Prompt and Circumstance

Business leaders face the challenge of moving beyond AI dabbling to strategic mastery, where artificial intelligence becomes the operating system of their organization rather than just another technology overlay. The episode reveals that 90% of AI pilot projects fail due to lack of strategic alignment and proper data infrastructure. Companies like Moderna are already restructuring their entire organizations around the combined human and digital workforce concept, signaling a fundamental shift in how businesses must operate. The key insight is that AI without access to internal data is like hiring a new employee and blindfolding them - they can't contribute meaningfully to business intelligence. Successful organizations treat AI as the foundation of their operations, creating intelligent systems that provide real-time decision-making capabilities and competitive advantage.

Highlights
  • Treat AI as your organization's operating system, not just a technology add-on
  • Overcome data access fears to transform AI from helpful stranger to informed coworker
  • Shift from generative AI dabbling to agentic AI with internal data integration
  • Create closed-loop systems where AI leverages your unique business intelligence
  • Implement daily practice and pilot projects with clear ROI measurements
  • Restructure organizational thinking around combined human-digital resources
  • Develop AI-first business models rather than overlaying AI on existing processes
  • Commit to continuous learning and mastery rather than instant gratification

Important Concepts and Frameworks
  • George Leonard's Mastery Framework - Understanding the journey through dabbling, hacking, obsessing, and mastery phases
  • AI as New Employee Analogy - The importance of data access for AI effectiveness
  • Intelligent Organizations - Companies where AI provides real-time intelligence at decision moments
  • AI Native Mindset - Building businesses with AI as the foundational operating system
  • Agentic vs Generative AI - The difference between AI that acts on data versus generates content
  • Closed Loop Systems - AI implementations that leverage internal organizational data
  • Digital Transformation Roadmap - Strategic approach to becoming an AI-first organization

Tools & Resources Mentioned

Calls to Action
  1. Shift your mindset from viewing AI as technology overlay to organizational operating system
  2. Conduct a data infrastructure audit to identify accessibility barriers for AI implementation
  3. Start daily practice with agentic AI tools that can access and act on your business data
  4. Create pilot projects with clear KPIs and ROI measurements rather than random experimentation
  5. Restructure organizational thinking around combined human and digital workforce capabilities
  6. Develop an AI-first business model rather than trying to retrofit AI onto existing processes
  7. Commit to continuous learning and mastery journey rather than seeking instant gratification

Key Quotes
  • "AI without data is like hiring a new employee and blindfolding them" — Mark Redgrave
  • "We're in the dial-up stage of AI, not ready to replace airline pilots yet" — Marvin Dejean
  • "AI must be in service of strategy, not strategy in service of AI" — Mark Redgrave
  • "The companies that succeed will treat AI as their operating system" — Marvin Dejean
  • "You better learn to love the plateau because you'll spend most time there" — Mike Richardson

Chapters
00:28 — Welcome and Recent AI Developments Overview
02:02 — OpenAI Atlas Browser and AI Ecosystem Strategy
03:20 — Moderna's Bold Organizational Restructuring Move
05:57 — Marvin Dejean's AI Journey Since 2012
12:18 — The Critical Role of Data in AI Implementation
18:17 — AI as New Employee: Data Access Analogy
21:49 — Overcoming Data Infrastructure Challenges
25:21 — Future AI Interface and Browser Integration
28:24 — Mastery Framework for AI Adoption Success
31:44 — Daily Practice and Commitment to Learning
33:54 — Strategic Alignment and Avoiding Instant Gratification
38:39 — Separating Wheat from Chaff in AI Implementation
41:29 — Practical Actions for Moving Beyond AI Dabbling
44:00 — AI as Organizational Operating System Mindset
48:08 — Closing Thoughts and AI Incubator Announcement


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Our Guest on this episode

Marvin Dejean
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvindejean/

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Meet the Crew

Mike Richardson – Agility, Peer Power & Collective Intelligence
Website: https://mikerichardson.live/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/

Ryan Niemann – Software CEO & Board Operator
Website: https://bob3.pro/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanniemann/

Mark Redgrave – Agility, People and Performance
Website: https://www.shift-transform.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/

Tom Adams – Executive Coach, Advisor & Trail Blazer
Website: https://tomadams.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/


Creators and Guests

Host
Mark Redgrave
Agility, People and Performance
Host
Mike Richardson
Agility, Peer Power & Collective Intelligence
Host
Ryan Niemann
Software CEO & Board Operator
Host
Tom Adams
Executive Coach, Strategic Advisor & Thought Partner

What is Prompt and Circumstance?

It’s human-friendly banter about code, culture, and CEO reality checks—served up by Mike Richardson, Ryan Niemann, Mark Redgrave, and Tom Adams. No jargon. No hype. Just real talk from four guys who’ve seen it all, and aren’t afraid to say what everyone’s thinking.

Episode 7 - Strategic AI Implementation and Organizational Transformation Framework
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[00:00:28] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Prompt and Circumstance podcast. We are so delighted to have you all here. We are most delighted to have our special guests today here, Marvin Dejan. Welcome, Marvin. I.

[00:00:43] Marvin Dejean: Hey guys. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:46] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Welcome.

[00:00:47] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Don't

[00:00:47] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Uh, those of you watching on video will immediately notice that, uh, Ryan Neiman is not here today.

He's off on some kind of secret mission. I, I think that's right. Um, 'cause he's a, he's a Kinder James Bond oh oh seven. Kind of character. Um, even looks a little bit like Daniel Craig, doesn't he really? So he's off doing some kind of, some kind of secret mission somewhere, but he'll be back next time. I'm back.

I wasn't here. I wasn't here last time. You know, I think every, every podcast needs a loud mouth. So, you know, I'm back to play my part and I'll be hosting this time. And we're looking forward to being with each other. We always start the same way. Uh, we've got the marvelous, uh, mark Redgrave here. We've got the terrific Tom Adams here.

We always start the same way. Uh, Marvin by and enjoy. Please join in and then we'll introduce you a little bit more. Marvin, uh, what have you seen? What have you noticed? What have you heard over the last week or couple of weeks since the LAD pod last podcast, or maybe even over the last. In a month or couple of months, what have you seen sort of brewing up more and more and more clearly, or more and more and more loudly?

