How AI is Raising the Bar at Every Job (Most People Haven't Felt It Yet)

Kayvon Kay0:00Can you delegate tasks successfully to other human beings? Sean Campbell, founder of Cascade Insights, says that single answer predicts who wins with AI better than any technical skill ever will. Sean spent years inside competitive intelligence and market research for some of the biggest technology brands in the world, studying why people adopt new technology and what gets in their way. Today at Cascade Insights, his team steps into a company, picks a job role, a team, or a business process, and rebuilds it with AI in the room. He also teaches AI at George Fox University, so he sees both sides, what founders need today and what the next generation of sellers walks in expecting. Then he names the one thing he says to start following right now because it is coming faster than AI did. This is the Vault. Let's unlock it.

Kayvon Kay1:06Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on, man. Yeah, I'm excited. I know we were just talking about the world of AI and you come from a unique background where you're teaching people AI, but you've also been behind some of the biggest businesses and some of the know hows of where these AIs are coming from and whatnot. So I'm excited to kind of dive in to talk about, well, where is AI today? Where is it going? How do you see where it goes? And you know, everything in between. Yep. Yeah. Looking forward to it, man. So tell us a little bit about who Sean is. Where where did Sean and AI meet?

Sean Campbell1:44Well, my experience with AI kinda grew in a foundation that my entire professional career, you know, I'm 55, so I'm squarely Gen X, has always been at some some kind of service or engagement around how people adopt technology. Meaning, you know, I left my master's degree and basically promptly started teaching people how to use networking databases, programming systems, you know, all that kind of stuff. Then I found a company that does competitive intelligence work initially and then market research work as well with extremely leading technology brands. Again, you know, like the Microsofts, the Googles, the Salesforce's, you know, etcetera. You know? And we... So we're spending years and years and years trying to understand, like, okay. Why do people adopt technology? What moves them to adopt technology? You know? What what gets in the way? And all along that time, I've also had multiple stints on a college campus where I've been a professor kind of engaging with students around, you know, different aspects of that same problem. So sometimes I sum it up, and I'm like, I've kind of had both a professional and an academic stint as professor in a way. Right? You know? Lots of research, lots of training, lots of observing, lots of mentoring. And so where I'm at now, the the AI specific is about three years ago. I'm like, like everybody else, I'm like, okay. Well, this is changing everything. This is bigger than every other tech change, you know, step change wise. And I don't want people to get run over by it. You know, my heart as an operator, you know, a guy who's owned a couple businesses, I looked at it from that angle, and I'm like, I don't... You know, there's gonna be people who won't get it, and they won't move fast enough. And then I was looking at it from the perspective of, can I get back into the university system and actually teach students this? And that led to a role where I'm an assistant professor of artificial intelligence at George Fox and I'm also the AI integration lead for the MBA program there. And, you know, obviously, there's lots of discussion at university level just of of how should we integrate this. You know? And I can speak to some things I see in the college of business, but I think it's reasonable to assume that, you know, any department on any campus is probably trying to figure out what they do with it. And then then you're talking about what does that mean for future generation. Like, this morning, I was talking about AI and sales in the class because I cover a bunch of different job roles. And I I I said, you know, I I could give examples if you want me to get into examples because we did some cool stuff, but but I basically said trying to set the kids into the framework of, you know, let's try to figure out what this is gonna be like when you leave here in four years. You know, in your first sales job, what is AI gonna actually do for you, and what should it not do for you, and, you know, what does it mean for your career? So, you know, I find myself in kind of this interesting position, I guess, you'd sum it up of, like, you know, I'm researching what's happening while working for some of the guys who are making leading AI solutions. At the same time, I'm teaching and mentoring on a college campus. And then the third thing is we we help companies meaningfully adopt AI. Like, we deal with all this, like, reimagining the job and what does it mean to basically, you know, change a sales or marketing or HR role with AI in the room. And, you know, it's a lot of fun. It's also really chaotic. Not in the sense of, I think, like, my work output is chaotic, but I think I I think I do good work. But, you know, man, like, every single day, there is something new. And if you're really trying to keep everything current, that's...

Kayvon Kay5:29Which I do. Right? That's a big, big deal. It's a huge deal. That's the challenge. I would say that's one of the challenges for sure, I think. Well, there's the adoption of AI, which I mean, and you say your... Yourself earlier, people who've who've yet to adopt it, there is... I would like to say they're so behind. They're not actually behind, but they're going to get behind pretty quickly. There's the adoption of AI, but then there's change, the rate of what AI is changing at every day. How do you stay on top of it?

