've had in technology, my own writing and everything, and I'll put it into AI. Nothing too personalizing out of it here, but I'll put it into AI and I'll have a learn about it.

Benjamin Bohman (14:41)
And then I will tell it, right, like learn how I write, learn how I speak, learn about my stories. And then I'll have it try to be more personable and first person. And it can actually do a decent job, but you have to spend the time teaching it about you and how you write. And the biggest thing I think, whether you're using AI or not, I'm a huge proponent of AI and even using AI for writing. It needs to be your original thought.

George (14:41)
And then I will tell them, learn how I write, learn about my stories, and then I'll try to be more personal and first person. And it can actually do a decent job of having this with the time to teach you about you and how you write. And the biggest thing, I think, whether you're using it or not, I'm a huge proponent of it. And if you're using it for writing, it needs to be your language. And that's the biggest thing for you to tell.

Benjamin Bohman (15:05)
And that's the biggest thing people can tell. If you go in and just like, what is this? Well, you can tell me what to think about this or tell me what to write about this. Sure. But if you go and say, hey, I'm thinking X, Y, Z about this topic and I really want to hit on this because this is really important to me and you give it details as far as what your thought leadership is. Now just organize my thoughts and help then.

George (15:07)
just like what is this? Well, you can tell me what to think about this or tell me what you're right about this, sure. But if you go and say, hey, I'm thinking XYZ about this topic and I really want to hit on this because this is really important to me and you get the details as far as what your thought leadership is, now to just organize my thoughts.

Benjamin Bohman (15:27)
I think that is, that's where we need to go with it is original thought, but having AI enhance the structure and grammar and all that with it.

George (15:36)
That's right. Yeah, I completely, so interesting. I use it the same way. And I think a lot of people, especially in the business advising community, are relying on AI to do some basic research and write some first drafts. Now let's shift gears, if we may, and get into, you know.

When we were getting ready together for this meeting, we passed some questions back and forth. And one of the questions that we kind of zeroed in on is how can AI revolutionize the business advising industry? What impact can it have? And I'm, as a technology provider, I'm especially interested in your perspective on analytics and turning analytics into useful.

into a useful, let's get back story.

Benjamin Bohman (16:31)
Yeah. Yeah. So interesting enough, when you look at AI and let's start at data, because for good analytics, you need good data first. And data is the lifeblood of artificial intelligence. I had one guest who called it AI's oxygen, which I think is like really, it's just really well put. So I start all of my conversations at the foundation and at the root of what AI is. And that's the data.

George (16:40)
Good day to you.

I like that.

Benjamin Bohman (17:01)
And now we're looking at, I think Salesforce are saying data is the next oil. So I just going on this data is just, it's the most important asset a business has. And when you look at analytics now and what you're able to do, it's really interesting. This is where to me, I'm almost, not almost, I'm most excited about the potential of AI because right now what do we do as a business? We look at our internal data sources.

George (17:26)
Yes.

Benjamin Bohman (17:26)
and we react to analytics. So what happened, Q1, and then we react. But by the time we're reacting in Q2 to Q1, the whole environmental factor of the world, the state we live in, the country we live in has all changed. So we're living in this world of reactive analytics. And I know I've been in cells before, and there was nothing worse to me than being in a reactive cell cycle where everyone was in constant panic mode, constantly changing and not being proactive about how we were going to hit our numbers and hit our goals.

KPIs, whatever they were. So now with artificial intelligence, what we can do is we can look at external data sources and internal data sources. We first need to clean the internal data lakes and data sources to make them coherent and talk amongst all databases. So you're not just working with marketing or accounting or cells. What we're doing is now we're looking at all the databases cohesively.

Again, we're making sure they're all communicating and the data is clean. Then after that, we're pulling in external data factors into looking at what are the anomalies that, and those are different for every single vertical and depending on the industry and location we live in, but let's take retail gas station out here in Las Vegas. Well, why are you just looking at Windows stock Monster Energy drinks every single month and what that looks like? Well, when you can look at does heat.

George (18:34)
Are you fed?

Benjamin Bohman (18:48)
increase the purchase of them? Does an event one mile away from or two mile away? Does EDC, the big, you know, the big concert, how does that increase, whether it's Monster Energy drinks, water, whatever it is. So, and then you look at airports, hospitality for room occupation. This is where I think we need to start doing is pulling in all the other data sources that we have and finding those anomalies within those data

(19:11)
This week's episode is brought to you by Growth Drive, highlighting the Growth Drive Summit, held this year in Charleston, South Carolina, September 23, 24, and 25. The theme is business advisory and quantum age, harnessing technologies and delivering client wins. This is unique content. You can't get anywhere. And to learn more, go to growth -drive .com. Look under events.