Uh, Tom Adams, we'll come to you first. What have you been noticing in the last period of time?

[00:02:02] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Well, I think one of the big, uh, I mean there's a couple things, but one of the big things for me is, uh, OpenAI drop their Atlas browser, uh, in the last, uh, little bit. And that's, uh, both a interesting addition to their complex mix of. In integrating, um, toolkit, not just into their chat bot, but adding that as a extra, along with what was sort of brewing underneath the surface was all of the agentic stuff sort of built into their chat tool, their desktop chat tool. So I mean, I think, I think that's a really interesting thing. Obviously Perplexity had done that with their Comet browser. And, uh, there's a DIA browser which came out of the browser company. So there's a number of different browsers that are playing now in the space because browsers are where a lot of people live.

So I think it's another layer of connection to where people spend their times, not just now in chatbots, in actually their browsers doing things as they're on the web in their toolkit. 'cause most of our toolkit now lives online. So that to me is

[00:03:07] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: cool. Excellent.

[00:03:08] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: step. Yep.

[00:03:09] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Alright. What was it called again? What was the new browser called?

[00:03:11] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Uh, the new browser from open AI is called Atlas. Yep.

[00:03:15] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Atlas. Okay. All right. We'll look out for that. Everybody go check it out. Uh, mark, what have you been noticing?

[00:03:20] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: So I, um, I, I something out like a couple of weeks ago, which like blew my mind, but I'm late to this, so like, if people already know this, but this took my brain out a couple of weeks ago. Right. And, and this is the, this is the story I read. So back in May 25, um, Moderna, who are a US-based drug company, made famous during COVID, right?

[00:03:43] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:03:43] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: made a decision. To role it the IT organization under the HR organization. Okay. Dramatic pause. Dramatic pause. Right. So, and, and when I read the article, it was in the Wall Street Journal, great article, but they're like, look, the future of our organization is in a combined human and agen. Our resources are gonna be increasingly digital,

[00:04:10] Marvin Dejean: Interesting.

[00:04:11] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: so they put

[00:04:12] Marvin Dejean: Hmm,

[00:04:12] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: lady, um, called Tracy Franklin, and her role became the chief people and Digital Technology officer. the whole IT organization. up to her. honestly, like, I was like,

[00:04:27] Marvin Dejean: Hmm.

[00:04:28] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: that is

[00:04:29] Marvin Dejean: Hmm.

[00:04:29] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: one super bold move. And I love bold moves. Like,

[00:04:33] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yep.

[00:04:33] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: like if you wanna change shit, change shit.

Right? And, and the second thing is it's like, it's like as a signal as if, if it made it, I think it made the whole world go, oh my goodness. Like we, like

[00:04:46] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: And what was her name? What was her name again? Mark Tracy. What?

[00:04:49] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: her name's Tracy Franklin.

[00:04:51] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Tracy. So look, look, Tracy, if you are listening, which you probably are, because this, uh, this podcast is getting a lot of traction, everybody. Tracy, if you are, if you're listening, please give us a call. We'd love to have you on the podcast and find out more about all of that

[00:05:05] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Yeah. Amazing

[00:05:06] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: as a by way.

[00:05:08] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: a amazing And,

[00:05:09] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Fascinating.

[00:05:09] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: when I, when I, when I tell that story to people, they, you can see everyone kind of go, they take a little

[00:05:14] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:05:15] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: sharp intake of breath and go, holy crap. Like things are changing. So yeah, I thought it

[00:05:19] Marvin Dejean: Hmm.

[00:05:20] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Talking about listeners, I will give a shout out to Michael Van Asel. I was at a networking thing, uh, probably two or three weeks ago, and he, I, I know Michael, he's on a, he is on a mentoring program that I facilitate for aspiring board members to get on boards, and he, he came up to me and said, Hey, in episode three, uh, you guys mentioned this.

Where do I find that again? And, uh, I love, I love the podcast. So we've at least got one listener, well, well now two with Tracy.

[00:05:49] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Right.

[00:05:50] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: um, we're, you know, we're doing well so far. Marvin, what have you been noticing over the last few weeks of your journey?

[00:05:57] Marvin Dejean: Well, you know, these are all, uh, fascinating, uh, fines. But, you know, just like Tom, to piggyback on, uh, what Tom was saying, I'm starting to, to see in terms of trends and also what I'm reading about. Is how, for example, open AI is now starting to embed commercial elements inside the browser itself. So you can Walmart and I think, uh, Amazon and a few others now, you don't need to leave, you

[00:06:29] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Huh.

[00:06:30] Marvin Dejean: uh, chat GPT to start shopping. So I think, uh, OpenAI has a, a very. Specific strategic plan in mind of keeping you on their ecosystem. So you're not, you know, saying, Hey, you talked to chat GPT, and then you have to go on Google, or go to Amazon to actually buy something. You can actually now start, uh, the commercial process or the buying process on their browser itself.

So I think they're, they're

[00:06:58] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Oh, nice.

[00:06:58] Marvin Dejean: an ecosystem where they want everybody to stay on there and they're shoring up to go against the Googles and the Amazons of the world, which is. Very. An interesting strategic

[00:07:08] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:09] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: think PayPal announced a deal this week

[00:07:11] Marvin Dejean: Yes, I think I, yeah,

[00:07:13] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: processing partner, I think.

[00:07:14] Marvin Dejean: exactly. So yeah. So you see the move. Yes. Like they're me putting the

[00:07:19] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: yeah.

[00:07:21] Marvin Dejean: and building that ecosystem, that commercial ecosystem.

[00:07:24] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: a new world order. Everybody is taking shape real time. Before our eyes here

[00:07:30] Marvin Dejean: gonna

[00:07:30] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: me, uh, about, what was it, two weeks ago, we were launching a new forum in San Diego, an in-person event. We had a fantastic, uh, speaker called Riley Strickland from a company called Carra ai, and I've got him booked to come and join us here on the podcast in December, which we're looking forward to.