Sean Campbell5:59Well, I mean, I could get really tactical, and I'd probably start there. But, I mean, like, you know, I have probably, I don't know, probably 75 substacks. I don't... You know what I mean? Like, that that are that are just kind of old school way show up in my inbox. It's more than that that I go do. But, you know, I use a mail client called Superhuman, so everything kinda goes up into a folder and a filter, basically. And then I have an AI go process through that and kind of tell me what's the stuff I should pay more attention to. I particularly use Claude, I have some skills to kind of pull that together. I find myself still sometimes reading certain pieces. You know? There's a guy, Ziv, don't... I think his sub stack is, like, don't forget about the vase. I love his sub sub stack. It's really long, though, sometimes, but even so, like, its length is what draws me in sometimes. Like, there's a narrative that you sometimes lose no matter how good your AI is summarizing something that makes you think. And then I've got a Grock bot that just bangs away at x all day. I mean, for anybody listening who has not tried Grock, now that Grock bot exists, you need to go try Grock. Like, I mean, that is... Know, all these AI platforms have had a moment where everybody went, wait a minute. Let me go try that one now. I think Groc bot is that moment for Groc, basically. And... Yeah. And then it's just just a whole bunch of just collecting, synthesizing, compiling, you know, where AIs have a role in that. But I I would say it all starts from really good creation around what you follow. You know? I probably spent three years now slowly, like, subscribing to a newsletter for a week and going, noise, and leaving, and subscribing to one for three years and going, this one has a lot of value. Right? Because there's a lot of parroting in the space too. I mean, you could go pull up five substack newsletters and realize they all basically just said the same thing. You know? So I'm usually looking for somebody from an editorial standpoint has kind of a lean. And and not just one lean. Right? I mean, I probably come off and it's probably legitimate. I'm probably more pro AI than I'm anti AI. And... I'm not a 100% pro AI, but I have I have sub stacks that are very much designed to make me read stuff I disagree with. There's one called blood blood against the machine or blood in the machine. I forget the name of it. This guy hates AI. I mean, like, maybe if he was on the show, he'd be like, no. I don't really mean it that way. I'm like, well, don't know. I mean, the title of your subset kinda gives it away, I think. But, like... You know what I mean? Like, it's... It seemed a lot of nuance in that. But but I read that guy because I'm like, okay. I don't wanna I don't wanna fall into the trap of just all the tech hype around it. You know what I mean? I wanna really, like, make sure I'm reading that other side of it. You know? Same thing with creatives. Right? You know? I've got stuff I follow that's like creatives who are gung ho about it and obviously a lot of creatives who are not. But that that I think comes from... I have kind of a bit of an informal motto. Like, by the time he gets 55, you probably have 20 of them. Right? But, like, one of them is read stuff you disagree with. Like Yeah. I think I think the whole world would be better if they just made that a bumper sticker and we were all forced to go do Read stuff you disagree with. Because... Well, because you know you don't read it all the way to the end. Right? I mean, most people don't. I mean, if you say... I... If you said, did you read stuff you disagree with in the last ten hours? Most people will be like, the headline? Then I stopped. You know what I mean? And so it really takes an act of will, I think, to actually, like, fill your your filter with stuff that maybe on the surface, you kinda, like, grumble when you're done reading it. You're like, yet again, you know, more blood. You know what I mean? But you're like, no. But somewhere deep down, that's like like either either it's helping me reinforce what I believe about AI, or it's making me back off a position that maybe I held more strongly than I should, you know, at the end of the day. I don't know. That's just one of the things I've always felt. You could extend that to regular business thinking too. I think that impacts a lot of things.

Kayvon Kay9:49So what's your thoughts? Because I thought I saw something... This is at the global stage, but I thought I saw something where in... I think it was a Finland or one one of the Norwegian countries, they've banned AI in schools, where in China, obviously, it's quite opposite. What do you think the impact of that's gonna be?

