AI Is an Amplifier, Not a Substitute for Thinking | Darren Mitchell

[00:00] Dave Pengelley: Because we get the countdown and it's go, but then there's like another delay before YouTube picks it up. So now that's two weeks in a row that I'm talking about the same thing. It's gonna be very confusing for people. Um [00:08] Matt: Did you end up [00:09] Dave Pengelley: but [00:09] Matt: looking at last week's one to see when it cut in? [00:12] Dave Pengelley: yeah, it was uh about as awkward as you'd expect. I can't remember exactly when, [00:17] Richard Webbe: As [00:17] Dave Pengelley: but [00:17] Richard Webbe: you can see, Darren, we are a very professional unit here. [00:21] Darren Mitchell: I love us. [00:24] Dave Pengelley: uh yes, yes. No, we uh we you know it is that pub style chat, so we we we like that little bit of casual ban to that. warm up and especially because it helps you know just fill some space before we get into the really meaty topics while people find us and go they get their little bell icons. I'm sure everyone that follows us has hit the bell icon um and is getting notified we're live and they're like oh oh I need to need to do that hey operators live I need to join that live get in the chats so we want to we wanna you know be kind to them and give them that opportunity. [00:52] Matt: I have it. That's [00:54] Dave Pengelley: Yeah [00:54] Matt: it there at [00:55] Dave Pengelley: see [00:55] Matt: the top. [00:56] Dave Pengelley: you got the bell icon um Yeah, I I I've got it. There's boom, the red one. It's [01:02] Matt: Perfect. [01:03] Dave Pengelley: blurry, you can't read it. But uh yep. Actually I think that red one I've shown you was KFC, but uh it is on there. [01:10] Matt: See notifications. [01:13] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, I I I I do. You got the KFC app, you get notifications. That's that's how it rolls. Um and they always send you a and notification around midday. Surprise, surprise, lunchtime. They're like, bang, let's let's just give you a juicy offer for some chicken, and you go, hmm. That [01:28] Richard Webbe: It's [01:28] Dave Pengelley: seems [01:28] Richard Webbe: funny. [01:29] Dave Pengelley: it was uncanny actually. Actually, this wasn't AI. This is, you know, the whole thing that your phones are listening to you? This and like if you oh, there was this great stand-up bit where I saw um I can't remember the name of the stand-up guy, but he just sort of paused in the middle of his stand-up set and just started like talking about personal devices in great detail. And it made no sense. It was just random. Why is he just saying these these words, these particularly like sort of, you know, words? And then he goes, Enjoy that in your ad feeds from now on. And he just fully just seated everyone's phones with looking for this particular product. But anyway, I was in, I was um at a bank with a mate, and we're talking about getting lunch afterwards. And we're like, what could we have? Maybe we could have some KFC. And we're like, we're just lining up in queue. And as I said the word KFC, like the notification came in. We're like, no, that's that was uncanny. Just just I'm sure the phones aren't listening to it. Actually, I think they are. What are you what do you guys? Reckon, have you seen any evidence of whether the um the phones are listening or not? [02:34] Darren Mitchell: They are they are [02:35] Dave Pengelley: They [02:35] Darren Mitchell: listening. [02:36] Dave Pengelley: are [02:36] Darren Mitchell: I'm often I'm often sitting down having a conversation with my wife about whatever topic, and pretty soon she'll be scrolling Facebook as an example or Instagram. All of a sudden there's something that comes up related to that topic. [02:47] Dave Pengelley: right, [02:47] Darren Mitchell: It's um so [02:48] Dave Pengelley: and [02:48] Darren Mitchell: be careful what you talk about because [02:50] Dave Pengelley: and [02:50] Darren Mitchell: we're [02:50] Dave Pengelley: you [02:50] Darren Mitchell: all [02:50] Dave Pengelley: haven't [02:50] Darren Mitchell: being [02:50] Dave Pengelley: Googled [02:51] Darren Mitchell: recorded. [02:51] Dave Pengelley: it, you haven't done no previous web search [02:53] Darren Mitchell: Nope. [02:53] Dave Pengelley: history on any device on your Wi-Fi network, it was just from that conversation, and then bang, pops up, right? [02:57] Darren Mitchell: Yep. Yep. [03:00] Dave Pengelley: Yes, which is [03:00] Richard Webbe: I [03:01] Dave Pengelley: which is [03:01] Richard Webbe: have [03:01] Dave Pengelley: why [03:01] Richard Webbe: seen [03:01] Dave Pengelley: this uh this stand-up [03:02] Richard Webbe: I have [03:03] Dave Pengelley: comic [03:03] Richard Webbe: seen [03:03] Dave Pengelley: was particularly funny. [03:04] Richard Webbe: I have seen algorithms that and how do I explain this? You guys will get it, that takes an approximation of the sort of calls you make and what you do and can tell you a lot more about you without knowing. Do you know what I mean? It can do an approximation. [03:21] Matt: One hundred percent. There's [03:23] Richard Webbe: And [03:23] Matt: a [03:23] Richard Webbe: and [03:23] Matt: there's an [03:24] Richard Webbe: so [03:24] Matt: entire um like book and like series of studies [03:27] Richard Webbe: it's [03:28] Matt: about [03:28] Richard Webbe: what [03:28] Matt: that. [03:28] Richard Webbe: AI is, right? It's what AI is. It kind of brings all these hints together. And [03:32] Matt: Yep. [03:32] Richard Webbe: then the detective says, Matt, I think you're thinking of going snow skiing, even though you haven't thought of snow skating or mentioned it, and [03:40] Matt: Are [03:40] Richard Webbe: it [03:41] Matt: you [03:41] Richard Webbe: appears. [03:41] Matt: um are you familiar with the author Charles Duhig? [03:45] Richard Webbe: No. Oh [03:46] Matt: I'm [03:46] Richard Webbe: yes, [03:46] Matt: pretty [03:46] Richard Webbe: I [03:46] Matt: sure [03:47] Richard Webbe: am. I am. Sorry, I am. Well [03:48] Matt: I'm [03:49] Richard Webbe: said. [03:49] Matt: pretty sure it's him. He uh he I'm pretty sure he wrote The Power of Habit. [03:54] Richard Webbe: Yep. [03:54] Matt: And um in that book they talk about a lot of that stuff where the marketing Companies could actually detect from like, you know, let's just say a person's [04:04] Richard Webbe: Obscure [04:04] Matt: shopping [04:05] Richard Webbe: behavior, [04:06] Matt: or [04:06] Richard Webbe: yeah. [04:06] Matt: what their shopping behaviors were to determine if they were pregnant and before they knew. And yeah, there was lawsuits and weird stuff about that. Um find [04:17] Dave Pengelley: That's [04:17] Matt: that very fascinating. [04:19] Dave Pengelley: that's wild. Well speak speaking of who people are and what they are, we've got a guest, so let's start the show and then um Brittard I'll get you to introduce our guest this week. [04:39] Richard Webbe: Do that, [04:39] Dave Pengelley: Every [04:40] Richard Webbe: don't [04:40] Dave Pengelley: time. [04:40] Richard Webbe: you? [04:40] Matt: I [04:40] Richard Webbe: You [04:40] Dave Pengelley: Every [04:41] Richard Webbe: do [04:41] Matt: enjoyed [04:41] Richard Webbe: that. [04:41] Dave Pengelley: time. [04:41] Matt: that. I [04:42] Dave Pengelley: So [04:42] Matt: enjoyed that a [04:43] Dave Pengelley: good. [04:43] Matt: lot. [04:43] Darren Mitchell: Did he [04:43] Richard Webbe: Darren, [04:44] Darren Mitchell: did he press [04:44] Richard Webbe: we [04:44] Darren Mitchell: the button [04:44] Richard Webbe: are a [04:45] Darren Mitchell: and [04:45] Richard Webbe: very [04:45] Darren Mitchell: dive? [04:45] Richard Webbe: we are a very professional operation here, so just stop laughing [04:49] Dave Pengelley: I [04:49] Richard Webbe: at [04:49] Dave Pengelley: said [04:49] Richard Webbe: us. [04:50] Dave Pengelley: start the show, Richard, which meant I had to play the opening [04:52] Richard Webbe: I [04:52] Dave Pengelley: bumper, [04:53] Richard Webbe: know, [04:53] Dave Pengelley: and then [04:53] Richard Webbe: I [04:54] Dave Pengelley: I was [04:54] Richard Webbe: know. [04:54] Dave Pengelley: handing over to you. [04:56] Richard Webbe: I was like the bad AI. My brain was over here, but the actions were over. here and they were just not doing this. [05:02] Dave Pengelley: What [05:02] Richard Webbe: Anyway, [05:02] Dave Pengelley: was what was [05:03] Richard Webbe: it [05:03] Dave Pengelley: great [05:03] Richard Webbe: is [05:03] Dave Pengelley: was uh seeing Matt's reaction in the little thumbnails while the video played. Thank you, Matt. All [05:07] Matt: Did [05:07] Dave Pengelley: right. [05:07] Matt: you say that? [05:08] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [05:10] Matt: Very good. [05:11] Richard Webbe: I'm [05:11] Dave Pengelley: All right, [05:12] Richard Webbe: very [05:12] Dave Pengelley: sorry. [05:12] Richard Webbe: sorry. Picking [05:13] Dave Pengelley: Richard, [05:13] Richard Webbe: it up. [05:14] Dave Pengelley: can you [05:14] Richard Webbe: Thank [05:14] Dave Pengelley: please introduce [05:15] Richard Webbe: you. [05:15] Dave Pengelley: our guest this week? [05:16] Richard Webbe: Would you please run a video over the top of me before I do? Anyway, I'm very excited to have an old colleague, an old friend, uh a famous podcaster, and a supreme sales executive, go to market executive and technologist Darren Mitchell with it. And Darren runs a podcast called The Exceptional Sales Leader, which gets all manner of amazing people from all over the world on, uh, including myself. I'm not sure I I'm that amazing, but um it was tw I've been on twice, haven't I? That's true. God, that's embarrassing, isn't it? And um that's right, I remember our first chat was could we swear or couldn't we, similar to this [05:52] Darren Mitchell: Exactly. [05:52] Richard Webbe: one. And so I, you know, Darren's been uh you know following us and we've been following Darren so I said hey mate, why don't you come on and uh Join the AI operators podcast chat, which we say is a bit more down in a fireside chat, like you have at a beer, or we don't have a formal, you're very good with your interviewing technique. We're not that good. But we like to get people's honest, honest opinion. [06:14] Dave Pengelley: Tell us how you really feel, Richard. [06:18] Richard Webbe: Um and so it was just an honor that you accepted to join us. So thank you for joining us. And we'll be throwing to you. And you don't have to be an expert in the field, as you see, when I talk to make a comment. [06:31] Darren Mitchell: No, thank you, Richard. Great, greatly appreciate the opportunity. And um to Dave and Matt, thank you for the opportunity to jump on this podcast. I've I've been uh an avid watcher and observer and listener of this for a while now and uh love the conversations you guys have. And I I think the when we when we first went before we went live, you were talking about how this is very much a pub, a pub, uh, a pub conversation. The question I've got is it does does it pass the pub test? Uh, because I did say that. This is how I normally run my podcast with a list full of questions as clear as that. So I think if that's in alignment, we're we're going to be good for the next bit of time because that's how I run my podcast as well. Very much a fireside chat. [07:13] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, I [07:14] Darren Mitchell: So [07:14] Dave Pengelley: think I think I think we're gonna have some fun. I think it's good. Um I am I'm curious, Darren, like um given you've you've seen a few episodes, you've been with I can't believe we're up to like episode 32 or 33 or something. This is ridiculous. Like it's just flashed by. I remember like, ooh, we've hit number 10, and now it's like but um What how do you find that like like because you're not coming in from a super technical audience point of view, you're you're more that business sales user? How relevant do you find our chats? Like, what do you think is particularly interesting about some of our conversations? With because we do vary, we do have that business focus and you know, buy, build, SAS, debt, all that kind of stuff, but also [07:47] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [07:47] Dave Pengelley: the more technical chats. [07:48] Darren Mitchell: I think it's um I I actually think there's a bit of a gap in the marketplace and and what I like about what you guys do is um from week to week you might delve really technical and down dirt in the detail. And and for me, not being a propel hit, I'm thinking I I I would love to have some of the brain cells that you guys have and the guests you bring on to go into that depth of um detail. And then others you think, well, hang on, what's the what's the business application? How does this apply to what I do? How does this apply to customers and potential customers, up and coming sales executives and executives in this world of uncertainty? And I think it covers all spectral of of different areas and I think it's a um a really well placed um Show, if you like, that it covers a whole host of different topics, and I think it's one that's needed. Um, and the the other thing I like about it is that it's completely unscripted. And I'm not sure about you, but I am sick and tired of listening and watching scripted videos, scripted podcasts where it sounds like this is this is like either a Spanish Inquisition or a CBS sort of interview. And it's interesting when I talk to a lot of my podcasts. Podcast guests and I asked them how it felt because I want to make it a very much a fireside chat as well. They often share examples where they've been on a podcast and there hasn't been a depth of conversation that I'd love to get into. It's all been surface level because the person who was interviewing had one question, wanted to get to the next question, and wasn't paying any attention to the gold that was being shared when answering those questions. So looking [09:25] Richard Webbe: That's [09:26] Darren Mitchell: forward [09:26] Richard Webbe: a [09:26] Darren Mitchell: to [09:26] Richard Webbe: great [09:26] Darren Mitchell: this conversation. [09:26] Richard Webbe: Darren, [09:26] Darren Mitchell: Who knows [09:27] Richard Webbe: that's [09:27] Darren Mitchell: where [09:27] Richard Webbe: a [09:27] Darren Mitchell: it [09:27] Richard Webbe: great [09:27] Darren Mitchell: goes? [09:27] Richard Webbe: comment. I would say that definitely about your podcast. And your approach to life, especially when you're running your sales training or sales coaching, which you do so well. It's interesting, you know, in my brief flick of fame outside podcasts, I was lucky to be on the ABC radio once at one of the big conferences. I forget if it was from, I think it was the multimedia in the old days when they were doing those big multimedia ones. And I won't, uh who's the young lady, dark hair that's on spics and specs? Um, long dark hair from the ABC. I I [10:00] Darren Mitchell: No, [10:01] Richard Webbe: remember [10:01] Darren Mitchell: they don't watch it. [10:02] Richard Webbe: anyway, I had all these professional Yeah, exactly. There you go. Anyway, she's still on radio now and she's the darling of TV. She's the darling of ABC. And she's not, she's one of those journalists and uh hosts that doesn't have an agenda. That's why I like her so much. And I'll remember her name in a second, but I'm sure some people in the chat might even put it in. So what happened is I at the time I was working for Apple and I just run an award for producing a multimedia product with Max Walker. And we had a whole lot of Microsoft plants on the thing. And this is nothing against Apple and Microsoft. And we're going back over 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And the Microsoft lobby kept asking me questions where I had to basically say, yeah, Microsoft's the greatest. And at the time, they're pretty good now, but they weren't compared to Apple. And um, and I just turned around and just cut right across the political agenda and said, no, we used Adobe for this, we used Apple for that, we did that, and we did that. If you try and do it without, it won't be. Work and you've got to do it this way. One of the few times I was technically competent. And she was great. She fired up and said, Richard, I love how you give us the answer [11:07] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [11:07] Richard Webbe: rather than the agenda. And I've never forgotten that. That was 25 years ago, and she's a very uh very good operator. Remember her name uh while we go through, and I agree, it's got to be a fireside chat, it's got to be speak from the heart. And as you know, some of the dumb comments I'm about to make, it's all just from the heart. [11:24] Dave Pengelley: It it is it is one of those things where where it's f find the balance and you you know this Darren because you don't have infinite time on on These sorts of things. And you want you're trying to build some kind of narrative and it is free-flowing and you don't know where it's going to go. But there's also a point where sometimes you kind of need to progress things as well. And you can't just keep going on the one thing forever. And you kind of need to steer it. Um, and so it's a gift and a talent. And I'm not saying I'm the best at it, but it's something I'm constantly working at. And sometimes I think we do ramble longer on one topic, and I I don't corral it as quickly as I could or should. [11:57] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [11:57] Dave Pengelley: Um, but then there's the other side of the spectrum where you get The people that sort of go, uh, I'm just gonna cut in and ask you a completely different question. And because I've got my list of eight questions I have to ask you in the 45 minutes, and I'm gonna get through them, even if it completely feels artificial and breaks the flow. And that that's [12:15] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [12:15] Dave Pengelley: that's [12:16] Darren Mitchell: And [12:16] Dave Pengelley: yeah. [12:16] Darren Mitchell: and that and the thing about that, Dave, is that it it pretty much says I don't care about my audience. I'm more interested in getting my narrative and my question out because I've got to impress who I think is going to be listening versus I I come into everything conversation with a level of curiosity because I I don't know stuff and I want to know stuff and I'm not actually listening or or listening to the guest for the person who's going to be listening to the episode. I'm listening because I'm really interested in the conversation, the topic, and I want to know more about this. And I firmly believe that the people that need to hear messages like this, some way, shape or form, this message will get into the earbuds that needs to get into. So [13:00] Richard Webbe: I run our sales training and our go-to-market workshops like that. I know that uh Dave and Matt have that approach as well. It's about curiosity. Just while we're there, it was Myth Warhurst who was very supportive [13:10] Dave Pengelley: I [13:10] Darren Mitchell: Oh [13:10] Dave Pengelley: missed [13:11] Richard Webbe: of me [13:11] Dave Pengelley: yeah, [13:11] Richard Webbe: while [13:11] Dave Pengelley: I [13:11] Richard Webbe: I was [13:11] Dave Pengelley: remember [13:11] Darren Mitchell: Myth, [13:11] Richard Webbe: being [13:11] Dave Pengelley: that. [13:12] Darren Mitchell: the [13:12] Richard Webbe: while I [13:12] Darren Mitchell: um [13:12] Richard Webbe: was being [13:13] Darren Mitchell: like [13:13] Richard Webbe: attacked [13:13] Darren Mitchell: comedian, [13:13] Richard Webbe: by all of [13:14] Darren Mitchell: and yeah, [13:14] Richard Webbe: Yeah, [13:14] Darren Mitchell: she's [13:15] Richard Webbe: yeah, [13:15] Darren Mitchell: cool. [13:15] Richard Webbe: she's great. She very and and like you said, she was in the in this same situation more curious than political. So when the others tried to cut me off when I was talking about exactly how things worked, and Matt, you would have been proud of me because in those days I could talk like you talk. I can't anymore, of course, but I could. And she just cut across all that and she said, Wow, Richard, you're doing really well and was basically telling us to shut up and let me talk. [13:37] Dave Pengelley: You [13:37] Richard Webbe: So [13:37] Dave Pengelley: know, [13:37] Richard Webbe: and [13:37] Dave Pengelley: I'm [13:37] Richard Webbe: that's the [13:38] Dave Pengelley: I'd [13:38] Richard Webbe: way we gotta run. [13:38] Dave Pengelley: I'd love [13:39] Richard Webbe: Free [13:39] Dave Pengelley: to live [13:39] Richard Webbe: and [13:39] Dave Pengelley: the dream [13:39] Richard Webbe: easy. [13:40] Dave Pengelley: and do the the sort of the Joe Rogan three hour sort of conversations, right? Because then then you really can ramble and run down foxholes and do all kinds of stuff and and it just goes how it goes, right? Um in even even like Matt and Richard, you know, often we end the podcast and then often have another ha uh half an hour to an hour more of just chit chat that uh Arguably could be podcasts a lot of the time. But [14:02] Matt: Yeah. [14:02] Dave Pengelley: you go like an audience isn't gonna like two hours of podcast is a lot. So we try and restrain the core stuff to the to the hour, but [14:10] Matt: Not gonna [14:10] Dave Pengelley: um, [14:10] Matt: lie, I have a bit of a uh a personal dream to to be to do and be part of shows like that kind of Joe Rogan experience and like the Tim Ferriss show and stuff like that, where you literally are just going hard on like cool topics to go deep on. [14:28] Richard Webbe: I agree. I agree. [14:29] Dave Pengelley: yeah. [14:30] Richard Webbe: And they pay him 50 million a year to do it, Matt. So let's just keep going the way we're going. We'll get there one day. [14:36] Darren Mitchell: Well, Matt, if you if you understand the two to three degrees of separation, there's somebody within the network that knows somebody who knows them. So it's you just you just never know. You never [14:47] Richard Webbe: Well, [14:47] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [14:47] Darren Mitchell: never [14:48] Richard Webbe: you never know. I knocked back my uh role to be on the uh the Golden Bachelor, and uh and here I am. [14:55] Dave Pengelley: I just I d I just I'm just jealous [14:57] Richard Webbe: You're [14:57] Dave Pengelley: of having [14:57] Richard Webbe: laughing, [14:57] Dave Pengelley: the budget [14:57] Richard Webbe: Darren, [14:58] Dave Pengelley: to [14:58] Richard Webbe: but that's a true story. Go on, Tate. [14:59] Darren Mitchell: able be do have that. to to Well, I'm gonna have to delve into that. [15:01] Dave Pengelley: I'm just jealous of having the budget to bring people into one place and one studio, right? Versus the remote thing. That's that that I think is a bit of a game changer. But uh, you know, we work with what we have and we're working in a country with people across the place, and so it's good that we can still bring these things together in in the modern era. But um speaking of the modern era, so um Darren, what for the audience at home is your general exposure day to day to AI? Just to baseline and get a feeling for what [15:35] Darren Mitchell: So I I use, I mean, I I think most people use the Ape and AI, the Chat GPT. You've got uh lots of AI components to most uh apps that you use today. In the work that I do, uh obviously podcasting and and sales training, coaching, mentoring stuff, I use it pretty much daily. And it could be to research uh customers, prospective customers, research organizations, but also to test. My own approach to certain situations and it might be that I want to uh create a proposal for a certain organization. So how do I actually put that into an AI uh model and stress test what my thinking is, remembering of course that I will never ever give in to the AI and think that that is the source of truth. Uh you've got to remember to train it because ultimately it's it's my voice, it's my thinking, it's my idea. Um but what I found is it's um It it significantly speeds up your ability to get uh things out. Uh, but you've also got to be very, very clear and conscious of uh that it is your narrative, that it is your idea, that it's not just saying, hey, write me a proposal