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Do Good Work is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
INTRO
PODCAST Today on the podcast,
I'm joined by Jim Tusha.
Jim spent over 20 years as a US Naval
officer that went to found his own
company and serve as CEOO, and now
he chairs two Vistage Peer groups
here in San Diego, one for CEOs of
companies of 5 million and above.
Where they're building their C-suite
and second line of leadership, and
one for small business owners between
the one and 10 million range who are
building the first layer of managers.
Now, there's something about a 20 year
naval officer sitting across a CEO peer
group that I find it hard to replicate
anywhere in the consulting world.
Jim's whole mission, the through line
from Navy to founder to Vistage chair is
to help CEOs have better lives and how
he does that is through the rooms that he
creates, where founders, when they go into
that room with each other, they can't go
in there to just perform to each other.
They're there to grow, and they're
there to be honest and transparent.
And he's able to see
conversations that very few.
Do.
In late 20 24, 1 of the Vistage
speakers opened up something in the
group that ignited one of his members,
an IP attorney, and took it seriously.
The attorney took his entire team through
AI bootcamps and then fast-paced future.
They're now three times more
productive personally, and the revenue
grew 50 to 60% of the first year.
Jim watched that happen in real time,
and he's also tracking and measuring.
Which CEOs are sitting on ai,
they're laggards, or there
might be real world friction.
And we discuss the real world adaptation
and the friction with AI across different
industries and what's actually happening.
We'll dive deep into the adoption gap
across CEOs, leadership teams and broader
workforce, and the AI champion model
that's showing up in the groups that
are actually moving and implementing ai.
Now, with that said, let's dive into it.
Raul: jim, you've been chairing Vistage
groups in San Diego for a while now.
For someone who's never been in a group
or know that model, what actually happens
in the room, how is this different from
just like a mastermind or a peer group?
What's actually happening in
the room when you're there?
Jim Ristuccia: It's all about the
decisions that happen in the room and
you get the perspective uncovered blind
spots and that's really the difference.
Could be somewhat closest.
Mastermind is probably the closest,
most people think it's like networking
and I'm bringing a business card
'cause I wanna like develop some sort
of relationships, some sort of sale.
But it's like it's, you have
a, a peer support system where.
People who know you really well and
want you to succeed and they're gonna do
everything they can to help you succeed.
Raul: So almost like there's an out,
it's like a working session when
there is an outcome, like a decision
to be made or something to chew
on at the end of the session or,
Jim Ristuccia: Oh, very much.
Raul: leave?
Yeah.
Jim Ristuccia: Yeah.
Actually there's a, there's
a couple areas that go in.
So we do actually exercises where we're
like digging deep into certain issues.
We're bringing in subject matter
experts who are like, really.
High expertise in their field.
I mean, really well-known people
from all over the country,
all over the world, in fact.
But the real core Vistage is what
we call our issue processing,
and that's the secret sauce.
That's where, where people are
bringing in decisions, opportunities,
and challenges that they have.
It's the thing that, okay, at
four in the morning, I wake up and
like, what am I thinking about?
Like, that's the thing we need
to bring to the Vistage group.
It's like, oh my God, this employee is not
performing, or my cashflow is really low.
Or, you know, I'm, I'm thinking
about doing a new launch.
Have we thought of everything?
Like any of those type of things.
And you bring that to your group and
you put that on the table, and then we
start asking you a lot of questions.
And then the questions start
becoming really uncomfortable.
If you're gonna grow that, hopefully
it's gonna be uncomfortable.
'cause if you have the answers to
everything, then it's not the right topic.
Raul: Yeah.
Jim Ristuccia: You talk a bit about Yeah.
And, and that just uncovers where the,
the gaps are and what you need to work on.
Raul: yeah, that's key.
You're pushing for the discomfort.
So, just so we understand, 'cause
there's a, we're gonna dive into like
where like the new tech AI compute
is coming into the conversation.
Just so we can understand the mix
of the groups that you're currently
leading, like what's what types of
industries and size of the companies
are you currently working with
Jim Ristuccia: Well, I have two main,
Raul: groups?
