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AI First with Adam and Andy: Inspiring Business Leaders to Make AI First Moves is a dynamic podcast focused on the unprecedented potential of AI and how business leaders can harness it to transform their companies. Each episode dives into real-world examples of AI deployments, the "holy shit" moments where AI changes everything, and the steps leaders need to take to stay ahead. It’s bold, actionable, and emphasizes the exponential acceleration of AI, inspiring CEOs to make AI-first moves before they fall behind.
Andy (00:00)
I'll tell you the thing that excites me most about a couple things, but the thing that comes to mind first is this whole notion of a micro book and this concept of
consumption of content by the audience. So it used to be that you'd create the book and the book would end and you'd write the book and it would get glued together and there'd be covers on it and the paper would be delivered to you.
You know, sometimes when we describe it, people say it's like choose your own adventure. It's actually not choose your own adventure. I mean, you it's a little bit of that, but it's really choose your own consumption. Like how do you want this content served to you? Do you want it in a PowerPoint deck? Do you want it in a podcast? Do you want it in a mini book? Like I just love that each reader, and they're they may not read each audience member can
Adam - chapter 3 (00:45)
Right.
Andy (00:45)
Customize the way in which they consume the content.
This is AI First with Adam and Andy, the show that takes you straight to the front lines of AI innovation and business. I'm Andy Sack, and alongside my co-host Adam Brotman, each episode we bring you candid conversations with business leaders transforming their businesses with AI. No fluff, just real talk, actionable use cases, and insights for you.
Greetings, everyone. Today's episode, we're super excited to talk to you about.
Our living book. we published a book, Agents Inc., came out on July 15th, and there was a whole agentic living book concept that we want to share with you all. We think it's disruptive to the publishing industry, and we want to tell you about it, tell you where the idea came from and why it's important. So with that.
Adam, like, how are you feeling about the Living Book and Vera Brown, our AI co author?
Adam - chapter 3 (01:39)
You know, I'm really excited for it as like a living experiment. I mean in the true sort of spirit of this living book, which is called Agents Inc. and I think the subtitle is How to Rebuild Your Company in the Age of AI, something like that, right? And so it's got a lot of the
Points that we like to make to business leaders that come to us for advice about, you know, how do I think about my company over the next couple of years AI agents become prominent? And we make a bunch of points in the book, but as we went to go write the book, we're like, let's spin up an agent, Vera Brown. We named it, and let's
use an agent to help us write the book because it'll help us unlock some things that we couldn't have done without an agent. And that's sort of very meta because that's kind of the point we make in the book. But what the reason I'm so excited about it is a living book really is an interesting idea that we should break down for our audience about like what makes it a living book, how it's a good example of like kind of some of the things that you could never do prior to AI agents. And I think we should sort of, you know, step through it.
Andy (02:38)
Yeah, so
wh Adam, why don't you just start? Let me ask you a couple questions. Start with what is a living book?
Adam - chapter 3 (02:44)
so this is the best way to think about it. And it actually helps you think about agents too, which is why we did it this way. Imagine you had a small staff.
like you're gonna write a book, a nonfiction book. So you as an author are like, I gotta do research and I gotta write it and I gotta get an editor and I gotta, you know, go get some people to interview, possibly as part my research. And you might even have a person that helps you administratively with everything to do with the book, right? So you have a little staff and they become very familiar with the content of the book, the interviews, your thinking.
Your writing style. before AI, that's how you'd write a book, a nonfiction book. you might be on an island, but most nonfiction writers have a little team. but imagine if you actually had somebody help you write the book. And then imagine when you publish the book, that that team.
Stayed on 24-7 full time available to you and your audience for whatever they want. you wanna you wanna ask a question about the book? No problem. I got a staff that's waiting to answer your question. You wanna read the book in a summary format or in a audio format, no problem. That staff will record a personal version of the book for you. the substance of the book has changed because the world's changing and there's updates in the topic of the book.
no problem. The staff's gonna keep up with that. They're gonna talk to you, the author, and figure out what you think about these updates, and they're gonna incorporate it into their thinking and they're just rolling along as a staff. Well, agents do that for you. You know, they're not human, but you basically can spin up an agent. The agent can have sub-agents, and everything I just said of like you can effectively keep the book alive as long as you want.
