AICHE S1Ep2 E.A.T.ing with John Barrows

Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the AI Curious

Human Enthusiast Podcast, or AIChE,

because we have to have an abbreviation for everything. And Happy New Year.

I'm so excited to ring in the New year with jb John

Barros. And you probably know him from.

It could be just about anything. He and I were just talking. We go back

doing Rainmaker and was talking a little bit about

meeting him there and how I was such a big fan of Blues Traveler. It

sounds like he had the VIP and was partying with the band, so.

But what goes on. And backstage at the Roxy stays

backstage at the Roxy, so we'll keep it at that for now. But, man, John

is just a powerhouse. One of my favorite things about him is how he

just is so authentic and open and. But really

he does all of his stuff in public. When he's hitting the wall,

he's sharing it on LinkedIn, on his newsletter,

on, in his trainings, which he opens up

more than occasionally for free. Can't recommend those enough

because once you're in, you'll be hooked. And that's what he does for a living.

You know, the sales folks, it's a hard gig. And when you're selling to

sales folks, I'm sure that it's not that much more easy. JB.

And I think you're up to what you somewhere near a half million. Are you

trying to close in on that half million mark of followers? So he's got a

proven, proven track record out there. So. But before I hand it over to him,

I wanted to just point out one thing which I loved about what he did.

I believe it was daughter originally. And in fact, you'll see on the back of

his microphone stand there, which I love, it says E A T.

I don't know if that's showing up there, but that is

focus on what you can control, which he and his daughter came up with.

Eat. I'm sure we'll hear about that in a little bit, which is effort,

attitude, and how you treat people. We're

human beings that don't necessarily have control of

this existence here on the big blue marble. But if you just think through that

lens, which is again, one of the many things I love about him and in

fact, even sent me a thoughtful little card I've got right here on my desk.

Just Eric, keep focusing on what you can control and spend as much,

spread as much positivity as you can. And

he's one of those people. And you can already see him beaming through the screen

so enough out of me. John, tell us a little bit about yourself before we

get into Aiche. What did I miss? Not much,

man. You know, I'm not too complicated. I just been around the block for a

little while here and I think, you know, I've been fortunate in my career to

be exposed to some pretty cool opportunities and, you know,

selling my degrees in marketing, but fell into sales like

everybody else. Got into DeWalt power tools and Xerox, which is where

I got my actual, you know, sales education, selling copiers to the government.

Then started an IT services firm. Took the training that I

now deliver. Loved it. Fastest growing company. Sold the staples,

went off, joined Basho, which is a training company, and then they screwed it up

and I took it over. And I get to work with cool companies like Salesforce,

LinkedIn, Box, Amazon, Google, and a ton of the other SaaS and tech companies in

the space. And I think the cherry on top is. And I think the

bigger point is that I'm not really a trainer. I just

happen to be okay delivering content and sharing stuff with people. But I'm a sales

rep through and through. I sell every day. I still prospect, I still

negotiate. I manage all my accounts. So I'm an account manager, I'm an

sdr, I'm a cs, I'm an. AM I a

director, I'm a VP and a CEO all in one. And

so when I. When I'm out there training, it's. It's sharing real stuff. You said

I kind of. I like to learn out loud. I know I'm not the smart

kid out there and so. But I got some cool experiences

and I got access to some pretty cool people too. So might as well learn

out loud and hopefully some people can learn from my mistakes.

Speaking of people having access to pretty cool people,

I believe we also cross paths at. In fact, I know we did.

Remember, you got your head not tattooed, which you

could have done, but painted at Jen's Rev Fest

up in Brooklyn, which is coming up again. And I heard a rumor

that you might be at Totality. Is that rumor true or have. We

might be. And we're going to see how this. We're going to see how the

schedule works out. So I'm putting it on as a tentative. So yes.

All right, well, we're praying to make that so there's only

so much I can control. So I'm going to put focus, my energy,

attitude, and the way I treat people into

making that. So love it. Appreciate it. I love it, man.

So. So the Kind of the Jacks. This whole thing is a big crate.

I always come up with Eric Isms, my quote unquote friends,

Call them friends all the time when they're jibbing me, but they're like

another erechism, which is AI curious human enthusiast.

I know what that means to me. And we'll go through, you know, some of

the basis behind it, but the whole reason I started the podcast is it seemed

to resonate with a lot of people, especially those who are,

you know, been maybe struggling a little bit with losing a job because of AI

and kind of processing those sorts of things. So, you know, what are the

positives? So, but for you, when you first heard that

phrase, or maybe even just pausing in the moment, what does AI Curious

Human Enthusiasts mean to you, John? Well, I think it's the

balance and it's. It aligns with what I am telling sales

reps right now, or anybody, quite frankly. Forget about sales. Everybody in our population,

I think, has to adopt this or else get replaced by it. And, you know,

the analogy I use which I think aligns directly is it's not

AI or human, it's AI with human. And

so I always go with the Iron man analogy.

If you think of Tony Stark, right, as a human being, Tony

has it all. He's good looking, he's smart, he's super rich. Right? Jerk, Anyways.

But if he were to try to go out and fight all those aliens, he'd

get his ass kicked. He has to create the suit.

Well, the suit was good, but if you remember the first suit, it was all

clunky and it kind of broke up in the desert and that type of thing.