Jim Ristuccia: I have two main
groups, which are the ones in Vistage.
I have a, a chief executive group,
which is like 5 million in revenue
and above really developing a C-suite.
They have developing their second
line managers, so the, the.
The CEOs can really be detached and
work on the strategic level things.
And then I have a small business group,
which is like one to 10 million in range,
but they're just developing their first
line managers, they're still getting
their procedures going, kind of figuring
out how to get through those first.
Milestones in a business.
Now you get to 1 million, you
get to like 3 million, 5 million.
How do you evolve through
those early stages?
Only, I think this 2% of the co
companies at 1 million, something
like that, make it to 10 million.
It's, it's a really small number, so
we helped 'em get through that level.
Raul: I like that.
So when, when did the 'cause a lot
of the work that you're, that you
published that you talked about,
like AI champions and what you're
seeing with managers or leaders in
the work that we're doing as well.
When did AI start coming up
consistently in the groups?
Like what's what are some of the
topics or when did it actually
start hitting like, Hey, this is
something we should take serious.
Jim Ristuccia: We had a speaker
come in Ross Hartman with
Kingo back in September of 23.
24.
24, I think it was 24.
And that just really opened up
the aperture of like, oh my God.
We're like, we really need
to spend some time on this.
And we really need to, to look at it and.
Different members are kind
of at different speeds.
And I have one that's IP law firm
and he just totally leaned into it.
'Cause they're into the tech space.
They have AI companies, but he
put his people through bootcamps.
They really championed
that within the company.
He.
He personally has his productivity
is three x and the company
revenue is up 50, 60% in the first
year after, after doing that.
So a demonstrable impact on using
AI tools to assist them on that.
I have other people leaned into the AI on
the sales, lead gen, that sort of area.
Other ones still are just
still kind of in that chat.
CPT Claude.
Asking it like a search
engine type of thing.
So you get people across the
spectrum, but we're bringing, we
bring examples into the group.
We talk about the examples.
I give them examples of, to,
to, to show 'em different
things that you can do with it.
So we try to highlight that.
We had another speaker on AI in February,
so I'm just gonna be getting into this
kind of a regular rotation of bringing
AI speakers, AI's topics into people.
What we, what we learned.
Raul: interesting.
Jim Ristuccia: The speaker in,
Raul: Yeah.
Jim Ristuccia: to have an AI use policy.
'cause that, and that dovetails really
well with everything we're talking about.
Vistage is about being, having clarity
around the things that you're doing.
Raul: Yeah, I know that's definitely a
key, a key topic and I'm actually having
someone else in the, the legal side come
outta the podcast to talk about that.
And I think you mentioned something
that I wanna dive, dive into more on
the macro level is that what separates
the founders who are thinking about
and moving and leveraging AI versus
those are awaiting, like, Hey, maybe
we should do this next quarter.
Or maybe we should talk
about this next year.
Like what's, what's really the,
is it, is it a mindset level?
Is it the decision making patterns?
Is it like the identity of who they are?
Is it the, the industry?
Like, what's, what's the delta?
Like, why, why is there a difference
between those who are leaning in?
Those might not as be
leaning in as, as it,
Jim Ristuccia: Yeah, I think
it probably is all the above.
It's like, how much time do they have?
How much benefit do they think
they're gonna get out of it?
They don't know really what to do with it.
So how do I actually do it?
Because you need to develop your
own internal use cases of success.
Hey, we used it for this
and now I have this output.
In the peer group you can see,
'cause the guy sitting next to you
is talking about 50% increase in
revenue because he's implementing ai.
That should get your attention.
Okay.
Yeah.
Then like the other person hired
someone to do the, the sales lead
gen, and that's been super successful
for them and they were like not doing
any technology at all before that.
So that was like a good success
by just learning from your peers,
but internally in the company.
And and Vistage is spending a
lot of effort, time on that.
That's part of.
Vistage you know, we get the
research and seeing what they're
doing, that they, they provide a
lot of web monthly webinars on ai.