Uh, I've seen a lot of, um, AI speakers. I haven't seen you recently, Marvin. I look forward to doing that. Uh, but I've seen a lot of AI speakers recently, both virtually and in person. He knocked it out of the park the best I've seen so far,

[00:08:09] Marvin Dejean: Nice.

[00:08:09] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: his company called Car.

[00:08:11] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: thank you. Thank you.

[00:08:12] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Oh, well, yeah. Sorry, Tom.

[00:08:14] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Thank you.

[00:08:15] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah, sorry about that.

[00:08:16] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: liver, obviously best he is ever seen. He, he says that to everybody. Pretty much like he told me I was the best he'd ever seen.

[00:08:28] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: To be

[00:08:28] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Anyway.

[00:08:29] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: I.

[00:08:29] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Tom, to be fair, we said we'd be honest, right? But like Mike, not that honest.

[00:08:34] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Okay. That. Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, anyway, back to where we were. Um, and, uh, Chara AI is rather like those, um, outsourced accounting companies where they will provide you a fractional team. Of AI implementers, and he said they normally put teams of five together and they, you know, come in and do an initial sort of 90 day assessment of where's the, you know, low hanging fruit, the medium hanging fruit, the high hanging fruit, and then they, you know, start to engage in the prioritized implementation of those things and make it happen.

And so, you know, in terms of having, you know, in the trenches on the ground. You know, use cases and case studies of real stuff being deployed. He's just got, he's just got Aon of great stuff, so we look forward to having him. But right now we have Marvin Dejan and um, Marvin is the, uh, senior managing partner of Gilead Sanders.

He started with them as a consultant, then became the managing partner. Now as a senior managing partner and, um, Marvin, you and I first met, I am a bit vague, but I think at least 10, if not 15 years ago when we were in the same keynote speaking. Agency and they got us together one time to kind of meet each other and begin fermenting stuff.

And we naturally hit it off around agility and digital transformation. And we'll find out more about where Marvin's from and where he's headed and all of that. But, uh, but we, we know that Marvin is of Haitian descent, uh, with parents from Haiti. And he got a, a, uh, project with, uh, one of the major banks there, SYA Bank,

[00:10:26] Marvin Dejean: Yep.

[00:10:27] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: went there many times and a couple of times and maybe even three times, uh, took me and we went off, uh, to a fantastic resort with the bank team and we facilitated two or three day events together.

It was an absolute blast. It's great to have you here, Marvin. So tell us, tell us a little bit about Marvin. How did, how did you get to where you are now? What was your career? And, and, and, you know, bring us forward to what are you doing now around AI in particular?

[00:10:56] Marvin Dejean: Yeah, sure. So, Mike, interestingly enough, uh, that you were, uh, mentioning, uh, our time in Haiti and Soja Bug, I just, for some certain reason, you know how your computer sometimes brings up. Pictures that you took. And I saw pictures of us the resort doing the training and I was like, my God, that was actually like, what, 12, 13 years ago? Where did the time go? But even then, right, it was the same thing for me. Um, you know, my journey has been, uh, in a previous life I can't even remember anymore. I was, uh, uh, did a lot of, uh, communications marketing, government relations sort of person, worked for a company, uh, an IT company and sort of really started getting exposed to a lot of the technologies of the time.

And back then cloud was just at the burgeoning stages. in talking to more and more people, I started realizing. You know, they were talking about things that were coming down the pike. You know, people started talking about, uh, artificial intelligence back then, and that was still in the fringes. I don't think, you know, Jeffrey Re Hinton was probably still working on neural networks at this time, but it just caught my attention and more and more I started, you know, going down this rabbit hole and I'm realizing, wait a minute, this is not, this technology is not only going to be game changing, but it's gonna change.

Everything as we know

[00:12:18] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:12:18] Marvin Dejean: way we run business

[00:12:19] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:12:20] Marvin Dejean: And the more I got deeper into it, the more it just became fascinating to me and I realized, okay, this is something that business owners are gonna need to start understanding. And the more that I gained knowledge, the more I went into, uh, some training and understanding what was about to happen.

I got on the speaking circuit. Started talking about, you know, AI started talking about blockchain and these things coming, and I would go to these talks and unlike what you just mentioned, Mike, it wasn't applause. People were like, it was crickets. People were like, what is this guy talking about? Ai? What do you. is that? What is this guy? This guy's been drinking a little too much Kool-Aid, watching too much Star Trek, you know? So back then it was just like crickets. People had no idea until one day some, uh.

[00:13:11] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: is how far Marvin? This is like five, 10.

[00:13:14] Marvin Dejean: 2012. This is 2012. I'm talking, I'm talking AI 2012. And people are like, bro, dude, you need, there's more letters to the alphabet than a and I, in case you hadn't noticed it. I said, I said, okay. And then someone said to me, look, Marvin, look, listen. The reason that people are, are, aren't applauding or scared is because they're scared. They, you're talking about a future. Where these technologies are gonna automate a lot of this stuff. They don't understand what that means. So it's a good thing that you're talking about the future, but what are you doing to help us get there?

[00:13:51] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:51] Marvin Dejean: then, you know, so that's when I pivoted a little bit and I said, okay, you know what? How could I make Gilead Sanders not just one talking about the future, but what is the strategic roadmap for companies to get there?

[00:14:03] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Hmm.

[00:14:04] Marvin Dejean: fast forward to where I am today. Where we talked about digital transformation and creating a strategic roadmap for companies to become what I call intelligent organizations, right?

So we're moving away from business models that we've known since the industrial Revolution moving, just like you said, uh, you know, moving the, the, uh, technology part from the periphery, from the IT department to really becoming the. Engine of the organization itself. So every

[00:14:36] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:14:36] Marvin Dejean: in the 21st Century is a digital company with products and services surrounding that ecosystem. Everybody is going to have a

[00:14:45] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:14:46] Marvin Dejean: company that that provides services. So

[00:14:48] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:14:49] Marvin Dejean: companies better understand what does this new model look like for your

[00:14:53] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah,

[00:14:53] Marvin Dejean: The technology, the infrastructure, the operation. It's a whole new world. So we're

[00:14:58] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: yeah,

[00:14:59] Marvin Dejean: stages and we're sort of a guide, a Sherpa, so to speak, to help them understand that

[00:15:03] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: yeah. And you're on the east coast, right? You're in the Fort Lauderdale area, Miami. And you are, you are. I mean, if people, if you just go to Marvin's, you know, LinkedIn profile. Marvin de Jean, um, you're doing a lot of stuff, uh, not just locally, but in particular locally, right? You're doing a lot of stuff. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, what's your average day, your average week, your average month look like?

