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BNI & The Power of One
BNI 782: Business Matters 114 - AI is Here!
00:20:59
In this episode of Business Matters we discuss AI and the importance of learning what tools exist and how they can help your business.
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- [00:27]
A
Welcome back to Business Matters, part of B and I Power of One. Tim Roberts. With me, Michael Martin.
- [00:33]
B
Michael, good morning.
- [00:34]
A
How goes it?
- [00:36]
B
It's going good. I, I think by the time this comes out, I will be either on a plane coming back from the Dominican or just getting back.
- [00:45]
A
So, yeah, we're trying to get ahead a little bit as you get to go on vacation, which is nice. Lucky you. Annual tradition for you.
- [00:54]
B
Yes, yes.
- [00:55]
A
Which I think is important to have those kind of things. Something that like, of work towards and look forward to. We've talked in the past about the importance of rest and. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
- [01:03]
B
You know, what's really funny is, you know, it's. It's a. It's a good time. It's been the same group of people for a lot of years now, and you can definitely tell we're getting a little bit older by. By virtue of the fact that none of us stays up very late anymore. But one of the nice things about it actually is after a couple days of just kind of settling into the vacation, we talk about business almost the entire time.
- [01:32]
A
Yeah.
- [01:32]
B
But it's done in a very relaxed, you know, atmosphere and, and it's not done at a hurried pace. So it's actually kind of fun because I come out of there with ideas, as do most of my friends. And, you know, we live in lots of places all over the country and we just kind of meet in one place once a year. But it's kind of interesting to see what people have been doing, where they're at, kind of what thoughts they have and all. So I always look forward to it. And you know, when I go down to the beach, I. I'm old school. I. In my little beach bag, I always have a pad of paper and a pen and, you know, I'll write things down as either I think about them or I hear about it from others and, you know, just gives us something kind of fun to talk about.
- [02:14]
A
Yeah, the. You guys are also traveling, I think, during a politically heightened time. Said, how's that enter into the conversation?
- [02:24]
B
Yeah, well, you know, it'll be funny because there's. There's definitely people who lean, you know, left of center and right of center in the group. But, you know, we've known each other for so long, we know which buttons to push for each other, but nobody takes it all that seriously. So thankfully, you know, we'll see because it'll be a couple days after the inauguration. Yeah, we leave and meet.
- [02:51]
A
But I saw, I saw a funny.
- [02:54]
B
Funny, warm place is probably going to temper. Yes, a little bit.
- [02:58]
A
I saw a funny, like, meme thing. So with President Carter's funeral, there was the whole image of President Obama sitting next to President Trump and how they were, like, laughing and stuff. And the meme said, here these two are sitting two together, laughing, while you won't talk to your mom about the difference between the two. I'm kind of thinking it's just like. It's like, you know, I mean, we all have friends in different places and. And when it comes to those things and. And it's okay. We can still love each other. Is the hatred.
- [03:25]
B
Exactly, Exactly.
- [03:27]
A
All right. That'll be the extent of our political discussion on this. But we've been talking about the importance of training and. And again, that being a hindsight, a big focus for me this year, just getting back to basics, fundamentals, those kind of things. But also we talked about the importance of learning new skills and staying on top of the world as it goes and changes. And, you know, the big term out there now that everybody's either diving into or running away from maybe is all around AI. And I think it can be a little bit of a confusing topic for a lot of present company included, and one that I think a lot of people think of incorrectly. Fear kind of shuts them down. And maybe, maybe they're completely afraid of it, or maybe they're afraid of trying to invest and learn about something so dramatically, what seems to be dramatically new. You were saying before that it's. You want to kind of talk about how it's not really a new thing.
- [04:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think the way we describe AI is really new. And it's. It's kind of. It's. It's a hot thing. It's an. It's an in thing you hear about on news because from an investor perspective, you heard about it in robotics and all of that. But, you know, if you think of AI as, you know, something equivalent to speed. We've had computers for 70 years, and they took human tasks where you would have large groups of people doing manual calculations on things, and you create the computer and suddenly you have this something of an intelligent thing that can do all of that work and replacing all of those people and do it in a fraction of the time, you know, without getting sick, without, you know, all that kind of stuff. So the computer's been around for a long time, people. So I think, you know, we have to be careful as business people not to get caught up in what, any kind of incorrect definitions of air and how they might impact your business or your ability to do business going forward and that. And I think, you know, we were talking off air, I said, you know, people, there's. There's this camp of people that has this outright fear of AI just for the sake. They think the robots are going to take over and it's going to eliminate, you know, humanity from the equation.