Sean Campbell10:08Massive. I mean, mean, literally, there's a single word, massive. I mean, there... There's so much about pacing the frontier, which if if... People that have read that post knows exactly what that means, with this idea that we're we're... We can meaningfully slow AI. Right? And I'm terrified just like everybody else. I like, you know, I don't wanna be flying a plane one day and AI decides we don't need planes anymore. You know what I mean? And all of a sudden, like, you know, the plane's in the ground. Right? You know? But but there's kind of this weird belief system that isn't isn't meta enough. Right? I mean, it's like, okay. I'm gonna remove AI from my k through 12 school district. I'm gonna remove AI from my college campus. I'm gonna have a red green stoplight system, and that will be good enough. When that when that was dead a year ago, like, I mean, the idea that, like, you could just say, don't use AI, like, I mean, it doesn't really even compute even. I mean, you're actually forcing kids to cheat because the minute they use Grammarly, they're using AI. You know what I mean? So, like, there's there's all these things that just don't make sense. You know? But you have to... I mean, we live in a global world. I mean, China has really... And I I have to be careful here because I mean, I'm not trying to, like, denigrate an entire country. Right? But, like, clearly, there's a leadership system that thinks differently than, let's say, a democracy. Right? It... Clearly. I mean, just just has to be. So maybe they're gonna make some pretty different decisions about how they want to use or weaponize or leverage AI and robotics in ways that I don't think we wanna wake up and have no meaningful counter. And and I think maybe the best argument for why it's hard to slow is what happened with Hugging Face. The Hugging Face attack that, you know, everybody tends to use as, like, this harbinger of, like, okay, that can happen is... Which they should, is they ended up being able to defeat it by using another AI model. Yeah. Right? So so it's like you look at that and you're like, okay. Come on, man. I mean, like, we can't keep just... You know? And and yet, just letting it just run ahead like crazy and what it would mean to the development of kids and all kinds of things. I mean, those those are real questions.

Kayvon Kay12:23Well, that's the the, you know, the critical thought, right? Like, someone was telling me that the challenge that's going to happen is like my era, right? We had to grow up with this idea of critical thought. We had to do some critical thinking. We had to... We didn't have the answers. Nowadays, they don't even... Kids, if they're using AI every day, like, you don't actually have to have that critical thought. You just ask AI. Other side of me goes, but they're also gonna be that much more knowledgeable, more powerful. Like, there's both sides that you Well, can

Sean Campbell12:55it's funny because that... There's two things about that. One, on the critical judgment side, right, it's interesting because that's such a quick thing people say. And I agree with you, by the way. I agree. Like like, that's what we need to develop in young people. If you grew up in analog, you know, Gen X, so we grew up with paper maps, believe it or not. Right? You know what mean? That kind of thing. Right? So, like, you know, we had to develop our judgment in a in a non digital form to start, and even the digital form when it first came out, it was, you know, archaic compared to now. Right? And so... But that alone is a challenge both professionally and academically because, you know, if I looked at you right now and I said, you know what? You lack judgment. There's a small part of every human's brain that gets slightly irritated. Know what I mean? Like like, what like, what do you mean? Like like, kind of like we almost assume we have judgment. Do you know? And and so what does that mean to train that? You know, go walk into a room full of millennials and say, you lack judgment. Okay. I... I'd like to see what happens after that. You know what I mean? That'll be fun to watch. Right? You know? And yet and yet that we're saying, like, that's what we've gotta develop. So there's there's... That... That's solvable by restructuring how we educate and receive information, but that takes time. But to your other point, like, just today, this week, it's AI and sales in the class. Next week, it's AI and creatives. Next week after that, it's AI and marketing, and then AI and HR, and I go through all these different job roles. We have, like, a hackathon week and all this stuff. And so... But I did an exercise where I said, go pick... I'll I'll try to make this brief. You can unpack more in this if you want because it totally ties in what you were saying about that high low that you can just cheat and do it badly, but you could also be, like, super empowered. So I said, this is a college campus, but I've done this in professional rooms just with more of like a a work example. But I said, okay. So pitch the university at a new cafeteria supplier. Right? A new food service management company because, you know, who who likes the cafeteria in the college Right? So I'm like, okay. Go ahead and write two pitch emails. And I said, you get to have all these different roles. One of you has to be the researcher. One of you has to do this. You know? Think of it like they're they're doing day one on a sales job for a food service management company. And so guess what happened? After me giving all the nudges, use AI as a boxing companion, you know, red team and everything else, there was at least a couple teams that five minutes into this exercise wanted to ship me their finished email. And I stopped it, and I said, this is way, way too early for you to be done. Like, you have superpowers available to you. You you you need this... I mean, I had, like, about thirty minutes for this activity, including reviewing the emails that they put up on the screen, you know. Yeah. But but here's the flip side. At the end of it, I said, just like you're talking about, you're way better off than day one of any sales rep that joined a job pre AI if you know what you're doing, if you red team it, if you really think it through, if you search effective subject lines, if you search good structures, you know you know where I'm going with this. Right? Like, this is this is a big, and they immediately saw the high low, and I could see them go, yeah. I was kinda tempted to cheat. But on the other hand on the other hand, I could be pretty powerful on day one if I wanna be. And then I said, and guess what? That'll be the bar. When you leave here, that's the bar. So get used to that.

