Episode 517: Flip the Script: Start with Your Business Problem, Not the AI Tool

Roadmaps And Cash Flow Friction

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So the level of complexity is going to be different for each business. But I think that there's a lot of opportunity if you look at it from uh just kind of roadmap, just map out your your you know what that cash, I'm sorry, opportunity to cash flow is within your business today.

SPEAKER_04 0:15

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. Well, AI, where do you even begin as a business leader? I'm your co-host, Chris.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on April 15th, 2026. Chris, Chris, Chris. Happy tax day. Here in the United States. Where do you begin with AI? That is a challenging question. We see all of the hype about this agent, that agent, this tool, this tool that tool, this framework, this token. It's rather confusing. But if I have an organization or a business, where do I begin with AI? Today we had the opportunity to have that conversation with Max Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Greaters, how are you guys doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Well, how about yourself? How about yourself?

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Good.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

I didn't know that uh you were a soccer fan.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Oh yeah. Yeah, big time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Do you do do you follow MLS? Or just uh European or or uh National League?

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Uh I I follow both Premier League and um and uh MLS. I'm a big FC Cincinnati fan. Nice. Uh we've had season tickets since they started all the way back in 2016. So interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

I'm a New England Revolution fan. Too bad. Had I known, I would have grabbed my scarf. That's great. I have season tickets for the revolution. I had them when they first, well, when they first started or when they first went to Gillette Stadium that I stopped for several years and I picked them up again. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Yeah. I've held on to mine the whole time, even through three wooden spoon seasons.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

That's good. Soccer's fun. It's one, it's one of those sports that once you know the rules, oh yeah, it's fun to watch. But I think if you were to just pick it up and sit and watch it, it's just a bunch of people kicking a ball. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Once you learn the rules, I got into the rules, and then you get a greater appreciation for the game and the footwork. Oh. And watching what some of these athletes can do with that ball is amazing. Like where they can place it. Like, how can you play the setup? The setup as easily further. Like you watch some of these even like corner kicks or some of these other kids, the ball just literally goes and arcs. And I'm like, how can you do that?

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Yeah, at full sometimes at a full speed run, you know, it's it's it's pretty fun to watch. But I agree with you. I I started, I didn't pay any attention to soccer at all when I was growing up. I didn't have much interest in it. But my son started playing when he's five. He's 22 now. And uh I was asked to be an assistant coach a couple of years into that when he was really young. And uh, I'm just that kind of guy, right? So I when I was asked to do that, I was all in. So friends of mine are trained coaches, they gave me recommended reading. I went headlong into it, really understood the game, and uh coach coached him for about three years as an assistant coach, and those were his only three winning seasons. I'm not gonna take all the credit. It was a lot of fun, and that's really when I fell in love with the game, and then we got it.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

It's it is a great sport, yeah, and to watch some of these athletes, like you said, what they can do with the ball at full speed and with the footwork, it's almost like the ball is part of their body. It's a hard thing to explain or understand, but it's almost as if they maneuver and kick and and handle that ball as if it's one of their hands. They just move it like uh I just yeah, listen.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

A friend of mine, he's uh so my son, when he got to about 10 years old, he started playing select, and then I wasn't, you know, I'm not I couldn't coach at that level. He needed he needed much better expertise and opportunity. And uh he joined a club here in Cincinnati that was just getting off the ground, and one of the two owners is a British gentleman who played at a pretty high level, not Premier League, but he played at a high level in Europe. And um, we're still friends, and he just posted a highlight reel of his son that's probably seven years old at this point. This kid the highlight reel was insane. He's dribbling right at everybody. He one of the highlights, he brings the he brings the ball up behind him, you know, kind of brings the ball back when the defenders collapse in on him, brings it over his back shoulder, pops around these two guys, and then one touches it into the goal right above the the keeper, top of the net. I'm like, he's like eight, maybe. I'm like, what are you doing?

Meet Matt And Real AI Use

SPEAKER_02 5:09

It's it's uh it's a great sport, it's interesting, but uh uh I I could talk soccer all day. Uh unfortunately, uh time doesn't permit that. But before we get into the conversation, might tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So Matt Stribble Hoff, CEO of Red Hawk Technologies. Grateful to be back on the podcast, guys. I always love our conversations. It's the energy is always up there, and we talk about some really cool, crazy stuff. Um, but we just celebrated our 18th birthday in business. And uh wow, happy birthday! Yeah, thank you, man. Really proud of that. It's it's uh it's it's great to get past that first couple of years, that first five-year milestone. A lot of businesses don't make it there, and now here we are at 18 and growing strong. And uh, you know, I went from being really concerned and worried about AI and its impact on software engineering to wholly embracing it and kind of geeking out. So I'm excited to kind of share where we are now.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

It is easy to geek out. I think that in my opinion, uh, there's been a lot of excitement about it, but I'm uh there still continues to be a lot of excitement, a lot of features, functionality added to the AI models, yeah. Uh from the software development point of view, uh, what you can do with it, but also from the business point of view. Yeah, a lot of people think of AI, artificial intelligence, we always talk about it's a broad topic. You know, what do you mean by AI? It's not just coding, it's not just uh um, you know, chat GPT and asking questions. It's uh it's it's a you can use it as an assistant. Uh I use it as an assistant now, more so than anything. I do a lot of coding with it, but I use it also as more of a personal assistant to do research, to uh tabulate things. I've been looking at some properties and I go around and I have AI just put together a nice portfolio of the properties for me. I talk to him, I look at them, I speak my thoughts, it asks me questions and makes nice sheets about each property and then compares them to the others and it'll do research on it. And to be honest with you, it asks me questions about them as I'm viewing them that I wouldn't even think of looking at in some cases.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