- [05:44]
A
And I've seen iRobot and.
- [05:47]
B
Yeah, you've seen iRobot. Lots of movies about it. Very, very dystopian future type of stuff. I forget the. The other movie there where Tom Cruise was the policeman and they did future crimes. Right.
- [06:00]
A
And there's minority.
- [06:02]
B
Literally, I won't mention them because I feel like if you mention them online, they start coming after you. But there are companies today that literally go to law enforcement groups and sell this precognition type of service, like how to predict predictive criminality and things like that, which is based on that. That movie Minority Report, I think is.
- [06:24]
A
The name of the movie. It is.
- [06:26]
B
And, you know, so that's a form of AI that people are really, really afraid of. But I think largely, and I know you touched on it in our. In one of the last podcasts we did, was that most people actually don't know what it is and what are the practical implications for your business. You know, until there are autonomous robots walking around the planet, which is still a long way away, despite watching episodes of Black Mirror and those dogs with little guns on their heads.
- [06:58]
A
Oh, maybe. Have you seen what Tesla and. And Nvidia is putting out at CEO? And they do see the presentation at CES where the robots came up much like Iron man style from the Iron man movie, when it was like these robots came up. I know it's coming a lot quicker than you might think.
- [07:14]
B
It's fun to look at and it's cool. But is that robot going to be able to get into a complex series of plumbing diagnostics and fix a leak? Eventually, maybe. Probably likely, but I think it's still pretty far down the road. So it may not. Things like AI may not apply to you. I think what you're doing as it relates to how can we use tools to kind of magnify our business, which is what you said your intention of learning about AI yourself is. And how do you apply that internally? I would say there's a lot of practical things that AI is in development to do for you that's outside of autonomously driven vehicles, which is the big push right now. But don't get involved in the HYPE of people who are using the term AI to sell you on something. Apple very recently said the latest iPhone up the iOS updates got this AI nada. And all these people are going, yeah, but it's not doing anything different. So there's people that are putting an AI label on things because they think, well, that's the hot new thing.
- [08:25]
A
Right.
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B
But what is that AI actually doing for you? Or is it actually AI? HP's done the same thing, Intel's done the same thing. All these companies are touting AI, AI, AI. Every ad you're looking at, it's like using AI to service you better. Are they really? Or are they just using the same things they were doing before? But they slap an AI label on it because they, they know that people are interested in the topic. So I think as a business owner you should know what AI is as best you can, you know. And are there tools that use practical AI that might help you either now or down the road that you should keep an eye on? But I think for most people, their day to day, not a lot's going to happen.
- [09:11]
A
Yeah, yes, yes.
- [09:15]
B
Somebody's still got to build all this stuff.
- [09:17]
A
Yes. But there's also, I think the point, I think the point you're making, which is true, is the term AI is probably overused. It's been just, it's like Google, it's just going to be a new term that just become kind of exists. Right. But I do think the evolution of technology, whether it's AI or it's been existing, is changing rapidly. And there are a lot of tools now that weren't available eight months ago, six months ago, a year ago that could dramatically change or make a positive impact on your business that I think a lot of people aren't researching, aren't looking into out of either fear. Right. So there's an ignorance part to it. Like I fully admit I'm a hundred percent ignorant right now to this, to this stuff. I went to a meeting with fellow executive directors and there are people light years ahead of me on this kind of stuff that to me always excites me of like, oh, let's like go figure this out. But to some people that can be like, oh my God, I'm too far behind the eight ball, I can't ever catch up or I don't have the skill sets or the knowledge base or whatever. And so it's kind of ostrich head in the sand. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and not worry about it. And Then that could be a detriment or I think there's a misbelief too that a lot of people hear the term and they think big company. Because you do you hear it on CNBC and you see it in these investments and you hear these big companies talking about big things and go oh, AI is something for big corporations. I'm a small business, right. And I think that's a mistake. So like I told you and my ready to share all the stuff that we're, we're looking at because there's a lot of stuff that we're looking at that will never work or won't be right or whatever. And so I don't want to promise anything, but we're a face to face organization, networking organization. I would say we're probably on the list of things people would think hey, I would never be a part of, but that is not true. I think there's a lot of opportunities even for us to make things more efficient for member experiences, make things more efficient operationally, make things more efficient even from a potential new member standpoint. Where these, these tools and yeah, they all get labeled at but these tools, right.