Thank you. See you there.

George (19:42)
You know, you know, I, okay, this is not what we plan to talk about, but you just hit on. So I have, I have started to share out with the world, the vision that we have. I have a vision for the impact, that we, we, that growth drive will have on the market. But part of that, a separate, but related vision is a vision for our technology, the clarity, strategic capacity analysis to decode.

Benjamin Bohman (19:46)
You

George (20:12)
the private business genome, right? And when you think of the technology in those, so it's a research, it's an analytic technology that gets inputs from the business advisor, from the senior leadership, some financial inputs. But if we expand that ring, just one ring out, and we start pulling in data from other sources, how can we prescribe and predict what will happen?

what is highly likely to happen and even not with a likelihood scale if certain actions are taken and executed in a bona fide way. That's where this business is going. So when we think in terms of using artificial intelligence to focus on analytics and again, decode that private business genome, what makes a great private business great? And then how does another business emulate it? You know,

Benjamin Bohman (20:53)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah. No, it's exciting, but here's some thought to it too, is right now we are really caught up in this large language model world. And if you look at LLMs, they're great at analyzing what? Language. That's why it's called a language model, right? Or NLP. So they're great at analyzing language. But there's a lot of numbers and there's a lot of numeric data that needs to be put into that flow. And what I have found is I've partnered with a company called Ikigai Labs and they are...

George (21:12)
So I just put a bunch out there.

Benjamin Bohman (21:41)
creator of what's called a large graphical model.

And that large graphical model is specifically used for numeric tabular and timestamp data. And so when you're looking at predictive analytics and finding anomalies with different things, you have to make sure that you're using the right model. If you're in a call center and you're analyzing language, then by all means use language. And still, LLMs can do a decent job with number analytics and looking at numbers. But if you're looking at, again, more, especially if you're looking in supply chain and even that business genome you're talking about where numbers are king,

and key, well yeah, we might want to look at some different models. And that's again, when I talk about the approach that I've developed is I don't go in and say, well, this is what we have to do because it's the only solution that I've found that I can offer. No, I have over 50 AI partners that are successful and good at what they do with use cases that I can provide. So what I hated, and I have to share this because when I was an IT manager or director and the company would come in and their product and solution wouldn't quite do what I needed it to do,

George (22:42)
Mm -hmm.

Benjamin Bohman (22:43)
that fit my business, well, they would ask me to change my business to fit the limitations of their product, right? I don't ever want that to be for a company. I never want to go in and have a business change their business model because I can't provide a solution for them that fits. I want to find the solution that fits their current model and their growth model. And again, it's a unique way of looking at it, but it's different than anyone else is looking at AI right now.

George (22:49)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I absolutely love it because I love it for a, for a variety, you know, a bunch of reasons and, and, and folks out there listening, you know, you wanted you to jot down, how, what Benjamin just said changes. I mean, that's what we need to do as advisors. You know, sometimes we need to sit down and say, Hey, you know, maybe your business model is, does need tweaking, but.

How much more powerful is that message if we have a deep understanding of what is actually happening? And I'm a quant by nature. I love quantified solutions. I'm a quant. And qualitative drives me a little crazy. And so.

Benjamin Bohman (23:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, these are all when I was an IT director, I started running an IT department when I was 21 years old. And the CFO brought me in and he gave me a book. It's back on my bookshelf there. But I don't remember the chapter. But the chapter he pointed to me to is how it was called PCs, not technology, but it's called PCs and how they were they were basically financial just drain on a company.

George (24:11)
You

Benjamin Bohman (24:18)
And his challenge was like, look, don't let your department be a financial drain. Try to figure out how to become a cost center. Try to figure out how to contribute. My CEO brought me in. He's like, I don't care how difficult your job is. I care about how easy you make everyone else's job. So I had really good leadership and really good, and that's great in technology. I didn't take that offensive. I was like, no, this is how we should look at it. And that was at a young age.

George (24:34)
That is great. Yep.