for this SaaS organization. We've got to do a training for 15 salespeople as sales leaders, XYZ. Uh write it and then go, oh, that's fantastic. I'll shoot that off and expect the money to roll in. It's not that at all. And this is one thing that. I've found a lot of sales teams are failing in and they give too much credit to the AI [17:07] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [17:07] Darren Mitchell: model and not near enough credit to their own responsibility about what that means for their customer. Because they're not [17:13] Richard Webbe: Oh [17:13] Darren Mitchell: they're losing [17:14] Richard Webbe: Aaron. [17:14] Darren Mitchell: sight almost of the buying cycle. [17:15] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, [17:16] Richard Webbe: Aaron, [17:16] Dave Pengelley: I've been [17:16] Richard Webbe: I [17:16] Dave Pengelley: I've I've been um back and [17:17] Richard Webbe: agree. [17:17] Dave Pengelley: forth with a potential client um this week and they sent her a brief of what they're looking for and and you know I'm using my um Hermes agent team to help, you know, finesse the messaging and really break down and understand What I'm doing, but it basically wanted to reply back with a uh and I gave it a sort of transcript from our call and I gave it a brief and uh and all the data and stuff and said, Okay, just help me summarise a response that they've been heard and and move this forward to the next step. And it basically just sort of sent back a bullet point summary of their own brief. And I'm like, that's adding zero value to them. That that doesn't help. Like, that's not what this needs. That's not what I'm after. Despite it's having training on my voice and training on this, it just missed the context of what the the conversation needed to do next because [18:00] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [18:00] Dave Pengelley: it is limited and it's not a human and it's not doesn't understand relationships the way we do. So I was like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna scrap that and and narrate three sentences for it to just sort of grammatically fix up for me. [18:13] Darren Mitchell: Yeah, and and look in a in a sales context, though as you were talking then, Dave, I was thinking a conversation I had yesterday with a colleague and um she was giving me an example of uh I won't mention the company, but just to say it's a health, a big health organization that went to tender for a certain Certain uh product or a certain service. And it was staggering to see the number of RFP responses that almost appeared to be identical. That [18:40] Richard Webbe: Exactly. [18:40] Darren Mitchell: it became it became obvious that these people had thrown stuff into a large language model and maybe it was the same one. And the responses were very, very similar. So in this art, and I'll I'll be fully transparent here as well. With my podcast, I put I put my podcast video stream into. An AI model to give me show notes, video reels, audiograms, [19:03] Dave Pengelley: Where does it? [19:04] Darren Mitchell: quotes, and stuff like that, right? And but I still I still check it, double check it, and make sure that it's contextual. But the whole point of all this is in and certainly in a selling game, if you're giving into AI, at some point in the buy cycle, they're gonna want to have a conversation and stress test what you've actually proposed to them. And if you haven't come up with the idea, if you haven't come up with a strategy, Strategy and you haven't understood their business, you're gonna be found out really, really quickly. So when I'm thinking now about business, the future of sales, the future of executives, and all the market differentiation, it's the human element that is going to differentiate people. It is not the technology that's gonna differentiate. And I think many people are thinking, well, this is the savior for us. Where in fact, more and more organizations are going back to, I want to actually talk to a human being. I want to be able to sit across Dave or Matt or Richard and actually have a conversation where I can ask you questions and we can deep dive deeper into what your proposal is, not just throw some AI slop that quite frankly, most of it is slop, that um that won't add any value. So [20:16] Richard Webbe: I I protest though that word slop you got from AI, so find another one. [20:22] Dave Pengelley: Matt Matt, [20:23] Darren Mitchell: AI [20:23] Dave Pengelley: I feel I feel [20:24] Darren Mitchell: dribble [20:24] Dave Pengelley: I I feel you got something you wanna you wanna ask, Matt. [20:27] Richard Webbe: Go, Matt. [20:28] Matt: So many things. This happens every single Episode. It's so crazy. Like the longer it goes, it's like my my my turbocharger just boosts in pressure. Um no, uh so much. So firstly, Richard, like you always talk about the the sumnet average of everything, you know, if you if everyone's just pumping their question into the one thing and you know, yelling into the void and they get that same response back, you know, yeah, where where do you differentiate? How do you differentiate? And then Darren, like, you know, that like internalization of the knowledge so that you can answer questions. To the various stakeholders, clients, customers is so important. I see that like completely analogous to like lazy vibe coding, you know, people trying to build tools or whatever. You know, they could be a really intelligent, powerful business owner messing around with this new software creation tool stuff that we've got. And yeah, they can probably get towards like some sort of result because they know what they want. But as soon as somebody asks them, like, how does that work? They'll go, I don't know. Like, [21:30] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [21:31] Matt: how do I fix it? No idea. I'll just go ask the thing again. Like it's crazy, that kind of level of comprehension just doesn't exist. [21:39] Darren Mitchell: It's insane. It's insane. And and to that point, uh, there's a lot of there's a lot of research out there. I'm trying to think of the the last bit of piece of research I looked at. Um in a business-to-business context, AI is here to stay, and we know that, right? And [21:53] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [21:53] Darren Mitchell: it's going to continue to proliferate across all of our all of our lives and our work and all that sort of stuff. But what's really interesting. thing in in the B2B space in particular is um at least 85% of business-to-business executive decision makers say that in the future um business to business interactions and sales will still have a huge human element to it. And where where people will differentiate is they use the AI to complement what their thinking is, not to replace their thinking. And I think a lot of companies are racing quickly to implement AI systems and tools into their workflows, which is great, but they're not necessarily spending as much time thinking about what's the human impact to this or what's the human leverage to this that will enable us to continue to create what is our unique value differentiation. And it ain't the product. It ain't the the AI. It is going to come down to do Matt do Dave, De Richard, do we leave an impression on a customer that drives likability, respectability, trust, and memorability as [23:08] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [23:09] Darren Mitchell: well? [23:09] Dave Pengelley: I mean, I I'm I'm ex Salesforce Darren, so I spent over a decade at Salesforce. And one of the things with CRM is, and I've had this debate with Richard before, but CRM um doesn't really help the top performers because the top performers already have their systems and processes and they they they know to get back to customers and follow things up [23:26] Darren Mitchell: Hmm. [23:26] Dave Pengelley: because they're just built like that. [23:27] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [23:27] Dave Pengelley: What a good CRM does with good workflows and processes is helps that that middle the the big middle move closer to the top and your [23:35] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [23:35] Dave Pengelley: bottom performers your laggards they're always going to be laggards they might get a little uplift from CRM but they're probably not because they're not going to use it properly and they're going to be performance managed over time anyway right but these sort of systems augment and help the big middle move up a little bit because your top performers are always going to be top performers no matter what tool set they have in front of them because they're [23:52] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [23:52] Dave Pengelley: just wide like that across any any industry. I mean there's that whole outlier as the Malcolm Gladwell stuff right that I think talks about that. [24:00] Darren Mitchell: Absolutely. And and to that point, if you ask a top performer in any industry, whether it be business, sports, entertainment, and you try to unpack how they do what they do, many of them wouldn't even know. They wouldn't be able to articulate it. It's just something that they do innately because it's that unconscious competence. But when you've got things like CRM systems as an example, a lot of organizations and a lot of salespeople, for example, within organizations think that it's just a compliance tool. My sales manager's going to use it like a stick over the head. To make sure you got your activities into the into the system. But if you can leverage it appropriately, it can become a superpower. But that's where organizations have to know how to leverage it. And it's not about the system. It's about the thinking that goes into the system and the behaviors that come out of it that will determine the outcome. So it's not the CRM. So it doesn't matter about the CRM. And I'll even contest it. It doesn't matter about whatever sales methodology you're using or whatever operational method you're using. It it's it's it's the people. It's do I have good people thinking the right way, delivering the right value, and um serving in the right way. [25:09] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, all all your spin and your sandlers and your your gold sheets and everything, at the end of the day, they come back to just helping you establish what the problem is and then positioning the solution effectively. [25:19] Darren Mitchell: That's [25:20] Dave Pengelley: Like [25:20] Darren Mitchell: it. [25:20] Dave Pengelley: it's not rocket science. Um, but at the same point in time, a lot of people just don't think about it like that, and they'll just they'll just jump in and they won't. You know, what do they say? Salespeople are coin operated. They do they just chase where they think the easy money [25:34] Richard Webbe: Hey, [25:34] Dave Pengelley: is. [25:34] Darren Mitchell: Well [25:34] Richard Webbe: hey, hey, hey, there's two of them here, right? Just be careful how you talk trash about. [25:40] Darren Mitchell: that it is that it well it well it is it is true. I mean you think about w we we reward we reward the behaviors that are [25:49] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [25:49] Darren Mitchell: gonna have attached um dollars [25:51] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [25:52] Darren Mitchell: to it [25:52] Dave Pengelley: Oh look, [25:52] Darren Mitchell: or [25:52] Dave Pengelley: I can retire [25:53] Darren Mitchell: incentives [25:53] Dave Pengelley: two X quota, brilliant. Like, you know, w when you're carrying a hammer, everything's a nail. Like [26:00] Darren Mitchell: That's exactly right. And then if you look at companies that and I had this conversation with somebody the other day, LD organizations or training within organizations as a general rule, a lot of it is geared around technical aptitude. So for the engineers, we give them engineering training. For the finance guys, we give them finance training. For the for the marketing team, we give them marketing training. And guess what? For the sales team, we're gonna give you a sales training. Um, but there's not a lot of