Uh, Marvin.

[00:15:29] Marvin Dejean: Yeah, no. So, uh, interestingly enough for us, uh, probably this past six months, ai, the momentum has just shifted. You know, really in terms of every conversation we're having is about ai. Whether it's how you know, what do we do with it, how do we implement it, what about our people? What about AI literacy?

So, and interestingly enough, yesterday I was, uh, conducting, uh, a focus group for a group out here called CareerSource Broward. And CareerSource Broward is a, is a sort of like a state, local quasi employment. Organization. And,

[00:16:07] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Right.

[00:16:08] Marvin Dejean: maybe four or five months ago, they came out with an RFP to hire a vendor to help them write an AI playbook for the entire county. they really want us to write a playbook that helps small to medium sized businesses understand what AI is, understand what a roadmap looks like, what does. A pilot project look like? What should they be looking at? And then really what's the, what's the final ROI in implementing ai? So not implementing AI in, in a FOMO sense, right?

Fear of missing out because everybody else is doing ai, but really, I. How, what is AI really, how do we separate the, the myth from the fiction? So it was so interesting, we had about 40 to 50 employers around the table, hearing the same thing, right? So people are using chat. GPT people are using Gemini, they're, they're doing it to review contracts, but they're really using ai, sort of like a multitasker.

Right. a lot of people, especially medium sized businesses, are missing the whole entire point of ai, of feeding internal data. because their data infrastructure is still in disarray or siloed. And AI does not exist without data. If no data, no ai, and I think people are still missing that point, right?

They're still thinking AI is chat GPT, I'm telling people, look, a chat, GPT is a very small. Part, it's a generative ai, but it's a very small part of machine learning. You know, neural networks and all those things. So if you ask me when I'm spending my time, Mike, I'm spending a lot of time educating people about what AI really is and separating the myth from the fiction. So we're

[00:17:57] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Beautiful. Yeah.

[00:17:58] Marvin Dejean: phase of, of this, uh, of this, uh,

[00:18:01] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:18:02] Marvin Dejean: turning page right now.

[00:18:03] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Marvin, I had a great conversation yesterday about something you just mentioned, which was this access to data. Right? And, you know, you know, the analogy people are using, which I think is a good one. It's like AI is like, is like a new employee for your company. Start thinking of it like that. Right?

And

[00:18:17] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:18:18] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: room were like, I'm really nervous about uploading data thing. and we were, the discussion was, well here's the deal, right? You've got a new employee. Like what tasks can they do if you don't let them see? Yeah, like anything.

[00:18:34] Marvin Dejean: Right,

[00:18:35] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: if you, if you've got a new guy in the room who's very capable Right?

Can learn

[00:18:39] Marvin Dejean: right.

[00:18:40] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: But

[00:18:41] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:18:41] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: I want you to do think about this, but you can't look at the um, you can't look at this document, you can't look at the sales book. I don't trust you to touch this. It's like they can't do anything.

[00:18:52] Marvin Dejean: right.

[00:18:52] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: I thought that was actually a really neat real

[00:18:54] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: really neat. You get a new employee and part of the induction program is you, put a blindfold on their eyes,

[00:19:01] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: do anything. Yeah.

[00:19:02] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: put duct tape across their mouth and you tie one arm behind their back.

[00:19:05] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:19:06] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: a good, it's a good little analogy, right? I like that

[00:19:08] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:19:09] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: you've

[00:19:09] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:19:10] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: like, like the outcome of that conversation was guys like, we just are going to have to, you know, don't be silly. Don't put like sensitive financial information into it, but you've gotta put data into it otherwise, like it's not gonna be able to do what you want it to do.

[00:19:24] Marvin Dejean: yeah. And not only that, uh, look, the, the, the companies, uh, and the organizations that are really getting a good lift about AI are the ones who are creating closed loop systems where you're pulling in those kind of platforms to help you with your intelligence inside the organization. I tell clients all the time, look, the way AI is works is. That's why we call it intelligent organizations of the future. You want your organization to be intelligent, and intelligent is all about data and information for everybody inside the organization when they need it at the moment of decision making. So if I, if I have to, if my data is siloed, if I gotta call the marketing department or the sales department to figure out before I can move forward, we're living. Like the 18th century, right? Where boats took, you know, months or years to get from point A to point B. That's not what we're talking about here. AI has the capacity of giving people information and data and access to insights and intelligence in a matter of seconds. So we're talking about really being able to have an intelligence. Being able to, uh, uh, and tap. Mike, you and I used to talk about this a lot, the collective intelligence of

[00:20:45] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:20:45] Marvin Dejean: inside the organization at the moment of decision. How

[00:20:49] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:20:49] Marvin Dejean: do you get? So, you know, instead of just thinking it's Chad, GPT, and Gemini. Or Claude is taking those, those platforms and putting them as the engine inside the data and intelligence inside the organization so that everybody has it at the moment of decision based on levels. you know, access, but I'm not busy calling, you know, Tom to say, Hey, Tom, can you give me the sales figures for last quarter?

No, that's the, the competition has already eaten your lunch, right? So you, Deb, you better, you better have that information right here, right now, when the

[00:21:29] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:21:30] Marvin Dejean: it or when that decision needs to be

[00:21:32] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:21:32] Marvin Dejean: what we're talking

[00:21:33] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Tom.

[00:21:34] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yeah, and I, I think the challenge is that, that depending on the, the, what you're coming into the world now with in terms of data and so. Um, smaller businesses have tend to rely on third party SaaS tools to really support data, and

[00:21:49] Marvin Dejean: Yeah,

[00:21:49] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: data's hidden a lot of times. There, there's no API access into it.