Yeah, that's fantastic. It's funny how an experience like that can shape a career, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, folks would probably want to know what you think are the most, you know, let's focus on large language, right, on language models. And most of our, you know, I think most people are using some combination, one or more of chat.

Benjamin Bohman (24:48)
Yeah, and how you look at things. Yeah.

George (25:10)
Gemini and Claude, right? I tend to use, I am using all sorts of different tools, but I believe most of them are leveraging, perhaps leveraging those fundamentals. And what do you find to be the most useful?

Benjamin Bohman (25:10)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

George (25:28)
Yeah, what? I don't I don't know quite know how to frame the question. If you were if you were advising someone who works with business owners and is trying to help them grow profits and potentially grow transferable value, what types of tech? What AI technologies would you say, you know, you you ought to take a peek at at, you know, this handful? I don't know if it's one or if it's five.

Benjamin Bohman (25:52)
Sure. Yeah. Well, and I'm going to take this a step.

One step further from that, because sure the generative model that you use is important, but controlling your generative model is more important than that. So if you, for example, you say, okay, well, I'm a, for me, I'm a GPT for, is it four little zero, whatever that is now. So GPT guy, but I would never advocate a business to go tell all their employees to start using GPT because there still is caching that's used with it. If you're putting sensitive data in there.

George (25:59)
Great.

Yeah, for something.

Benjamin Bohman (26:24)
It can cause some major issues from a proprietary standpoint and client information standpoint. So the first thing I say is find a model and have it be proprietary and secure it. The other thing that you're allowed to do, and this isn't even just customization, I work with different companies that provide these private models that might use a GPT or other type of backends, but they still secure the data. The other thing that I think is most important is,

Why are you just using generative AI tool to just talk about what that person wants to talk with no tie into the business? So why are we making everything more disparate, meaning separate systems for separate things and having your marketing separate and your Salesforce separate and your accounting separate? Why aren't we talking to data across? We have the data. So when I type something in with data that's allowed to me,

Why can't I just type something in and pull the whole company's information, which you can do from that query? So I think that's the number one thing. And then the other thing I always talk about is security on top of that. So what generative models are being used? And I work with companies that actually monitor generative AI activity in the ecosystem. They will redact information that's trying to go out that could be proprietary. And it also gives you controls down to the human layer as far as what they can access. So sure, just like now,

I've been in organizations where I can't access accounting and I can't access whatever but I can access engineering and sales so I have access to those areas but I can't access development right so you can put those same kind of controls so it's not so when you're talking about from a business level it's it's going to use an open maybe an open AI or a different type of model but you have a custom

And when I say custom, it could be like, I'm trying to think, a Domo has a custom, RapidScale has a custom, right? One that you can do. So there's different ones that you can do, but have a custom AI model built, monitor the AI. Now, when it comes to your own personal use, for me, I'm a GPT person. I still like GPT because I can teach it the most.

George (28:36)
Yes. Yeah.

Benjamin Bohman (28:37)
Right now, I love teaching and right now I just got the notification my memory is full so I gotta wipe it and start reteaching it because I love teaching it just different things and playing around with it. Almost like I'm not trying to hack it, but I'm trying to hack the language code within it to try to get something more human like to get something more useful. And I have people who read writing that I put all the time and be like, it's nice you don't use AI.

And I'm like, no, I absolutely use AI. I just know how to train AI to talk more human -like than most people. Was that a good answer? Sorry, was that a good answer? I know.

George (29:07)
this to, that's a great answer. That's a great answer. You know, and we have, I won't, since this is going public, but you know, we have some things we're working on, but, but you know, something you just touched on Benjamin. so I'm a, I'm a business advisor. I'm working with a client. I have a bunch of their data. Of course, they don't want this going anywhere. And I want to use, let's just say chat. I want to use chat to generate, a first draft of a deliverable or to run some analytics.

What potential security issues are there? What kind of risks am I running? What does CHAP promise to do and not to do with that information?

Benjamin Bohman (29:49)
Well, the biggest thing is for GPT, it's going to store it. And you can turn that off too. So you can turn it off so it doesn't store a cache, but really is it not, but it's going to cache it for 30 or 60 days at least. Now the issue is there, is it going to go right out to the public? No, but if the GPT database was ever to be compromised or hacked, then people could get access to it. I would still steer a clear steer clear of putting in any customers for

proprietary information and for most quotes aren't proprietary, right? I mean, most things that you're looking at, if you're looking at seat numbers and seat counts and users and things like that, you can probably, you can use and throw that in there. And then maybe just talking, I've had conversations where I've said, Hey, I use AI to generate this. Is there any information that we've talked about that you would not like that you would not like me putting into an AI system? And

George (30:46)
That's a great question.