So yeah, my business partner right now is negotiating with uh, I guess it's it's the the the folks putting in the new um gas pipeline, and he's gonna lose, he has to give up certain percentage of his property, and he's used it to help him through that whole negotiation process, and and then he puts it, cycles things back through, and they're like, Oh, they're gonna know that you have a certain level of sophistication if you approach it this way, and so you might want to kind of start here, and it's just it's nuts. Wow, it actually asked him questions around uh old timber. Like, do you are you gonna or are there any trees that have to come down along this easement? And he's like, Well, yes, and okay, well, what are those trees? And he says he's communicating with it. It's like, okay, you've got some old growth hardwood there that's probably those trees might be worth, you know, twenty-thirty thousand dollars. You gotta add that into your plan when you're negotiating. It's like it's it's scary.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

I mean, it again, it's sometimes uh from my experience, I've seen it do things really, really well. Yeah. And I've seen it do things really, really bad. Yeah. I I think you st it's still something that you need to review uh uh uh at certain points. And it's hard, uh I think you'll understand what I'm saying. You get a sense of where you need to have that human in the loop type process, uh, the more you work with it and and how to work with it. And uh we do appreciate you coming back. Always nice to have a follow-up. You're you're big in the AI world. I was thinking uh uh of catching up on some of the things that you're doing with AI, but I I've had a couple of conversations this week, and I I thought that you would be someone that would be able to help navigate some of the questions that I'm hearing from other uh individuals with businesses. Sure. And the first one is again, everybody's at a different stage of their journey with AI. Uh everybody hears about it because I don't think you can walk one step on this planet without AI being thrown at you in some form. Uh the word AI. Now I'm not saying like use of AI, I'm saying the word AI being thrown at your face. But I've had conversations with the business team members and and uh uh business leaders uh over the past week and last week as well. Where do you begin? Right? This is one of the I think a lot of people are getting into it. Okay, well, this isn't a hype. At first, I think you have people like, okay, this is just a hype, or oh, this is just chat GPT, I can ask you questions, it gives me answers. And then other then you start seeing more and more of some of the social media hype of what people do with AI. Oh, I have 4,000 agents working for me, running my business on seven Mac minis, and I'm making$4.2 billion a day, all the way down to you know, but I was saying as you see how there's a type of exposure, sure. So I've had these conversations in these groups, and that was a very good question of what is AI in my business. How where do I begin? How do I even know what I want to do with it? And how do I assess it? And how do I get into it, and how do I get started? And I know you have your business uh developing software or creating software applications, and you was our last episode we talked about, you have a big use of AI within your organization. We can talk about that as well, but I'm thinking, how does someone get started in this journey?

SPEAKER_03 11:02

Well I think that it's very much along the lines of traditional business strategic planning. If, for example, take AI completely out of the conversation and then look at your business holistically, you're gonna have to have your business leads in this strategic planning conversation. But where are your most expensive workflows within that business where you can streamline operations and help drive more revenue to the bottom line just by simply trying to reduce some of the cost of the way that you're operating? There's a lot of ways to reduce those types of workflows, you know, the operational cost of those workflows. It may end up being machine learning and you know, data warehousing and things like that to streamline operations, or AI might fit into the conversation agentically. Maybe there's some things that can be done there to help assist uh the people that are critical and the subject matter experts particularly that are critical in making sure that that part of your business operates efficiently. But if you if you just take AI out of the conversation, it might remove some roadblocks. People think they have to start with how you know AI, where do I plug it in in order to receive some benefit? I would say flip the script. Look at your business holistically first and think about uh where are your most expensive workflows within the organization? And expense might be a result of, if you're in a highly regulated industry, how often are we failing or struggling with specific types of third-party audits? What does that cost our organization? What is causing those uh mistakes that are leading to that expense? And can an agentic workflow or tooling help us reduce the amount of occurrence or frequency of occurrence of those mistakes? But really what you're doing is you're talking about the business challenge first to find the opportunities. And so we actually created an AI decision matrix. It's really pretty simple. And you know, people can download it on our website if they're interested, but it's a way to kind of reframe the conversation so that you're not so focused on AI's capabilities and all the hype and the buzz out there and and how you replicate that type of success in your business. Just I would suggest people take that off the table and actually start with what your core business functions are. Where is there a lot of um transactions with regard to data and people? Because you know, you if you're talking about opportunity to cash, right? Every business is opportunity to cash. Really? No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Yeah, right? I mean, fundamentally, it's I think people forget that people forget that point.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

All businesses are in business to make money. Yes, period. It's it's there is no other reason for it. I mean, I it I'm not going to get down the whole nonprofit role or the whole nonprofit discussion, but all businesses are in it to make money somewhere for someone. And it it you're going to have business profitability, which business profitability is going to go to its employees, and you're making money for those employees so that they can live. So it's the fundamental existence of a business is not just to have fun. Uh, people may have fun while they're doing it, but the underlying goal is to be profitable.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Absolutely. And and part of that is reducing the time to cash.

unknown 14:34

Right?