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Kayvon Kay17:11It's interesting because it... Well, let me ask you this because you're actually in the school systems and you're in the university systems. What what are... What's the the energy like right now with AI? Are they adopting it? Are they excited about it? Are they hesitant of it? Like, I know I have some professor... Like, professors in my network. They're just waiting. They're waiting the day, you know, that AI takes over for them. Right? And I think I still live in this world where I'm naive to wanna believe that we still need humans. AI is not gonna be taking over everything yet. Quantum, you know, we had to... Quantum computing's coming. But Right. I... It's just interesting because these kids are in school right now. And for me, I think about it and I've heard this. We don't even know the jobs. Like, my my children are three and three and six right now. The jobs that they're gonna be doing in the next twenty years, we don't even know... Like, they don't even exist yet. We don't even know what they're gonna be.

Sean Campbell18:15Well, there's a lot in what you just said. So so to hit a couple high points so we could dig into any of it. Right? Yeah. First off, I mean, the university has, like, a chancellor, provost, whatever. So I'm not... I can't really... Like, what the university thinks isn't isn't me. What I can tell you, though, is, like, in the college of business where I'm at and what I've seen from what I observed from other universities and even what I observed when you go peer inside an organization that's trying to adopt AI, I think the first filter that starts to impact things is role because Is role? Is role. Because if you if you think about... Like like, in a department, you may think you're growing up a bunch of accountants or you may think you're growing a bunch of future marketers, or you may think you're growing a bunch of future sellers or financial planners or economists or whatever. And and in a business, it's obviously, like, those roles plus other ones. Right? And I think what happens is it's the degree of awareness of that person as to, like, how deep the AI water really is in that job. You know, the the partnership that person's gonna have to have with AI. Because I've said now for a couple years, we never get away for the rest of time. And I I know somebody says that. You're like, how could you be right? I think I'm right. For the rest of time, having to decide every morning, what do I give to AI and what do I keep? Even when AI gets more autonomous, it's still the same problem. We just moved it up in abstraction. Right? I still have to make the same decision. So every young person gets to wrestle with that everywhere. And my point about role based is some people, I think, see where their role is going better than others. Does that make sense? They can see where it's going, and so they're willing to accept that, and they're willing to kind of understand that. And then there's other people who are just either more resistant or they haven't seen what's possible yet. I mean, like, one of the biggest divides right now, I think, is people who use AI platforms. I don't wanna say just like chat because chat's pretty powerful. Right? I mean, like, it is. Like, I mean, you can do amazing things in a long running chat session. It's not... You know, people send it, like, throw shade at it now. They're like, ah, you're just chatting. I'm like, well, we can do some pretty cool things with chat. But but there's somebody else who's, like, automating and driving their entire computer with computer use. And and that camp, to paraphrase a CEO I heard say this once, the the the one that's just prompting thinks the other guys are just doing magic, and the ones that are doing magic can't possibly understand why the prompting people aren't over here with them. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like... And that and that gap gets in the way. And why is that? Because it's moving so fast. Right? I mean... And that ties into the job role thing you mentioned. Right? You're you're right. We don't know the easy out for people when they talk about job disruption. Because, you know, obviously, if you stand in front of a room full of either young business professionals who are in job or young students, you you get obviously an immediate question of, like, is my job gonna be around? And I know the easy out sometimes is like, well, we don't know the jobs that we're gonna have. I mean, we, you know, we had, you know, steam, you know, wheel engineer, you know, and then we all of a sudden had, like, diesel mechanic. And, like, clearly, like, look at that. There were jobs. They were both mechanical. And I'm like, great. You know, that took, like, three generations. Right? Yeah. This is different. This... You can't you can't... You know, that... This this happens in like a year. You know what I mean? Like, we no longer need any medical transcriptionists evermore. Okay. Where do they all go? You know? And and that is what I want people to be honest about, you know? And that's what I think people innately know. So so... And then to tie in one other thing, I don't know if this hit all the points, but like, you know, you mentioned your kid's age. Right? I think the hardest job... And I told this to somebody else who's, like, kinda works with administrators of k through 12 school districts. It's at the university. We were talking about AI use, and that's kind of the role she has. And so I said, you know what's the hardest job in all education now? K through twelve administrator. Because what do... K through twelve administrator or principal or district head because how in the world do you honestly say that the curriculum you've designed, which we know exists in a book somewhere or online of how you take a kindergartner through senior year of high school, how in the world do you actually know what that endpoint is twelve years from now? You know what I mean? Like, what what... I mean, college is hard enough, man. Mean, it's hard enough for me to stand in front of a room full of freshmen and make statements like, you know, sales is gonna be different when you leave here in four years. And that's true, but, like, to... Know, how much different, right, is it gonna be? Right? That that... You know, like... But I can maybe draw a trend line. Like, maybe I can be like, okay. Could kinda see. Even if it hockey sticks, I can be like, okay. I think that's safe to say. But But What what are what are we doing with that? Right? I mean, like, you know, what... You know, that's that's hard. And then that also has the other piece of it, which is... And this is true of a lot of things. I think people say this is true of education, but it's also true professionally, is we're rapidly reaching a point where... I'll give you a concrete example. Let me put it this way. Like, we're rapidly reaching a point where you can do a lot by knowing what the thing is. You don't have to actually have done the thing. So say say you talk to an accountant who says, you know, I need to grow up a bunch of young accounts and they need to learn accrual based accounting. And to learn accrual based accounting professionally or educationally, you know, they need to actually build a spreadsheet, put items in it, make journal entries, and then eventually make it all add up. And that... Now they learn accrual based accounting. I... My argument would be for for a lot of things that we consider craft that we learned manually, like we drove stick shift to learn it. You know. What's really important for a lot of those things now, not not all of them, but but an increasing amount of them, is the ability to know what it is so you can direct the system to do it for you. Yeah. Which is a huge step change in, like, professional life and academic life. Because for me to know what accrual based accounting is and tell a system to give it back to me in accrual based accounting requires a lot less time and a different level of judgment and reason than the other way around. Right? And that's true of everything. That's like every single thing. We're confusing, like, the time it took us to learn the craft with the time it takes other people to learn the craft. And I I think we haven't really quite wrestled with that one, honestly. I think that, you know, you can blame young people for some things and older people for some things and middle people for some things. I think that's one that we haven't quite dealt with yet.