Um, and then there's, you know, larger organizations, a a lot of times who we're talking to mid-market tend to have a, a much more robust understanding of how to access their data, how to get to it. But I think the challenge sometimes is that. If your data set isn't even accessible,

[00:22:11] Marvin Dejean: Yeah.

[00:22:11] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: fighting this other battle.

And so a lot of times what you're forced to do is rely on generative as opposed to agentic, which is touching data, but you have to have access to data that's touchable. And

[00:22:25] Marvin Dejean: Yeah.

[00:22:26] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago. Who's actually extracting data from closed systems, putting it in things like Airtable in order to run agentic AI on data because they can't access it in their, in their software systems that run their business.

And to me, that's what's happening right now is this evolution. Because even accessing data is challenging depending on who your software vendors are, your SaaS vendors are from the last 10 years.

[00:22:54] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: I had another speaker, about two weeks after the previous one that I mentioned, and, and, uh, his name is Peter O'Sullivan. He has a business called High Beam. Analytics and his whole thing is exactly this. It's the data aspect of ai

[00:23:10] Marvin Dejean: That's

[00:23:11] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: and he came in and, and, and just educated people about what, what is the data lake and the data warehouse and the

[00:23:19] Marvin Dejean: right.

[00:23:19] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: inputs and the outputs and all of this kind of stuff that you've gotta have in place.

How do you. How do you put that plumbing in place, as it were?

[00:23:27] Marvin Dejean: right.

[00:23:27] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: And, um, I, afterwards, I was coaching him a little bit on how to take his game to yet an even better, better level. And I said, you know, you really need, you really need an opening visual that picks up on the metaphor of your, of your business, high beam.

And so I went to chat GBT and just in, in, you know, 15 seconds, please give me a visual of a vehicle driving through a dark forest. The fog with its high beams up and outta the fog is emerging the word data in capital letters. And, and, and there it was. It was a thing of beauty and I sent it to him and I said, there you go.

Something like that.

[00:24:10] Marvin Dejean: That's exactly it. That's exactly it. You

[00:24:13] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:24:13] Marvin Dejean: I was, I was talking, when I talked to to CEOs, I said, look. When you're talking about ai, are you talking about using it as a tricycle or do you want a Schwinn bike? the difference between using generative ai, you know, that's out of the box, you know, the open ais of, or, you know, taking them as an engine and then really using the data.

Once you release the data inside your business, that information leak, that's single source of truth. You, it's like, it's like taking. Putting a, a bolting on a rocket ship your business and then turning it on, that is, that is going to be the difference between the companies that succeed in the next couple 10 years and the ones who just disappear out of the ether because your internal data combined with the intelligence of these, you know, AI machines, that's what's going to give you the leverage that nobody else has.

But if you keep on just thinking that AI is just, you know, chat, GPT, you, you're missing the whole

[00:25:19] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:25:20] Marvin Dejean: of what's going

[00:25:21] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Great point.

[00:25:21] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: of,

I'm thinking about the browser comment from a few minutes ago, right? So like, this is very clear to me that like, like what, whereas today, right, just again, another analogy, right? If you're anything like me, you are sat here with. 30 tabs open, right? And loads of applications, right? And what we do is we move between applications, right?

What

[00:25:42] Marvin Dejean: Yeah.

[00:25:43] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: happen in the future, and of this there can be no debate, is we will work from an AI interface, right? All the

[00:25:50] Marvin Dejean: Yep.

[00:25:50] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: are already there.

[00:25:52] Marvin Dejean: Correct,

[00:25:52] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Gentech and the work, like, like, or you just, you just connect and integrate with all the applications. So you're gonna

[00:25:57] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yep.

[00:25:58] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Through a single source, and that's going to be probably an agentic AI interface now. So, so when you, you know, like the problem with tools AI and agentic is it has no context. It's brilliant, but it has zero context,

[00:26:15] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Right.

[00:26:15] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: So.

[00:26:16] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Unless it's living in a sea of data.

[00:26:18] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:26:19] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: can

[00:26:19] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah,

[00:26:20] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: is to

[00:26:21] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: yeah,

[00:26:22] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: So

[00:26:22] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:23] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: my, to my, um, analogy before it's like, it's like without it, it's a helpful stranger. You know, like

[00:26:30] Marvin Dejean: Yep.

[00:26:30] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: data, AI becomes like an informed coworker, right? That's

[00:26:35] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Oh, I see.

[00:26:36] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: way

[00:26:36] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: How about that Helpful stranger? Hey, uh, can you tell me, uh, where, where's the, where's the cinema? Is it down? Is it Oh yeah. Down there. Turn right. Turn left. Okay. Thanks very much.

[00:26:45] Marvin Dejean: Right, exactly.

[00:26:47] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: stranger. It's worse than that. Mike, the helpful stranger goes. Oh, hi. Yeah, sure. I'd love to help you. I dunno.

[00:26:53] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah. Marvin, you've probably heard me speak about this. One of my favorite bodies of work is this thing called, um, mastery by George Leonard. It's all about the journey to mastery, and he talks about four characters that go on that journey, right? Masters. Who understand the nature of that journey.

And it's gonna be Plateau, plateau, plateau, Esker, breakthrough, new Plateau, plateau, plateau, plateau, Esker breakthrough, new Plateau. And they understand that they're gonna spend most of their time on the plateau, so they better learn to love it and just keep, you know, putting one foot in front of the other.

And then George Leonard says, but three other characters show up to try to talk them off the path. Number one, dabblers. Number two hackers and number three, obsessives. So I'm guessing that we are all seeing CEOs who are falling into at least those two camps. They're either dabbling or hacking or obsessing and, and they're stuck and they're wondering why they're not making progress.

Or they under they're masters who understand the nature of this journey. This is gonna be a marathon, not a sprint. If I start doing it the right way, I put one foot in front of the other, I will gradually make some progress. And the sort of snowball effect will kick in and gradually I'll start to break through and get over the hump and feel like, wow, I'm really on my way.