SPEAKER_03 14:35

How do you compress the time from opportunity to actually having that revenue hitting the books? And in every business, you're going to have different leaders that are responsible for different functions within that the way that you're you're structured operationally. So there are all these handoffs that take place from marketing, you know, qualified lead to the sales team, to now there's an intake process for that new deal that you just landed. And every company has different ways that they slice that up, particularly you know, based on what they're offering. You know, is it an engineered product? What is it, right? So the level of complexity is going to be different for each business. But I think that there's a lot of opportunity if you look at it from uh just kind of roadmap, just map out your you know, what that cash, I'm sorry, opportunity to cash flow is within your business today. Who are the subject matter experts responsible for those successful handoffs from department to department? Where where are the areas where you know that you have some inefficiency? Now look at those inefficiencies and see how AI or ingenic workflow or some type of integration might help optimize that. I don't think that it's rocket science. I really don't.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

I I I like that approach because I think breaking it down to look at specific tasks and seeing how AI may be able to assist you. And you reference uh a couple scenarios there. You reference what's your most expensive, but where are you where do you have an expensive process? Yes. And now you're talking about take a look at that operations to cash. And in that, I'm assuming or inferring from your conversation that expense doesn't necessarily always mean dollars when you're looking at the expense, it could be time. Yes. So in some of these operations, what is the friction you may have that will delay your opportunity to cash cycle? And how may AI help you reduce that friction, either cutting or reducing steps? Uh, because uh I I know, and I'm happy that you brought that up because again, these are discussions that I've had with uh every time I'm up north, I go to dinner with many different people. It's strange, and I I think I gain like 300 pounds when I'm here, but that's a different story. Um, because all we do is go out to eat and um drink water. So but it is, it's it's the it's the friction, and anytime you hand off to a person, what is the delay in the feedback loop as well? Because it could be, as you had mentioned, you hand it from a sales team to uh an implementation team or a sales team to an engineering team for architecture. There's a feedback loop between those in order to continue to the next step or to go to the next step. So maybe looking at some of those handoffs to see how can you make that more efficient from a time point of view, which in essence increases your opportunity to cash as well as reducing cost of time. And if you're in consulting, sometimes that time can be expensive because it could be the opportunity of uh being successful or not successful in winning an engagement as well.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Certainly. And I and I think there are there are a lot of great tools. You guys are clearly you know familiar with notebook. You know, Copilot has their version of that now. I think in a prior episode I was talking about you know Google's version of that. If you can capture all your transcripts and meetings, conversations, content in a notebook for an engagement from lead to cash and interview each of the parties responsible to evaluate where your what your current status is. Because your subject matter expert, if your boots on the ground, those are the folks who know where all the problems and challenges are. And so one thought is to implement a strategic you know, information gathering, evaluation process, leveraging AI, and using notebook as as really your research assistant. So if you're not quite sure where some of those challenges or opportunities lie within that flow from lead to cash, follow some of that through your the process, capture all of your interviews with the individuals responsible, dump all that into a notebook and then start vibing with that AI agent and see what kind of ideas come from leveraging that as a research assistant.

Mapping Opportunity To Cash Handoffs

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Okay, so that's that's a good approach to start, and that's uh where do we start? Yes. And now how do we start? Right? So now it's we've we've done, we've identified the where, which could be the how, right? But the how is to start is to do the the review of these processes. But now I hear you had mentioned notebook Google has uh perplexity, notebook LM, uh, which has some nice features in it. We hear uh on the news open AI, chat beat, chat GPT, codex, claude, uh, copilot, opus, sonnet, haiku, I can keep going. It's it's it's there's there's a a smorgasborg of words that we hear with AI. And if I'm new to it, or I'm really trying to understand it, because there are businesses that aren't technical businesses. We all work in a technical space, so we're in this bubble. I'm starting to realize of understanding and using and knowing AI. Yes, but I speak with individuals outside of the tech sphere that have businesses doing HVAC that doing that service other service type businesses or uh um commercial type businesses, and they're not so exposed or as exposed, and again, it's it's okay because everybody has to start at a different point in their journey. They're not so exposed to the technical workings of it, and some of them are rather afraid because they hear about all this stuff and they hear all these words, and they're like, Well, what should I know? Like, how do I even know what AI can do, and how do I even set it up and how do I go through this? So, what's your take on that? I know it's it's kind of putting you on the spot a little bit, but uh Chris, jump in as well, too, from your thoughts on any of this stuff, because this is these are real conversations I've had more than once in the past week.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

Well, I I think I think sometimes too that uh the fear of look, when when AI was coming around and everyone's like, oh, it's gonna take a job, even that alone prevents people from starting. Like, why would I want to make an effort if it's if there's a possibility that's going to take my job, I'm not gonna go and do that. So I think that's a I think that's a valid challenge right now where where maybe the adoption is a little slower in other areas or other industry. Um I think for us it's easy to say, oh, we should adopt it because we are in tech. But there are other industries where, like, I don't even know where to start. You're right. So it's very difficult to understand. You can have some ideas, but then you get to a point. Okay, okay, now we have a problem. We have a challenge. Let's go use AI to solve it. But to your question, Brad, where do you start? Where do you begin? Which one do you choose? And that is where you get hung up as well. And say, okay, well, I don't know which one to choose. Someone tells me that this is better for that. Another person tells me this one's better for this. And making that choice is uh as a business leader, it's like, well, um, where's gonna be my ROI? If it's not the right one, uh, did I just waste money?