Kayvon Kay24:59Is that the speed of which we can learn?

Sean Campbell25:02Well, it's more it's it's more that we wanted we wanted to find mentoring or apprenticing or educating someone, business or academic, in a way that was defined pre AI. There are literally things that they don't need to know how to do manually. They just don't. Yeah. And and and and do... Are we really thinking about that when we're shaping a new seller Yeah. In their first year or a new market? And I would argue we're not. I would argue some of that and even the, you know, even the evaluation systems will need to change. Right? Like like like a really good concrete example of that. Right? Like, you know, I use this with professional audiences and students a lot. I'm like, okay. The bar for visual communication is massively going up. And everybody goes, yep. I've seen that. I've seen Nano Banana. I've seen ChatGPT image two five. I I know I have. But have you thought about what that means? Because that means the next time you build a deck, if you wanna raise because you built a cool deck, the hard deck exists now. You gotta go way better than that. And sellers and everybody... You know, like, the... All of a sudden, that'll filter through because we're humans. We're all of a sudden like, yeah. I'm bored with that. That's new. What else do you got? You know? I've seen amazing decks. Right? I've seen amazing emails. I've seen... You know? And all of a sudden, everybody's like, wait a minute. Now it's hard to get. And I'm like, yeah. Get used to that.

Kayvon Kay26:19It is. It's interesting you say that. It's like, it's hard because now you have... It's almost like people... Like, I'll just use this example, like graphic designers or, like, graphic designers are gonna be a thing of the past. And I'm like, if you're a good graphic designer, you're more needed than ever before because everybody knows AI slop. You could see the AI slop.