focus, and I know we're talking about AI, but there's not a lot of focus on how do we how do we create well-being programs? How do we actually work with the human so that we can maximize the potential of the human? And then any AI stacked we throw on top of it can potentially be amplified by having good people in the right positions with the right approach. [26:48] Matt: I love you said that word. I I literally had I just scribbled scribbled down the word amplifier before because it was something that I came across recently with the same concept that you said before, Darren, about that you You can't replace your thinking with these tools. Like you still need to be able to think. But one thing they can do is help you amplify your thinking and accelerate. So, you know, ideas that you previously never would have even considered because you just don't have time, you can go down that rabbit hole briefly, let it figure out, do the research, pull back some information. And then, Dave, this is where it comes into like what is a what is a decision? Like, how can these top performing sales operators actually make a decision? Like they might not be able to define how they do it, but if you can give them the information that they need to make that decision faster, that's that's where that's where the improvement comes from. You're not getting this the machine to decide for you, you're getting that information, that data. [27:46] Richard Webbe: You know, it's interesting when you look at, you know, we've all got a I think a very clear idea of what makes the success and where the information comes from. One thing that worries me, and it I'm not having a go at Salesforce, but for all AI. Is that when people start to correlate the data, as you're alluding to, Darren, who does well and what are the habits? We all know that know the habits of successful people. Sometimes people approach that with a very narrow, non-contextual focus. And they go in and go, oh, hang on, Darren's a top salesperson because he spends more time in his car. And so then they start measuring everyone, you've got to be in your car more. And they've missed it by a mile. And the law of unintended consequences kicks in. I think AI in sales can help us with that anal analysis, but it's got to be a much broader context and a much broader focus. So we really know. And I always, I've mentioned it before, I always refer to the very funny AI. Over 20 years ago, they were trying to use AI to catch criminals coming into Heathrow Airport. And they asked all the customs officers, how do you know a criminal? Because they were ninety-nine point nine percent accurate. If they were sitting there when you walk past that mirror at Heathrow, right, they'd go, that one, that one, and and ninety nine. Percent of the time they'd catch someone who'd done something wrong. And they asked them before they started programming the software, and and they said it's in the eyes, right? And for years they tried to make it work, but it didn't work. The the uh software, and then someone found out that the customs officers, this is knowing what you don't know or not knowing what you do know, they looked at the eyes, but it was actually in the stiffness in the neck, right? So if you're looking at someone when they walk past that mirror, they're very stiff in the neck, but the customs officers. Officers saw it as something in the eye. So there's a real danger in the early phases of judgment through AI that you're going to focus on the wrong thing and you're going to send yourself south. And it it comes back to what all three of you are saying earlier. It's the human element. We won't have an AI with the creativity and the cross-referenceability and the human touch for other humans, probably for a hundred years that gets close to that. So, and then I always laugh at, uh, and and you'll appreciate this. I remember when online sales first came out and Darren and I did a lot of work even in the same space in that uh, you know, 20, 26 years ago when it was taking off and more. And I remember all these companies sacked all their salespeople. Oh, I'm just going to put an ad on the on my HTML website and people are going to be queuing up at the front door buying my stuff because I've got a web page. I don't know if you remember that. I remember it well. And [30:27] Darren Mitchell: Oh, [30:27] Richard Webbe: you know, pretty quickly all those companies very Crushed in on the one and you sales people again. [30:32] Darren Mitchell: Well, it's so it's uh and we're laughing because it's it's well it's it's we're laughing because it's funny, but we're also laughing because it's actually quite serious. And there and there were a lot of people in even in some of the big organizations I've been part of that uh in certain parts of those businesses, such as marketing. Shout out to all the marketers on the on the call, um, thought, you know what, we've got these fantastic products. All we have to do is put some nice brochures out there. Back in the old days it was printed brochures, now it's all online. And you're gonna have customers lining up around just like they do with Apple because our products are so good. Until they recognize and realize the harsh reality that irrespective of the company, your customers don't they don't want your product. They couldn't give two hoots about your product. You just you might think, and this is where I get really caught up in in a lot of the challenges around big organizations and particularly when it comes to training their sales staff, they fill them with all these magnificent Kool-Aid about how good our products and services are without recognizing that the customers, excuse the frames, don't give a shit. [31:37] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [31:37] Darren Mitchell: What they care [31:38] Richard Webbe: Exactly. [31:38] Darren Mitchell: about, and you said it before, Dave, like or maybe Matt, it's about the hammer and the nail. Like everything looks like a hammer when you need a nail, it's gonna bang it in. [31:46] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, that [31:47] Darren Mitchell: How [31:47] Dave Pengelley: the [31:47] Darren Mitchell: about we [31:47] Dave Pengelley: the [31:47] Darren Mitchell: start [31:48] Dave Pengelley: the [31:48] Darren Mitchell: thinking about what's the [31:49] Dave Pengelley: They've [31:49] Darren Mitchell: problem? [31:49] Dave Pengelley: got a problem they need solving. I mean I th I like the um Donnald Miller has his whole story brand framework, which really talks about that as far as your marketing messaging. I saw someone on LinkedIn this week talking about the damage that some And Cinex done with the whole start with why thing for early stage startups and companies because no one actually cares about your why. They don't care about you, they don't care about your story, they don't care that you had a sick dog once that vomited on your homework and that led you to create this new SaaS application. They care about whether your SaaS application solves a problem for them. So don't start with your why. Start with what does this solve for them? How is this going to help them? How why [32:22] Richard Webbe: What's [32:22] Dave Pengelley: why [32:23] Richard Webbe: the [32:23] Dave Pengelley: should [32:23] Richard Webbe: problem [32:23] Dave Pengelley: they [32:23] Richard Webbe: with [32:23] Dave Pengelley: care about [32:23] Richard Webbe: that [32:23] Dave Pengelley: your product? [32:24] Richard Webbe: call? [32:24] Dave Pengelley: That's the why you need to start with. [32:26] Darren Mitchell: Yeah, [32:26] Richard Webbe: Yeah, [32:26] Dave Pengelley: Um [32:26] Darren Mitchell: that's it. [32:27] Richard Webbe: absolutely. [32:27] Darren Mitchell: And [32:27] Dave Pengelley: yeah. [32:27] Darren Mitchell: that'll and that why might evolve over time because at some point point the person who started that needs to get really clear on the why because if they don't have that why they're not going to have the sustainability to be able to get through and and deal with all the challenges and the and the the failures. I spoke to the guy the other day he said I spent 12 years becoming an overnight success. [32:48] Richard Webbe: Exactly. [32:49] Darren Mitchell: And he said I was looking at all of my mates because I said I'd never I'll never be able to work for anybody else. So he started a an entrepreneurial venture straight out of university and for 12 years he was watching all of his mates in corporate drive nice cars, go on nice vacations, and and live in great houses. But then he said, you know, a funny thing happened at the age of 30, it started to click, and I passed them like you would not believe. It's just it's but do we have the tenacity and the patience to stay the course? Particularly [33:20] Richard Webbe: Darren, [33:20] Darren Mitchell: in in [33:21] Richard Webbe: you and [33:21] Darren Mitchell: today's [33:21] Richard Webbe: I you you [33:21] Darren Mitchell: society. [33:22] Richard Webbe: and I both know what [33:22] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [33:22] Richard Webbe: that's like being, [33:23] Dave Pengelley: Um, [33:23] Richard Webbe: you know, entrepreneurs ourselves. [33:25] Darren Mitchell: Oh [33:25] Richard Webbe: It it [33:25] Darren Mitchell: yeah. [33:25] Richard Webbe: happens. [33:26] Dave Pengelley: Richard, it sounds like you've been burned by some some some terrible sales managers over the years. That have really jaded you. And what's surprising is I didn't read about any of those that I can remember in your book, which which which makes me think of this.com. Look out Richard Webb. There you go. [33:57] Richard Webbe: Thank you, sir. [33:59] Dave Pengelley: Look at that. [34:00] Matt: That's a little [34:01] Dave Pengelley: What [34:01] Richard Webbe: Did [34:01] Dave Pengelley: a [34:01] Richard Webbe: you [34:01] Dave Pengelley: man. [34:01] Richard Webbe: give yourself co-producer [34:03] Dave Pengelley: No, I'm [34:04] Richard Webbe: credits? [34:04] Dave Pengelley: not on there at all. I'm [34:05] Richard Webbe: You [34:05] Dave Pengelley: not [34:05] Richard Webbe: should [34:05] Dave Pengelley: on there. [34:05] Richard Webbe: have. [34:06] Dave Pengelley: No, [34:06] Richard Webbe: I told [34:06] Dave Pengelley: you got [34:06] Richard Webbe: you to [34:06] Dave Pengelley: got [34:07] Richard Webbe: do [34:07] Dave Pengelley: got [34:07] Richard Webbe: that. [34:07] Dave Pengelley: the two Richards. Uh well, what was I as an editor or something? I don't need to be on there. It's fine. I got my other stuff going on. But uh yeah, [34:14] Matt: bit more. [34:14] Dave Pengelley: this is your book. You wrote it. It's good. [34:16] Richard Webbe: Thank you, sir. [34:17] Darren Mitchell: As his own words. [34:20] Richard Webbe: All my own words. I had to take all the F's and C's and S's out of it, but it's all my own words. [34:28] Darren Mitchell: Congratulations, Richard. Great, uh great to see it finally coming to um come into the public domain. [34:34] Richard Webbe: Thank you, Darren. Appreciate it. [34:36] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, some some great stories through uh through the decades of technology selling in there. Um I had a few chuckles as I read through it, as I reviewed it and put it together to publish. So yeah, um, if you're interested in hearing, you know, how even bad situations can be turned around for for good at the end of the day, uh, and how a bit of resilience and creativity can get you through them, uh, Richard's book is a good read. [35:00] Richard Webbe: Coming out soon in my own voice. [35:02] Dave Pengelley: Yes. And [35:02] Matt: Wow. [35:02] Dave Pengelley: I didn't look at the Kindle E version as well. I'm still looking into that for you. [35:08] Dave Pengelley: So that's that's one win of the week that uh we we can share this week. Anyone else got a win of the week that they would like to share? [35:18] Richard Webbe: Come on, Matt. [35:19] Matt: Every every [35:20] Dave Pengelley: I [35:20] Matt: day's [35:20] Dave Pengelley: know. [35:20] Matt: a game for [35:21] Dave Pengelley: I [35:21] Matt: me. [35:21] Dave Pengelley: I know I know