SPEAKER_03 22:31

Uh so analysis paralysis. Absolutely, you know. So I I I believe firmly at this point, you know, it is it is absolutely an arms race, you know. And and I think it's less about which tool you choose, and it's more important just to choose to start, knowing that it's okay to change direction. But when you decide to start, and you choose, let's say that you're gonna start with Chat GPT uh or perplexity. There's nothing wrong with starting with either one of those. I think there are some nuances, one that you know, things that we as experts might think, well, I'll I'll prefer to use this because of the model behind it, or et cetera, for certain types of outcomes. But when we're talking to non-technical business leaders in HVAC, for example, that are are interested in just trying to understand where to start, I would say choose whichever one that you feel most comfortable with. And if you're not sure which one that is, just choose one. But do so in a way that you're creating an account specific to your business. It's not a personal account. Make sure that the information that you share with it about your business and processes, look take the time to look at the privacy policy in terms of use. Make sure it's not training on the information you feed it. I think as long as you can validate that it's uh a tool you can use that's not going to train on your data, then it's okay to choose that tool.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

Yeah, I that's a good point. Uh you had mentioned about policy as well. You know, before you even begin, you know, what are what are your company policy about AI use? Because you have some IP, you have some process that's unique to you, um, that could be it could be exposed. I think finding a good partner that can talk you through that is very important. I know there's a lot of a lot of businesses want to just turn it on uh and not have any clue of like, okay, what there's a risk there uh in terms of security of your data. Uh I've heard that too. I've heard stories about people turning it on because they just want to turn it on. Someone um uh uh someone had bought or purchased Chat GPT licenses uh for individuals, not the enterprise. And it's like use it. It's like okay, that's a wrong approach.

Pick A Tool And Begin Safely

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Well, that's that that's another uh challenge in itself. And I think we hit a couple of points of where do we start and how do we choose uh Chris? You had mentioned having an AI policy, and again, uh these are all things from you think of someone outside of this, how does it start? And you're also a point of there's a big difference between using Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot, uh even Grok at home saying, Oh, tell me about my shopping list or uh what happened with the sports game last night. You know, I mean there's a big difference between using it for personal use, then bringing it into the business use, and maybe not having I don't like to use the word control, but having visibility or having that human in the loop type process to make sure that the use of it's in the best interest for your business. I think shadow IT is becoming more of a problem. Not to again, I'm trying not to jump all over the place, but uh uh Chris, you're talking about somebody taking a personal chat GPT subscription into the workplace to start doing things for work, where there may not be a policy or there may not be guardrails, and then they start creating these shadow IT processes or or shadow IT workflow systems, and now an organization can be cut shaught off guard by something that's being done by somebody who's trying their best just to do their job. Not to say that someone's doing this stuff maliciously, uh oftentimes uh their intent isn't malicious, even though it could the results can be catastrophic.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

So yes, policies are critical, and then having an owner of that policy and then training people is key. So uh it's just it's a pretty simple structure, but in our business we have a support group that they own defining policies for the tools that we're adopting, and then distributing that among the organization, and people are tested on their knowledge of that policy before they're onboarded to use those tools to drive enforcement of the policy itself. It's really not that complicated, but it is a process that you you have to implement. And we're gonna by the likely within the next year we'll have a hundred engineers on our team. So we're we're scaling at a point now where if we don't have that type of system and process in place, shadow IT, especially with engineers who are like, oh man, check out this new tool. I'm gonna see what I can get out of base 44. Oh, I've got some client you know information over here. I'm gonna see how quickly I can videcode a prototype for them as part of this next phase of work. Well, if we can't have them just randomly onboarding it, and not only is there a risk from uh IP and and uh information kind of getting out there into these models, there's also a cost implication. Because of the tokenization and at scale, that starts to get that can start to get expensive.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

But I don't wanna I don't want to get too deep in the technical side of it because I mean, yeah, it's it's it's that's just see this is where I think all of these conversations that I'm having outside of the tech sphere, as I'll call it, yeah, is is concerning businesses because you start to hear of all these small little stories. You hear the great stories of oh, I can run my business uh more efficient by myself, and uh everyone else will be out of business to well, my business blew up because I spent$40,000 yesterday on tokens because I didn't put a limit because somebody was trying to do something. So it's tough to go down that road. But I think just where do you start and just being aware of some of these things to say that it's it's it's easy to get started with a personal subscription. Implementing it into a business requires a little more thought than just turning it on, is what I think the both of you were saying, and what I'm seeing as well. It's it's okay to dabble with some small things, but before you implement something organizationally, you should identify your focus of what you're trying to do. So which what Chris and I like to talk about this a lot when we have our conversation? What problem are you trying to solve? That should be the first thing you do before you do anything, yeah, is clearly identify the problem.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

If you're trying to just create something cool and you don't have a problem to solve, it's all wasted investment at that point. It's wasted investment, and what I've seen is I've seen it create more problems.

SPEAKER_04 29:59

Oh, yeah. Yeah, people tend to play. I I think I think we do have to slow down. I know we've spoken to a lot of people that are utilizing AI right now. You you know, AI is is supposed to be this um accelerator of many things, and what a lot of business leaders should do, um, or at least from my from my perspective, from my in my opinion, humble opinion, uh, we should slow down. Uh, I think both of you guys noted you have to identify the challenges, the you know, the the costly operations that you may be dealing with. Um in addition to that, um perhaps the um uh policies, uh data. Yeah, you have to have good data. Uh you have to have clean data. And and is it are these data accessible somewhere, or is it someone putting it on a notepad that could help uh some of the you know important component to have good agents to be working for you? So there's a lot of things that you have to do pre preliminary preliminary uh prerequisites before turning on or having agents uh implemented in your in your environment. So yeah, I'd say slow down a little bit and cover all those basic basis uh in itself.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