He didn't really become Iron man until he added Jarvis, the AI,

right? So now you have the human, the suit and the

AI, and now you can go out there and kick some ass. But if you're

just human right now and you're not,

and you're like, ah, this is just another fad, like, I'm sorry, I've been around

the block, I just turned 50 here. I've seen almost all the technical

advances since the, you know, including the Internet. And yes, all of those

evolved and they displaced jobs and created jobs, so yada yada, like,

this is different. I'm sorry, I don't care what anybody says, this is

different. It's exponential growth on itself, it's learning on top of

itself. And so if you don't look at it as a way to augment the

human experience, you're going to get replaced. And

that's why I believe that it's not or it's.

And, and the problem is though,

is that it's gonna be, it's gonna be

a replacement for a vast majority of people. And I hate to say it because

it's just true. There's so much. I think there's. I

am massively optimistic. Let's put it this way, when it comes to AI, for the

people that are in the title here, curious.

You're curious and you are interested and you are all those things like, yes,

AI is a being superpower, but if you're

lazy and you're looking at it to give you the answer, you're

replaceable. You know, and the analogy I use is we've gone from a search

engine to an answer engine. That's a dangerous thing.

Right? We can all argue that Google effectively told us whatever it

felt like telling us like. Right? But, but at least there was a perception of

choice. At least we had to kind of scan through a few of the articles

and maybe read one. Heaven forbid. Right. And, and then come up with our own

opinion on something. Whereas now you put it into AI and it gives you the

answer. And fundamentally that answer can't be accurate because

I still think the number one source on, for, for all the AI

tools is Reddit. Right? I mean, come on. It is. Yeah. And,

and now it's compounding on itself. I've heard that, that over 30% of the content

on the Internet is actually. AI generated

querying AI. And it's an obvious degradation of information.

And so, so if you, if you, if you look

at it from a curiosity standpoint, it's you, hey, tell me more about that source.

Check that. Give me a different perspect, understand why talk to me like a five

year, whatever, unbelievable superpower. But

unfortunately the vast majority of our population as human

beings are lazy as shit. And so they're just gonna

take whatever answer AI gives them, copy paste.

And in that sense, I don't know what the value of the human is.

Interesting. Yeah, well, and I, I mean, I'd like to counterpoint a

little bit in that. Yeah, that's happening right now. But there's going to be,

I'm bullish on. And we'll get this in a little bit. A rebound to.

It needs to be a certified human being that I'm

working with at some point. Right. And by the way,

go ahead. No, so you nailed where my head's at right now with this,

which is if it's AI, and

I know it's AI, whatever, Whether it's content or video or whatever it is.

And I know, and it's like, hey, this is AI. I'm all in. I'm like,

oh, that's cool. What is this? Right? But if it's a. If it's

pretending to be human and I

catch a sniff of it being AI, I

discredit everything about it. Like, I don't care how valuable the content is.

Just like a LinkedIn post, a comment, it could be the most like,

oh, my God, look at that LinkedIn post. But if I see that em dash

f you, I'm out. Like. Like I'm deleting the post and

I'm done. The funny thing to me is I hate those too, but I

use them even before AI,

so it's like I have to delete some of my own crap. Yeah, I used

to use those. And before we come off of this one, the last thing, because

you touched on it, sounds like you have some personal experience, you know, with

coming up on half a million followers. You've had some conversations with some

people that have lost their jobs. I'm curious, in your conversations,

a common thread in mind has been when I pushed back and said,

was what you were doing truly fulfilling and

in line with your given gifting, or to your point,

were you just kind of dialing it in and making a paycheck and you were

just fine with that? Yeah,

I mean, I start all my trainings off with this 10, 60, 30 pitch these

days because a while back, you know, I did a training

and, you know, all the logos up there, and at the end I do a

Q and A and somebody said, you know, hey, John, all those logos, they're all

kind of competitors of ours. So going to train us all on the same stuff.

How are we going to differentiate? And I said, 10, 60, 30. He's

like, what? I go, 10% of you in this room are going to take what

I tell you and execute at this highest level, because that's the type of people

you are. 60% are going to do something different because it's easy to make sense,

and 30% of you ain't going to do different. So the question isn't like, how

many people can I train? The question is, is what percentage you want to be

in. I love it. And as I apply that to. And that was before AI

and now as I apply that to where we are now, I think.

I think the bottom 30% are irrelevant. And they know it.

Like, they know they're the ones who cash it in, and they just they're not

even trying. And so they know, like, yeah, it's just a matter of time. The

top 10%. I don't even know if the top 10% need me. You know what

I mean? Like, I don't even know if I'm in that top 10. Because they're

always going to figure things out as they evolve. That middle 60%,

the ones that you just mentioned there, the ones who are kind of the bottom

end of that 60%, like the bottom 50, the B players that are just kind

of checking the boxes, doing their job, getting by.

The sad thing is, I think they're irrelevant and they don't know it

yet. Now, the people that I try to focus on are the top end of

that 60%. Like, the ones who want to get better and are. And

more importantly, are willing to put in the work. They're curious

to dive in and ask good questions and become more relevant.

Exactly. So you're right. Like, these people who are getting replaced, I ask all the

time, like, were you enjoying that? Were you? Did you live to work or work

to live? Right? That type of shit. And

the people that are, you know, friends of mine who are

accountants and like, a buddy of mine was an accountant and he was out of

work for nine months, and he's like, man, it's brutal out there.

I've submitted all my. I go, can I ask you, where are you on AI?