Matt's [35:22] Darren Mitchell: Every [35:22] Dave Pengelley: been of [35:23] Darren Mitchell: time [35:23] Dave Pengelley: the [35:23] Darren Mitchell: I [35:23] Dave Pengelley: week. [35:23] Darren Mitchell: saw win. [35:24] Dave Pengelley: This is this is Matt's win of the week. [35:30] Matt: True. [35:30] Richard Webbe: What's going on [35:31] Matt: Yeah. [35:31] Richard Webbe: with Chevy? [35:31] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, T T T Bo gave another reset on Chat GPT and got all our quotas reset for like the second or third time this week. Wild. [35:39] Matt: Which is crazy. Like I I burn through that so fast. Like I'm on the absolute maximum you can get from them. And just the amount of work that I need to put out now. Um, sure, I probably could optimize my workflows a little bit more, but I burnt through 50% in less than 24 hours of the entire weekly limit. Um and Yeah, then the next day it was like at zero. So it was very, very refreshing to see that reset again. So that's definitely [36:05] Dave Pengelley: Refreshing. [36:06] Matt: a win. Yeah. [36:08] Richard Webbe: If we're looking at loss of the week, I did the same as some of you saw. I was practicing and playing around with some video generation for marketing strategies and stuff, Darren, and producing something that could be current. And uh wow, when you're doing video uh production using AI to automate, not to create, uh I'll gotta emphasize. It's automation, not creation. Man, you burn through the credits faster than man, that is that is a very expensive process. It's almost cheaper to go and hire a videographer instead of doing it [36:42] Dave Pengelley: Well [36:42] Richard Webbe: yourself, [36:42] Dave Pengelley: that's [36:42] Richard Webbe: man. [36:43] Dave Pengelley: that's that's that's the meme, right? It's like uh um after spending half a million dollars on on AI credits or whatever, it's like, I think we should hire our engineers back. [36:52] Richard Webbe: That's exactly. And it'll be the same with salespeople. I'm just [36:55] Darren Mitchell: Yes, [36:55] Richard Webbe: being a [36:56] Darren Mitchell: right. [36:56] Richard Webbe: you know, and marketing people, maybe not the marketing. [37:00] Dave Pengelley: I've I've been very grateful for the uh the Chat GPT resets. I um my mine just naturally reset on Sunday morning, my weekly reset. And then they announced, Oh, we've noticed that we've been miscalculating some stuff. So we're gonna give you another one tomorrow. So I was like, Oh, it's in the bag. So I like while I was watching the F one on Sunday night, just sat there across like eight different projects and just blitzed the entire Chat GPT quota that I had um for for coding uh and was gone. And then eleven o'clock Monday morning, bang, reset. And I was like, excellent, back to work. Focus down a little bit more. This will get me through the whole week now. And then by midday yesterday, I was like, ah crap, I'm done. I'm I've I've killed it again. So to get a reset this morning, I was I was quite grateful for. Um but uh yeah, if you are in the chat GPT camp, uh we'll get to the news in a minute. We'll I'll I'll save news for the news. But um yeah, I think I think you know, just I watched an interview with Tebow today and he's actually got a physical reset button now. I've actually built him a physical reset button where when he wants to And he doesn't have to get any oversight when he just feels it's right for the community, for the market, for whatever. He just presses this big button and it can reset everyone's quotas. Wild. Meanwhile, Anthropic is putting in sneaky watermarks and everyone's complaining that their models are dumber and fighting them and won't do what they're told anymore. And it's that's weird because you know, six months ago, with all the White House defense stuff, everyone's like, Open AI is the devil because they're letting weapons be used with their stuff. We're all going to anthropic. Claude is the savior. And now six months later, everyone's Like, but what is this anthropic deal? Open AI is the best company ever. [38:34] Richard Webbe: Well, here's the funny thing. I was reading all those articles with interest about putting watermarks on documents, edits, everything. And the law of unintended consequences, which is big in this space, is let's say, and 99 to 100% of the people. So I write my thesis on something and I go, okay, and it's all my work. I think, oh, I'm a great writer, but I'm not a great editor. So I drop it in ChatGPT. to edit it when I send that document out it's got in the meta file and hidden inside the text a comment to say it was generated by AI with no reference to me actually writing it. So if someone uses that imagery or that you know that sleuthness, they'll think I just lied on the whole thing and I didn't. All I did was get it to put a comma here or a full stop there. That's a real danger isn't it. [39:24] Darren Mitchell: It is. It is. For the solution. [39:30] Richard Webbe: Sorry. [39:30] Matt: sure [39:30] Dave Pengelley: Don't [39:30] Matt: if it's a it's a danger as such it it's kind of like it's kind of like just a governance trail in general you know it it's being able to cite your source you know if you if you're a a a researcher or a writer you know where you're getting [39:43] Richard Webbe: That's [39:44] Matt: your information [39:44] Richard Webbe: true. [39:44] Matt: from [39:45] Richard Webbe: Yeah, that no, that's true, but those that aren't fully equated, like I know about you, we've spoken to this before. Kids hate AI. They've been appropriately [39:54] Dave Pengelley: That's that's [39:54] Richard Webbe: told [39:54] Dave Pengelley: an overgeneralization. [39:55] Richard Webbe: by [39:55] Dave Pengelley: My my my kids don't hate it. [39:57] Richard Webbe: Well my [39:58] Dave Pengelley: Your [39:58] Richard Webbe: okay. [39:58] Dave Pengelley: kids might, mine [40:01] Richard Webbe: I do have rebellious [40:02] Dave Pengelley: There [40:02] Richard Webbe: children that are [40:03] Dave Pengelley: there [40:03] Richard Webbe: a bit [40:03] Dave Pengelley: there [40:03] Richard Webbe: like [40:04] Dave Pengelley: there [40:04] Richard Webbe: me. [40:04] Dave Pengelley: is an element, and I know other teenagers and stuff with it are pushing back against the whole AI slopification of the of the world. I [40:09] Richard Webbe: Yeah, [40:09] Dave Pengelley: get it. I'm [40:10] Richard Webbe: yeah. [40:10] Dave Pengelley: I'm just [40:10] Richard Webbe: And [40:10] Dave Pengelley: yeah, [40:11] Richard Webbe: and but what I'm saying is with that sort of um attitude coming out and and taking over, you know, someone's got a little bit of a sampler that says, oh, you know, Darren's email he sent me was written by AI. That didn't really come from Darren, because I'm not smart enough to double check, and I just delete his email and never read it. [40:29] Dave Pengelley: yeah. [40:30] Richard Webbe: That would be really unfair. [40:31] Matt: You you just um said like the most important part, Richard, though. Uh not not saying that it was accurate, but you you said you're not smart enough to check. That's where this is going. Like if you if you ever scroll X, like I don't know what LinkedIn does now because LinkedIn's just full of slop anyway, but like there's always the generated by AI or made with AI. You know, that that is the fingerprinting essentially in action. So imagine you get an email and they email literally says this person used ai while drafting this or it was written with ai like you don't know what percentage per se but there was ai involved you know at that point you'll see that everywhere because like [41:13] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [41:13] Matt: everyone will be probably using it [41:14] Richard Webbe: That's true, [41:14] Matt: especially [41:15] Richard Webbe: that's true. [41:15] Dave Pengelley: And [41:16] Matt: like [41:16] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [41:16] Dave Pengelley: what [41:16] Matt: through [41:16] Dave Pengelley: what [41:16] Matt: that [41:16] Dave Pengelley: where [41:16] Matt: whole thing [41:17] Dave Pengelley: where do tools like Grammarly fit in that, right? Like because they f even I'll get AI sometimes to help me draft up a response or just format my thoughts and I'll drop it in and then Grammarly sort of wants to give it another another pass again and go, no, you need a comma there and change this and do that. I'm like So um that's all my words, but it's just been formatted a little bit and tweaked to say my words in in the manner I intended them, not the manner that they came out of my mouth. Um [41:41] Matt: Yeah. [41:42] Dave Pengelley: so [41:42] Matt: I've [41:42] Dave Pengelley: yeah. [41:42] Matt: got a good um I've got a bit of a a take on the on the kids hating slop as well. And this is this is purely a a thought experiment. No pun intended, as you'll see. Um I think a lot of the kids hate the slopification because They were never taught how to think. And the kids are the ones that are so attached to digital media, and it's they ingest more than anyone else, any other generation. It's where they get everything from. And if all they're exposed to is slop, then of course they're not going to want it. They're going to be desiring that change, that pattern interrupt, that, you know, how do I ascend to the next level of humanity without just being succumbed to brain rot all the time? You know, like the very term brain rot started in. This generation or like just the previous. So yeah, if you're in there and it it feels like this weight of depression, of course you're not gonna want it. [42:38] Dave Pengelley: Well, [42:38] Matt: Like [42:38] Dave Pengelley: yeah, add add doom scrolling into that as well, right? Like it's all those elements combining. [42:42] Matt: Yeah. [42:43] Dave Pengelley: And what does all this AI stuff mean for their careers and futures and jobs, which I think is the other concern, especially for some [42:49] Richard Webbe: That's [42:49] Dave Pengelley: of [42:49] Richard Webbe: the big [42:49] Dave Pengelley: them. [42:49] Richard Webbe: one. I [42:50] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [42:50] Richard Webbe: think [42:50] Darren Mitchell: That [42:50] Richard Webbe: that's that [42:50] Darren Mitchell: that's [42:51] Richard Webbe: you're [42:51] Darren Mitchell: huge. [42:51] Richard Webbe: on. [42:52] Darren Mitchell: And I think, Matt, if I can pick up on one thing you just said there, and and the key word was um there's two keywords. One is what and the other one is how. So if if kids are not taught how to think and only taught what to think, then they don't have a natural level of curiosity. And what I would challenge education systems, but certainly leaders and when I say leaders, also parents, is we have a responsibility to teach our kids how to think. And I and I say this to to teams all the time, particularly for leaders, your job is not to lead with the results. Yeah, that that is part of it. But your your role as a leader, is to create a team of independent thinkers where you teach them how to think so they don't become dependent on you. So you don't do not want to be creating this codependent relationship where you are the oracle and everybody is now looking at you for the answers. You want people to say, you know what, I hear what you're saying. I see this information. I want to think differently and I want to challenge that and [43:52] Matt: Yeah, [43:53] Darren Mitchell: how to make decisions and how [43:54] Matt: it's [43:54] Darren Mitchell: to [43:54] Matt: a [43:54] Darren Mitchell: think is is probably [43:55] Matt: good thing. [43:55] Darren Mitchell: the most, the most I would say one of the most important skill sets. That people of today need to develop [44:02] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. When when my kids come and ask me to give them the answer to some stuff sometimes when they're doing the homework, I'm like, go look it up, go work it out. I'm like, I'm teaching you independence and resilience. I I say that verbatim to them. Like, I'm like, I'm just stop being lazy. Uh I I kicked a bit of a hornet's nest