Using AI in a way that's actually affordable and feasible. And that's what we're talking about in a living book.
Andy (04:25)
do you wanna screen share and show what
Adam - chapter 3 (04:27)
Yeah,
Andy (04:28)
website, if you want to go to it, is www.agentsincbook.com
Adam - chapter 3 (04:33)
And right now at the beginning of our launch starting yesterday, we are offering a free custom mini book to kind of show off the power of what Vera does. In the future, if you see here, I'm gonna click on this premium tab. We're gonna have a premium, you're gonna be able to unlock premium access to our agent Vera so that she can, create mini books for you, actually make the book multimodal, create presentations, build a 90-day
plan for you based on the contents of the book. So Vera can go to work for you when we have this unlockable premium version access to this agent. But in the meantime, the agent's alive. So here's a section called Meet Vera. Here she is, has access to the book. She says here, Vera Brown, AI co-author, in the free tier, I'm the living embodiment of the book. Ask me anything about it. And there's like some, you know, explain the 50% rule, what does speed order aim mean, et cetera? You can ask anything here.
Since I'm signed in, I can go to my chats and it saves all my previous chats so you don't lose this. So you've got like a customized chatbot version of Vera, but then Vera can also, in the premium version, go to work for you on some level. And in the meantime, Vera is staying alive. And you know, Agents Inc., it says here, the home of Vera Brown. And so this is a good example of what we mean by like the book.
lives on the agent that helped us write the book lives on. And I think it's a paradigm shift for publishing. So you don't just end up with like a static bunch of glued together pages. You end up with this thing that, you know, is interactive from the minute you publish it and stays up to date on everything and goes to work for us as the authors, but also for you as the reader.
Andy (06:20)
so Adam, what's the most exciting part of the living book for you?
Adam - chapter 3 (06:23)
Well, so far, the most exciting part of the Living Book is whenever you and I are interacting with an audience of any kind. It can be online, it could be when we're doing advisory stuff, speaking, one-on-one with people. I love that we have an agent that embodies all this stuff that we can just say,
you know, on an impromptu basis or not, just go, I'll have Vera make this thing for you. that's a good question. Let's I'll have Vera do this for you. So it's like a coworker of ours that's fun.
Andy (06:50)
Yeah, you you have
this virtual team that's there to that you can give tasks to. I'll tell you the thing that excites me most about a couple things, but one the thing that comes to mind first is this whole notion of a micro book and this concept of
Adam - chapter 3 (06:53)
Yeah.
Andy (07:05)
consumption of content by the audience. So it used to be that you'd create the book and the book would end and you'd write the book and it would get glued together and there'd be covers on it and the paper would be delivered to you.
You know, sometimes when we describe it, people say it's like choose your own adventure. It's actually not choose your own adventure. I mean, you it's a little bit of that, but it's really choose your own consumption. Like how do you want this content served to you? Do you want it in a PowerPoint deck? Do you want it in a podcast? Do you want it in a mini book? Like I just love that each reader, and they're they may not read each audience member can
Adam - chapter 3 (07:41)
Right.
Andy (07:41)
Customize the way in which they consume the content. And I think that coupled with the fact that there's this virtual team whose job it is to stay up to date on agents, those two things coupled with we, by the way.
We did this in three months and really not only did we do the book, but the entire website. We had no designer. Like it basically was Adam and I, and I'll give Adam credit, like
I may have taken the lead on the printed book. Adam took the lead on the website. So no designer, no engineer, the full site and the hosting, Adam really drove. Now we're working, I will let you all know, we're working with Intensity Bradfeld at Intensity Magic on a project to support and collaborate as it relates to Vera Brown.
But really what everything that you see has been done by the two of us. we've gotten some help from Rose, like we couldn't have done it without Rose and Maddie on our team. But I'd say 90% of the work plus has been done by you and I. And I think that is in three months, that is insane.