But they're seeing about 80% of
CEOs are leaning in and doing ai,
like they're messing around with ai.
They're doing Claude, they're doing
chat pt, they're experimenting with,
Raul: using,
Jim Ristuccia: yeah, their
leadership teams are.
A notch below that, they're probably
like around 60% penetration, that
the leadership teams are actually
doing something with ai and then the
actual worker bees are, are below 50%.
So there's this disconnect between
the top of what they're doing and
then what the employees are doing,
but the employees see it as a threat.
If they don't understand it, they
see it as this could take my job.
The best scenarios, I mean, the
scenarios that make resonate with me
what Ross told me was, and, and I've
heard from other people, is that, a,
you're not gonna be replaced by ai.
You're gonna be replaced
by somebody who uses ai.
Raul: Yeah, so one of the things there
too that like, so one of the areas that
I talk about is that I think there's
business models that are going to expire.
That's something that I've been
talking about to the audience and also
developing IP around, like the idea
that the business model that you ran
with for the last 10 years, excuse me.
under structural pressure either from
cost on the backend, from value from go
to market or from the value prop itself.
Are you seeing those conversations
show up in the groups?
Are founders kind of discussing
that or are they mostly focusing
on use cases, like practical terms?
Here's what I can do today.
Jim Ristuccia: I'm seeing
them more on the use cases.
This is what I can do today.
This is how I can do it.
And it comes more onto the LA large
language, large language model.
Options to like, help
with marketing, help with.
They're not getting into the agentic stuff
as much as it's, it's like right there.
It's kind of been really close coming up.
I think Claude's doing a
lot to push that forward.
Raul: Mm.
Jim Ristuccia: and, and
people are dabbling in that.
But I haven't seen like, major
structural changes on ai.
I know one of the challenges
is you have to be AI ready.
And most companies, a Azure statistic
that only like 5% of companies
are, are really, truly AI ready.
And they're more at the, you
know, enterprise, larger type of
company, which doesn't really fit
the model for San Diego companies.
'cause San Diego is a
startup type environment.
50 to 150 people compared
to like, you know, a five,
500,000 person type of company.
They have more resources to bear.
They probably, their systems are
already more digitized compared
to the smaller companies.
And you need to have that.
Throughput of connection to be able
to have the AI be able to do all the
functions that you want it to do.
If you want, you know, set up multiple
agents to be able to accomplish a
task, it has to all be digital for
it to be able, if it, if it goes to
a paper form, well the AI's stops.
There's the, there's the
friction in the process.
Raul: It's interesting because I'm seeing
the opposite that I'm seeing that the,
the leaner and the tighter that you are,
the faster you can adopt and actually
implement and get value pretty quickly.
Jim Ristuccia: If you have the
mentality, but that's in the tech space.
If, if, if I'm not in the tech space,
if I'm in a car repair business or car
modification space, I'm not thinking tech
if, you know, it's depends what space.
That's why my, it, my ip attorney
he does patents and, and he's in
the tech space, so he gets it.
He's able, he's, he's understanding that's
really his customers demand that, 'cause
that's the ecosystem he's operating in.
But if you're a plumber or doing something
tangible, it's, it's not as in your
face and it's not readily accessible.
Raul: So that's why I wanted to bring
on the pod 'cause you're actually seeing
it firsthand with these peer groups.
So one of the, the key areas that
you're focusing on is it's, there's
a, there's a obvious leadership gap.
Like the higher the you are on the totem
pole, the more that you're able to see it.
And, but the, the lower this is, again,
not to classify people, but again, it.
You're like, oh, I'm
just gonna replace me.
And there are that real
in, that's a real thing.
'cause there are instances where companies
say, Hey, build out this AI workflow,
and then from there they're fired six
months later, which is, it's a real thing.
It's not a, a false false narrative.
So there's that happening.
The change management with the, with
the people is, is one of the key areas
that I think is making AI adoption.
So that's the biggest
hurdle in my opinion.
The second is what you just mentioned
on the technology, vectorizing,
those things, putting it into a
database, doing the transformation.