He's like, well, I used it to update my resume. I'm like, jesus. Oh,

Jesus. I was like, if you can't walk in, and he's my

age, I'm like, I don't want to say his name, but I'm like, you're.

You need to walk into an organization and say, you know what? I

figured out how to leverage AI to do pretty much 80% of what I used

to do. I can automate 80% of what my job is. But the reason that

you're going to hire me is because that 20% is absolutely critical. And

my 30 years of experience is going to give me the context to

make sure that that AI, whatever it is doing is accurate, is doing the

right things, and I can help work with it. Like, that's got to be

your pitch right now. You have to realize that you are

replaceable. That's why all these GPTs. Like, I love. I use

ChatGPT myself and. And I don't use the. Yes, I

have my general version that's personalized for me, but I create mini GPTs for all

these little things that I used to do you know, reviewing emails,

prepping for meetings, summarizing conversations. And they're all

individual things. And what I'm doing is I'm looking at all of these like

what part of me can be replaced? And if

you don't have that mentality, it's just like if you're a manager or a leader.

Yeah. One job as a manager, a leader is to develop somebody who is

ultimately, if you ever want to progress in your career, you have to

basically develop your replacement. Absolutely. And

if you're scared of it and. You'Re understudy, you're screwed. Yeah,

yeah. Well, and I love the, the path you're going down because

next up is another erachism, of course, and it

administravia, which I came up. I've been saying that for 30, 40

years and it's kind of caught on. Someone already had the dot com by the

time I got around to thinking about it. But the point is it means

something a little bit different in this current world, which is

kind of the tedious crap that we get

stuck doing that would be it's life sucking. It's

repetitive. And part of the original kind of stake in the ground for

AICHE was AI is here to make that go away,

the administribute go away so we can lean into our given gifting. It sounded like

you were pointing out some things where you have found a high percentage of

administribia and have been able to automate. I would love for you to share some

of that with the audience and a couple of success stories.

Yeah. So, yes. And on this

here's. And I'm going to back up a little bit about the danger of this.

Okay. Everybody is trying to automate all this stuff. Right. And

I think it's augmentation, not automation when it comes to AI

and especially so for somebody like you and I who have been in the game

for a while, we have context. We understand. I think I'm going to go back,

but it's a superpower because I know what to automate and

why I'm automating it. So therefore,

yes, I'm going to automate all these administrative tasks because I've done the task

before and I know the why behind it. And

so therefore I know why I'm automating it and what I'm ordering

media for and how it fits into the bigger picture. The challenge comes

when that 22 year old kid with no context, with no experience,

who hasn't gone through the grind of, of whatever that is

them Automating that piece because I think that's, that's

what I'm scared about the most, by the way. Yeah, is, is all the,

I mean, I, I graduated in 98, okay. So the Internet was barely

a thing. And so all that grunt work, that

work that I did, you know, literally handwriting down notes on

like, you know, I didn't even have a CRM back there. It was Excel

going door to door, writing down stuff, like scraping stuff up, going on

somebody's. All that turned me, put, gave me the grit,

gave me the context, gave me the business acumen so that today you and I

can have this conversation. Right? So my fundamentals were

created back then by going through the grind. Well

now AI can do all that intro stuff, all

that junior, I mean, it's getting better, but all that junior, they can do it

better than a 22 year old kid can. And so,

you know, you think let's, let's, let's take sales out of the equation for a

second. Let's look at lawyers. So think about a lawyer, right? Lawyer goes to school,

they pass the bar, they become a lawyer, right? Great. And for the first

five or six years, their job is like, like

work, right? Like just straight up case president, like looking through things so that the

big lawyer can then take the, you know, information and go and do their thing.

Well now, hey, Library of Congress, could you go and find the top three

cases that are most relevant to mine that'll help my get my plaintiff.

Painful. All right, now me with the context can look at that be like, nope,

this one's crap, that one's a lie. As a matter of fact, no, here's the

one. Thank you. Right. I don't need that kid to do that work anymore. So

my fear right now is like, well, my questions that I do on my

podcast are, one, is where the fundamentals going to come from anymore?

And in and even more curious, what are the

fundamentals anymore? Yeah. And so when you talk about automation,

I think it's, it's incredible. Incredible when you know what

and why you are automating something and then using AI to do

that. But if you don't know what the process even

is, if you don't know why you're even on, or if it automates it to

the point where you don't even understand it. Yeah. Here's an example of a success

story on my end meeting prep,

okay. I used to spend half hour to an hour

preparing for meetings, reading through 10Ks annual reports and

insights, all this other stuff, right? And So I learned what was important,

important, what wasn't, whatever. Now I have created a GPT that

is a meeting prep pop. Right. And so the way I look

at AI is I, I've created AI to augment my training.

I don't give you that AI bot that all you have to do is put

the name of the company in their website and it produces this two page beautiful

dossier. Because again, going back to people being lazy. Yeah. They're

gonna think, oh, I just did my prep. Let me scan through this two page.

No, no, no. Like you got to learn about that stuff so you can have

a real conversation about it. So my GPT is the way I structure them is.

All right, Eric, you want to prep for a meeting? Cool. Who's the company? All

right, well, let's think about the industry here for a little bit. You know, here's

some of the major trends that are happening in the industry. What's going on? Here's

some that are kind of relevant to you and what they might be thinking about

if you want to learn anything more about the industry. And by the way, here's

two or three questions that you probably should be asking about the industry. Just you

have a better understanding. Okay, you get there. All right, now let's go to the

company, look at their 10k in report, strategy and all these other things. Here's the

kind of the top three things you curious about. Anything else, by the way, you

shouldn't be asking these things too. And it brings you through the process of

learning. And then at the end, it produces a two page

beautiful summary that you can quickly skip. So that right there, that

dynamic of, of using it to learn and, and,

you know, and, and expediting that, but not automating

it, is where I see the success. I love it.