Adam - chapter 3 (08:48)
Yeah, like it physically would not have been possible without the agent. which is a big point we make in the book, which is like when you start having a lot of unlocks, right? Speed order aim is a key theme of the book, which is like get moving to understand agents and start experimenting with agents. Order is think about where you're gonna get the most juice for the squeeze. don't just do random stuff, like give some thoughts to where
Once you understand AI, you're moving fast on it, you know, start thinking about what order you want to do your experiments, because you can't do a hundred at once. And ultimately you'll aim the AI at a big unlock for your business or your organization or your project. And that's kind of the spine of the book is speed order aim. And we go through a whole bunch of stuff which you Andy, I want to give you a huge shout out. you really took the lead, like you said, on
Like taking the substance of the book and then pointing the book and the agent at these interviews that you conducted with a bunch of people who actually using agents and then able to wrap that in and deliver which is a really cool book and book project and living book. I'll build on something you just said though that I think it's really important to talk about because you hit on it. Like it's a choose your own consumption model. And I actually don't think that that's just kind of a neat, I'll call it.
you know, parlor trick for us in the age of agents. I actually I'm starting to think that that is the future of how people are gonna learn. So and how people are gonna read and and consume things. I watch my daughter and how she consumes things. It's just very different than how you and I do. and you know, your son is the same way. Like where you basically have a world now that already is sort of choosing their own consumption model with
YouTube versus Twitter versus LinkedIn versus reading books versus T V versus Netflix, like versus, you know, iMessage, iPads. we live in a world now where people choose their own consumption model and a lot of stuff gets distilled down through bite sized videos and bite sized tweets
and I know a lot of people lament that, including me and you, at times. At times it's like it's too bad the whole everything's being sort of distilled down to a bite-sized chunk. You know, what's that gonna do to our thinking and our critical thinking? And there's like legitimate philosophical discussions and practical discussions to have, but the reality is that's how people wanna learn and consume right now. I actually think school and education is gonna go in this direction. And so what's cool about our book to think about is
And this is true of nonfiction. If you're a nonfiction author and we're gonna write a book, is the goal of the book that people read your words and they somehow have some emotional experience with your words? Or is the goal of the book that they learn and internalize some key takeaways that you're trying to get them to understand? I would argue it should be the latter, it doesn't have to be some authors teach some
Andy (11:30)
Yeah, yeah.
Adam - chapter 3 (11:30)
For you and I, like when we wrote our first book, published by Harvard, like the goal wasn't, they need to feel our words. You know, like that's not like that's true with fiction, I believe, right? Like when you're trying to evoke a certain feel. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. But like in nonfiction, I think a lot like school, a lot of it is like, how do you internalize, remember, consume information? And so what's cool is the book itself became like
Andy (11:43)
Maybe it may be true of fiction.
Adam - chapter 3 (11:57)
The long form content version of our outline and all the notes from our the interviews you conducted. Right. So you think about it, like we had an outline and interview raw notes, and we wanted to turn that into something that somebody could sort of like consume and internalize. And so we did that through a traditional book process, although we used Vera, like you said, so we could do it in three months instead of 20 months. But at the end of the day, now we have this long form.
Of the key points we want people to learn from. And now it's like, how do you want to learn it? To your point. It's like, do you want to learn it by chatting with it? Do you want to read it? Do you want to watch a video? Do you want to listen to a podcast of it? Do you want a PowerPoint presentation of it? Like you choose. And I'll give you one last thought and I'd love your reaction to this. I gave a talk about agents built on a lot of the topics in our book.
And then I put a QR code up for anybody to go to the site. This is like a couple days before the book launched, a few days ago. And we let, you know, 50 people come on. And there was a hundred people at the conference I was speaking at. Fifty of them said, I want a mini book, which is an incredible hit rate. And then we started asking, what do you like about this or not? And I anecdotally asked one of the participants at this conference, like, what did you like about the mini book you got? And she said,
It was fifteen pages. It was perfect. Like I want to read your book, but like right now I was so eager just to know a summary version of it and I wanted to know how to apply to my life. And I wanted to have something I could consume in like fifteen, twenty minutes. And we delivered that. So that's a good example of I think the world we're going into.
Andy (13:22)
It's the th this will
date us it's like the monarch notes of our book. you know. Monarch or Cliff Notes, exactly. I mean, there's so much to say. I mean, I can't
Adam - chapter 3 (13:27)
Yeah. Cliff notes, right? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny.