But then the third is also
knowing the use cases.
How are you combining
those three like variables?
The, the human aspect,
the leadership aspect?
Some of the task aspect, but I think the
tech can be easily solved, is actually
easier than the human part, in my opinion.
And then also the actual use cases.
How are you leading teams through that
besides just bringing in speakers?
Like what are, what are the tangible
either exercises or ideas that we
can have bring home here so that we
can understand how to work through
this internally, or, and or when
we're working with with clients?
Jim Ristuccia: At this stage,
'cause like in the Vistage, we're,
we're like, we're bringing the
subject matter experts to speakers.
They know about it more
than, and that I would do it.
And our focus is just to bring awareness
to my, our job is not to like provide
the nitty gritty details of like how
you would do something, but it's to
get the CEOs thinking around how can
I make this work in my organization?
To try to get them to shift their mindset
that, oh, this is something I need to
pay attention to, and like, where would
I put my energy into those things?
And then bringing up really the, the use
cases of, okay, this company did this.
Maybe I could do that.
Or if you take company A and company
B, how could you combine what they did?
And, and you do it your way that's gonna
make sense for you on those things.
That's really.
The value that we bring.
'cause they might not be connected
with companies to do that.
It's hard to go through that shaft.
There's a lot of noise around ai.
Everyone's an expert.
You get certifications.
Take this course.
It's, it's harder to know what the
what's real and what's not real as
far as what's gonna give you value.
Raul: What?
What would be some of the exercises
or some of the mental models that you
help founders or leaders go through
to understand what is real, what isn't
real, or where the real value is?
I.
Jim Ristuccia: Just again, coming to
the use cases of what you can do how it
can help you, how can it save you time?
I did this and I saved, you know, and
normally it would take me two hours
to do this and I did it in 15 minutes.
And how did you do that?
Oh, I had, I had a really good prompt.
What's a prompt?
Let's talk about creating a prompt
and with that, how you do that.
'cause you have to like understand how
to do the prompt engineering to set it up
so that you're gonna get a better return.
It's not just a search engine, you
know, that, that's older stuff.
That's what we talked about,
but it's still people.
If they need the repetition
on how to do it successfully.
Raul: Yeah, you have to actually,
you have to actually use it and
spend money to, to know the value.
'cause you're right, it's a search
engine to prompt and two agents,
and then two automated workflows,
and then two proactive workflows.
Jim Ristuccia: All scaffolding, building
on these skills that, and then you,
you mentioned on the, the people
are the harder part because you have
to train the people to to do this.
And you have to motivate them
and make them feel safe that
if they're gonna be doing this,
that their job's gonna be secure.
So it's like, this is the
leadership aspect of ai.
Like how are you.
Raul: part.
That is the hardest part.
Jim Ristuccia: How is
the leader enabling this?
It is a good thing for the company
and, and getting them motivated.
That's stuff that we talk about as
well, like how you approach it to them.
You can't just say, oh, we're
just gonna do AI right now.
Just go ahead and do this.
Like, then you have to
make it more entertaining.
Raul: it.
Jim Ristuccia: You wanna use a
carrot, not a stick to like get him
to, to do what you want him to do.
Raul: So let's double click on that.
'cause you mentioned that you have to
have an internal champion, either at the
leadership level or at the management
level for this to, to be adopted.
How are you seeing leaders effectively
create like real change and
adoption of AI in the organizations?
Jim Ristuccia: Yeah, it's the, this
is idea that was shared with me is you
have, anytime you time you need a change.
You wanna have a champion who can be that
change and AI is not in a specific area.
You tend to think it's
like, oh, it's technology.
We'll give it to it, but it
doesn't understand the process
and the idea or AI is you wanna.
Short circuit the process.
You want it to do the process.
So you have to map out your processes.
So and depending, is
that a financial process?
Is that a human resources process?
Is it operational process?
Is it a marketing process?
Whatever your process is, you
need to understand the process
and the it is not gonna do that.
