Hey everyone.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Prompt and Circumstances.
Isn't that a great title?
Yeah, that's a good one.
Um, I'm Tom Adams and I'm your host today and only today for this inaugural
episode as we pull up our chairs around this virtual conversation, and brown
table that we hope will become your
, Listening, uh, thing that you do on a regular basis just to hear
about code culture, CEO, reality checks around all things ai.
, To get us started, let's just make sure you know everybody on our panel.
This is our first episode and we just wanna make sure everybody knows
who the people are in the voices.
So, I'm gonna start with,, Mike,, do you wanna take it away and
give us a sense of who you are?
Yeah.
Thanks Tom.
Hey, it's uh, great to be here.
Everybody looking forward very much to this podcast.
Mike Richardson.
Yeah.
I've spent the last 23 years coaching and facilitating CEOs and so I
just feel a grave responsibility.
To help CEOs figure out this AI thing.
That's why I'm here, Tom.
Good.
That's great.
Mark.
Yeah.
Morning Tom.
Thanks.
, Like Mike, uh, just to echo him, like delighted to be here.
Awesome.
Um, so look, I'm an ad guy, I guess I'm a marketing guy.
Um, spent my, um, early career in agencies, then moved client
side and was, uh, in C-level for.
number of billion dollar companies, uh, which was incredible experience for me.
Right now I am, I do a lot of leadership coaching.
I work with CEOs.
I'm working with some young companies in, uh, who are facing unbelievable
disruption unbelievably quickly.
So, uh, super exciting topic, like, uh, great to be with you guys this morning.
Yeah, that's great.
And Ryan, I.
thanks.
Uh, excited about our prompt and circumstance, uh, AI podcast.
My background is 30 years in technology in the last 10 years being CEO of
private equity backed B2B enterprise software companies in that mid-market
space and super excited to help coach, lead, and, uh, educate others
on what I'm seeing in the market.
That's great.
Uh, from my perspective, I'm an executive coach.
I've worked with small to mid-size, privately owned, uh.
Companies primarily in the B2B service space.
But I do a lot more than that.
I've been doing that for 23 years, and, uh, I am just, uh,
headlong into AI related stuff.
So that's part of the conversation, but, uh, now that we've got a sense of who
each other is, um, Mike, you are the guy who kind of put us all together.
So I want jump to you and, and, uh, give us a sense of why we're, you
know, how we all met, how we put us together, and why we're together.
Well, you know, like when you go through life, you sort of
accumulate hangers on, don't you?
And, and so, and so I think, uh, Tom, that, that you and I first
met, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah.
been a media guy all his life and, uh, actually ended up doing one of my websites
at one point, and then we ran into each other again two or three years ago because
we're part of a similar global community.
And I discovered that Tom is blazing the trail with a very
practical approach to ai.
then, uh, uh, Ryan and I met, I guess Ryan, when was that?
Like, I don't know.
Back in 26, 20 17, I think it was.
I was doing a keynote in Denver.
I asked the audience, you know, who thinks that their business is gonna be
disrupted, you know, beyond recognition within the next, you know, X years.
was one of the very few that put his hand up and he is like looking left and
looking right, and he's just, I could see this puzzled look on his face of
what, what is up with the rest of you?
Are you asleep at the wheel?
And then Mark and I met probably, what, two or three years ago, uh, Mark's
a fellow Brit, as you could tell, from our respective accents, and, uh,
he just got back from New Zealand.
uh, he'd previously been in Southern California, just got
back from New Zealand, whereas you heard he did, uh, three global
corporate massive transformations to enterprise agility and everything.
And so, you know.
I, I've been blazing a trail around agility for 23 years.
Before that, I was a serial CEO and Tom, you know.
I just know when the dots start to join up and something special starts to happen.
And so I'm
Hmm.
that we've come here today to begin this podcast.
We, we thought about writing a book, didn't we?
And we thought, well, hang on a minute.
By the time the ink is dry on that thing, it'll be about three years out of date.
So why don't we just try to keep up with this, this rollercoaster
ride, you know, week by week, month by month kind of thing.
Yeah, so
Mike, I, um, I, it's so funny 'cause I was just thinking about like, uh, what
we're gonna talk about today and um, and I had it all figured out on Monday.
Like, and then yesterday I, I like it all changed.
right.
I, I was like, I was like, oh, okay, so
GPT five and all, all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, exactly.
that's what we're dealing with, right?
It's like, and, and I actually, I'm, you know why I'm here?
Like, I'm here 'cause I need someone to talk to,
Yes,
like, like really, like I, I need somebody to talk to.