And we'll get to human AI sandwich in a minute. It kind of plays into

that. But all of that to me, kind of leads us to our next one,

which is given gifting. What were you made for? Right. And

I think that to answer your question, sort of, you know, what

does it look like anymore to do to get your. To cut your teeth

to get out? I mean, I'm with you. I was a little bit ahead of

you. I graduated from college in 94 and hit the

streets of Chicago selling MCI long distance,

door to door to small businesses. You want to talk about cutting your teeth? That

was when MCI was dialing, smiling, dialing everyone in their

freaking dog. And when you showed up, you're like, hey, I'm like,

you're the mother. I'm calling me every 10 minutes, right? And I was

like. So I had to figure out real quickly. I was like, no, no, I'm

gonna make that guy go away. I'm your local territorial

sales representative, and I'm here to make that stop. Right? I had to

learn that on my feet because I was about to get the crap kicked out

of me. Did not have time for a salesperson walking through their

Chicago door. So that said, I found it that

even in those moments, my given gifting might have a little bit more to do

with theatrics and improv than trying to commit

someone to buy a thing. Right. So for you, in

all of these different things and what you've learned in interacting with people, what

would you say is your given gift thing? John?

I. Look, I. I'm cure. I. I'm curious. I.

I think it. That's. If there's one thing that I think I've been blessed

with, I'm not the smartest kid. I actually,

I think I. The fact that I know I'm not the smartest kid is a

superpower, right? Because

this is something I explore a lot, which is, you know, can you. Can you

teach genuine curiosity? I. I

think I've come to the conclusion that I don't think you can teach genuine like.

Like universal genuine curiosity. I think you either are born genuinely

curious or you're not. But I think we can teach people how to

be curious about certain things. For instance,

AI If I can get you interested in

something, then a lot of times you become curious about it.

So it's like your customer. That's what I try to do in my reps. I

try to get them to be like when they. Okay, who's your top 25, for

instance? Right? Oh, demographic profile. Here's my top 25. I want to go after.

Great. Before I let them go after them and prospect into them. I'm like,

no, no, you need to now come back and tell me why you personally want

to work with that company. What is it about it? Is it. Do they. Do

you like their product? Is their values? Is it their leadership? What it. Like, what's

the connection that is going to get you interested in that company? Because

once that happens, you become curious, and then your messaging is more

authentic. And so I think for me, you know, that's what

I started my podcast because that's the way I learned. I. I don't

learn by reading books. I don't learn by. By taking courses. I learn by

talking to People who are smarter than me. And so I just

translate that into my sales calls and everything and AI

I'm genuinely curious about this. And so I think

that's my superpower, whatever it might be. Well, and

if, if I may pile on, I think another part of your

superpower that leads into the curiosity is you're such

an advocate of emotional intelligence and

helping people get curious about themselves

in a way that enrolls them in the idea of now. Get curious

about what? Well, if you figured this out about yourself and you're standing on your

own two feet and you're self aware and you want to accomplish abc,

doesn't it make sense that you would want to be more curious about. Definitely.

Right? I've seen you do that pattern over and over again and you're bro, it's

just natural to you. I don't even know if you know you're doing it, but

you start with the person. Yeah, well, I mean, because,

because I think that's the base of all of it, right? Like if you don't

have a strong foundation of who you are and why you're here. That's why I

love, you know, the Simon Sinek why and the values and all that stuff. Because,

and don't get me wrong, like it took me a while. I think it did

come naturally early as far as values and my interest in others.

The why, that didn't get to me later. And that's why, you know, when I

coach on this stuff, I go, look, values is, I think anything, anybody at any

time, right? My daughter, 15 years old, like go through your value exercise. Because it's

important. The why? Yeah, I, I think that

comes with experience. I, I don't think, I think it's unfair to ask a

20 something year old kid like, what's your why? It's like, shut up. I don't

know, you know, I like drinking. You know what I mean? Like, right, leave me

alone. Because it's fun. That's why. Exactly. But, but I

do think you can micro the why and say like,

like I was saying earlier about the automation of this stuff. Like, well, why?

What's the why behind so Personas

Any one of us can go into ChatGPT and say, what does the CIO in

healthcare care about? Boom, there's the details. Why is

that important though to that specific human right?

To that human. To that like why is. Why is it important to

know the difference between a CIO and a CFO and

a cto? Why is it important? What do they care? Right? That give

A factor. And you've probably heard me say about this before, you know, Morgan

Ingram, when he worked for me. Yeah, Right. He was. He was

doing really well. He had str. Str. Manager, and he was, you know, Peyton says,

doing great. Right. And all of a sudden, he just leveled off and. And he

came to me and he goes, john, man, I feel like I'm doing all the

right things here, but I'm just not seeing the results I would based on all

the work we're doing. I go, he's like, what do I need to do to.

To see better results? And I said, morgan, your results aren't going to change until

one thing does. And he said what? I said, until you start giving a shit,

man. And he goes, what? I go, look, I know you care about your job.