What, what are you seeing out there, Marvin, in terms of how you would characterize CEOs and where they're at on the journey?

[00:28:24] Marvin Dejean: Yeah, no, I think that's exactly it. Uh, you know, it was interesting. I saw, uh, a study, I'm sure you guys probably saw it too, a couple of months ago, uh, MIT came out with a study that almost like 90% of these AI adoption, you know, pilot projects are failing because, you know, it, it's, it's like a, it's like a herd of horses and it's just people are just panicking. You know, I just don't want to be left behind. The competition is doing, but they have no idea. the second thing that I see a lot of CEOs trying to do is like, okay, our sales process. Put AI into it, you know, uh, or our customers put AI into it. It. It is like, okay, what's, what's the strategy here?

Like, what are we doing? Where are we going? Like, so I think a lot of, uh, people are just dealing with trying to, because they're hearing this in this ether. They bring in their team and they're like, let's talk about ai. We need AI and everything is ai. You know, put AI in the kitchen, put AI in the, in the bathroom, and you know, it's like. Dude, what are we doing? So I think the, the ones who are succeeding are exactly what you said, the masters, Mike. They start with a, let's, let's, first of all, let's separate the myth from the fiction, right? AI is not about to replace everybody, you know, overnight. It's, it, it may one day, but it's not there yet, right?

AI is still a baby, learning how to crawl. I always tell my clients it's like, you know, early, the early days of the internet when a OL was, you've got mail, right? We're, we're in the early stages of ai. Let's not. Yeah, we're in the dial up stage. Let's not, let's not, let's not start getting rid of airline pilots and put AI in charge of the airline just quite yet.

Right? So the first step. The second step is. Please people, let's have a strategy. What are we doing? Like where, where do we see AI really creating business value, right? Not just commoditizing, but creating bus. Where does the value lie? Are we

[00:30:28] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:30:29] Marvin Dejean: to 3% lift here in, you know, putting AI in operations or are we really just creating something that is allowing us to lead in our. Category. Right? So

[00:30:41] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Beautiful. Yeah.

[00:30:41] Marvin Dejean: And then the third, the third thing is really, like you said, let's pilot this thing. What's the ROI? What are the KPIs that we're looking at to let us know that AI is actually working? Am I getting a, a 10% lift, a 20% lift, a 30% lift? That's, that's what I need to, I need data to be able to tell me that where we're

[00:31:04] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:31:04] Marvin Dejean: AI and how we're using ai. Actually something

[00:31:08] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Be. Yeah.

[00:31:09] Marvin Dejean: for us as a business. Otherwise we're just throwing the, the, the spaghetti against the wall and hoping that it stick and then we're

[00:31:15] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Some it, yeah.

[00:31:17] Marvin Dejean: Yeah. You

[00:31:17] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:31:18] Marvin Dejean: it's, that's, I'm seeing a lot of that.

[00:31:20] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Well, from a George Leonard perspective, one of the things in that book that I, I think is so important to mastery is, um, uh, he says We must surrender ourselves to the countless repetition of practice,

[00:31:33] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:31:34] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: and what so often

[00:31:35] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:31:36] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: see is ideas, thoughts. Um. Intention but not commitment to an everyday

[00:31:44] Marvin Dejean: Mm.

[00:31:44] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: of, of doing that.

And whether it's a skunk works like we've talked about before, a pilot a, a process that we're engaging it with. Uh,

[00:31:53] Marvin Dejean: Yeah.

[00:31:54] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: do that, then a lot of times we don't have the, the capacity to practice. And, and what I have learned, uh, 'cause, um. Marvin, I, I am of the group. I'm playing with all kinds of stuff all the time, and I have agents all over the place.

And, one of the things I learned in the last couple of weeks is every time I ask my agent for, so, and I have an agent named Kat Herder, and she, she works for me and I chat with her. And, um, but now she collects, if I ask something about how do I deal with this and she thinks it's related to me, she puts that into a separate database to remember me,

[00:32:29] Marvin Dejean: Nice.

[00:32:30] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: specific things about me.

And now when I look at that database, there's, there's like 500 things in there that are unique to me. but for me, that's coming from a daily practice of. Testing something, hitting walls going, that doesn't work. Uh,

[00:32:44] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:32:45] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: do I

[00:32:45] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:32:46] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: prompts? How do I make sure automations make sense? Where does data flow from?

Where does it go to? How do

[00:32:52] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:32:52] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: I support that data? But the, the thing to me about mastery is you gotta practice master. You can't talk about it. You can't intend it. Uh,

[00:33:00] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:33:01] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: says, you can't tickle it. You gotta tackle it. And, but

[00:33:03] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:33:04] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: is a one-time thing. To me, it's every day. You're just, doing

[00:33:08] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: You gotta stick with it. You gotta stay in the game.

[00:33:11] Marvin Dejean: Yeah.

[00:33:11] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: keep showing up. You gotta never give up. You gotta keep on keeping on and, and, uh, elsewhere in the book, uh, uh, associated with that, as you said, the sort of the, you know, unending, relentless practice, he talks about waging war. Against instant gratification.

[00:33:30] Marvin Dejean: Hmm.

[00:33:31] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: what causes you to give up

[00:33:33] Marvin Dejean: Yep.

[00:33:34] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: relentless practice because you're not seeing results. And if you're not getting that instant gratification, you start to think, what's the point? I, you know, this doesn't work. I'll, I'll go and tickle something else instead.

[00:33:49] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: look, this, uh, this is, this to me is. Of like the challenge for

[00:33:54] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yeah.

[00:33:55] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: listening. They, they, if they don't recognize themselves in this, like they're not listening. Right.

[00:34:00] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Are you dabbling, obsessing, hacking?

[00:34:03] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: So, so the first, the first thing for me is like, AI must be in service of strategy.

[00:34:10] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Right,

[00:34:10] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: is

[00:34:10] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:34:11] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: because

[00:34:11] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:34:12] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: strategy. And

[00:34:13] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:34:14] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: if we're honest, are not that good at strategy. So,

[00:34:18] Marvin Dejean: is correct.

[00:34:19] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: okay, that's a problem. And I think

[00:34:21] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: I.