'cause this, this shit's gonna, is, is driving me mad.
yes, yes.
So Ryan.
thread is, is when we, we started talking to each other, we realized we were seeing
the same things and felt some level of comfort that we weren't, uh, alone in,
in seeing, and the dots aligning and.
As Mike says, something special happening.
And I, and I think we decided to do a podcast because, uh, it, it
allows us to talk to each other and I think, frankly, other people.
Uh, would be interested the kind of conversation we're having because
we're coming at it from four, uh, I think uniquely different perspectives
and a podcast allows us to be fresh, relevant, you know, we can record and,
and, and it be online fairly quickly.
I think the other advantage to it is what Mark said.
We just get to have a about what we're experiencing and exploring.
It's not because it's staying static, it's changing so incredibly rapidly.
Yeah,
everybody that's listening, just, I'm gonna fess up right now everybody.
I am willing to be the slow guy in the room, so you, you might struggle to
keep up with these other three guys here 'cause they truly are blazing a trail.
But I'll be coming along behind gradually, so if you just keep
up with me, then you'll be fine.
Trust me.
We could do closed caption subtitles for you, Mike.
We, we have a walker for you too.
Don't worry.
maybe let's just kind of come at it from the perspective of what's our
individual sense of what's happening, not just why we're doing this podcast,
but our sense of what's going on in the world in AI and why we're particularly
interested in this conversation.
Ryan, maybe let's start with you on that one.
You know, the, the first thing that comes to mind is everything all at once.
Uh, it just seems like the rapid innovation, the rapid change that's
underway, uh, I don't think it's hyperbole to say it's another.
Industrial Revolution.
I also think it's fascinating there's such a spectrum from ai first, AI native,
really rapid company innovation and personal productivity gains the way to.
Lack of awareness or, you know, somebody may have tried something a couple years
ago but really hasn't revisited using a large language model or generative
AI or, you know, really hasn't, uh, adopted it in their business or even
just mandates that there will be no use of, of AI in, in a company.
I think that spectrum is just amazing and it's happening all at once.
Yeah.
I love that.
And, and know, I've, I've, I get to coach a lot and facilitate a lot of
CEOs, a lot of forums, a lot of boards.
And even before all of that, the natural state of play for CEOs,
maybe, maybe plenty of exceptions to that rule in our listeners here, but
the natural state of play is already sort of, you know, overwhelmed.
I'm already overwhelmed with, you know, all of the strategy and execution
and leadership and communication and, and, you know, business development
and, and process engineering that I gotta do in my business.
And now this.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed.
Times 10 if I'm not careful.
You know what, Mike?
I, I, um, I was having a chat with somebody a couple of weeks ago uh.
We see CEOs fitting this is gonna, this is a little bit like ridiculous, but we
see CEOs fitting into two camps, right?
The ones that are like, can you just keep this away long enough so I can retire?
All right.
There's those guys.
And then, and then there's, and then there's another camp, which is like,
um, uh, I have no idea what to do.
That's it.
You've got like, and, and, and it is like, it's, and, and I'm not joking.
Like those are the conversations we see happening.
Like, like, because, um, and the ones, you know, I don't see anyone sat, sat, sat in
the, this is not gonna affect me middle.
I don't see anyone.
So,
and then there'll be the, then there'll be the camp of people
that listen to our podcast.
Perfect.
but, but like, but, but there's a, there's an absolute group of people
that are like, can just keep this away.
Like, I've got 18 months, I've got 18 months till I
leave the seat, keep it away.
It's like, it's, it's pretty scary, right?
Like.
Yeah, and the challenge that I, I see in my conversations is, uh, is what
you said, plus there's this other factor that I also see, which is.
Um, keep it away from me.
, , I don't wanna deal with it.
It's too much.
But the other one is, I, I don't even have a path to take with it, like it's.
It's a lot of times we're getting there because there's, I don't know
what step to make at this point.
Like, it feels like the ground is so uneven and unsteady that I'd rather just
stand here, kind of like, you know, the, uh, the flight or fright or freeze mode.
A lot of people are in freeze mode right now, just stuck not knowing what to do.
Yep.
Yeah.
a good point.
You know, the CEOs that I talk to, I frequently ask them to really
lean in and start to make it part of their day-to-day operations.
Uh, I love it.
Story where I had a conversation with a CEO and I said, take out your phone,
open up chat GPT and walk around your warehouse, start to take some
pictures of products that you have.
And, uh, he reflected back that he had four or five people behind
him and they were getting insights and really kind of some level of
omnipotence about the products and such, and storage and material safety
data sheets and different things.