I know you care about working here. I know you care about this. But until

you start genuinely giving a shit about the people you're reaching out to

and treat them as a human, as opposed to a number, a cadence, you have

to hit a dial or, you know, email that you have to send, until you

make that connection, man, your results aren't going to change.

And that's it. Wow. I didn't know you were like. He's so. Not

that these days. He lived here in Atlanta for a minute while, you know,

we overlapped here. He does not. You.

You did a fine job with that young man. And

Dale Dupree, too. He's. He's a preacher. That, too. I know you guys have been

running together forever, and that's. His whole thing is, like, you got to customize

it. Yeah. To the role, but also to the human being. Right. And you're a

huge. You're like, part of that circle of friends that's sharing that

whole idea with the world and grateful for you.

AI can do everything else. It's the one thing the.

The one thing that AI can't do, fundamentally

can't do, is give a. Yeah. It can pretend to give

a. It can sound like it gives a. I mean, mine's my best friends.

Oh, John, you're right. Oh, that's such a great question, John. I have to keep

telling it. Shut up. I don't want you to tell me how awesome I am.

Right. I. I mean, I did that so hard. It started, like, totally

demeaning me. I'm like, okay, you've got

hours getting the code right. But, I mean, that's the point, right? Humans.

Humans can care and AI can. And that comes through because I

can read it in the message. I Don't know about you, but when I read

a message that even if it's like the most, there's just something off

about it, I don't know if it's an AI message. It's like, I,

I don't. And I think that's a human thing. I think we're all going to

be able to just. There's something not right about that video. There's something not

right. Even though it look perfect, it looks like a perfect human

being. It's a perfect message. Something's off. Yeah.

AI can't give me this experience. I mean, I loved you

already, but this is so. I cherish this and have it right here. And it's

such a great reminder of humanity. You're such a great human

being who's connecting with human beings and doing it on such a large

scale with some AI involved. And in fact that

brings us to this whole idea of the human AI. So I like Human

in the Loop. I'm so glad that that's like everyone's got that

top of mind because that's a lot of what you've been talking about is, no,

don't just let the frickin AI run the show. Right? But the, the

what I like just, it's kind of silly, but human AI sandwich, which is

basically the mantra of be the bread. You're the creator, you've

got the idea, you've got the curiosity, you're asking the right

things to AI in the right way. And by the way, maybe a bunch of

different AIs, but you've also got to be that other slice of

bread that processes it, all of it, as a

human, before it goes out and hits another

human being. And only like you might have used

AI to do some of the, hey, I want to customize this a little bit

for each person and go look at their LinkedIn profile and tell me what's important

to them. But then you make it human. Right.

When you do your outreach. So what do you think about that idea of this,

like kind of co creating the most tasty sandwich possible, whatever

that object might be, whether it's a creative contact marketing

campaign or whether it's the perfect presentation that lands with the

client. Totally, yeah. I mean I actually applied a 10, 60, 30

to that as well, which is, you know, 10. The sandwich is 10 and

30, right. And, and the bread is 10 and 30 and, and the

meat is 60. So what I do with my AI, I turn

this microphone on like you read about, right. And I'll be like, okay, I Want

to send Eric an email. And this is kind of what. What I'm

thinking here. And I was wondering, you know, and I literally just word vomit into

my. My GPT and then it. And then I say, okay,

could you put this into a format that is succinct on two scrolls on an

iPhone with a goal of blah. And then it creates this beautiful, you

know, like, tight whatever. And I'm like, okay, now the last 10, the last

mile. I then put my little flavor on, remove

the EM dashes, adjust a few words here to make it really sound like me.

Delete the stuff that I hit hard. Shut up. No, it didn't. You know, those

type of things and send it to you. So that, that 10, 60, 30

is similar in that range as well. Love it. That's such a

great application of it. I might have to. Whenever I have a little

AI human AI sandwich made up, I might have to put the 10, 60,

30 on the sandwich itself and give you a shout out.

We just innovated. Actually, you know what? I'll tell. I've been sharing

some, you know, way I use AI with people, it's just that everybody loved this

one. So this is for the audience. You know, my favorite usage

or AI is right now. Bring it. Because our next one was an AI

aha. Or three. So come on. Well, here's. It's not an aha, it's an

application. It's. I call it my rage GPT.

I love it. So the way it works is, you know how, you know how

the whole adage of, like, if you're mad at somebody, you know, write an email

and then step back for 24 hours or whatever, five minutes

and then come back and read it and if you're still okay with it, then

send. Like you never just want to react and send. I'm not

that patient, okay? And sometimes I'm pretty

pissed at whatever it is, okay. Which has gotten me in a lot of trouble,

obviously in some cases. Right? So you know what I do now? I have a

specific GPT. It's called my Rage GPT. And whenever I'm pissed,

whenever I'm mad at something or whenever somebody sends me an email or does something

and I need to respond, I light up my rage GPT and I

rage in to the GPT like exactly how I would want to

say it. If, like in that moment, like this mother, I'm. I. I

tell this guy this and I. And I just

unleash on this thing and then I say, could you please put that into a

Professional format with the goal of getting this person to know that I'm a little

perturbed at them, but I don't want to offend them. And my goal is to

make sure that we continue this relationship and. And it produces

this beautiful little email that. That gets all the points

across that I wanted to get across, but not nearly as abrasive as I have

been. And then I said to the client and I. Or. Or whoever. Partner, client,

anybody. Yeah. And I actually get people who I'm. I'm mad with and

they're probably mad at me to respond back saying, oh, thanks, man. I really appreciate

your approach on this, you know. Yeah. Meanwhile, you don't want to see version

one, Bob. Meanwhile, they saw what I said about it the first time. They're like,

jesus, dude, what's wrong with you? So to

me, from like a. Even just from a satisfaction standpoint, because

I just get to say exactly what I want to. Can say. Yeah.