So we talked about identifying this policy or excuse me, identifying the problem, coming up with the responsible use of AI type policy. Uh I use that loosely. I don't know how formal it may or may not need to be. Uh, I think each organization can determine that based upon uh their their uh structure. What if I need help? Like, so this is great. This is all great. I I I can be a business. So we talked about identifying all this, choose a model, start working with it, get a subscription, and look at it. How do I get information on what to do? Like, is there there's 40,000 AI experts out there? Uh, if I'm looking for help, uh, there's uh a lot of information on the internet, which personally now I don't even know what I believe anymore because I see so many different things that sound good. And uh sometimes you have to go out. Is that even true, or is that just yeah, you know, bait or something, uh just to get a reaction? Um and side note, just a little ramble. Then you see all these things that people are posting or articles or this that they're creating, that you read it and you're like, there's four billion words and there's no meat because it was all AI generated, but that's a separate story. Um how do you get help? Well, where do you which resources are available for you to learn about this stuff?

SPEAKER_03 32:57

Well, you can go straight to AI and start getting help there, which is probably you know what people are doing, you know, Google searches and whatnot, and then using perplexity and doing searches there. But but uh it's a great question. I I think we've all been in the same line of work long enough to know that this trust issue and challenge, when you're asking for expert assistance with something you just clearly don't understand, it almost always leads people through a process of using their network first and looking for referrals to whom they have trusted in the past and had success with. That's why the line of work we're in is almost always referral-based.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

It is, it is, yeah.

Policies Shadow IT And Guardrails

SPEAKER_03 33:46

I think a lot of business leaders and non-technical, you know, non-technical business leaders are probably doing just that. They're they're they're hanging out in their peer groups. Maybe it's vestige, I don't know. You know, they're they're talking to other people in their circles. Um and uh and they're asking that very question. How did you go about it? Who did you trust? What was that experience like? I think that's the that's the pathway that most organizations end up going down because of their they're just they don't understand, and it's big, it's scary, it's intimidating, and they want to find a vendor they can trust, a partner who can go in as a trust.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah, it's it's it's it is difficult, and I think word of mouth, I think a lot oftentimes, again in in the space that we're in and what we're doing is undervalued because sometimes those connections and relationships can drive a lot of business. Uh, you also mentioned uh one thing that we haven't mentioned here, I think scale and size of business matter as well. Because having somebody who's responsible for your AI policies and implementation and use doesn't necessarily need to be somebody's full-time position if the business doesn't warrant it. You can have someone that does that based again. I think everything just depends on the scale and the size of your business. I think some organizations definitely need it.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

And it's not a five-minute task, typically. With the way things are changing, the way things are evolving. There's a little bit of work in the air, and again, not to say that you have to always use the latest as well. But things are changing rapidly and understanding how it could be used, the cost of the use, uh, believe it or not, nothing's free. It sounds great and free when I can use my you know, I install one of these chat models on my phone, but there's a big scale difference between, again, me looking for a restaurant and a recipe versus somebody trying to gain efficiencies between their sales handoff cycle and their engineering team to do prototypes for prospects.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 36:03

Most of our customers, and this is sort of the audience that we we serve, are upper mid-market or mid-market businesses. We do have S and Bs in our portfolio as well. And in my experience, the majority of them rely on fractional CIOs to assist with tech stack evaluation, platform evaluation before they transition from nothing to a new ERP or an ERP they're unhappy with to a new ERP. Oftentimes they'll bring in those fractional experts to assist with that type of planning. And I know several of these fractional CIOs are also helping them establish acceptance use policies for AI, helping them make decisions based on the current tech stack, what tooling makes sense to adopt, and they're putting some guardrails on that. And those are not full-time hires, they're extremely valuable because of the level of expertise they can bring to a smaller organization as a fractional consultant. And we're seeing a lot of our customers uh they've been doing that for quite some time, and now those fractional CIOs are expected to bring expertise around AI into that conversation. If they're not, they're probably not gonna be the fractional CIO for very long.

SPEAKER_04 37:19

Yeah, I think I think asking for help is uh uh first we we established that earlier today, right? Like you've you got to figure out what what challenges and and what problems you're trying to solve. Yeah. And uh Matt, you had talked about like maybe within your network, uh, talk to the people, your peers that you've interacted with. Um, I do believe that going to conferences would be a good opportunity if you are a business leader that's like, I don't know where to begin. I have these challenges. So first identify all your challenges and and problems you're trying to solve. Talk to your peers. They may or may not be in your industry, but they've know they've worked on it uh to solve their problems. Uh, I think a good one would be to go to a conference. Now you come in prepared, obviously, with your questions and challenges and all that. You go to a conference, you could be sitting next to someone that have maybe have solved a similar issue that you're dealing with and say, okay, well, let's pick that person's brain. Uh, I think it's more, I think it's very important now to go to these conferences because it's not it's no longer just generative AI where we just get answers and stuff like that. How are our businesses using agents? And I think conferences would be a good place. And then of course you get someone speaking about specific agents, but the people that would be sitting next to you uh at these conferences would would would could could help you for sure.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Uh I would add that a lot of the conferences include breakout sessions, so it's not always just the keynote. And you might find if you're looking at the agenda for the conference even before you sign up, if there are some breakout sessions where they're doing more workshop type planning and and and experience shares, that's oftentimes where a lot of ideas and and networking, etc., can kind of expand. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

There's a lot to this. Now I'm curious to hear a little bit how your AI um use has uh progressed and grown since we last spoke. But is it true? Can you run 14 agents 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and make 40 billion dollars?