Uh, just an example of how you could really just.
Change the way that you work.
That mindset shift how you can leverage AI in your day-to-day operations is,
is really, uh, uh, enlightening and really kind of opens up that aperture
as to it not just being a product or something over there, or something
that's being discussed at a board level, but rather how you infuse it
into your, your day-to-day operations.
You know, I, so I run these monthly forums, as you all know, and after you
came and spoke, Tom, if you remember, you came and spoke to all of my forums,
or rather you came in by Zoom, you know, over the last, what, 2, 3, 4 months
Yeah.
Yep.
Um, I instituted.
A second sign in sheet.
There's always been a first sign in sheet where on the way into the room.
The CEOs will sort of rate themselves out of 10 business professional,
personal life kind of stuff.
And you know what, what issue, challenge, problem is front of mind
for them as they come into the room.
That's, I've always done that, but I put up a second sign in sheet, uh, which
is all about ai, and they now have to rate themselves out of 10, how are they
doing and applying AI to themselves.
To their team and to their business.
And of course see scores all over the board.
I mean, there truly are people that, that come in and, and put
zeros they're, they're just like, you know, frozen as you said.
And there are some who come in and they're putting sixes, sevens, eights, nines.
um, one of the members, it was his turn last, last month, a couple of weeks
ago, to do his sort of host presentation and, and process and issue a case.
Um, I, I encourage people to get into the habit of doing, uh, moving
average graphs to, to help explain the story of their business.
So he was explaining to everybody that with the new agent mode in
chat, GPT, he just dumped the raw data in there and boom, average
graphs just like that, and everybody
Right.
sat there with their eyes wide
Yeah.
on.
Um, so I, I was, uh, here in Southern California, right?
We in, uh, orange County, there's a, a group called EMP and they
do events like a couple of year.
There was one on Wednesday and I went to it and I got to hear a couple of really.
People talk.
One of them was a guy called Keith Strayer or Stria, and he's the
SVP of um, global AI A MD chips.
Right?
He's ex Nvidia.
Right.
And he said something that I thought was so interesting, right?
He's like, so, you know like when, when we have new technologies like
that, you know, the hype cycle, it's like, oh, it's overhyped.
He said, guys, like, let me make one thing clear.
This is under hyped.
All right.
So, so it was like, and that actually stopped me in my tracks
Mm-hmm.
okay.
He said, normally when we talk about technologies in this stage,
we we're talking about overhyping.
This is under height.
He's like, it, no, this is not just another technology.
to be honest, I've got a little bit of that narrative in my mind.
Like it's just tech, right?
It's like he's.
This is like, make no mistake.
And he said, you know what we've gotta get our arms around is you,
you know the story of the single person, billion dollar company?
He said, that's real.
And he said, but what you've gotta understand is with AI, you are
no longer limited by team size.
By team location.
You are not, you are unlimited.
Yeah.
So, and he mentioned a couple of companies where, um, uh, one
of the, what was one of them?
Um, I've wrote it down somewhere, but he's like, look, this is a six person
company like that is valued at $5 billion.
Right.
all teenagers.
six of them.
He said, he said, because, because if you, you know, like when you deploy this
technology correctly, you are unbound.
Yeah.
have a team, an unlimited team of experts to help you.
And um, and another lady there, girl called, a lady called Claire,
uh, Gibbon, or yeah, Claire Gibbon.
Um, at AWS she said, I'm not a brilliant person.
But, um, with ai, I can do brilliant things.
And I was like, that's a good, that's a good quote, man.
Like,
Yeah.
that's a good quote.
So, so anyway, I just thought, like, that really struck me this week as like, we,
we are talking about this thing, right?
And, and it's like if, if you, if you buy into the, it's under hyped
narrative, then it's like this wake up guys ring the bell, right?
Like ring the bell.
I thought it was really quite powerful actually.
Yeah.
couldn't agree more.
And I think actually some timely things this week, uh, for instance, I
think it was the CEO of Palantir, Alex
Yeah.
had said, we see that we could 10 x our revenue.
And with 10% fewer employees, there are currently, I think at 4,100 employees, he
said, I think we can trail down to about 3,600 employees and 10 x our revenue.
And I think the level of innovation, just leaning in on the hype cycle,
it's possible that there's just so much innovation that we never get.
I, I have never felt like I hit a trough of disillusionment, for
instance, in the last, uh, few years.
Right.
Yeah.
seems like the next level of productivity
Yeah.
level of innovation just keeps building that.
Maybe, maybe we'll never see a, a trough of disillusionment.