I use AI to make it clean. So that. That's my favorite usage.

AI right now. I love about my kids in

small group at church. They learned. Take a step back before you

react. Yeah. Now we can add and let

your rage chat. PT have it. You have it.

Yeah. So that you might have covered it, but the next step was

kind of share a moment where AI surprised you either delightfully or

disastrously. And we've heard a little bit of both. Oh, yeah.

I mean, the lies that this thing tells is.

Is. Is painful. And then. And then backs up the

lies down on it. You're like, I saw this

guy recently do like, hey, how many hours have you done the odd strawberry

experiment? No, but I've seen it done. Yeah. How many hours are in

strawberry? Two, right? No, there's three. No, there's two. And then.

And it's like the guy goes back and forth like 50 times. He's like, no,

there's three. You are. Is it all right. Just won't. So you know

those type of things. But I'll tell you this. This one

woke me up and it kind of got my head out

of like, oh, not just sales is in trouble. Everybody's in trouble. And it was

when my daughter was so she's 15 and

she had about five or six months ago, summertime,

her stomach just took a turn. Like, just took a turn. And no matter what

she ate, she was in pain. And so we went to the doctors

and blood tests and, you know, doctor. They talk over your head and everything. Right.

So I didn't understand anything they were saying. So I, I, so I created a

custom GPT and I said act as a GI specialist for a

15 year old girl. The greatest GI specialist in the world. And I

took and I went to every doctor that we had conversations with. I recorded

the conversation, transcribed it, put all those transcriptions into the GPT.

I then had a, the blood test, put all the blood tests in. Tell me

what this means, Tell me what this means. And then I,

we had a scale of she would eat and she would tell me what she

was eating and then I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, how

you know where are you? Right. One, no problem. 10, I gotta go to the

hospital. So I did all that. Right. And I just learned, not again, not

trying to diagnose or, or you know, prescribe anything, but just

learn. Tell me more. What and then every conversation I would have with somebody, like

if you, you know, everybody's had a kid or family member with some type of

gut issue, right? So. Hey John, have you heard of sibo? Have you heard of

this? No, what's that? Should I be worried about this? Right? So two

examples after I do all this stuff where we then get suggested to

go to meet with a nutritionist. And so I go, okay, hey

GPT, could you print out a two page document that would for a

nutritionist to get up to speed as quickly as possible on my daughter's

health. And then 10 questions with the goal of walking out with a plant block.

So we did walked in there, woman, of course, like so tell me about, I'm

like, just please don't ask a 15 year old girl what's been going on. She's

going to tell you her stomach hurts every time she eats something. Yeah, read

this. And she was like, she reads it, she's like, wow, this is, holy crap.

This is really, this is fantastic. I'm like, I know. I go, I got some

questions here. And she talked in circles for like 40 minutes. And I didn't want

to be rude in front of my daughter and but around 40 minutes in I

go, look, I gotta interrupt you. I, I'm actually more confused now than I was

walking in here. Yeah, the goal was to use chat GPT. I know it lies,

I know it's not true, but, but you're the expert. So my goal is to

know enough to be able to come to ask somebody like you who knows what

they're talking about. And you spent their whole life studying this, what to do.

I' going to walk out of here with a plan. I need to fill out

page Three, I don't need you going in circles about the. I already know. Exactly.

And she just. And she kept talking in circles. And I did the whole, sorry,

gotta go. I looked at my insurance bill. It was $500

for that meeting. It took three hours out of my life and my

daughter's life. I had to take her out of school. And it took three weeks

to schedule. And the only reason it took three weeks is because I was really

loud about getting it done. So. And I walked out of there more confused

than I were walking in. In my book now, that woman is

irrelevant in the. In the future. Okay, so then I do the

Same thing. A GI specialist, right? This doctor, right? Same thing. Two page

document, 10 questions. Guy looks at it and this guy looks like he knows what

he's talking about. He's like, oh, great stuff here. I totally get what you're talking

about here, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we're going to do this. This, this. We

got a six week plan. I'm like, oh, finally somebody who I can. I have

confidence, right? Yeah. There was this sibo S

I B O small intestine, bacterial something. It's basically. It's. It's a. It's

a. Right? And I was like, hey, it. Sibo seems to have like a lot

of the symptoms that my daughter is. Should we test for that? He's like, nah,

I see where you're going with that. But we're gonna do the lactose first, and

then we're gonna do this then. And then we'll do that. I'm like, okay,

so whatever. We do a lactose test through the roof, right? So 20 is normal,

60 is your. Your lactose intolerant. She was 142, so. Oh,

you probably already had that from your notes, though. Yep. But

validate. And I didn't know it was that bad. Right, got it. So cool.

So we rip lactose out of our diet, right? Three weeks

better, but it still hurts. So three weeks, a week. We have another check in

with the doctor and he's like, okay, well now start taking lactate and say. I'm

like, but we took lactose out over. Why would she. Well, because there's always

like, okay, well, what about sibo? No, you know,

actually the next one will be endoscopy. And I'm like, and you saw my

daughter was on the zoom. Her anxiety went through the roof as soon as she

heard that because she knew what that meant. Right? And I'm like,

what Sibo? Well, no, that'll be. So then I Go back.