on LinkedIn this week. I won't go deep into it because uh it was around uh calls by experts, whatever that is, that the prime minister's office should apply a gender lens to their AI policy frameworks or whatever, right? [44:29] Darren Mitchell: it. [44:30] Richard Webbe: Very good article [44:30] Dave Pengelley: I try [44:31] Richard Webbe: die. [44:31] Dave Pengelley: I tried to not be overly political and not partisan about it, but I wanted to make the point that why are we like running this [44:38] Richard Webbe: Introducing [44:39] Dave Pengelley: gender lens when actually there is this critical thinking gap? And yes, [44:42] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [44:42] Dave Pengelley: bias is everywhere. And this is this was the point I'm sort of making: is that there's bias in AI, there's bias in media, there's bias in your brain, there's bias everywhere. So rather than it's let's say, hey, women are on the back foot because AI is going to be biased against them, how about we just teach society as a whole around critical thinking skills? So that way they can independently have agency, make good decisions, and not sort of be placed like with this sort of victimhood from day one. Now, I got a lot of comments mentioning words like patriarchy and other bits and pieces on there. So we won't go into that four [45:15] Richard Webbe: I [45:15] Dave Pengelley: blokes talking about whether we should [45:16] Richard Webbe: I [45:16] Dave Pengelley: have a gender [45:17] Richard Webbe: supported [45:17] Dave Pengelley: lens on AI. [45:17] Richard Webbe: you. [45:18] Dave Pengelley: It's probably not a good look at this point. Maybe we'll get some of our uh our um female friends to come back on for another episode to talk about that. But just that concept, I think it relates, Darren, that what you're saying around teaching the thinking skills. Teaching that that sort of critical analysis is actually the the super skill that we need to be equipping the the next generation, but also the current generation with that [45:40] Darren Mitchell: Yes. [45:40] Dave Pengelley: have kind of washed their hands of it a little [45:42] Darren Mitchell: Yeah, [45:42] Dave Pengelley: bit. [45:42] Darren Mitchell: and and part of that, Dave, is is along with the critical thinking skills, it's teaching emotional resilience, but also emotional intelligence. Just being aware of how I'm feeling, but also how others are feeling, but also how my actions are having an impact on other people. And just adjusting according to that. It's it's such a human condition that I'm staggered. There's number of so many people who just lack just the basic um curiosity, awareness, let's just say empathy to um to learn and to want to learn from others. And they think, well, no, I'm right, therefore I'm gonna fight to the death to prove that I'm right, and I'm not even gonna entertain the fact that I could be wrong. And [46:30] Richard Webbe: Dangerous angle of the term critical thinking. And I support what Dave says 1,000%, but it was interesting. I was doing some research recently, and it was a Nazi working with Hitler that introduced critical thinking into the universities at a very young age. And their objective wasn't to do what we call critical thinking today, it was to challenge people just learning. They wanted a rebellion. And so they used that angle. And we're in [47:00] Dave Pengelley: Well there's [47:00] Richard Webbe: They were [47:00] Dave Pengelley: there's [47:00] Richard Webbe: saying [47:00] Dave Pengelley: critical [47:00] Richard Webbe: hey. [47:01] Dave Pengelley: theory, which is where a lot of the the [47:03] Richard Webbe: Yes, [47:03] Dave Pengelley: the [47:03] Richard Webbe: that's [47:03] Dave Pengelley: the the Marxist [47:04] Richard Webbe: it. [47:04] Dave Pengelley: kind of root has Marxist roots around, you know, oppressor [47:06] Richard Webbe: That's [47:07] Dave Pengelley: oppressed and all [47:07] Richard Webbe: it. [47:07] Dave Pengelley: that kind of stuff. And it often gets confused and conflated critical theory with critical thinking. [47:13] Richard Webbe: Yes. [47:14] Dave Pengelley: Um which I I [47:15] Richard Webbe: Well, [47:15] Dave Pengelley: I don't know [47:15] Richard Webbe: they [47:15] Dave Pengelley: if that if that's what you're referencing, [47:16] Richard Webbe: no, [47:16] Dave Pengelley: Richard. [47:16] Richard Webbe: that's what [47:17] Dave Pengelley: There [47:17] Richard Webbe: I'm [47:17] Dave Pengelley: it [47:17] Richard Webbe: saying. [47:17] Dave Pengelley: sounds [47:17] Richard Webbe: And they [47:17] Dave Pengelley: yeah. [47:18] Richard Webbe: I was gonna say they do use the word interchanging, like universities and what we do [47:22] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, [47:22] Richard Webbe: here and [47:22] Dave Pengelley: crit [47:22] Richard Webbe: everything [47:23] Dave Pengelley: critical [47:23] Richard Webbe: should be [47:23] Dave Pengelley: theory [47:23] Richard Webbe: about [47:23] Dave Pengelley: is is [47:23] Richard Webbe: learning. [47:24] Dave Pengelley: not good. Critical thinking is very good. [47:26] Richard Webbe: Yeah, it should be out learning, right? Um, and of course they interchange the two so that they can change a narrative and as Darren was saying they teach us um how to think sorry they teach us what to think not how to think and it's a fine line it's [47:41] Darren Mitchell: Yeah, [47:41] Richard Webbe: dangerous [47:42] Darren Mitchell: it is. It is. And even simple things like decision making, right? And how many people have this either implied pressure or direct pressure, maybe from others or sometimes from themselves, to have to get the right decision made. [47:57] Richard Webbe: yep [47:57] Darren Mitchell: And is there such thing as the right decision? Well, I I I would challenge and say, well, you come up with the best decision you can based on all the information. Therefore, you have to make a decision, right? The worst decision is to not make one. But [48:09] Dave Pengelley: No, [48:10] Darren Mitchell: I say [48:10] Dave Pengelley: not [48:10] Darren Mitchell: to [48:10] Dave Pengelley: making [48:10] Darren Mitchell: team, [48:10] Dave Pengelley: a decision is still a decision. [48:11] Darren Mitchell: it's still a decision, right? But I say, if you if you can make a decision, tick. But if then you can articulate the method that you arrived at the decision, double tick. It doesn't matter whether the person who you made the decision for or on behalf, or whether they can test that or not, whether they agree with it, that's not the point. They should. should not be able to d disagree or challenge with the method that you used in order to arrive at the decision. And that's how [48:37] Richard Webbe: Perfectly. [48:37] Darren Mitchell: to think. [48:38] Richard Webbe: Yeah. No, that is that is perfectly said. You know, we see a lot of protests happening around the world at the moment because as we know, the world's being very polarized. And I'm hoping that AI will play into that and solve that and help solve some of that. But and it is very pragmatic. But in a lot of the protesting people around the world that feel disenfranchised. A lot of them suffer from what euphemistically is uh borderline personality disorder. Now, getting back to what you said, a lot of people have we all have a percentage of mental health issues for all of us in different ways. And and Matt and I have spoken openly about how our brains work. Um, we haven't worked out how Dave's work, but that's another story. But it's very clever. Um, and so what happens for someone in there? Um, going what you said, they can't operate in the gray. They can only operate in the black and the white. So there Only the oppressed or the oppressive. And if you live your life like that, you get very angry because everyone's guilty or everyone's a victim. And there is no, so you know, when you come to your decision and you say here's how come it's okay being wrong because some new information introduced, it's in the gray, you're not, you haven't parked your brain and saying this is how it is, and away we go. So it's a very interesting intersection of psychology, knowledge, learning, and how we're going to go forward. The reason I call my company syllogism is it perfectly. describes from Aristotle what fuzzy logic is. You don't, it's logic, but you don't have to be right or wrong because as more information comes in, it'll shift the answer, and that's how AI works. [50:11] Dave Pengelley: So I think I think um at the the risk of this uh di divulging into divulging uh diverting more deeply into uh political analysis, uh which we're not a political podcast, but it is it is relevant to the point around all this AI stuff that if you're abdicating your thinking to the AI, then that It's gonna put you on the back foot because now you are not taking personal responsibility. You are reducing your [50:34] Richard Webbe: Yep. [50:34] Dave Pengelley: personal agency. And I think that's more critical than ever. Um, I love this one that Matt just shared with me, this new term that I hadn't heard before. Meat proxy. A person who forwards AI generated text, code, or other output without reading, understanding, or validating it. The person acts only as a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient. [50:53] Matt: It's gonna stay around. [50:55] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, meat [50:56] Richard Webbe: Mate [50:56] Dave Pengelley: proxy. [50:56] Richard Webbe: why the word mate? Why are we saying [50:58] Dave Pengelley: Because we're [50:58] Richard Webbe: that? [50:59] Dave Pengelley: humans, we're the meat. So a [51:00] Richard Webbe: Uh [51:00] Dave Pengelley: proxy [51:00] Richard Webbe: the meat [51:00] Dave Pengelley: is [51:01] Richard Webbe: and [51:01] Dave Pengelley: a [51:01] Richard Webbe: sandwich. [51:01] Dave Pengelley: go-between. And so so [51:03] Richard Webbe: Okay. [51:03] Dave Pengelley: so we're the go-between between the AI and the other person. We're we're the proxy and we're made of meat. So [51:07] Richard Webbe: You [51:07] Dave Pengelley: rather [51:07] Richard Webbe: could all [51:07] Dave Pengelley: than [51:08] Richard Webbe: you could call it meat slop proxy [51:10] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [51:10] Richard Webbe: or or casserole, which is what meat slop is. I'm [51:13] Dave Pengelley: Um [51:14] Richard Webbe: coming up with more words all the time, Matt. I hope we can use [51:16] Dave Pengelley: look, [51:16] Richard Webbe: them. [51:16] Dave Pengelley: I mean all this, all this just in one of my wins of the week, something I I'm building for for my client engagements is because you have agents and you go back and forth with them, but then a chat feed is not the best way to actually manage data and interactions. And then when it comes back to how did you get to that decision? Or where was that from? It's like, oh, it was in that chat thread. Which chat thread was I talking with the AI back and forth about this, discussing possibility um solutions for a customer. Uh and we often talk about probabilistic versus deterministic. So one of the things I've been burning all my tokens building um this week, and it's still in flight being built. But uh like I'm building a system where I can, you know, have intake where I can bring in transcripts and sources and use the AI to process that and then actually break it out and like reveal the workflows, the systems, the stakeholders. The measures. And so that way the data is managed. And yes, the AI can still help me do analysis of it. But I actually have now a place where I can see and manage and do things and understand this is just demo data, this isn't a real client, don't worry. Um, but just this ability to then show like the thought pattern and the reasoning and to be able to reflect on all the information versus just having, I gave it to my agent, my agent told me this. Um, and I think we talk about, you know, sometimes AI is the solution, sometimes AI. Is the tool that helps you build the solution. So the focus I've got is like how much of this can I make deterministic where it's actually very