I'm sure we'll see a plateau at some point, but that's so Well I say so far
in the future, but, you know, in the next three to five years, uh, the level
of innovation and productivity and, and insights and anecdotes about, you know,
elevating your own personal level of, of capability is just super exciting.
Yeah.
And, and everybody listening, the
I.
I think was made by Gartner.
Is that correct guys?
The hype cycle?
Yeah.
And, and I think it, I think one of my other favorite models is called
the Dunning Kruger model, and I think they, they sort of go hand in
hand and it, it's this idea that.
As you've all said, right?
You know, you, you get this explosion of, of the sort of up curve, you know,
the bub the bubble kind of effect all the hype, and then it sort of crashes
into the valley of disillusionment when sort of reality sets in and then,
and then gradually it sort of claws its way back and starts to be real.
Just like if you think back to the internet.
You know, what, 25, 30, 35 years ago.
but I think what, what Mark and Ryan are saying, everybody is, you know, sometimes
things come along that just, um, explode the previous paradigm and you begin to
realize that that doesn't work anymore.
That, that, uh, that codification of how things go doesn't apply to this because
this is breaking all of those rules.
Yeah.
And for me that that has meant, as I'm having those conversations, I had
to take it outta the theoretical for myself because we can talk that talk,
you know, we see the hype cycle, but I had to make sense of that for myself.
And one of the things I've tried to do is go, if I'm gonna be in this conversation.
In a reasonable way.
I've gotta explore what this looks like.
I gotta try things, I gotta do stuff.
And, um, I I, I heard recently that one of the biggest indicators
of whether a a generally a larger company, even mid-market comes on
board, is the CEO actually playing with chat GVT or Gemini or, or copilot.
If they're not playing with it, it's not gonna happen.
But if they are, it is.
And for me it was.
I gotta dig in, I gotta try stuff like literally on my, my
office computer, I have four different, uh, LLM agents running.
I'm testing stuff all the time.
I've been vibe coding on five platforms.
Like I, I'm just throwing shit at the wall literally all the time.
But what it's helped me to do is really understand that this is not a hype cycle.
We're, we're in something profound.
But that's it.
That's it though, Tom.
Right?
It's like, I think that, um, that's a great example because like all
leaders have to have that moment.
Yep.
They have to where, where they go, hold on, this is different.
Yeah.
isn't like, oh, try this new CRM.
It's better than the last
Right.
whatever.
Yeah.
But like when you start to touch this, and I know just chatting to
the, between the four of us, like the impact it's had on my work in the
last six months is just unbelievable.
Right?
You can't experience that without going something crazy is about to happen,
Yeah.
can't, you can't look at it and not have that reaction
Yeah,
you know, I, I think everyone's gotta go through that moment where
you wake up and you go, holy crap.
Everything just changed.
Yep.
I've talked to a, a number of, uh, leaders, and when that tipping
moment happens, they, you know, that, that there's this consensus
of, I just haven't been this excited about technology for a while.
you know, and I've, I've lived through, you know, pc, internet, mobile, cloud,
uh, but man, the last couple years and especially the last six months.
Uh, has just been something special and just really just kindled
this excitement for what's next.
Yeah.
And, and you know, all of us to some degree have been blazing the trail
with agility and, you know, the, the concept of that enterprise agility,
business agility, organizational agility, team agility, leadership
agility for, you know, decades now and.
You know that tipping point idea is, is so crucial, I think, where you sort of
cross over to the other side where rather than fearing chaos, you embrace chaos
Yeah.
rather than chaos being the enemy.
Chaos becomes your friend if you know how to engage with it and, and get
into the concept of organized chaos.
The trouble with ai, everybody is this is just going to 10 x
Yeah.
if you fall behind the curve 10 x opportunity, if you're sort of
hanging on, you know, keeping up with the curve or even getting ahead
of the curve, just gonna sort, it's gonna be another grand sorting out
those who can and those who can't.
Yeah.
Tom, what are we gonna try to do here, from week to week
or month to month to try to.
I've resigned.
Well, I, I.
we gotta, we gotta bring some solutions.
I, I appreciate everyone's time this morning, but I'm out.
What's that famous, that famous, uh, uh, commercial, right?
Oh, no.
No.
We don't do anything.
We, we only
No, I,
problem.
yeah, I think what we wanna do is, is just based on our own perspectives,
let's just talk a little bit about what are, what are we seeing?
What do we see this week?
What's fresh, what's new?
Uh, is there a lesson, an insight experience, a tool a, something
that happened this week that brought you in or that caused you to think
differently or caused you to be aware of how profound this is?