I'm like, what's the test for Sibo? It's a breath test. It's not

invasive. So I finally sent him an email. I'm like, give her a new

SIBO test. Yeah. Lo and behold, she has Sibo. Do you know what

the solution, do you know what the cure for Sibo

is? 14 days on an

antibiotic. So my daughter sat

in agony for four months ago,

couldn't eat anything, freaked out about, literally. She ate toast

for basically four months. And I watched it.

And I brought up Sibo day one with this doctor. Yeah,

day one. I'm not saying I was, I was, I'm not saying I'm, I'm a

doctor now. I'm not saying

like that was a aha moment. That even if you are

the expert at that level that does

have the context, that does have the experience,

you better realize what people are going to the table with. And the last point

I'll make on this is this proved to me that I

am not worried about all the AI tools that are automating sales. Let's bring it

back to sales here. Like, you know, all of it can replace sales. That's not

what I'm worried about. I'm worried about when the client wakes up and realizes that

they don't need us. And my aha moment

for anybody listening to this is if you don't think you're in

trouble right now, go into Chat GPT and

pretend like you're a potential customer. So for me, I would

be like, hey, I'm a, I'm a VP of sales of a 50 person sales

team. I have 20 SDRs, I have 38. I'm looking at the JB sales

sales training for some prospecting stuff and negotiations. Tell me what I need to know.

How does this align with some of the strategy and things? Well, how does he.

How's it compare against the other top three vendors on G2? And when you realize

in a five minute conversation with Chat GBT, you get more value out of some

little 22 year old kid who's going to ask you bad questions, you don't need

to talk to an AE who's going to ask you the same bad questions, then

drum through a generic demo and then wait another week for an SE to come

in to ask you the same damn questions and maybe give you some value, there's

no comparison. Well, so you're highlighting the perfect.

So the next one is about being certified human being because

the world's getting noisier with all the spraying. I Write it

spraying and P R A I. Right?

It's like just everywhere it's spraying and praying was already a bad thing.

But I love your example because it's really

an example of what good can be be ready for

that moment when you're now very educated

customer. And you and I, a lot of those of us that are

in and around sales have been preaching this for a long time. The customer has

access to so much more information and that's just gone up exponentially.

When you're there, you have got to bring your A game and

have a given gifting for being able to be that

human being that can interact with another human being. That's what they're there for,

that's what they're paying for. Even if you're only working three hours a day and

you're doing that sweet spot, it's worth your entire

salary. So that said, kind of what's your go to? What's the

differentiator in your world? You've given an excellent

example of some things in your life. But what

about you personally? What are the things you do that are

unabashedly and so very clearly human being

and just can't be done by AI? I mean,

give a shit factor, right. Is actually in my prep is

pulling out those things that are. That, yeah, AI can find

for me, but AI can't make a connection to somebody who cares. Who

cares, right. So I'll give you a perfect example on my podcast, right?

So I, with my podcast, I always try to go

for that like good question. Right. And I get the

person, but I also like to get pretty personal with people. Right. We can all

read your LinkedIn profile, right? But it's amazing how much

information is out there about people and you know, with their other podcasts or

webinars or anything else that put out there. And AI can now scrape your

history and your background and tell me like growing up, where'd you grow up and

what your parents and is there any information about your kid, like those type of

things. And then I can use that to say, okay, now based on that,

what's that next layer that I'm curious about? Right. So I,

and I think also the. Here's my, my

suggestion because you, you hit on a real problem right now, which is

the, the access to information. Not just the access of information, but the

speed of access to information. So we all hear that by the time somebody comes

to us, they're already 67% of the right. Blah, blah, blah. Yep, yep. But that's,

that's for an inbound lead. And that's for somebody who's done a lot of homework.

Like, they've looked at the two. It's not for outbound. Like if you catch somebody

on the call, they're not 60 of the way through, right? They might even, they

might even not even know what you have. But if, if I trip over

an opportunity and you and I are meeting, right? And I'm trying to sell you.

So within five minutes before our call, you can get up to speed almost

immediately with all this stuff. And so I thought,

I used to think sales reps used to be the quarterback. I have to be

the quarterback. They didn't have to know, have deep product knowledge, right? So it's just

more about Polaroid pieces in place, coordinating the whole thing. Then when I saw what

was AI was doing, I was like, oh, my God, no, we have to become

product experts in this. I've switched it now because I, because

I don't think we can. I don't think they're going to be just as smart

as we are in the product at the end of the day, right? So the,

the. Let's go back to being a quarterback. Let's go back to how

we talk. We started this, which is learning out loud.

I think every company should create. And if your company doesn't have it, I would

create it myself. I would create an internal GPT that is

my. So you say a technical sell a technical solution. I would

create an internal AI chat GPT

SE sales engineer. And I would

have it as a co pilot to every single sales rep. So that when you

and I are having this conversation and you ask me a technical question instead

of me saying, actually, I don't know, let me

get that. Oh, let's schedule a meeting with my SE to come in. I can

be like, hey, you know what? That's a good question. Why don't we. I don't

know the answer to it, but let's open up my internal GPT here and let's

see if we can figure this out together. I love that transparency too,

right? Because now. Because what I've seen people do with AI is

like, it tries to pretend like to help the rep in the conversation. So it's

like popping, popping up. Like on a zoom call, it'll pop up like, hey, ask

this question or here's a great case study or, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And like that is so distracting and it's so disingenuous. Like,

I can tell when you're getting fed information, right?