Benjamin Bohman (30:47)
Usually they're most of them are just they're fine with it because we really when you talk about business, you're rarely talking about until you get into the design, like let's say network design and you're talking about IP schemes, firewall configurations, things like that or cybersecurity. Yeah. Once you're in that point, you shouldn't be putting anything. Yeah.

George (31:04)
It could be anything. Yeah, I know I'm getting hives just thinking of it. Yeah.

Benjamin Bohman (31:07)
Right, but as far as us as consultants and talking about it, I always ask permission, even when I'm on a call, right? We have our, I might not be recording the call, but it's transcribing and I still let them know, hey, this is gonna transcribe. It doesn't show up as a recording, but technically it is a recording because it's gonna transcribe it. I'm always about being as vulnerable and open to the customer and letting them dictate so there's no surprises.

George (31:31)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting. I mean, AI is, we're recording this inside a technology called Riverside. Riverside is heavily AI driven. And, and as we publish this, you know, there are different, there are different AI tools that'll be brought to bear, you know, to summarize, to smooth it out, you know, to do all of that, all of that post -production that is, that is critical. And that used to take, you know, used to take an incredible amount of time and be expensive and now is done in, in really in moments.

Benjamin Bohman (31:48)
Yeah.

George (32:01)
which is cool. It's amazing.

Benjamin Bohman (32:01)
Isn't that amazing? What you, what you knew, I mean, you used to have to pay thousands of dollars for a video editor and still at times I wish I would just pay for the video editor, but just cause it'd make it easier. But still it's something that's doable now to be able to go through and edit video. I use the software that I can use short, I can create short clips and short videos and little commercials and info bits from, from the stuff that I do. So it's the.

George (32:11)
I hear you.

Yeah. What technology do you prefer? What AI do you use for that specific work?

Benjamin Bohman (32:30)
So the specific AI I use is Capwing. And I have an affiliate. I'll send you my affiliate link and then if you post it. But here's what I like about it is I can edit the whole video. I can put subtitles in it. I can pull a transcript from it. I can cut it. It will automatically cut short videos. So I'll type in keywords. Let's say I upload my video series, which is AI Insights, the Executive Brief. And I upload the full video. And I'll say, I want to clips on AI.

George (32:33)
Capwing, okay.

Yes?

Benjamin Bohman (33:00)
business, business intelligence, C -suite, like all these different keywords. And then I'll say, I want clips 30 to 45 seconds and generate it. And he'll pop me out 15 to 20 clips, just short clips. And then after that, then I can add music to it. I can add B -roll to it. I can add, I put a logo in the beginning and end. So it just gives me everything I need. And it's fairly, fairly easy to do. And I'd like 59 bucks a month.

George (33:25)
That's great. That's great. Yeah, I've been using some mix of Riverside and then, you know, Transistor is more publishing, but Cast Magic, I don't know if you have any experience with it. Yeah, it sounds like that was called Capwing. Okay, Capwing, that sounds like it's a competitor to Cast Magic. I'm interested to check it out. Yeah, and if you have an affiliate link, send it over, we'll share it.

Benjamin Bohman (33:38)
I haven't tried Cast Magic yet.

Yeah, Cab, worth a K.

It could be.

George (33:54)
And we'll share it with all the listeners.

Benjamin Bohman (33:56)
Sure, yeah. And I think the biggest thing, and I loved hitting on this, I know it wasn't a question you asked specifically, but what we're talking about now with AI is going to be a different a year from now. And I think you and I talked about the BlackBerry comparison last, and if you'd talked about BlackBerry and cell phones back then, you're writing a different story now, and AI is gonna be even more dramatic. The conversation we're having now is gonna be different in a year. That's why I tell businesses, don't rush into AI. Ready your business for AI.

George (34:06)
Yes.

Benjamin Bohman (34:25)
Ready your data, get everything ready for AI. And then if you have an ROI, you have a clear effective savings or efficiency that you can see, then go ahead and implement it. Then it's worth it. But don't implement AI right now just for the sake of implementing AI.