Um, Ryan, do you wanna.
You wanna take that one first?
Well, I'll probably take a, a little bit, uh, different SL on this.
What I was excited to see was additional investment from the majors education.
Uh, so I believe, uh, you know, four weeks ago or so, Microsoft had committed
billions of dollars to education and the like, I think Google just,
uh, did a three year billion dollar investment in the higher education.
I think that's absolutely imperative As this workforce is being educated,
I personally have seen entrance into the workforce and a heightened
expectation of AI avail availability, uh, and often met with a lack of
interest and not understanding.
Um, I, I think that has coupled with.
What we're seeing is a more normalization of CEOs that level of productivity,
going through efficiencies in their workforce, doing some layoffs and
the like, becoming much more normal.
And I think it's an interesting dichotomy some organizations
realizing that productivity, going through some, some layoffs.
A new workforce entering the, uh, entering their, their first jobs and
having that expectation of AI efficiency.
So I'm really excited to see, uh, additional investment into education,
especially in higher ed and across K through 12, uh, to really help
educators understand how to best, uh, groom the next workforce in this, this
AI enabled, uh, environment we're in.
Very cool.
Yeah, that's great.
Mike, what's, uh, what's blooming for you right now?
So, uh, you know, over the last two or three weeks I started to play with the
new agent mode in chat GPT-4, and that was what that, that CEO member used.
uh, do those moving average graphs so quickly and so easily.
So he, he tuned me into that and I started to use it, uh,
to just do some basic things.
My wife and I are planning a vacation in Sep in, in October, and so I asked chat
GPT to sort of out there and figure out where the best deals are for cruises and
resorts and all of that kind of stuff.
And, and then you just sort of watch it do its work and, you know, a few
minutes later, five or 10 minutes later it's done and serves up.
The summary then of course, heard about chat GT five, uh, at least I saw the
video yesterday of that rather stiff robotic announcement video of open
ai, CEO, and the team announcing chat, GPT five, but they, you know, they
got the message across, which is good.
So, lo and behold, you know, when I, when I opened it up this morning, you know my
chat, GPT, there it is, chat, GPT five.
And so I asked.
I asked chat, GPT five.
Hey, gimme a summary of chat GPT five.
a summary of, of what, how CEOs should be thinking about what's new and different
in chat GT five and what else, you know, what they can start to do with it, even
more than they could do with chat GPT-4.
So that's what I've been playing with in the last few hours, literally.
That's great.
Mark, what's going on with you?
What's, uh, what's driving your attention this week?
What's, uh, what insights, experiences, what else?
Uh, we lost your
We, we lost you,
I've got, um, got some guys doing, uh, doing leaf blowing
outside the window, so I went
Okay.
a second.
of course.
I, I think, you know, I, I mentioned earlier the event I went to, like,
I, I just thought some really.
Uh, like important thoughts for me.
I'm still like, I, I'm flip-flopping though between like end of the world
the most exciting thing I've ever seen
Right.
and like, and I'm, I'm not kidding.
I, I
Yeah.
when I'm like, we're actually doomed.
I'm not kidding.
I'm like, I can, I can force it and it'll be, and it'll happen, it'll happen
quicker than we could even imagine, right?
So don't, like, you can talk to me about a 10 year horizon, but like
nothing beyond that because in 10 years we, this will be unrecognizable.
Yeah.
And that is, really terrifying.
Right.
I, I've, as a, as a dad of two.
Two kids who have now left school and are trying to get into the workforce.
I'm terrified for that.
Um, you know, I'm terrified that Elon Musk thinks there'll be a billion
humanoid robots, you know, in 10 years, but really probably in five.
said he's, you know, I dunno if you saw that interview, but he's like,
he's like, in five years there will be humanoid robots everywhere you go.
Every public space, every service.
And he said, because of that, services will go to zero.
Right?
Because like, it'll be so cheap to do everything.
So I'm like, so I do have days when I wake up and I go like, oh, oh my God.
Like, this is, like, I don't even know if I wanna live in that thing.
And
All right.
you're a beard mark?
Is that, is that what that's.
like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to buy a cave somewhere in, yeah.
I would say, you know, mark, actually that's an interesting point.
I have heard that from others, uh, especially those that have children
that are entering, or young individuals that are entering the workforce, this
sincere, compelling feeling of, I need to make sure they understand this.
I'm super worried, Ryan, I gotta tell you, and I'm super, I've got a, I've
got a, I've got, um, a family member is doing computer science at UCLA.
Not a great decision, right?
Like, like, I mean, seriously.
Like let's get real here.