SPEAKER_03 39:30

Is it if I pulled that out I wouldn't be on the podcast right now, it'd be somewhere in some exotic part of the world. Uh I think there's uh I think that I don't think we've seen the world's first billionaire that is running a company with just himself and agents. Is it possible? I think the billionaires that are out there in the tech industry right now are taking bets as to how long it's going to be before we see it. I think a lot of things are possible. I have engineers right now that um one I'm thinking about today, we were just talking uh earlier this week. He on average has five to seven agents running at any given point in time to expedite the work that he's doing.

Finding Trusted Help And Learning Paths

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Interesting. Now that's it's it's I I talk with people all over, and it's I've learned to dissect what everyone says because I had a conversation with someone the other day, and like, oh, they have 14 agents and they're doing all this, and each agent they have one for documentation, one for testing, one for coding. And then they come to find out they just have instructions for single-threaded processes, and they have 14 different sets of instruction files. So they're not really doing this 24-sev type process. They they they may have those separate agents to do separate tasks. It's geez, I'll even admit it. I have several agents that are doing different things based upon what I want to do because I have guardrails that I want the output to follow or things that I want it to focus on so it doesn't go the wrong way. Uh, and I say that just because it's just some of the things that I've seen it do when you don't give it a few little boundaries, have been uh comical. So if someone can it's not the agent that's those individuals that are doing well, I think you can do more with less. Yeah, but it also still takes someone to have that creativity and it still takes some people to do something. It's not, I'm going to say, let's create an agent and create an application, and I don't have to sit at it now. I'm on my beach in Tahiti, you know, sipping a margarita while my my team's back there working and running, and uh it's I laugh. And and Chris, you said it's what'd you say it's for uh I don't want to say influences, but it's more for like uh I don't want to say clickbait or more for it's just attention. Like some of us really would like to see what they're doing. I could set up 14 agents to run and do something. Sure, you could. What is the output? Is it gonna be any money?

SPEAKER_03 42:04

I don't know. Is it gonna cost you a lot of money? Probably.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Well, the thing is like I I can spend$20,000. I like when I see that stuff, I'm like, okay, you're doing all this stuff, but you're spending okay, you have a Claude Max times 20 subscription. Great. What is that making you? Like you can do a lot of cool stuff. I'll be the first one to say you can do a lot of cool things and a lot of great things, but how are you capitalizing on it? Uh, is the other question that I ask.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

So what value is it creating for somebody else that they're willing to pay you for it?

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Yeah, there are a lot of influencers that are I have seen that some of those uh short reels that they put out there that were like, oh, you could do all this stuff. And like you said, Matt, like base 44, you can make an app. I think one of the ads were like you can make an app uh and it's an employee within a company that someone used base 44 to create an app. I was like, wow, that is uh shadow IT in itself, uh creating something for their company that he was they just happen to use. Uh, but there are a lot of influencers out there, and and and unfortunately, some of that that you see somebody see that from a personal point of view, and it's like, well, I could do that. Why can't I do that? And then they would take it to work, and that becomes a problem, right? So a lot of the the uh private or personal side of things uh kind of leaks into the business world, and as a business leader, you that is something is a uh a concern, that is a risk in itself. Like, how do you control that? Yeah, it's gonna be tough.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

It is gonna be to expect to do that over. It is gonna be tough. And it then and oftentimes that type of of clickbait and chatter and buzz creates very unrealistic expectations in the business world.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

Yeah. Have you been experiencing that with your customers? Yeah, like they can see have you been challenged. Or questioned by your customers because they see the AI hype or they see the AI slop, I call it. Uh, with not just the output of AI, but also the AI slop content that's created on the internet. Where I think some may have, in my opinion, a perception of devaluing good output from others. Have you had any challenges with that within your organization?

SPEAKER_03 44:26

Well, I think rightfully so, our clients are challenging us to help convey to them how we are adopting AI for their benefit. And I think that's fair for them to be asking questions. Where does AI fit within your SDLC? Uh we have a lot, most our clients are for the most part very reasonable and uh have a high level of sophistication, and so they're not buying into all of the hype, thank goodness. But they do expect to see better quality, uh faster throughput from our team as a result of our careful adoption of AI. So it's up to us to educate to them as to how we're using it for their benefit. And we are doing a lot of that. So you know, a lot of that stuff is coming in into the conversation around uh quality assurance testing, automated QA. Um, you know, how are we leveraging AI to help us create and then run those tests to reduce the labor and improve the quality throughput? So yeah, we're we are having those conversations. Now there are occasions where it's maybe it's not a customer, but it's somebody that has been introduced to me that has a brand new idea that might have very unrealistic expectations because of the hype out there. And then I then it's I don't know if this is gonna be a good fit, man. I can't build 14 agents and and see you on the beach in a month, you know, making 40 million dollars a year.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yeah, but when it comes to anything like that, I always tell everyone if it were that easy, everyone could do it. That's right. And everyone would be on the beach, yeah, and nobody would be working. It's it I say that with uh you know, sort of tongue in cheek in a sense, because there are some people, again, you look at Facebook, you know, can anybody create Facebook? Yes. But somebody at the I say it's the right place and right time and the proper marketing. It's it's sort of how you get used and how you get adopted. Sometimes it's not what you're creating. You don't always need to have this fancy whiz-bang, shiny object, as I call it, this complicated technology. Sometimes it's just solving a problem for people and people using that tool and having little friction to use that tool.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