George (34:38)
For the sake of it, I think that's fantastic advice and I totally agree. And as with any new technology, and it's not the newness, it's the understanding how to use it, right? And yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. It's an exciting time. So let's see, we've been chatting for a little over half an hour. Is there a question?

Benjamin Bohman (34:54)
it is.

George (35:04)
What question have I asked you, Benjamin? What's something that we haven't covered yet that you think is important? All of it.

Benjamin Bohman (35:10)
I mean, we've asked, we've had such a great conversation and covered so much, but I think the big thing is embracing AI and not fearing it. And I don't think AI is going to replace jobs, but I think AI can replace.

George (35:21)
Agreed.

Benjamin Bohman (35:27)
jobs where people don't keep up with how they leverage it. And that's with any technology. That's not different than anything else that we've seen where when files went digital and people still wanted, I'm never going to put my file on digital and I'm going to keep it in on. Well, eventually those people just quit working or went out of business, you know, and, and AI, if you embrace it in a safe and ethical way.

and you start learning about it. And when I say safe and ethical, like we said, it doesn't mean embracing, just like, hey, I'm all about AI. No, start learning about where it's applicable for your job, where it's applicable for what you do. Understand it, and then go from there. And that's why, again, I built.

the business model that I built because I don't want to have to force anyone into any kind of AI implementation or usage. And I didn't want them to be steered one way or another. I wanted a large enough ecosystem that no matter the use case, I could either say, no, it's not relevant right now. How old off or go find or yes, this is where we go and this is who's going to do it and who's going to do it well. But again, just learn AI. I would embrace it in the way of just understanding and learning right now. But I wouldn't fear it. And no matter if you do,

What do you call it? Not the gravy train, but this is coming like the storm. If you want to call it the storm, the storm's coming. It's not here yet. It's coming.

George (36:41)
This is coming. Yeah, the tide is coming in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I see it increasing. You know, I, you know, let's think of personal experiences, the efficiency that it brings. And it changes a fundamental question. You know, now, now a business can be, you know, produce as much as five people with a couple, right? Produce as much as 10 people with just a couple, depending on the on the business you're in.

And that is what it's going to change. But it's not, I don't, I think I certainly, you know, there certainly are jobs that will be, that will morph into being AI powered, but that frees people up, right, to do other things, maybe more valuable things. And I believe that to be true. That's been true of technology over the course of time. You know, revolutions will put certain people,

Benjamin Bohman (37:24)
Yeah.

100%.

George (37:38)
There will have an impact on certain parts of the population, but ultimately it's for the good. And I believe AI is ultimately going to be a very good thing. And the good news is that you and I and everyone is asking the ethical questions. We're asking the ethical questions. What should we allow AI to do? And it's a good time. It is a good time. It's an exciting time to be.

Benjamin Bohman (37:57)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, absolutely.

George (38:07)
in business in a really exciting time like for you and I to be in technology.

Benjamin Bohman (38:12)
Yeah, I think so. I think it's just it's about patience right now. I mean, especially with my my business being so focused on AI and having a lot of great conversations, working on a lot of great projects. But also, there's not budget for everything right now. I mean, budgets are done in September, typically, for especially for larger organizations and AI hit in November. And most CTOs, CIOs hated even talking about AI in November, December, January. Now it's getting to the point where like, okay, we've got to start talking about it because boards are asking about their initiatives, but still not giving funding. So it's just a

about patients and continuing to understand and have the conversation.

George (38:44)
Yeah, it's interesting if we build on that, you know, what will the additional funding that may be allocated to AI and to similar technologies, how may they impact the evolution of this and the dissemination of this tool? It's ultimately, it's just a tool next year and the year after. Really fun conversation, Benjamin. This was great. And, you know, we're talking a lot about AI inside our community.

Benjamin Bohman (38:57)
Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

George (39:13)
and I hope you and I can have conversations going down the road. I'm really looking forward to reading your book.

Benjamin Bohman (39:20)
Awesome. Yeah, George, I'm just looking forward to collaborating with you more and thank you so much for having me on and just sharing thought leadership with me. I love it. So thank you again.

George (39:28)
Yeah, my real pleasure. Thanks, Benjamin. All right, ladies and gentlemen, ciao for now and we'll see you next week.

Benjamin Bohman (39:31)
Thank you.

(39:38)
Hi this is George, thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, you can subscribe, like, and please take two seconds to leave a review. It tells the world that you like what we're doing and it helps us understand how we can improve the show. Thank you and see you next time.