Sean Campbell26:38Well, right. And and and the other thing is this is a little bit in the weeds, but there... There's a very different paradigm if you're going to, like, interact with an AI to create visuals. You know, you you... Like, really good people put things in, like, the focal length of the camera and the angle of the shot and where things are put. You know? Now now I think I think that's... That goes back to what I said earlier. Is that a learnable thing? Because it's very different. It's exactly the... It's exact... I didn't intend to bring it up this way, but that craft thing, it's right there too. Right? I can take a room full of students and have them put an image or a video clip in that they love and have the AI interpret it and give them back photographer or videographer language for how that was created. Now I know this is derivative. Right? But you could argue everything's kind of derivative. Right? You know, we start with that. Right? And say, okay. Now you know how to... And I know there's probably some graphic designer, but you're... They don't know how to talk like me. Said, that's not my point. I'm saying they they have new language to use that they wouldn't normally use. Right? And now they start to use that language and those constructs to direct the AI. You see where I'm going with that? Like, that's a different... It's a different thing then. And and now, how much of that craft do they need to know? Do they walk around with a camera bag with 17 different lenses in it? I don't know if they need to do that to learn how to pick the right lens for an AI image, but they certainly need to know something more than just what the AI tells them, but there's a whole dynamic in that.

Kayvon Kay28:05Yeah. Yeah. Well, that... And nowadays, how much... I don't know if you've ever seen even with chat, for instance, like, the false information. Like, I found, like, when AI first started, it was good. I feel like it's getting stupid. Like, the like, the generic models are getting more stupid or the false information where you're like, that's not actually not right. And then it says, oh, yeah, sorry. You're right. I was wrong. Right? So now there's so much misinformation as well. So I still think there is Yeah. That need that you're saying, you still need to have the knowledge. You got it like AI, I always say, AI is only as good as the prompter, as you know. AI is only as good as the person who can ask the questions, right questions, and you can try to learn. I know what you're saying is you can indirectly learn the questions to ask and then ask it, but I still think there's still a nuance to understanding,

Sean Campbell28:50like to know or to understand. Those are very different things. No. And I agree with that. I mean, the the thing I've said for a couple years now is if you want me to predict, at least with AI as it stands today, the biggest... If I if I look into someone's past and I was gonna... And I only got, like, one skill to ask them about, And anything this reductionist is gonna leave some stuff on the side, but I really think it plays out. It seems to have played out every time. I go, are you a good delegator to humans? And if I can prove you're a good delegator to humans, you set context, you set good boundaries, you set goals, you set conditions by which you bail. Right? And you're like, don't do this. You you know, you... Those folks rock with AI every time. If they're a poor delegator to sell for other humans, they struggle because it's exactly what you're getting at. Like, there's a moment of judgment and interpretation and looping and finishing and halting and all those things that that people, I think, that are really good with AI go, why doesn't everyone else get it? And I'm like, because back here in, like, human space land, these people don't do this good well with... They don't do this well with humans. So they're not gonna do it well with AI. They're not. And you're doing it well, which is also why I think operators, business owners, people who have high agency jobs, you know, they tend to look at AI and feel like, I don't get it. Why does everybody else not actually, like, leverage this the same way? And I said, because... You know, to paraphrase an owner who said this to me not that long ago, she's like, AI is the best intern I've ever had and the worst. And exact... And and and and how do you shape the best in world... The best intern in the world and the worst intern in the world? You delegate appropriately. You shape, you organize, you create, you new model. It. So

Kayvon Kay30:45how are you helping? I know you have a business where you're helping business owners implement or take on AI. Tell a little bit more about that.