So that's why you need people
embedded in the areas that you want
to change and the overall, so you
need expertise in, in those areas.
It interesting, we had a speaker
come last month and he was.
Talking about winning the war for talent.
What do you do for talent and people?
The reason people leave companies is
'cause they're not challenged anymore.
They've learned, they feel like
they've learned all that they can
learn and now they're just like,
well, I wanna learn something more.
Especially the younger generation with
millennials and Gen Z, they really
wanna learn, they really value learning.
Supposed to like baby
boomer, gen X, where like.
You know, go ahead and do this.
And it's like, you know,
we're happy to have a job.
We're doing what we're told, but they're
like asking more of the why question.
So they wanna know that those things.
But the champion like dovetails in that.
Exactly.
And that speaker that talked about the
winning and the war for talent, he's
like, when you get to someone like three
years, make him, make him an expert.
Do domain expert in some area, have a
conversation and find out what they wanna.
What they're interested in, what
they wanna spend some time on.
And then you do like Google,
okay, you got like five hours a
week to spend time on this thing.
I expect you to, to learn
this and then come back.
And then you're gonna be the champion
in the company and learn this.
So you could have a, you know, a large
language model expert where you could have
a Claude expert and a chat GPT expert.
You could have an agent expert,
you could have someone doing
all that as the champion.
So they're becoming the domain
expert within the company
Raul: how have you seen teams
like actually implement that?
Are they doing that like per domain
expert or are they doing like a
board from different departments
come together to collaborate on that?
Like how are you seeing your groups
actually tangibly execute that?
Jim Ristuccia: The smaller companies you
get pretty much it's just one person.
One person's like the, Hey, you're
gonna, you're gonna be the AI
champion and like you're, let's say
a 15, 20 person company the larger
company's like a hundred people.
Then you'd have like a committee.
You'd have like get a couple of
people from different departments.
So a couple of my members have done that.
So I've seen that success.
And it's really, it's the leadership
empowering them and making sure
that they have the support.
That it's, it's not just a, oh, I
have an idea, go ahead and do it.
And then you don't give them the support
on it, but you really have to like,
help them and make sure that they have
the, in premature, so to speak, from the
CEO, that everyone knows that this is
important, that we're gonna be moving
on this and we wanna see some traction.
And, and the real traction is get the.
A real world use case that's success,
a, a success story in the company.
We implemented this, we
saved x amount of time.
This is the benefit of this.
This is why we should do it.
Oh, okay.
Now I need from you,
I need your processes.
I need a process.
What's your low hanging fruit?
Your 80, you know, your 80 20,
you're getting 80% of your return
on this, 20% of these processes.
Let's pick the, the number one or two
process and we'll map that out and we'll
see if we can create an agent around that.
Or how can we eliminate steps
in that area using the tools.
Raul: The way that you're
measuring success right now.
It sounds like it's a lot of
the metric of time savings.
Are there any other teams or
leaders that are measuring
anything else besides just time?
Jim Ristuccia: The time is the big one.
'cause you can say, okay, X it took
me X about before, and then you could,
Raul: right?
Jim Ristuccia: yeah.
And you can you, you, it, it,
you get a sense of how much pro
product the productivity is.
The one who's the intellectual property,
they're unique because they're billing.
Typically lawyers bill on hours or
they have projects and they, they
understand how long their projects
take, and then they're seeing
that it's happening a lot quicker.
So they're able to, to get more work done.
And then obviously their revenues
have gone up in that timeframe.
Raul: Okay, so it's a little bit of
just focusing on time right now, which
I think is, is a good starting point.
But is anyone measuring
like new ways to do the.
any new revenue that come through besides
just like the increased total revenue?
Or is the, are leaders
just fixated right now?
Like, oh, this is time savings.
'cause it's, it's the lowest
hanging fruit to measure.
Jim Ristuccia: They're just mine are
just focused on the lowest hanging fruit.
Like, how can I save time?
How can what's this gonna save me time on?
What things you know, I, I like
some of the stuff is on the
learning too, which is a different.