[00:34:22] Marvin Dejean: That's right.

[00:34:24] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: So, so, so here's, so here's the first, like, so this is a weakness, right? And I think, uh, that's really uncomfortable and we know that like uncomfortable conversations like make leaders uncomfortable.

It's like, okay, so there we are. Um, you know, the second thing for me is I, I love like that, you know, the instant gratification piece is like, I think that's awesome because like, this is to a point I think I made on a previous podcast, which is like, leaders find confidence in knowing. Right. This is an area where they have no knowledge, so, so they are again exposed.

Right. So that's what leads them to, I have to gain knowledge quickly. Do stuff. Yeah. Marvin, go deliver. They're like, 'cause, 'cause I have to know and like to

[00:35:10] Marvin Dejean: Right.

[00:35:10] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Tom, I responded to a comment on your post this morning. I'm like, what's the, and I think the question was, what's the most important thing? I'm

[00:35:16] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yep.

[00:35:17] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: as a leader, you must commit to learning. If

[00:35:21] Marvin Dejean: Yes, yes.

[00:35:23] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: they're all obsessed with knowing because

[00:35:25] Marvin Dejean: Yeah,

[00:35:25] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: I've been doing this for 25 years. I

[00:35:28] Marvin Dejean: yeah,

[00:35:28] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: of stuff.

[00:35:29] Marvin Dejean: yeah.

[00:35:30] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: You don't know anything about

[00:35:33] Marvin Dejean: Yes, right.

[00:35:34] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah,

[00:35:34] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: commit to learning, this is gonna be very hard journey for you.

[00:35:38] Marvin Dejean: Yeah,

[00:35:39] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: yeah. and back to George Leonard's mastery. I love what you said, by the way, mark, you, you, you started off by saying something like, you know, surely every listener's gonna recognize themselves. That's what I often do. I put up four pictures. Dabbler, obsessive hacker master, and, uh, with a little description right of each.

And, and then I asked the audience, so do you recognize yourself? You know, which one of these is you? And by a show of hands, you know. How many of you would recognize yourself as a master? A few people do, right? They're largely in denial, but nevermind. Right? And then, and then all the hands go up for the other three characters, you know, that, that have got them stuck.

And, and by the way, the other thing I love about, I love this George Leonard work mastery. I absolutely love it. And, and indeed, like I said earlier, he says this plateau, plateau, plateau. Scur new plateau. S curve, new plateau. So one of the other things he says is this. He says, you better learn to love the plateau.

[00:36:38] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yeah.

[00:36:39] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Because you are gonna spend most of your time on it.

[00:36:42] Marvin Dejean: Yeah.

[00:36:43] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: most people hate the plateau because there's no instant gratification. So one thing I recognized in myself, and I'm sure we all do to some degree, is one of the reasons I love. The plateau on anything, whether it's AI or launching a business or building a skill, or you know, finding a new groove or something.

One of the things I love about the plateau is that every step that I take, every hour, every day, every week, every month that I stick with it, and I just keep putting one foot in front of the other on that plateau. I know that around me, more and more people are checking out. So I'm in a smaller and smaller and smaller minority of people sticking with the game, which is only in a self-fulfilling way, only helping the next breakthrough scur come along, isn't it?

Right? Because there's fewer and fewer and fewer people doing it. And so that's why, that's why I wanted to, you know, hosting me hosting today. Not least all having Marvin here, but that's why I wanted to frame this up a little bit today through this mastery lens. Marvin, other, other thoughts on all of that?

[00:37:56] Marvin Dejean: Yeah. I mean, I think. of you aren't exactly on point. I think, uh, what we're seeing right now around AI is a stampede. And the stampede is, you know, people running and, you know, usually it's driven by fear. It's driven by competition. It's driven by so many other things other than right. Mike, what you said. Hey, there's something new going on here. Let me take the time to master this stuff. I'm not gonna know it. Let me take the time to re just let the stampede go. But you know, that's that, that focus on mastery. Is what's going to separate the wheat from the shaft in the coming years. Really,

[00:38:39] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:38:40] Marvin Dejean: that we are gonna see who are going to be the next Amazons, quote unquote, of the AI world,

[00:38:46] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:38:46] Marvin Dejean: the time to master this thing right now, so that in the next, you know, three to five years we're gonna start seeing some, some amazing companies. Unicorns probably driven by, you know, a few employees that

[00:38:59] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:39:00] Marvin Dejean: that are delivering. Amazing services because they've, they've just turned this intelligence into a competitive advantage like nobody's business.

[00:39:09] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: I'm doing a big event in a coup in in what, three weeks locally here. A CEO Summit, C-Suite Summit, and I'm being very careful to be the gatekeeper. It's invitation only. It's for, you know, mid-market companies. You know, what I call big, small companies. Not small, small companies, not big, big companies, big small companies, you know, too small to be big and too big to be small.

That kind of messy middle. And I'm, I'm, I'm holding a tight filter. On that as the in, as the invitation only gatekeeper to make sure that that people can come confident that they will have peers in the room. And of course, one of the classic questions I would ask people is say, calibrate me to the scale and scope of your business.

I don't know, revenue. And of course employees. And of course that employee nub that question is gonna become increasingly irrelevant, right. The number of employees that you have is going to be an increasingly poor representation of how, what scale and scope of a, of a business that you have, because there's gonna be this increasing separation.

You know, those two things used to have a correlation, and that correlation is going to be increasingly broken and separated in a whole new paradigm.

[00:40:29] Marvin Dejean: So very

[00:40:29] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Um, well, Marvin, look, it's been, it's been phenomenal. To have you here. You've, you've, you've really brought some fantastic new insights and perspectives.

Everybody, if you haven't already, go over and check out Marvin Dejan on LinkedIn. Uh, we'll put his LinkedIn, uh, in, in the show notes here. He's got so much great stuff cooking on, not just locally, but, but regionally, nationally. We're gonna get him plugged into our ref, global, uh, community, uh, and do some, do some webinars and things and, and so the way we land the plane here, Marvin.