We've got people who are about to invest.
Like we've got a new education cycle rolling.
Now we've got people who are about to undertake three, $400,000 of
investment for degrees in things that are going to be worthless,
Yep.
right?
And, and 15 years ago we said, become a developer.
You'll be set for
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Like,
right.
it's like guys like wake up and, and, and, and then people always
say to me, oh, yeah, but they're, they're learning how to learn.
I'm like,
like, excuse me.
Like,
Yeah.
keep your, keep your 400 grand.
Right?
And like, and like learn this shit.
Yep.
go to a trade school and
Right.
okay.
Yeah.
So, so I, I'm, I'm, I'm having a, I'm definitely having
like a minor midlife crisis.
We
Good.
see that Mark.
We,
Yeah.
all it's written all over your face, mark.
So,
Well,
and
I get,
I, so, so, and, but I'm, and then I'm like, and then I think about
possibility and I'm super excited.
But
yeah,
so, I, I'm, I'm having one of those moments.
I might have to have a lie down in a minute,
yeah.
Yeah.
you'll know why.
so, you know, I'm sure we all, we all do this, right?
You know, we talk about vuca, right?
Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
And the thing everybody is, we've always had vuca.
I mean, when we, when we rolled out the railroad infrastructure
around the USA, that was vuca.
then we rolled out the, the, the automotive infrastructure
and that was vuca.
And then we rolled out the aviation infrastructure and that was VUCA
on everything that came before.
And, and yeah, there's been VUCA and VUCA and vuca, uh,
COVID of course and all that.
So this is obviously another form of VUCA on steroids times 10.
Yeah.
So there is a little bit of a sort of.
There is a little thing we can hold onto which, and try to stay
composed in the face of vuca and that we've always had to do that.
We've always had the next phase of vuca and we've always had to find ways to sort
of, in the face of that craziness and that terror that's coming at us, stay composed
and look for the silver lining, look for the opportunity inside of that threat.
It just, it just is gonna, as you're saying, mark, it's
just gonna be so much harder.
Times 10 times a hundred possibly, to find that ability to stay composed in
the face of what's gonna be coming at us.
And that's what we're here to try to do.
Everybody is try to give you,
I don't have that.
try to try to give you a little safe harbor, a little port in the storm to
Well,
you know,
yeah.
rebalance your composure.
Well, for me, the way I deal with that is I go into it, right?
I go into the storm.
And so like this week, the thing that I've been learning this week, and uh, and this
is, this is pretty good, I gotta tell you.
'cause it connects to our, our, our title,
drum
is
Very nice.
circumstances are the direct result of prompt effectiveness.
yes.
Right.
And so what I've been learning this week, 'cause I I, there's conversational chat
with your chat, GPT or your Gemini, but I, I'm trying to learn vibe coding more and
I, I don't know how to code, but I've been playing on, uh, on things like cursor.
Uh, there's rep, which is one, but Cursor is like a, a software that sits on your
computer, like you write code in it.
But now you can add a AI agent.
And what I'm learn, what I'm realizing is, um.
They're like bad employees.
They really are because, uh, they can go down a path and then they just go
round and round in circles and loop the loop and they go, I don't care.
I don't want to help you.
And they, they do the thing that you didn't want them to
do and they keep doing it.
And, um, what I've, what I've been spending time on trying to
figure out how to stay, you know, brain calm in this world is.
I dig into it and I go, huh, if I get better at prompting, and it's not just,
it's not just a little bit, it's like it's actually called prompt engineering.
Um, and, and I get better at those kind of little things.
I'm more comfortable with the crazy, for some strange reason I can deal with
the crazy when I'm in it, as opposed to standing outside of it, looking at it
and going, uh, right When I'm inside of it I go, okay, this is crazy, but it.
It's no better than, uh, even, you know, a crazy employee.
It just goes.
And I, and I have, I realized like a management, like a
leader, you gotta give it.
What's the context?
What's the goal?
What's the outcome?
Is there examples of this?
Are there steps that you think I should take?
And, and when you do some basic prompt engineering, you're
in the middle of the crazy.
And at the same time, you start to see that it responds to that.
And I respond to that, which is kind of cool.
My circumstance gets better.
Yeah.
And that brings back.
a couple.
Good, there's a couple good tips there.
Uh, you and I have talked about this, like with, uh, just in the last few
weeks, repli released the MD feature, which is like custom instructions.
And so
Yep.
things in there to help provide some guide guardrails and such
Yep.
to, to make the agent, uh, perform better.
You know, just a, a quick tip on prompt engineering, and I always tell people
this 'cause it's just super easy.