End of it on, like, you use like
notebook, lm and you have like a book
and or, and you, you can create a pod.
If you're a, a auditory learner, you can
create a podcast for yourself on a topic
that you want, or you can create visuals
on that, or, you know, I think that's
a an area that's interesting as well.
But I don't know if it's as
easy to measure the return on
the investment on that one.
Raul: into nonconsumption?
Yeah, I think there's a, there's, there's
three metrics that I've been measuring.
Obviously.
The first one is time saving, but
I correlate that to productivity.
One of the things I have my agents
do is to actually measure like,
what did I accomplish today?
And on a good day, like pre ai,
I would be able to do like a.
Six big things in a day, maybe 13,
like actual like push things forward.
And then now, like every day
it's at minimum 30, 40 in some
cases, 70 to 90 things in a day.
So I'm, I'm measuring that.
The other measure obviously is revenue.
Like how much net new value are we
creating, as well as what, 'cause
this one is more, less tangible.
It's like, how did we create something
that we couldn't do before for clients
and how would we price that in the past?
So then that new value would equal
X amount per revenue per month.
So I think those, I think it's it's
not like lack of, of measurements, but
it's just like it's easiest to think
thing to see how am I more productive?
And then gearing that productivity
to revenue generating activities.
Jim Ristuccia: Yeah, you can look
at how, how much, what did you
get done at the end of the day?
How many more things did you do compared
to if you had to do it all, how, how
you used to do it, what would you get?
Raul: Help me walk through the,
the mindset of the culture.
So the teams that are adopting,
obviously they're, they're enforced and
like their clients demanded of them.
But I'm just thinking of like, like
the clients that are listening to this
and or the the teams that are listening
to the podcast and they're like, the,
the average business is like, they're
running, they're stuck in the day-to-day.
They're doing a lot of work.
They don't have either anyone to implement
it or they have a champion right now.
But what are some of the mindsets
that you've seen successfully
implement from leaders down
versus, Hey, this is important.
In terms of communicating to that team,
because you mentioned earlier that
hey, maybe some one of the manager role
or the perks, the person at the, the
junior entry might be threatened by it.
What are some of the like winning
mindsets to transform the org's
culture to view this as something
positive versus negative?
Also, by the way, in the United States, we
have the lowest sentiment on AI as well.
Which is something that is, is
hopefully gonna change, but we have
a negative sentiment towards it.
Jim Ristuccia: Yeah, people,
people feel threatened.
So that's that to me is really, is, is
the leadership part in creating that
psychological safety within the, the
company so that the, their employees
feel that they're gonna be safe by doing
this, and they're gonna feel that it's
gonna be productive and to show them
that this, it's just a net positive.
It's, there's not gonna
be a negative on there.
And obviously there's, there's gonna
be dislocation because there's gonna
be certain jobs that are gonna go away.
But like, how do I transition those
employees to do something different?
How do I get those employees to adapt to a
different job or a different job function?
And maybe they'll just be overseeing
a whole host of agents and I'm
gonna, I can create more opportunity.
We've seen this in the past
with technology innovation.
It creates jobs.
It doesn't take the jobs away or else we,
we wouldn't be working right now with all
that changes that we've had with compute.
Raul: There's, there's, yeah.
I'm not a dor, but in terms of like,
what are your leaders actually saying?
Like what are their, what are the
action plans or the, the approaches
that they're taking with their team
to create that safety to train?
Or what are the narratives that
they're, they're taking that's working?
I.
Jim Ristuccia: It's really from.
They, they have to make the, they
have to make it a positive experience.
They have to be engaged in it as well.
So the first step is, that's
why we're seeing that 80% at the
top, the CEOs are engaging 'cause
we're telling 'em in Vistage that
you gotta be involved with it.
You need to know what it is
and what the capabilities are.
You can't just keep it hands off
and then expect your team to do it
and you're not gonna be supporting
them or understanding what the.
Implications could be for the company
and where the, the opportunities
could be of how you could adapt.
And that's really the key for the company
is like the companies have to adapt.