Sean Campbell30:54Yeah. Well, so, you know, a cup... You know, there's three legs of my stool of life, if you will. Right? You know, there's like, I'm I'm teaching and I'm working at the university, and then we're doing research and trying to understand what's happening in the marketplace. And then the third leg is, you know, there's research about what AI is doing to, like, the marketplace, but then there's also research inside a company about what it's doing to you. Right? So what we do is we come in and we basically say, okay, give us a job role or give us a team or give us a kind of a business process, if you will. And we come in and say, how can we reshape this? How can we recraft this with AI? And enable your people. Like, that may be training, that may be mentoring, that may be building a a a limited number of actual kind of like pilots, if you will, to say, okay, you go run with this. Right? So that you can walk out and be like, okay, that line between what I give to AI and human, that's really clear to me right now. And then the other thing we do is we kind of, like, bring the frontier into the building. I mean, it's exhausting for these companies to figure out when was the... When is the new thing an important thing? Right? When does it actually impact that job? Yeah. Right? And that's that's another thing we do. But mostly, we help them reimagine the work. That's what we do. Because, you know, I wish it was easy for people, but I understand why it's not. It's it's even even fundamental things like, how do I break my own job into these little silos that I can kind of safely give to AI and operationalize it. Right? And I feel it's pretty missional, to be honest, because like I said at the start, I I just don't want people to get run over by this. You know, that's kind of my big thing. Right? And I feel like if I can go in and help you get more with the people you have, well, then you can put that time to other good use at the end of the day. Right? And so, anyway, that's basically that's basically that side of the business, and it's fun. It's it's a lot of fun. I mean, you know, people feel pretty empowered if it's delivered right.

Kayvon Kay33:03I think people feel that they can do things they never even thought were possible before. You know, I see that in student's eyes all the time. They're like, I didn't even think I could pull that off. You know? It's it's quite remarkable, like, what you can build with AI. I I... I'll say this from... And I have a... I would say, I have an understanding of AI, and I've dabbled in AI and code and all this stuff. But what I've even played with myself, like, the mind's the limit at this point. There's nothing you can't do with AI. It's it's it's quite interesting. If you... And and people always... They always say, how'd you get started? Literally ask that question. Like, how do I get started with AI? That's that's what happened for me. And then next thing you know, created a full on hiring software specifically for salespeople. 97% efficacy in knowing that if they're going to be successful or not. Six months. Zero zero development skills, full just commitment to the idea of that AI is is here and learn self taught. And like, it's not challenging, but it takes time. And you... And and like you said, it changes so fast. That's the problem. It just changes so fast.

Sean Campbell34:14Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, the the MBA class that I'm gonna teach in a couple weeks that I designed is is basically how you plus AI can create a company and how far can you get before you actually, in essence, hire another human. Yeah. And that's just a different way of going after what you're talking about. I mean, the ability to kinda create in meaningful ways and powerful ways is there. But but even there, it requires a few things. It requires knowing where the frontier's at. It requires having kinda the instinct on what what what things I can box and put together and, you know, give to an AI meaningfully and all that kind of stuff. But I will I will admit, it's a super fun time to be like a creator. You know what mean? Even dorky little things. Right? You know, like, I'll give you one. So, like, here... Here's here's the ultimate in, like, tactical vibe coding, right, you know, that I did, like, while I was probably doing eight other things with an AI the other day. Because that's the other thing if you work with them enough. You're like, I got eight things running all at the same time. And I'm like, so I can manage my Apple TV with my phone, and it's got a remote app. But why does my Mac not have a remote app? That seems weird. My phone's on the other side of the room. So I, like, open up Cloud Code. I'm like, I would like a remote app for my Mac so I can manage my Apple TV. Right? It's not in the OS. Like, why is it not in the OS? And I'm like... And, you know, six seconds later, I have... Maybe a little more than that, but I have this, like, remote. You know what I mean? And I think when you when you get people on that side of it, at least certain types of people, it's it's pretty crazy and and awesome, you know. It's...

Kayvon Kay35:50Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. I I love what you said when you say when you get the certain types of people that just even ask that question you asked, not afraid to actually prompt it and get the answer, that it is crazy. It's absolutely crazy where AI can come. And that's the scary... I think that is what's scary. And you and I, even today, I feel... And again, from what I know of an AI is like, we're talking Mickey Mouse level AI right now. We even I got