Yeah, you know, we uh this is this is gonna this is an interesting story, and it'll be very brief, but I remember working at another software engineering firm early in my career, we're going all the way all the way back to 1999. We were working for a group. Our client was uh a company that generated financial reports for companies on Wall Street. The challenge that the CEO provided to us was to automate the ingestion of data, create a QuickBooks plugin that would automatically generate charts and graphs because the most expensive part of their workflow were people creating charts and graphs to drop into QuickBooks. I'm not sorry, not QuickBooks, um uh Quark Express, which was at the time a tool that designers would use to create annual reports and all kinds of reports. It's a design tool. Well, we did such a good job at that that we overshot the mark. He was looking for an incremental reduction in labor. We were able, and this has nothing to do with AI, but it was it was more machine learning and then writing a capsulated postscript to drop in these charts and graphs. Now the designer still had to come in and add some information. But we reduced their labor by 94%. Pretty significant. So when we presented that to the CEO, the meeting did not go as planned. Right? This is something else that's kind of interesting. Is the market really ready for it? Their entire business and the way that they sold and provided their services to their customers was predicated on the labor associated with generating those materials. So we basically reduced his revenue, had he taken that all the way to the finish line by 95%. And so they decided not to move forward because in order to do that, they would have to retool everything from the sales process through the contracts to make it value-based as opposed to labor-based calculations in order to produce to deliver their product. So sometimes, you know, there are opportunities, and probably more so today with the you know AI tooling that's available, to have a dramatic impact. But is are you ready for it? Are your customers ready for it? Are you can you can you offer that without having a detrimental impact on your revenue? I don't know. I mean, this is a personal experience we had years ago, but it's something that kind of stuck with me. It's like is your big idea feasible? Well, first you gotta check that box. Let's say that it is. Is your business ready for it?

SPEAKER_02 49:22

It's a good point. I I think it's a good point. Anything that's uh I think any idea or any problem that you're going to solve, uh you have to make sure that you're in the position to support the the the outcome or the output of what you're going to do to solve that problem.

SPEAKER_03 49:37

Yeah, because you might hit the mark and then all of a sudden it's like, oh crap, I gotta change my entire business.

Agent Hype Versus Business Reality

SPEAKER_02 49:45

Which which is it's important to do so. And I don't think I I think that if you're going to advance, you have to be aware of that and learn how to manage that. Because as you were saying, I think a lot of businesses are challenging how are you using these tools to provide me better value. Yes. And avoiding using these tools because of maybe how it impacts your revenue, may have a different approach of how can I maximize my revenue by using these tools instead of worrying about these tools reducing my revenue because organizations and businesses see and want to see the value that they're getting. Because ultimately, I look at it this way uh if I'm going to buy something, it has a value to me. It's going to be$100 for me for this microphone, for example. Is it worth it to me? If it's$200, maybe I don't want that microphone because it's not worth that much to me. So that's it's it's that whole middle piece of providing value, and what is that worth to, you know, is is the value that you're providing worth the cost to the customer? Therefore, it's going to impact your revenue. It's a little long-winded speech that I had there.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

I I have a couple of friends, one in particular that is a high-level consultant, and his business is work, it is focused on helping professional service organizations modify their go-to-market and pricing strategy to make it value-based so they can liberate themselves from yeah, liberate themselves from a labor cost you know, pricing model so that they don't anticipating, you know, this these what's coming, and they're trying to get to value-based. They have to get to value-based.

SPEAKER_04 51:42

We, we, we just, man, that's a topic on its own because I am passionate about that, value-based, uh, and uh specifically in the professional services, and where AI has a huge impact on the professional services industry. And uh, yeah, that in itself is a separate topic. I mean, we I'm sure Brad and I could talk about that, because that is a an area now with AI has um an impact towards. And what does that mean in the professional services?

SPEAKER_02 52:18

Because you sell by you go by the hours and all this stuff, but it's the value is the end result to the you pop that cork right there because uh it is, it's a balancing act. What is something that can be value? Again, if everything's time-based, if you can do things with less friction and faster, then if you're going to just go by the amount of time it takes, you run the risk of reducing your revenue because you're that more uh you're more efficient and you have to do more, or you charge more. So if you're going time-based, if again, if we charge by the hour, and in professional services, many industries, not just tech industries. It can be legal, it's you know, any consulting type industry. If it takes me less time to do something, I'm going to make less money. It's it's it's if I keep the same billing rate per unit of measure of time. So if my billing rate is$100 an hour, and now tasks that used to take me three hours take 10 minutes, I run the risk of losing that revenue, or I'd have to say that it took me three hours. And it's it's it's it's a balancing act. So then you need more to get that same quantity of time. But ultimately, at the end, the equation is what's the value to the customer? Because even on the professional services base, again, some things you have to pay, uh, unfortunately. If you tell me it takes 12 hours of your time to do this task, whatever that task may be, is it worth it to me? So I can go into the argument of tell me it's 12 hours at$100 an hour, or tell me it's$1,200. Ultimately, I'm gonna get to the same spot. Now, I think some things you do have to look at the value of what it is worth to somebody. And again, it's not overcharging. I am not by any means saying overcharge. We go to the supermarket, we pay X dollars for a product because we think it's worth it. Right? We're going to differentiate between maybe name brand and store brand because the value of the product to us.