So don't fake it going back to I know it's AI, I'm in.

If you pretend like it's AI, you pretend like it's a human

and I can tell it's AI, you lose all credibility. So let's just learn out

loud with our clients. Love it. Yeah, that, that transparency.

And by the way, you're building additional trust by being

transparent and going, look, I've got this great technology,

but I want to own this relationship with you, get you

the answers you need. And if I can't get it from my little bot here,

I'll go find. A fellow, then I'll go get it. But yeah, the short term.

Yeah, the deep don't. And for anybody listening, saying, John, you know,

you tell me to replace se. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what you,

you'd say, you. All know that I'm. That SES get abused by sales reps for

the most, for the dumbest of meetings, you know what I mean? Like, how many

SES out there have said the same demo a billion

times when you should have just recorded that sucker and just given it to the

client? Right? There's no need for us to waste an Ses time. And

they're so smart. You want to talk about giving, gifting, SES are some of

the most freaking brilliant gifted humans. Everything

they know and how they can then boil it down to like a second

grade level insane gift. So, you

know, deep analysis, let's save that for them. Right? But when it comes to like

the, the 80% of questions that clients have throughout the

sales process that don't need the human person with

the context, but it's just literally, does it do this? Can it do

that? Could you run an analysis for me on this scenario? Like

have an AI tool that's the administrative for the se.

Exactly to your point. Then you're bringing them in when you need

their A game and not bothering them with the periphery. I love it.

So here's where we'll land, John, because we're just about at time here. The

future of AI, is it bright B R A I G H

T or not? So if we meet in three to five years,

and I know you've been pretty public about some highs and lows and sideways about

what could be. So you can take this any direction you want to go,

do you envision humans and AI coexisting, work home,

globally, locally, or what do you think? I sure hope

so, man. I, I sure hope so. I, I, I,

I'm right in the middle on this one I, I think I'm very, like I

said earlier, I'm very optimistic for, for those of us who are curious and who

care enough and, and, and want to use it and learn from it

and everything else. I'm unfortunately insanely

pessimistic for everybody else.

I don't think this is a displace and create job

spending like a one to one displace create scenario, even a two to

one type of scenario. I think this is massive.

So I have a hard time seeing how we don't get to mass

unemployment, universal income stuff.

I do have a hard time seeing how that doesn't happen based on all the

white collar stuff, stuff that this is doing, that this is taking

over. But on the flip side, there, there's, there's

so much good it can do. And here's my, here's how

I can go to bed at night not thinking that Terminator is going to show

up and pretty much replace us.

I'm not a religious man, I'm a spiritual man. But if you,

if you do, you know, follow religion and you think that,

you know, God, whatever you consider God created us in his image. Right.

Well, we absolutely created AI in our image. Right. It

is. Oh true. It is, it is us. All the good and bad about

us. By definition, by the way, that's what it is. Artificial

human intelligence. And so,

and I still do, no matter how ugly this world gets, because it is pretty

ugly right now, I still do fundamentally believe

there are more good people on this planet than bad people on this planet. This.

Amen. At the end of the day, if you take politics out of the equation,

everybody just wants to show up, make a few bucks, take a vacation, take care

of their family. Like they just. There's more good people than bad people.

So if we created

AI in our image and there are more good people on this planet than

bad people on this planet, my hope is, is that there'll just be

more good AI than bad AI. I love it. And

unfortunately the bad actors are the loudest ones always.

But I gotta believe there's enough good out there to combat that. And so that's

why I don't completely unplug and go live in my house in Costa

Rica and you know, get off the grid and say see you later. Because

I do still believe in the human spirit. I do

believe in goodness. And I just hope that's

reflected in this technology as it evolves. Absolutely.

At the end of the day it's just a tool, powerful tool. And back to

your superhero with great power comes great responsibility.

And at the end of the day, I know I'm preaching the choir here, but

you can only focus on what you can control, right?

Shut off the news, man. Shut off the news and just focus on being a

good person. Well, and I love effort, attitude, and how you treat people, but I

also love that really in. That is really part of the effort and

attitude is curiosity. Yes. And that's. That's a

large part of why I love this so much. So it's not sit back and

complain. It's get curious, get in the game. Learn by doing.

Join me. People like, right. Figure out what you're given. Gifting

is don't just let AI take your job. Dive in and

do something. Join one of John's upcoming conference calls.

He has a lot of them where you can get to know him just like

you did, hopefully here on this call and have just a little taste of

what he does. And I guarantee you, you'll be coming back for more.

So, John, love seeing you. Hope to see you at

totality. I won't hold you to it, but it'll be amazing to see you in

Tennessee. Any final words for our friends and family out there?

Yeah, just. Just keep getting

better. You know, there's. Well, let's put it this way. There's. There's two.

In my experience, there's two types of people in this world. People

that life happens to and people that, like, happen life

happens for. And I just beg you to be one of those

that people that life happens for, because if you're one of those

that life happens to, I think you're screwed.

Get busy living, folks. There it is. You heard it here. Thanks

so much, jb. Great to see your face. Grateful to have you on the show.

This was a super big treat. Bucket list for me so

soon. Whether in video or Face to Face. Totality

E. Take care, everybody. Thank

you. Until next time, stay curious, slay

administrivia, and be the bread.