One, take the prompt I give you make it better.
two, ask me three questions or five questions before you proceed.
two things can really make a prompt that much better and, and help you
get to an outcome that's much more tailored to what you're looking for.
Yeah.
I tracked with you there, you'd say maybe you go into chat GPT or whatever, you
put in your first prompt, you see what comes back, then you say again, okay,
please improve the prompt I gave you.
Yeah,
And then and then, and then you're saying a third round would be ask me three
questions to help improve the prompt.
Is that correct?
on my, you can put that right into your prompt.
And if you wanna go to the advanced course, if you will go to your settings,
look for traits you want GPT to uh, uh, display and put it in there.
And every time you prompt will do that.
Say, you know, take my prompt, make it better than ask me three questions.
And you don't need to know code.
You just that right in there.
Natural language.
Okay.
Yeah.
And Tom, you know, what you were saying brought back that old adage
that, that we've used many, many, many times, which is, you don't
feel yourself into acting better.
Right,
act yourself into feeling better.
right.
So I think everybody that's listening, we're just, we're
gonna try every, every week, every
I,
we're here.
We're gonna try to encourage you, inspire you to dive in and get messy
yes.
the only, the only way to learn is to learn by doing everybody, not,
yeah, you can do some reading, you can do some thinking, you can do some
studying, but if you're not a careful that, that becomes analysis paralysis.
You just gotta dive in head first and start doing some things and
learning by doing and, and you'll start to feel not massively better,
but at least a little bit better.
I think Mark's beyond help, but we'll, we'll do.
All the, well, yeah, good luck.
Um, on like, um, I know all the quotes attributed to Mark Twain, all
of them ev all the, but like, I I, this was attributed to Mark Twain
and I, it made me think of it when you're talking and it's like, um, it's
something, it goes something like, um, I really don't like that fellow, right?
I must get to know him better.
Hmm.
And I'm like, if, if, if AI is the fellow.
Yeah.
Right.
It's like, there you go, because, and this is, and this is like a life skill, right?
Yeah.
whenever you meet somebody and you go, oh, I'm really not sure about that Ryan Guy.
It's like, it's
Yeah.
just, you gotta understand Ryan, man.
Yeah.
like, and, and, and that's, that's the, that's the genesis
of what you're saying, isn't it?
It's like, we've gotta, we've, you've gotta get into this guys.
Like,
Yeah.
it'll be this scary monster that's gonna come and eat our families, you know?
And it's like, so, so, yeah.
I, I'm so, so as again, as everything around us changes,
everything stays the same, right?
The same rules apply.
Like we are facing a massive moment of disruption.
You got two choices.
Like if you're gonna leave, leave now and go far away, If, if.
that island in the Pacific.
If you're gonna stay like, like get to know him better,
Yeah.
know?
Yeah.
That's good.
So, a, as we wrap this one, um, I'm gonna take that concept and just sort
of ask you, um, the, the concept for me that I try and teach the people I
work with, or when I'm training people on this one, is be comfortable with
play instead of putting this big set of expectation that you gotta figure it out.
Play with it.
Like, like you, you only get good at this when you play and, and you
don't even get good at it 'cause it changes by the time you play.
But at least when you're playing with it as opposed to this big
expectation, you gotta figure it out.
Um, it tends to come easier.
So my question to you is, as we close up this, uh, first inaugural, uh,
episode is what are you gonna play with this week as it relates to ai?
What are you, what are you gonna, what are you gonna focus on?
Or what action are you gonna take to help you move you forward?
I, I'll jump in first.
Uh, I have a new Microsoft Surface copilot ready, uh, latest whizzbang high spec, uh,
you know, uh, device that's just shown up.
It was time for me to upgrade, so I'm gonna get all that set up over
the weekend, and I've only skimmed the surface of what copilot can
Hmm.
I, you know, I have chat, GPT, paid version of course.
but I'm really excited about what copilot can do inside of the.
Microsoft ecosystem of, of PowerPoint and Word and Excel and, and Outlook and,
and teams and all of that kind of stuff.
So I'm really gonna dive in head first and then I, the other thing
is, I, I know you have, I think you have flawed Mark, don't you?
The little sort of, uh, transcription device.
I, I actually signed up to get Limitless, and I've just been waiting, waiting,
waiting for the, for the Android version.
And so I, I canceled out of that.
I'm, I'm gonna get myself applaud and, uh, and start, start experimenting with that.
How's that been for you, mark?
uh, it's good.
I, I use it, um, specifically to record like leadership sessions.
Um, it's really good.