We'll go back around the room. How would you distill from everything we've talked about, a suggested action that a CEO might take to try to get out of being dabbling and obsessive and hacking, and try to sort of just get on the train with other masters who are on this, you know, longer journey. Um, we'll come to you last, Marvin.

Um, uh, Tom, do you want to get us started? What action, what action do you suggest.

[00:41:29] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Well, sometimes the action that I like to suggest is the action that I'm gonna take, which is, instead of dabbling, I have to go down a path, and I have to dig into another tool. And so I am, deeply playing with, um, Claude Code, um, 2.0 inside the guts of my computer. So I put it into a, in, into a, a folder in my computer and I say, go. And I tell it what I want it to do, and it goes, and, um, I am, uh, I, I am learning through, uh, giving it access to specific folders on my computer and saying, go and rewrite this. So this week one of the things I did was I had it rewrite my entire, uh, download inbox, which had 25,000 files in it. And I said, go fix this inbox for me. Um.

[00:42:21] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: to take my foot back outta my mouth from when I said earlier that, that, that Tom wasn't up there on the top shelf of speakers or that's what he interpreted, or at least Mark did. Uh, Tom was a phenomenal speaker and when he shows up. He shows stuff working. You know, he is sharing his screen. He's showing an agentic AI application that the wheels are spinning, and, and this says done, and then it moves over here.

It says this is, this is happening. So, and by the way, Marvin, the number one thing we remind listeners of all the time is this. And Tom does not know how. Code. He has never written one line of software code in his life.

[00:43:06] Marvin Dejean: I believe it.

[00:43:07] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Mark, what would you throw on the table here?

[00:43:09] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: I think I'm gonna go back to the data challenge and I'd

[00:43:13] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:43:13] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: like, if you are

[00:43:15] Marvin Dejean: Yes.

[00:43:16] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: giving AI systems access to data, over it. You've got to get over it,

[00:43:21] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yeah.

[00:43:22] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:43:22] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: now, of course, do it the right way. So get specialist help and make sure you do it the right way. But you have a dumb employee with one arm tied behind their back if you don't. So like, you've

[00:43:35] Marvin Dejean: right.

[00:43:35] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: gotta get over this fear

[00:43:36] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: Yes.

[00:43:37] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: got to connect the, the, the, the data in your company to your AI systems.

[00:43:41] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Marvin, what would you offer our, our listeners in particular, you know, CEOs of those kinds of mid-market, big small companies that you were mentioning, or in your audiences these days, what would you recommend as at least one action that they can begin to try to try to join the, the Mastery Train with?

[00:44:00] Marvin Dejean: Yeah. So usually when I give recommendations to CEOs about, uh, you know, thinking about ai, I said, look, the first thing you need to shift is your mindset. you're, what you're doing right now is you're trying to take AI as a technology play, and you're overlaying it on your current business model. Said you need to shift that mindset. You need to look at ai, not as a technology play, but as the operating system for the entire organization. It's the, it's the thing that makes the organization work. So now if you were to do that strip. The organization of everything start a blank state, right? Uh, tabular rasa, and you're putting AI as the foundation of the business. How would that business be? Work completely different than what you have today. So if you start

[00:44:53] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:44:54] Marvin Dejean: and hr, AI and operations, AI and customer service, AI and sales, so you become an AI first company, not an

[00:45:02] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yep.

[00:45:02] Marvin Dejean: after the fact. How do I

[00:45:04] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yeah.

[00:45:05] Marvin Dejean: ai? Use AI as a foundation, as the operating system of the business.

Then you completely shift your mindset and you see the business completely different from that

[00:45:15] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: That's a beautiful, beautiful thing, Marvin. We, we, we were talking about that actually in the last episode, which was called AI Native. I thought it was called AI Naked, but that's gonna be a episode. We're gonna do another time Anyway, the one before.

[00:45:32] tom-adams_1_10-31-2025_130121: opened themselves to erotic content, so we got that now, so we're good.

[00:45:38] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: We were talking about, you know, if with, if you are not AI native, which of course most existing companies aren't, you know, could you start a skunk works over there and truly start from an AI native, you know, AI first ai, bottom up AI engine kind of place. So that's really cool. Um, one of the actions I'm gonna take that we've already put in motion.

And we'll get all of you plugged into it in some way, shape, or form, at least virtually. And, uh, you know, if you're ever in town or Mark, mark is just up the road from me in Ref San Diego. Um, with our, with our membership base of CEOs as an added value experience over and above their monthly forums, we're gonna start the ref AI incubator.

[00:46:23] Marvin Dejean: Nice.

[00:46:23] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: it'll be a combination of annual, quarterly, and monthly experiences that people can opt into, uh, where they come to an AI lab, right? Where we're gonna be doing demos, we're gonna be doing, you know, hands-on, roll your sleeves up workshops, um, and we're gonna be, you know, getting people down and dirty and into the guts of actually doing stuff.

With AI and seeing case studies and use cases, real, real world things of, okay, this is what this company's done with this, that's what that company's done with that. So we're really excited about getting out of this, um, talk and into the walk with a, with a, you know, a, a, a life support system of a sort of AI incubator in our, in our.

In our, um, uh, community in San Diego. So there we have it, everybody. Another episode of the Prompt and Circumstance Podcast, landing the plane here. We're so grateful to you, Marvin Deon, for joining us today. Thank you so much. We look forward to having you as a friend of the podcast going forwards. Maybe come back, uh, once in a while and share more stuff.

We'll get, we will get you plugged into some of these other exciting things that we're gonna do. And we know that you are doing exciting things too, so keep, please, keep a surprised of all of that so we can share that with our, with our, uh, listeners. Uh, our RM. Uh, James Bond, uh, Ryan Neiman, no doubt will be back with us, next time.

And, uh, he'll, he'll share whatever he can from his secret mission and, uh, we look forward to having you there. If you wanna know more about us, go to, prompt and circumstance podcast.com and we look forward to having you with us for the next episode. Thanks very much, everybody.

[00:48:08] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: Halloween.

[00:48:11] mike-richardson_1_10-31-2025_100121: Yes.

[00:48:12] mark-redgrave_1_10-31-2025_100120: See you guys.

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