Monarch,
sorry, Andy, sorry to interrupt you. Monarch or Cliff Notes, to your point, personalized. Because like Cliff Notes, like when you got Cliff Notes, or you went, I don't know if you ever did this in college, I'm dating myself here at UCLA, that you could actually go buy notes from classes. Like it was not like a cheating thing. Like they at the official UCLA store, like if you missed a class, you could go get the note from that class for like a dollar or something from the store. And but they weren't
Andy (13:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Personalized. Yeah.
Who's it?
Adam - chapter 3 (14:02)
Personalized. It wasn't like Adam, like let me give you an example of like how this concept applies to your life. Imagine the Seattle Seahawks are doing this, or imagine, you know, whatever, like personalizing the content, not just in the consumption factor, but even with examples that are like true to your life. And that's what, by the way, Vera does that in our mini book. Vera goes and researches the person that signs up for the mini book and says, I looked you up on Google and I see like
This is some stuff you've done in your life and this is what your LinkedIn said. So I'm gonna customize even examples from the book that are relevant to your life. it's really remarkable.
Andy (14:36)
Yeah, I want to make a couple of points to just build on what you're saying, because I mean I feel like We could easily talk an hour. we're not going to, but we easily could. Point number one I want to make is what the living book represents is our own customer experience unlock.
That we discovered in the process of writing Agents Inc. Like we've been in the applied AI consulting business for three plus years. We've been heavy users of Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini and Notebook and other tools, lovable. It wasn't until we went deep on this project and had the idea of a living book. And the original idea, so number one is customer experience unlock.
And my point about is not only did we get to a customer experience unlock, is that the unlock was an iterative process. We didn't get to the idea of the microbook until four or five iterations in. Like the original thing that got me excited about the living book was, God, as authors of a book on agents.
The book's out of date as soon as you publish it. And because the space is moving so fast. And I was like, I'm so excited to have an agent whose job it is to surf the news and Twitter, et cetera, for content about agents and keep me as well as all the readers up to date. that really appealed to me.
That was like the original idea and then I had like an old school thought. I was like, every six months we'll do a new printed book of Agents Inc. Now it's like in the process of iterating from that to the book that you can talk to and we'll answer your questions, the idea of this living book and this team as you talked about it.
Adam - chapter 3 (16:05)
Right.
Andy (16:13)
This digital team of Vera Brown agents, why we gave authorship rights to to Vera Brown, our AI agent, as part of the book, is because it's all of those things and more. And it's really a customer experience unlocked. and the fact that we arrived at it through iteration, it actually is so meta. That's what we talk about in the book. And I just it's the chef's kiss.
Adam - chapter 3 (16:34)
Yeah. I think you're right, experience unlock is a great way to put it. Yeah, there was a moment Yeah, iteration 'cause it was the iteration of you and I talking when you're like, Yeah, like we could you know, Vera could just come up with these new additions or at any moment you can print an edition anytime you want. You can in other words, it's real time live, staying up to date. it really is an unlock that goes beyond
Andy (16:37)
Through iteration, through iteration.
Adam - chapter 3 (16:56)
you know, the original static thinking of it. And, you know, by the way, I have a stack of you can't see it here. I always have one nonfiction book going at any given time.
so but my point is that when I read these books about what's going on, I wish they were alive. Cause you know, you read a book and then you think about that book for a long time.
Andy (17:10)
Yeah. I I think I
mean I think the reason that and and we may do an episode with our former publisher, Scott, he was so excited about this. I think he had a hint that we were onto this. And I'm just thrilled. I can't wait. I'm sure we're gonna learn with the audience and discover more about what the living book is, but I'm just thrilled that Vera Brown is along for the journey and is gonna be listening and capturing this entire episode.
for all future readers. It's just so meta. with that, I hope you all enjoyed this mini episode and I hope you all enjoyed the living book. Again, you can visit the Agents Inc. website at agentsincbook.com.
as you can tell, we're super excited about it. We think it's the next frontier of publishing, not just for books, but it affects journalism, it affects all content and content consumption. So we look forward to your feedback. We hope you enjoy your custom mini book.
We thank you for listening to AI First with Adam and Andy. For more resources on how to become AI First, you can visit our website, forum3.com, download case studies, research briefings, executive summaries, and join our email list.
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