set rules and the AI is just helping with some of that breaking down that that that sort of information transfer and and data loading piece more than doing all the solutioning. [52:46] Richard Webbe: I'm excited because I have a couple of technical questions for Matt and yourself. The first one is, tell me about the company Cresta, which I came across in the last uh month or two. You're so funny. They're an agentic management platform for customer conversations. [53:06] Dave Pengelley: I've not heard of Cresta. [53:07] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [53:08] Matt: What [53:08] Richard Webbe: Well, [53:09] Matt: do you want to know? [53:10] Richard Webbe: C-R-E-S-T-A. Just your view on it, how it manages agentic conversations and customer development. They're a very clever startup out of Sunnyvale, a friend of mine who's running them in APAC, and I wanted to get your opinion on it. [53:23] Matt: Um, well, I mean, I can I can show you my exact opinion right now as far as What [53:30] Richard Webbe: But [53:30] Matt: I'm able [53:30] Richard Webbe: mainly [53:31] Matt: to [53:31] Richard Webbe: around contact centers and bots and interactions and using agents. The site [53:35] Matt: just [53:35] Richard Webbe: can't be. [53:38] Matt: it's really good. There [53:39] Dave Pengelley: No, [53:39] Richard Webbe: It's [53:40] Matt: they're [53:40] Richard Webbe: Krista. [53:40] Dave Pengelley: no. Cresta with a C. [53:43] Richard Webbe: C Krista [53:44] Dave Pengelley: This [53:44] Richard Webbe: with a C. [53:44] Dave Pengelley: one. [53:45] Richard Webbe: Thank you. [53:48] Richard Webbe: It's [53:48] Dave Pengelley: Come [53:48] Matt: going not to be [53:48] Richard Webbe: all [53:48] Dave Pengelley: on, [53:48] Richard Webbe: about [53:48] Dave Pengelley: man. [53:49] Richard Webbe: using agents to manage it customer conversations. [53:51] Dave Pengelley: I [53:52] Richard Webbe: So [53:52] Dave Pengelley: think I think we're gonna see a lot of these different platforms coming up and they're all gonna, you know, have their own ways of doing the same thing. Just like, you know, there's there's twenty CRM companies. So there's gonna be twenty customer client agent management systems and and agent hierarchy systems and agent coding factories and it's all there's gonna be a matter of personal preference. Some are gonna do some things better than others, but I I I can't speak specifically to Cresta because I've never looked at it before. [54:17] Matt: Oh, [54:17] Richard Webbe: Okay, [54:17] Matt: I [54:18] Richard Webbe: and [54:18] Matt: can [54:18] Richard Webbe: the [54:18] Matt: say [54:18] Richard Webbe: next question I have is cursor. [54:21] Dave Pengelley: Cursor [54:21] Richard Webbe: C [54:22] Dave Pengelley: is [54:22] Richard Webbe: U [54:22] Dave Pengelley: Mass [54:22] Richard Webbe: R [54:22] Dave Pengelley: Lane. [54:23] Richard Webbe: S O R. What? What is yes, absolutely. I'm looking at Matt. [54:28] Dave Pengelley: But [54:28] Matt: what [54:28] Dave Pengelley: what [54:28] Matt: do you [54:28] Dave Pengelley: what [54:28] Matt: want [54:28] Dave Pengelley: is [54:29] Matt: to know? [54:29] Dave Pengelley: the question? It's a it's a deep bucket. [54:33] Richard Webbe: Tell me a bit about your thoughts on the company cursor, C U R S O Rep. [54:37] Matt: Okay, so Cursor has been acquired by SpaceX AI to begin with, which already should be giving you enough signals as to the trajectory of how everything's moving. Um they right now, I would say, have the best publicly facing and available cloud agent infrastructure and agentic [54:54] Richard Webbe: Cool. [54:54] Matt: layer in general. [54:56] Richard Webbe: Yep. [54:56] Matt: Between them and the SpaceX AI team, they've come out with GrockBot. Which is probably the best version of a commercial, you know, easy-to-use agentic layer for people to use as a bit of a relay and task delegation system. Genuinely, Cursor has the most amount of data in the world as far as people using coding agents. And they were one of the first successful VS clone, VS Code clones that built in agents into their infrastructure and have been literally capturing all this telemetry evidence. since. Now [55:31] Richard Webbe: Wow. [55:31] Matt: you now look at SpaceX as a company that also has a lot of data. You know, their entire business is basically harvesting data to then optimize and keep moving. So [55:41] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [55:41] Matt: imagine those two companies merging that and then creating LLMs based on that series of learning. [55:50] Richard Webbe: That's [55:50] Matt: That [55:50] Richard Webbe: exciting. [55:50] Matt: is literally what the Grok models are. And you know Grok [55:54] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [55:54] Matt: 4.6 right now is fairly capable. If you're used [55:57] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [55:57] Matt: to working with Fable and Sol, you'll probably Probably not think it's as good, but it is very, very useful. And then as soon as 4.7 comes out, that's going to be equivalent to you know your soul right now. I'm not even going to talk about Opus because it's useless. Um, but yeah, Cursor as a company are doing fantastic things. They're owned by AnySphere. So you basically can go look up Anysphere or the other the other company they in integrated with was, I think, called Maven or something like that. Um fantastic layer. It's just a lot to learn. So I would say Say right now, uh, if you're getting into everything, the best subscription you can still jump into is the general chat GPT one. But if you start needing to actually do cloud compute, cloud agent type stuff, then cursor is definitely where you should go. [56:45] Richard Webbe: I had heard heard all that, but it had so much more credibility coming from yourself, Matt. So thank you. [56:51] Matt: Like you know, you know, like Dave talks about harnesses a lot and and agents and like you know the way that you wrap an LLM and control it. If you literally You take the same model and you put it through all of the different agent harnesses, it's pretty much gonna perform the best in the cursor harness because of the way that they've wired that together. [57:09] Richard Webbe: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. [57:12] Dave Pengelley: Brilliant. [57:13] Richard Webbe: Thought we'd throw some technical stuff in there because [57:16] Dave Pengelley: No. [57:16] Richard Webbe: we were all getting soft and cuddly [57:17] Dave Pengelley: It's [57:18] Richard Webbe: there with Darren [57:18] Dave Pengelley: it's [57:18] Richard Webbe: about [57:18] Dave Pengelley: it's [57:19] Richard Webbe: people [57:19] Dave Pengelley: fine. [57:19] Richard Webbe: and feelings. [57:20] Dave Pengelley: There [57:20] Darren Mitchell: And [57:20] Dave Pengelley: in [57:20] Darren Mitchell: that [57:21] Dave Pengelley: in [57:21] Darren Mitchell: stuff [57:21] Dave Pengelley: the news [57:21] Darren Mitchell: just goes [57:21] Dave Pengelley: headlines. [57:22] Darren Mitchell: straight over here for me. [57:23] Dave Pengelley: So so i as far as news goes, something else that um companies, organizations, people might be interested in understanding or learning. About is Vercel launched a new site called IsAgentic, uh, where you can put in any website and ask for a score. So I'll put in our podcast website and it goes through and runs a whole bunch of tests to see whether agents are able to read and understand your site. So I haven't had a chance to run the um review across this one yet, but gives you the whole prompt. So it will generate a prompt that you can give to your agents of all the different things that thinks you should uh fix and Review, but it sort of go, what does I ARPredispod.com do? Explain it back to me. And it shows the steps the agent took to go through, read our website, understand what it was doing. Um, how did the agent do what it needed to do? How did it find? Like, where is the content? What's exposed to agents? So, in this world of you know, making your content and your brand um agent friendly, this is a pretty useful resource for free that you can do. And then when you uh run your site through here and then make some improvements, so if I go To like [58:30] Richard Webbe: That's [58:31] Dave Pengelley: um [58:31] Richard Webbe: exciting. [58:32] Dave Pengelley: like I think I ran the process over this one that started off at about 80 and now I've got this one up to a hundred. [58:39] Richard Webbe: Wow. [58:39] Dave Pengelley: Um [58:40] Richard Webbe: That is exciting. [58:41] Dave Pengelley: yeah. So this is uh a useful resource for people if you're looking at your website and wanting to know how you can uh help rank and and make it more agent-friendly, is hyphenagentic.com. [58:54] Richard Webbe: You're typing the exceptional sales letter in there right now, Darren. [59:00] Darren Mitchell: I know I got a bit of work to do on that one, Richard. [59:04] Richard Webbe: It's all about you. It's not our websites. It's our human tasks and elements [59:09] Darren Mitchell: That's [59:09] Richard Webbe: that do it. [59:10] Darren Mitchell: it. That's [59:10] Richard Webbe: That's a [59:10] Matt: Speaking [59:10] Darren Mitchell: it. [59:10] Richard Webbe: great thanks, [59:11] Matt: of the [59:11] Richard Webbe: Dave. [59:11] Matt: um the [59:12] Richard Webbe: You [59:12] Matt: the [59:12] Richard Webbe: guys [59:12] Matt: concept [59:12] Richard Webbe: always [59:13] Matt: of [59:13] Richard Webbe: come [59:13] Matt: making [59:13] Richard Webbe: up with [59:13] Matt: your [59:13] Richard Webbe: something interesting. Sorry, [59:14] Matt: Dave, [59:15] Richard Webbe: Matt. [59:15] Matt: like the the concept of making your website more agentic as well, like if people haven't realized yet the the web mcp protocol has just been sort of released and announced. [59:25] Dave Pengelley: Oh, how it [59:26] Matt: Yeah, [59:26] Richard Webbe: Oh, [59:27] Matt: web [59:27] Richard Webbe: that's [59:27] Matt: mcp. [59:28] Richard Webbe: exciting. [59:28] Matt: So you you think of community. Computer use and browser use agent stuff, you know, yeah, it's existed, it works okay. Um, but WebMCP is where your agents literally get the exact tool calls and schemas that they require to do the job that they need to do on your site. So imagine, you know, you you've got something where they can sign up or they can actually place an order or input some sort of data into your system. You expose it with WebMCP, and all of a sudden now they have all the [01:00:00] Dave Pengelley: That's very cool. Yeah, I need to look at that for my app. [01:00:05] Richard Webbe: That's [01:00:05] Dave Pengelley: But [01:00:05] Richard Webbe: cool. [01:00:05] Dave Pengelley: uh [01:00:06] Richard Webbe: You know [01:00:06] Dave Pengelley: this [01:00:06] Richard Webbe: what? [01:00:06] Dave Pengelley: is [01:00:06] Richard Webbe: You know what puts my brain in a spin. I know, Matt, you're just talking about you, you've got so many questions, me too. [01:00:12] Darren Mitchell: No, [01:00:12] Richard Webbe: So I'm [01:00:12] Darren Mitchell: could not [01:00:12] Richard Webbe: sitting [01:00:12] Darren Mitchell: be scored. [01:00:13] Richard Webbe: there. I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there. I've got a website and I want to capture customers. So I get my AI to check how good it is with it with other AI for finding me and connecting me. And then I start to get my AI to reverse engineer my website to [01:00:29] Dave Pengelley: a good idea. [01:00:30] Richard Webbe: gets a bit better than someone else's, does that become a race to infinity between other people using the same tools? [01:00:37] Dave Pengelley: Well, [01:00:37] Matt: How does [01:00:37] Dave Pengelley: I mean [01:00:38] Matt: this any difference [01:00:38] Dave Pengelley: it's [01:00:38] Matt: to standard advertising? [01:00:40] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, and it said on and your SEO stuff, all that still applies. This is as a Gentec isn't making sure you've got the best SEO ready searchable website. It just says, hey, can robots come and read it and how hard is it for them