- [11:32]
B
I think that's, but that's, I think that's a very important distinction because technological advancements, the pace of technology improvement is, is just as capabilities of computers and technology increase, the speed with which new technologies emerge, you know, is, is going to increase as well to your point. So, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's AI, right? It's, it's tools to get to, to do things more efficiently. And that's existed forever. That, that's existed for literally thousands of years. You can track the history of technology and there's, you know, it used to be a really slow pace and then as soon as a new technology comes up, the next leap of technology is a much shorter time frame and so on and so on and so on up to where we are today. So always be on the lookout for tools that can increase your efficiency and all that. The thing about AI is, you know, artificial intelligence, meaning it actually replaces the human being altogether and how it processes things. I don't know if a face to face business that's kind of built on networking and built on, you know, in your case in bni, givers gain that type of thing about being. I don't know if AI is going to either change that fundamentally or not. It may create tools, it may create pathways to gain new members. It may increase the way we access knowledge, the speed with which we have knowledge. You know, because think about it, all these things now that are out there, like ChatGPT and OpenAI and all of that, these, these LLMs, right. Large language models and how they use things, they're just digesting information that's already existent.
- [13:13]
A
Right.
- [13:14]
B
And they're just, they're digesting it so fast and able to kind of spit out a synopsis of what that information is faster than you could possibly read and do it yourself. But that is all based on previously existing things. So I think just like the backbone of new technological advancements, right. We still drive automobiles. They've been around for 130something years now. They're not that fundamentally different.
- [13:40]
A
Right.
- [13:41]
B
Four tires, a motor and some seats. I mean it's. So the, the way we construct automobiles has changed quite a bit. That's through technology. How we manufacture automobiles has changed quite a bit. But even with the fact that the assembly line and robotics technically has been around for almost 100 years, it's still largely built with people. So I guess what I'm saying is, you know, I think you should know what AI is. But in a way you have to do a little bit of a deep dive to kind of see like, you know, what's really AI and what's just a new piece of technology that I should.
- [14:22]
A
Yeah. Debate there would be whether you really care about getting that involved. I think the problem right now is AI, like you said, is such a prominent term that you better just accept you can't turn away from things because it gets labeled AI now because it's lab mislabeling things. Which is fine, like to your point is accurate, but for the person listening to this, it's like I don't really care about learning like about, you know, the, in depths of like artificial intelligence. I just know that I can't shy away from looking at something because it might be labeled AI right now and going like, oh, I don't understand that. Know what I'm saying? Yeah.
- [15:00]
B
And I, but I think the slippery slope is if, if you're investigating a possibility of a tool that helps you and on the surface of your research, it doesn't show you how it's going to do it. That that's where I start getting a little bit, it starts getting oily. You know, I've looked at a bunch of websites where it's like using AI to power this and power that. Then when you get in there and it's all marketing and yet they don't tell you one iota of what AI is actually doing there There are a lot of people are just repackaging and saying AI driven, but it's the same product they have before. That's rampant.
- [15:36]
A
100.
- [15:38]
B
So I, I think, does that matter.
- [15:40]
A
Though, to where, when do you think that matters, though, to the, hey, I found this tool that I think can help me. They're marketing it as AI, but it's not really AI, it's just, I, I.
- [15:51]
B
No, I think if it's a tool that's going to help you, you have to do the research on it. But, you know, and I was going to say a minute ago, you know, if you start down the road of investigating AI, you're going to learn something so that's valuable. But you may find that journey may produce different tools for you to actually look at that weren't really part of your original scope. You might have gone in saying, you know, I want to go and learn about AI, but then you find a really cool tool that maybe it has AI, maybe it doesn't, but it's still going to help you.