So the leaders have to be the
forefront of that, a adaptation.
So how are we gonna
incorporate that in there?
What's our new reality?
How do I orient myself to this
new reality that I have this tool?
And what can I do with this tool to
speed up my tempo so that I can get
past my competitors and, and I can
get to my customers quicker and, and
provide what my customers are expecting.
Raul: Yeah.
One of the things that I'm seeing as
well, and, and, and and on top of that
is not only just the leader or the CEO
actually actively playing or dabbling
or actually building stuff, and, but
obviously it's not production ready.
It's not like safe to put, some
of them are not safe to put
into your actual organization
if you're doing like 20 million.
But one of my clients they're
looking at not just, okay, cool, you
got the agent, but they're looking
at, okay, what's the compliance.
For the team that's actually using it.
How are we doing this compliantly?
How, who's complying to
like the actual use case?
Where do we track like API costs
and making sure who's using what?
Are we building like a shared database
or a pool of knowledge that we, when
one person learns, the other person
already compounds that learning.
So the organization as a whole learns
and then on top of that ones you
have that, then you can actually do,
okay, here's some of the agents of
the workflows that we can leverage
to, to execute some of the work.
In terms of the discussion, which is
a real discussion, I think there's
gonna be some turbulent times.
Could be a couple years before there's.
Ability there is gonna be job transition.
Job loss.
How are your leaders preparing for that?
And have your leaders
seen that firsthand yet?
Jim Ristuccia: They haven't seen
it and I don't think they're
really preparing for that.
They're not, they're think
thinking that through.
I know my attorney's thinking he's the one
who's thinking about it 'cause he doesn't
see his other attorneys as his competitor.
He sees Claude as his competitor.
Raul: Mm-hmm.
Jim Ristuccia: that Claude is gonna
create the workflows or, or the other
LLMs are gonna create, or someone's some
sort of form of AI is gonna create a
competition for the stuff that he's doing.
'cause it's all intellectual capital
that they have inte, you know, it's
all paper stuff that they're doing
and doing research and evaluating
and making you know, documentation to
support what all this that you're doing.
So you can use those tools to do that,
but it still takes someone to review it.
You have to have someone reviewing it.
So it has to be a person
in the loop for it.
So do you replace it and you
have less people or do you have
more people doing more work and
you just create more revenue?
Or, and did you find other areas?
You know, I challenge him.
It's like, okay, you're just,
you do this narrow niche.
Like what if you were the expert
in AI and now, and can you expand
in other areas and just teach
them how to expand in other areas?
That's like an opportunity as well.
Raul: So he's actually facing the
real pressure from the business model.
'cause it's actually discussing like,
how do I, how do I look at this?
Yeah, there's, there's, the way
that I thought about it too, there's
four different ways to price.
One is like, just right now what
you're seeing is the margin play.
Can I do things the same way
with less cost and less overhead?
And I get more margin like that.
That's like level one.
But then the question
becomes, is it a volume play?
If I'm able to productize this, can I go
for volume and then, and then price on
outputs or price by leveraging my IP to.
So the agents deliver the ip or do I do
a performance play where I capture the
value and I take a cut of that value?
It, it's, it's, it's a real, where he's at
is I think where, where we're, we're too
far into the future thinking about it, but
that's one of the things that I've been.
Forecasting is that there are a
lot of business models that are
gonna face this either by force or
naturally, where you're gonna have to
really rethink your business model.
To contrast that, one of the, one of
our, my friends, he's running an agency.
They're, they're doing like fundraising
right now, but they're, they're.
delivering what I, it's
like a hybrid play.
So the 70% of the delivery is agentic,
the, the last 30% is like concierge
and they're charging like 10 to
40 KA month because of the value
and the outcome that they perform.
And that's only because
of their positioning.
If they didn't have that concierge
human in the loop support for their
end clients, then it would be a
volume plan that the, the, the
product price model would be cheap.
So there's a lot of dynamics
there to think about.
Do you, do you, I mean, you're,
you're in the field, you're
talking to founders in real life.
You're actually seeing where they're at.