But again, Mike, I've touched, like, I've just skimmed it right.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
this is, this is part of the challenge for us all.
It's like, goodness me, we are, we are touching the very, every time
these tools come out, like we're doing the classic like, you know,
2% of available features, right?
Yeah.
Good.
Keep going.
Mark.
What are you gonna do this week?
You know what, I've got a really interesting week coming up actually,
'cause I'm gonna Vancouver on Tuesday to spend the week with a client in
Vancouver and we're gonna spend a lot of time re-imagining their business.
So, um, I've got quite a creative week coming, which is gonna be really fun.
Um, you know, I just picking up on something Ryan said earlier, like.
Because I hadn't thought of it that way.
Like, this is really interesting because this hype cycle has
no disillusionment, right?
Because every time I try something or do something, it blows my mind.
All right.
so, so I'm like, so I'm like, and, and so, so I would encourage, for
anyone listening who's like, you know, every great journey, one small
step, it's like, just try it because I guarantee you the first thing and be.
The first query you ask Chatt BT Okay.
Make it very specific and very relevant to your business.
And if it doesn't blow your mind, I'll send you a coupon for Target.
Right, right.
like, so, so like, honestly, it's like, um, it, it's 'cause 'cause that's
how I started and I remembered my first query and I'm like, holy crap.
Like, how does it do that?
So just, just, just start, just try something.
'cause it's like, it, it'll not, it will not disappoint you.
If it does write to Sam Altman, uh, I don't know, somewhere in Silicon
Valley and he'll, he'll answer.
I'll,
Gonna do.
Yeah, actually, and, and do it with something that you are familiar with.
Right.
know, I think a lot of people are like, well, I don't need to ask Chatt
BT this, but you'll be surprised.
One, you can start to validate, is it accurate?
Is it hallucinating?
What, what am I seeing?
But you'd be surprised on the different vantage points, or if you keep.
I keep asking it, well expand on this.
What do you think or challenge my thinking on this?
You'd be surprised what you, you get back.
That really just starts to open up your mind to different perspectives on
a topic that you may know very well.
Yeah.
So what are you gonna work on?
What are you gonna work on this week?
Uh, Ryan, what's, what's on your uh, plate this coming week?
Well, like you, uh, I've don, uh, dove in on, on vibe coding, and you
were kind enough to gimme some time and really show me some great agent
work that you've been, uh, developing.
So that's my, my objective.
And I think even the day that we were talking, I was like, well,
should I subscribe to the chat GPT?
Uh.
I forget the next level, $200 a month and really get, get in on agents.
And I think that day it was when, when they had released
the agents for the pro version.
So I'm excited to dive in on that and, uh, just see how I can start to, uh, add
agentic tooling to my own pro productivity and really think through product roadmaps
for, for SaaS companies and the like.
So that'll be my, my to-do this week.
Awesome.
What about you, Tom?
Uh, so, um, I am, I, I've never used, you know, there's this thing on
your computer, it's called Terminal.
If you're on, um, if you're on, uh, Mac, it's terminal, and if you're on
Windows, it's, uh, what's it called?
It's.
It's, I don't know, command prompt.
Tom.
I have no
Yeah.
Whatever this is.
But I, I, I didn't really understand it until Claude Code, which is now
pretty much universally recognized as one of the better coding tools.
So you don't even see it now.
You just go into terminal and you say, Claude and Claude pops up, and
you just talk to Claude and Claude.
Make stuff.
It fixes stuff.
It it, you say, go look in this folder and tell me everything that's in there.
And it comes back and says, this is what's in the folder.
Why, what do you want me to do with it?
And, um, I'm playing with Terminal and I've never done that before, but
I'm using this really cool tool called Warp, which is like AI terminal.
Um, and then I'm testing also warp, I mean, Claude Code in Cursor.
And again, the very fact that I'm saying this, mark, you'll get this.
I don't even know what I'm, I don't even know who I am.
Like I would've never said this literally
What have
three weeks ago.
I, I, I'm going, what, what is going on here?
I'm touching stuff that code people touch, but I'm touching it.
So that's what I'm working on this week.
Yeah.
So
Anyways.
if you're, if you're there with us, uh, never fear, I'll bring up the rear.
We'll make sure that we translate this back into English for you.
I nearly had to interrupt, Ryan.
Sorry, what?
Rept what?
And MD What?
And by the way, we'll try to put it in English.
English everybody.
Not
All right.
of the thing.
Anyway, Tom, take us out.
Well, uh, gentlemen, it's been great.
Thank you for sharing where you are and, uh, we'll catch up soon.