SPEAKER_03 54:35

Yeah, and the onus of generating margin is on the supplier of that product. So if they can find ways to streamline, modify, you know, working with their vendors, et cetera, to maximize margin, we don't care, right? We're just there to buy the product and we're okay with the price.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

Exactly. And that's I think some people overlook that fact that the custom I a customer was to look at that. Now, there are some things that's still going to be time and material based, I think. I think professional services need to take a look at how they're doing these things, and I've been saying this for a while. And I'm not saying time and materials as people doing is not valid in some cases, because there are some cases where you truly need to be time-based, right? So, again, if I'm giving you providing you know training on site, or if I'm sitting with you, again, that's the reality is I'm spending three hours with you, and you want three hours of my time to do something, whatever that may be, you're going to pay for the time that I'm going to sit with you. If you want me to deliver something to you, if we can agree on exactly what that may be, then maybe it's more what's the value to me. I really don't, you know. I I have some, I say this in every episode. If I have someone come do work for me at the house, I really do not care how long it takes. I care about how much it costs and when it will be done. I mean, I do care about how long it will take. But again, it's if you're not going to get it done until next December and it costs this much money, is it worth it for me? No. If you can get it done by next Friday and it costs this much money, I don't care if it takes you five minutes. Because to me, it's worth this much money to be done next Friday, period. So it's it's it's it's uh it's a change in the professional services industry, and I think it's um slowly being adopted across many uh industries.

SPEAKER_03 56:15

Yeah, yeah. We're doing some interesting things now in that regard. It's it a lot of what we do is still time-based and should be. Knock on wood so far, we're we're seeing more opportunity to offset the reduction in labor. So we haven't been negatively impacted. But where we are seeing opportunity is in in uh where routine, mundane, doesn't requ it requires expertise from a software engineering perspective to execute, but it's not the whiteboard, white space, big strategic thinking and design work. Maintenance. The maintenance that needs to be done in in applications. We we now have uh a product that's subscription based that the engineers aren't doing the dishes. Right? You know, we can we can monitor the bill of materials, find the CVEs, the agentic workflows, handle C VE remediation, automates that all the way up to the pull request, notifies the engineers so the human in the loop is still there from a quality assurance perspective. But it's also generating deep uh technical documentation with every commit. And so if you think about, you know, as an as an engineering team, it might take if we take on somebody else's software application, we might be looking at 80 to 100 engineering hours to create the level of documentation we need because nobody's good at documenting their custom software applications, it just doesn't happen. You can do that in minutes as part of this platform now. So I've so that one is value-based priced.

Value Based Pricing And Maintenance Automation

SPEAKER_02 57:51

Yeah, no, I agree with you. And that's how I've seen better documentation. Again, you can overdo it. Yeah, right. I mean, AI can create some great things, but you still need to work with it. I keep saying I've seen better documentation than I've ever seen in my life coming from developers with modifications because the AI tools will create even simple things of these are the changes that I made, these are if you're dealing with tables, these are the pages, forms, or UI, this is what was added and such, and this is how this works, right? You still can guide it, it just puts it together so that somebody can follow it and use it. And if somebody can also come in and pick up um to understand the application if they need to maintain it, yes, and also if you have AI agents working with you, that documentation can be used for those AI agents to help you maintain it, which is key. But you did say something which is also important. Again, I want to emphasize before everyone starts telling me because we've had these conversations about value versus time. Uh we all said it. All of us, yeah, uh there are points for time and materials, yes, and time and materials are necessary for some things, other things are more appropriate for uh value-based things, and neither one of them are in a position to um uh or take advantage of you know whomever's consuming those. It's the appropriate billing cycle or method for the bill of, in my opinion. And I I think that's uh a different way to frame looking at it. Um, because uh if you do all of one, then you could uh at this point impact um the revenue that you're making for a professional services industry.

SPEAKER_03 59:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

And uh again, that's many industries, not just the tech industry.

SPEAKER_03 59:39

Certainly.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

Uh so Mr. Matt, I could talk to you for ages. I really wish we did get to dive into how some of uh you're using AI to uh streamline your business uh and uh you know some of the tools that you've adopted. But maybe we'll have to have you back on again to jump into that. But uh uh I wanted to get your intake on how or your excuse me, your input or your take on how to get started with all of this because that seems to be the bubble that I'm finding in as I get out of the AI bubble and into the business bubble. And uh there's far more people concerned about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:16

100% agree. Yeah, it was a pleasure being here, guys. I really appreciate it. Lots of fun. Always have a good time talking with you guys, really do. So uh look forward to being back at some point and hopefully. Absolutely. We'll get you on in a few months again.

How To Reach Matt And Closing

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

No, absolutely, and I'll have to have my soccer season will still be on. We'll have you on before the soccer season ends, and maybe we'll have to do it when uh I'll take a look at the schedule, see when Revolution plays Cincinnati, and we can do it the day after. So we can talk about that. That would be great. I would love to hopefully we'll win. Uh so we'll see. But uh, if anyone would like to reach out and contact you to talk a little bit more about AI, how they may be able to adopt AI within their organization, or see how you're using AI in your organization or any of the other services that you offer. What's the best way to get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

Two great ways. Look me up on LinkedIn, Matt Striplehoff. That's all you gotta do is search for and uh send me a message. Uh alternatively, you can just go to redhawk-tech.com, fill out a contact form. I'm the one who gets uh that information routed to me through the marketing team. I'll be happy to schedule a call and have a conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

Great. Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us again today, and I look forward to speaking with you soon. Cha-cha. Thanks, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

Thank you, Chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair. And thank you to our guests for participating.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:34

Thank you, Brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlife.com. That is D V L P R L I F E dot com. And you can interact with them via Twitter, D V L P R L I F E. You can also find me at mattalino.io, m-a-t a l i no dot io. And my Twitter handle is mattalino16. And see you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you, and take care.