You're also obviously measuring what's
the cadence, what's coming down the pipe?
How much do you think is like the real
pressure to really rethink business models
versus just adopting the technology?
And I know a lot of people aren't there
yet, but where, where's your, where's
your thinking at Jim in terms of how
to rethink how we operate in this new,
I dunno if this is a new era, a new
economy, but just with a new tech.
Jim Ristuccia: It depends on the
timeframe because without a doubt in
my mind, this is like revolutionary
of how it's gonna change things.
'cause it is going to have
significant dislocations.
It's gonna have significant
opportunities of how we do things.
I like the model, you know, okay, I'm
doing the agentic, you got machine
doing it, but I'm doing concierge,
so high level customer service.
To, to, you know, people like
high level customer service.
It depends on who your customer is.
'cause maybe they just
wanna deal with a machine.
You know, gen Zs wanna just deal with
a, a machine, but like boomers, I
want, I wanna talk to somebody and I
want them to hold my hand through it.
So it depends on your customer there.
But in the short term, I mean,
there's a lot of hype around it.
If you're in the tech space, like, oh, it
seems like, oh my God, this is so crazy.
But when I'm dealing with my
members that are still dealing with
mechanical things and, you know.
Producing things, manufacturing things.
It's slower change.
There's a lot more friction.
You know, are they AI ready?
What's it take to become AI ready?
What's it take to get the, the
workforce trained around that?
That's gonna take a long time.
I think it's gonna take a longer
than people are expecting.
Raul: Yeah.
Jim Ristuccia: adapt, the technology's
gonna move fast, but I don't know if the
people are gonna be able to move as fast.
To me, the winners are gonna be
the ones who are able to adapt
quicker to this and understand how
to make this tool work for them.
And that, that's where the huge
opportunity is utilizing these tools
in the way that's going to become you
know, most productive for the employees.
'cause the employees are gonna
implement it in some way,
and that's gonna create the.
Ultimate value.
I, I don't see, I don't see a lot of
companies with like, what would be a
hundred people and there's only like two
people running the company and all agents.
I mean, there could be some use
cases for that, but the, the vast
majority of company companies are
not gonna have something like that.
It's gonna be make something.
If I'm a florist, I still
gotta put flowers together.
But it could help my order system.
And I could be more streamlined and
I could have a good communication
system with my customers that
everything kind of cascades and that
whole thing, it takes care of itself.
I don't even have to answer,
have someone answer the phone.
'cause I can have a, an agent,
virtual assistant take that.
But someone's still gotta create the,
the flower arrangements and put it
together and cut them and clean up the
store and, and do those sort of things.
Raul: Yeah, I think there's two things
that I wanna highlight before we
close, but I think that reframe that
empowering your front level employees
because that's gonna be the real change.
I think that's very powerful.
The other thing is that you're
right, like the companies with
like a hundred thousand, like 1000.
500 employees, like for this to
change, it's not gonna be overnight.
And hopefully with when they adapt and,
and leverage it, I think they're gonna
create more net new value where they're
going to be able to increase revenue.
And maybe they may not be
hiring more, but they, with that
team, they're able to do more.
And then to the, the point of the
small businesses that like that you
and I work with at least part of
your, your practice works with them.
Like one sorry, two to
like 20, 30, 50 employees.
I, the way that I see it for them,
and this is what I'm actually seeing
in like on, on the ground, is even if
it's a team of five, they're able to
execute as if there were a team of 25
or, or 30, maybe even 50 in some cases.
So I think it's to, to your
point, leverage the tool,
adopt it, see where it goes.
But Jim, for every, everyone our
listeners out there, where's the
best place for people to reach out
to you, and thank you for being on.
Jim Ristuccia: That's my website.
It's just my name, jim tus.com.
That's J-I-M-R-I-S-T-U-C-C-I a.com.
Raul: Right.
Well, Jim, we'll put that
link in the show notes.
Thank you again for being on.
Jim Ristuccia: Roll.
This was great.
I really appreciate it.
It's a fun conversation.
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