Sean Campbell36:15tell students all the time, this is as bad as it'll ever be. Yeah. Right? What it... Like like, I'll give you an example of what I saw today that's actually... Gosh. I see if I've got it open at my sidebar because I I don't. I think I shut it down. Anyway, I'll dig up the name if you wanna put it in the show notes, I'll find it. But everybody... Here's a good example of like... And then all of a sudden, sometimes a use case appears that you go, that was super obvious. Why have I not seen that in a product? And then you go, oh, that changes everything. So, you know, like, there's Fathom and there's Granola Yeah. And there's all these tools that'll join your meeting. Right? Everybody wants the conversational intelligence. Everybody wants Yeah. You know, lever... Fine. Those are great. So this one I saw just today said, it's new pitches. We listen, but while we're listening, we build stuff while we're listening. And I went, what? So picture like you're actually sitting there in an internal meeting and one of you says, well, that now first agenda item is done. We'll need to write an email to Bob about that, the director of plant operations or whatever. So this AI sits in the meeting, does all the normal... Well, I shouldn't say all. I didn't look at the feature comparison. I want the Fathom guys to be like, it's not the same. You know? So, like, it does some of the stuff like Fathom, I guess. It joins the call and listens. But in the middle of the call, it goes, oh, here's the email already written. Here's the couple slides you wanted. Here's... And I'm like, well, that was obvious. It's weirdly obvious. Right? You know? And sure, you and I could vibe code some solution to Jackson or system audio and, like, you know, goes... But I was like, well, yeah. Why wouldn't AI just get to work in the meeting once it intuits that we're basically done? You know? Or, like, I brought it up to somebody who's a seller in my team, and we chatted about it. And she was like... I was like, imagine if it's writing the proposal while you're in the meeting. And she's like, yeah. I I feel good about that, but I I don't feel good about that. Because, like, part of that is my job is to come back with something unique. And I said, well, yeah. But on the other hand, co creation probably helps win that deal because most proposals that feel like they were kind of co created in a way, right, the seller's got a job to do, but it has to feel like it's unique for that person. Right? And I was thinking like... And and stuff like that happens every day in this space. And that actually... I I talked to students about that today, and I said, like, imagine what this is like in four years. Right? Back to that idea. Right? You can kinda chart that far out. Not really, but you... It's better than k through 12. Right? And I was like, so imagine four years of development of this, and I pointed up at the screen. You know, what's it gonna look like when you have a meeting? You get done with the meeting, the meeting will be done, and the AI will have built everything. Yeah. Like It's crazy. That'd kinda cool. Also scary.

Kayvon Kay38:52And then what do we go do? I guess we go to another meeting and we talk to a bunch more Well guys. And then We just evolved. I guess it's speed. It's a... It's speed. As we as we get to end here, where can people find you?

Sean Campbell39:03We can go to cascadeinsights.com. K. You can also email me at sean,sean@cascadeinsights.com.

Kayvon Kay39:13And you can also find me on LinkedIn too, like if you go poke around. So We'll put you... We'll put all this in the show notes for you as well. If if you can leave people with one thing that they should be excited about with AI on a positive note, one thing to look forward to, one thing that they should be inspired by, one thing that they should understand that's coming through the pipe that you might not... But that you might know, what would that be?

Sean Campbell39:36Gosh. One thing. I I would say, like... And this is the geek in me. I... I'm super excited for the software of one. I mean, I'm regularly, like, bouncing into my kitchen and showing my wife who's only so impressed. Although, by the way, I'll leave you with this. I built software of one for her. Like, I'll give you a super quick example. But that that idea that, like, we don't have to, like, take mass produced software. Like, we can build things that we want for ourselves and do so in, like, really amazing and cool ways. I I think that's just gonna be a gift that's gonna keep giving, you know? And the example of my wife that I'm sure she wouldn't mind me saying in closing is she she's... She really no problem with this. Like, my wife's awesome, but she's a physical therapist. She's not a technologist by heart. So she is regularly going to be like, oh, I forgot to plug in my laptop. Like... And it's sit... And it's dead. You know what I mean? And so I built this little stupid battery app that shoots off fireworks and everything every time she gets to 5%. And it's this huge honking thing that shows up in the middle of the screen, like, your battery is about to die. You know? Yeah. And she looks at me. She's like, it's the best thing you ever made for me. You know what I mean? And so, like, I think... And that's gonna lead to all kinds of interesting problems we get to solve, all kinds of stuff. What I will tell you, I know you asked for something optimistic, and I think this is kind of optimistic. It's not what I'm expecting. It's what I would tell people to pay attention to. As much as we talked about AI, also follow robotics.

Kayvon Kay41:06Yeah.

Sean Campbell41:07That change, people will barely, if even, get used to this change, and that one is right around the corner. And there's all kinds of cool stuff and scary stuff there too. But if you're not paying attention,

Kayvon Kay41:20I would immediately start subscribing to those substacks too. But anyway, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for all the wealth of knowledge. And for those of you that are listening, you just heard it. It's not just AI. It's also robotics. We'll maybe have you on to have that conversation. Sounds good, man. Okay. Thank you.