to know? Because like it might like I looked at one and it took 30 steps and had to do all these general web searches and comparisons because the SEO data was Wasn't on there. So it worked it out. But it still comes back to what is the content like we talked about there. And like, what is what are you telling them about your company on your website? And that's where I think that some of the story brand stuff comes in, where it's like, what problem are you solving for them? And and remove the cognitive load, make it really easy for people to understand. If people can understand what you're what you do and how to access you from your site, then the robots will know. So you but you need to then not just have the content, but make the content robot accessible, which is what this site is really helping you assess at measure and do, you still need good content. And I think one of the things with this is this is agentic side as the technologies evolve, like Matt said, web MCPs has come out. I'm I have no doubt that will continue to add new tests and new metrics on this. And so this is one of those regular things as part of your general review where you need to go through and go, okay, am I still agentic? I got 100 today. Will I get a hundred tomorrow? I don't know. [01:01:53] Richard Webbe: Let me pose a crazy situation. So I'm in a very competitive market, and the way my website prevents information Is very competitive and critical. I write an agent to check my competitors, to give it an MCP or a you know a AI score, and then I tell it now go back to my website and change it immediately so I get a higher score than them. And then they set up an agent to do the same on mine. That's why I say, is it a race to infinity? [01:02:22] Matt: Uh it's literally no different to any other media that exists right now. So you [01:02:27] Richard Webbe: Okay. [01:02:27] Matt: think of old journalism websites like want to get the the hits there first they want to have the scoop you know like why why is it called a scoop you know the you're you're getting that that large just chunk of the market and the the whole thing there is but there's there's a lot of things there's literally no difference to any other thing that exists right now it's just the speed that it can happen so the like like SEO works aeo works ads work it it it's your product you your product has to actually be somewhat relevant To the person, if it's if it's a crap product, similar to what Darren said before, doesn't matter how much the company believes in it, if nobody else understands [01:03:06] Richard Webbe: It's just [01:03:06] Matt: it, [01:03:06] Richard Webbe: I get it. [01:03:07] Matt: you [01:03:07] Richard Webbe: It's just [01:03:07] Matt: know. [01:03:07] Richard Webbe: lipstick on a pig, I get it. [01:03:09] Matt: Yeah. So with regard like people talk about AEO a lot, like agent engine optimization is pretty much what is Agentich is doing. But you kind of need to give the agents really obvious comparisons. Like, why would you go to this? Doesn't you don't need to tell them all the good things. You say, like the comparison because they know of other things and they're gonna do a bit of research. So if you can give a comparison, Comparison to other things, clear, honest language, probably human language would be nice, [01:03:35] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [01:03:35] Matt: then [01:03:35] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [01:03:36] Matt: it will actually be able to distinguish and apply to the individual better. [01:03:41] Richard Webbe: Good explanation. Thanks, man. [01:03:43] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, but um certainly doing that weekly review and and the companies are already doing that. They're looking at Google Search Console, they're looking at their Google Analytics, they're looking at Google Trends, they're they're running those weekly reviews. Um [01:03:56] Matt: Did you just say weekly? [01:03:58] Dave Pengelley: I don't know what companies are doing. I'm I'm I'm doing some weekly reports myself, um, because you know, you set up uh robots to go do that for you and give you an analysis and make changes. You're saying daily, hourly, you could do it more frequently. [01:04:09] Richard Webbe: Every [01:04:09] Matt: Yeah, [01:04:09] Richard Webbe: second, [01:04:09] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [01:04:10] Richard Webbe: you [01:04:10] Matt: that [01:04:10] Richard Webbe: can [01:04:10] Matt: was [01:04:10] Richard Webbe: go [01:04:10] Matt: gonna [01:04:10] Dave Pengelley: Yeah. [01:04:10] Richard Webbe: to [01:04:10] Matt: be [01:04:10] Richard Webbe: normal [01:04:10] Matt: my point. [01:04:11] Dave Pengelley: Yeah, [01:04:11] Richard Webbe: pressure. [01:04:11] Dave Pengelley: yeah. No not not less often, do it more often 'cause it's automated, yep. Um but yeah, that peop companies will already be doing a lot of that already. Their tools exist for doing that. Um, but this is, you know, a new lens on it with the agentics side beyond the traditional SEO content search results, etcetera. Um [01:04:30] Matt: Exists right now, like Cursor, um, Richard, what you said before, one of the main engineers at Cursor, it's one of the main ones that actually put Grockbot together. So SpaceX, AI um engineer mixed with Cursor, mixed with all of the things. I got a crazy, crazy person that is extremely intelligent that I'm trying to like learn from a lot at the moment. They literally have these things that are constantly scanning for discourse about their products. You know, what do people want? Why do they want it? You know, all these. things and then as soon as there's multiple hits about one certain thing it goes and creates that software change and automatically deploys it because they know that that's what people need and the [01:05:10] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [01:05:11] Matt: project the the whole product engineer sort of cycle is therefore like a closed [01:05:16] Richard Webbe: Yeah. [01:05:16] Matt: loop [01:05:17] Richard Webbe: You know, one uh looking at that map, one of the best ads that I ever saw, um, you know, Apple used to do the best ones, but it was a Microsoft one and it was promoting their acceptance of.NET. And it was a really great ad. So you see. This very um, I suppose, uh um superficial woman walks into a car, a luxury car um place, and she's with the boyfriend, and he says, What color car, darling? And she goes, I want a blue one. And then it flashes to the robot that was spraying the car red, and it immediately changes at that second to blue. And she's oh, I want the wheels white. And and so that's a great, you know, that was a great example for lay people to learn how quickly dot net can complete the marketing product cycle and I but with AI I'm thinking that's that's gonna happen now right people are gonna you know just in time manufacturing just in time marketing um just in time messaging it's just that's why I say a race to infinity if we've got bots out there every second monitoring the competitors and that information comes back it's going to get fed straight into [01:06:21] Dave Pengelley: But [01:06:21] Richard Webbe: the product [01:06:21] Dave Pengelley: but back [01:06:22] Richard Webbe: cycle [01:06:22] Dave Pengelley: to Darren's point, there's a lot of people that are doing nothing because it's all too hard, too scary, too overwhelming. And so that's where you've got to be careful with your Early mover advantage that you actually do it well, you know, rush into slop, [01:06:33] Darren Mitchell: Yeah. [01:06:33] Dave Pengelley: but you know, there are now is a time where some people will get a leg up. [01:06:41] Dave Pengelley: Yes, yes. Well, we are we are well past the hour. Thank you, Darren. Really appreciate your time and contributing to the [01:06:46] Darren Mitchell: Guys, [01:06:46] Dave Pengelley: chat. It [01:06:46] Darren Mitchell: thank [01:06:46] Dave Pengelley: was [01:06:46] Darren Mitchell: you [01:06:46] Dave Pengelley: great to [01:06:47] Darren Mitchell: so [01:06:47] Dave Pengelley: have [01:06:47] Darren Mitchell: much. [01:06:47] Dave Pengelley: you with [01:06:47] Darren Mitchell: It's [01:06:47] Dave Pengelley: us. [01:06:47] Darren Mitchell: been a pleasure being on the on the [01:06:49] Richard Webbe: One [01:06:49] Darren Mitchell: pod. [01:06:49] Richard Webbe: more [01:06:49] Darren Mitchell: So [01:06:49] Richard Webbe: plug [01:06:49] Darren Mitchell: um [01:06:49] Richard Webbe: via podcast, [01:06:50] Darren Mitchell: thank [01:06:50] Richard Webbe: mate. [01:06:50] Darren Mitchell: you. [01:06:50] Richard Webbe: How do we find it? [01:06:52] Darren Mitchell: How do you find it? Well, I I saw when Dave plugged in the um the Iogenic there, we couldn't score my my websites. The Exceptional Sales Leader Podcast is on all the reputable podcasting platforms and also some dodgy ones as well. So um just plug it into Google or LinkedIn is the best place to find it. And uh [01:07:11] Richard Webbe: And [01:07:11] Darren Mitchell: yeah, [01:07:12] Richard Webbe: we'll find you [01:07:12] Darren Mitchell: talk [01:07:12] Richard Webbe: on LinkedIn [01:07:12] Darren Mitchell: to [01:07:13] Richard Webbe: if we want to book you for some sales consulting or training and [01:07:16] Darren Mitchell: what's [01:07:16] Richard Webbe: stuff. [01:07:16] Darren Mitchell: up, man? Say that [01:07:17] Richard Webbe: We'll [01:07:17] Darren Mitchell: again. [01:07:17] Richard Webbe: we're gonna find you on LinkedIn to try [01:07:19] Darren Mitchell: Yeah, [01:07:19] Richard Webbe: and get some [01:07:19] Darren Mitchell: best [01:07:19] Richard Webbe: sales [01:07:20] Darren Mitchell: places. [01:07:20] Richard Webbe: training. [01:07:20] Darren Mitchell: It's funny because people ask me all the time, have you got a business card? I said, No, I remember business cards for 20 years. It's um LinkedIn is the best one, but um, as you've got on the uh on the on the screen there exceptionalsales leader dot com is the uh is the web address so [01:07:36] Dave Pengelley: Very [01:07:36] Darren Mitchell: um [01:07:37] Dave Pengelley: good. [01:07:37] Darren Mitchell: an absolute pleasure having having the opportunity to speak with you guys so uh keep up the great work [01:07:41] Dave Pengelley: Brilliant. Make sure you tell all your friends. And uh, we're uh gonna have a comic book version of you by the end of the week published out with uh key conversation moments from today's chat. So uh look out for [01:07:53] Darren Mitchell: look [01:07:53] Dave Pengelley: that one [01:07:53] Darren Mitchell: forward [01:07:53] Dave Pengelley: too. [01:07:54] Darren Mitchell: to that [01:07:55] Dave Pengelley: All right, [01:07:55] Richard Webbe: All [01:07:55] Dave Pengelley: well, thanks, [01:07:56] Richard Webbe: IR [01:07:56] Dave Pengelley: fellas. [01:07:56] Richard Webbe: smoke. [01:07:56] Dave Pengelley: Thanks, everyone, appreciate you, [01:07:58] Darren Mitchell: thanks [01:07:58] Dave Pengelley: and if [01:07:58] Darren Mitchell: gents [01:07:58] Dave Pengelley: you are Joining us for the new or the first time or the last time, um, make sure you like, subscribe, hit the bell icon. We are now, um, I launched our first, but didn't even talk about it on the show today because we're out of time. Launched our first pre-recorded piece of content since we started the uh the podcast. Uh, with just, I'm calling it field notes, with just like this show. It's not hype, it's not like all like, yeah, this is the best TEDx thing. It's just, you know, here's my real experiences. Here's some of my real learnings from the week. Comment if you uh wish. So [01:08:30] Richard Webbe: Yeah, [01:08:30] Dave Pengelley: Thanks, Matt. [01:08:31] Richard Webbe: I [01:08:31] Dave Pengelley: It means [01:08:31] Richard Webbe: agree. [01:08:32] Dave Pengelley: a lot. Uh brilliant. All right. Well, let's uh play us out. And thank you all. Thank you, everyone. We'll [01:08:36] Richard Webbe: Thanks, [01:08:36] Dave Pengelley: see you next [01:08:37] Richard Webbe: Danny. [01:08:37] Dave Pengelley: time. [01:08:37] Richard Webbe: Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Darren.