- [16:21]
A
Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.
- [16:23]
B
And so you, I think to your earlier point in this, you've got to use technology. And I know I talked about this probably a couple years ago, but one of the, one of the best things I ever learned was from the CFO of one of the companies I worked at when I was a, when I was a young professional. And he used to say to me all the time that we have to use technology as a competitive advantage.
- [16:49]
A
Yep.
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B
And that always stuck in my head because I wasn't in the technology space, I was in consumer goods. So I never really thought of it that way. But he said, no, we have to use technology. So, you know, we had an IT department who was constantly on the lookout for better systems, more efficient systems, whether it's point of sale, inventory, whatever, because if we could make, get ourselves more efficient through technology, we'll ultimately be more profitable.
- [17:16]
A
Right.
- [17:17]
B
And probably be able to deliver to the market at a much more rapid pace. He was absolutely right. And I have always stuck that like, we have to be looking at technology. So when I've gone into leadership roles in other companies, when I've done consulting, I'm always looking for tools. I'm looking for, hey, well, what are they missing here? What could be used. So using technology as competitive advantage is always there. Now I just think that the caution is that people shouldn't be too afraid of AI and they shouldn't be too excited about AI until they know about what it is.
- [17:52]
A
Yeah.
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B
Does that make sense?
- [17:53]
A
Yep.
- [17:54]
B
Yeah.
- [17:54]
A
Yeah. I think bigger picture. 100%. 100%. And like I said to the point of. You're like, my big issue with a lot of it is seeing people just kind of tune out because they are afraid of it and not afraid of, like the, you know, the robots taking over the world kind of stuff. Which there's. There's definitely that, but it's way over my head. Yeah. And so they shut down. And because things are being mismarketed as AI, you could be missing things that are really valuable or could be valuable because of the speed of technology change to your business. And that is the big thing when it comes to learning, is you got to always be looking for these things. You always have to, no matter what your services. You've used plumber as an example multiple times. But yeah. Whether it's a point of sale thing. Right. I know a friend of mine who's in that kind of field. And whenever there's a job done, it's, I'll get a bill three days later. And then I got to pay this bill through a check or whatever. Three days. Or mail in a credit card where I had another service guy come yesterday and it was, boop. Pulls out his phone, credit card, done. Here you go. Receipt was in my email before you left. And it's just like, you know, just keep up with these kind of things that can make you more efficient, more effective, like all those kind of stuff, right down to BNI stuff. Like I said, there's some really interesting things for us that we're researching, and I think a lot of people wouldn't think of us in those like, kind of terms. And I do think BNI's technology is one of its competitive advantages on that. If you're listening to this, you may not be utilizing as much as you should be, but it is a huge competitive advantage as well. So it just goes back to that There are always new skills to learn. Right. That, that I, you know, I've been in business. I have literally owned. Been an executive director now, so a franchise owner of BNI. It's 20 years, two weeks ago.
- [19:38]
B
Yeah.
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A
And like, so it's crazy. And so. 20 years. So. But I'm still like, like I admitted earlier, there are people light years ahead of me now in certain things that I gotta get.
- [19:50]
B
It goes to the point of the, the training. It's not, it's not just the ABCs, but you got to train your mind to keep up with what's, you know, you need to always have the ABC, but the ABCs might change over time. Right? How you do those things is going to change. So you need to be cognizant and up to date. So always be on the lookout for and and listen, if you're not on, if you're not not on the lookout for ways to be efficient and ways to improve your business, you know, you're only hurting yourself in the long term.
- [20:22]
A
So.
- [20:22]
B
And maybe even in the short term.
- [20:24]
A
Cool. Very good. Well, Mike, we're talking before you leave, so enjoy your vacation.
- [20:31]
B
Thank you very much.
- [20:32]
A
Might be back. And for everybody else, if you got any questions, comments, topics, etc, go to bnipower of1.com leave it there. If you're finding value, let us know. Leave us a review and we'll talk to you soon.