AI & You: Harnessing Technology Without Losing the Human Touch – The Action Catalyst Live!

The Action Catalyst unites several of its esteemed alumni; Anya Cheng, founder and CEO of Taelor, Dave Brown, Founding Partner at Southwestern Consulting, Dr. Amy D’Aprix, President and Founder of Lifebridge Strategies, and newcomer Gayathri Krishnamurthy, Head of Product Marketing at Level AI, for it’s first ever “live” episode, from City Winery in Nashville, and a panel discussion on harnessing the growing power of AI without using the human touch.  Each guest shares their unique perspective on AI’s limitations and pitfalls, how to blend technology with humanity, potential use cases and opportunities, and where we go from here.

Episode sponsored by:

About Anya:

Anya Cheng is a Taiwanese American technology executive and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Before launching her artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Taelor, she helped build Facebook Shop, a social commerce initiative where people can explore and purchase products directly on Meta (formerly Facebook) and Instagram. Before that, she led the go-to-market for Facebook’s Wi-Fi Tech and Innovation team where she improved digital literacy by bringing the Internet to countries without fast connections. As Head of Products, she transformed eBay Classifieds’ emerging business and built Target’s mobile tablet eCommerce app. As McDonald’s Senior Director of eCommerce, she launched their global food delivery apps from scratch.

Cheng is currently Founder & CEO of Taelor, a AI-powered menswear rental subscription platform busy men to rent styles and for brands/retailers to test products and predict trends. Taelor is an award-winning sustainability startup that has won various competitions hosted by accelerators including Draper University, University of Chicago Polsky Center and SPARK Accel.

Cheng is also an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University and 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) where she teaches software product management and marketing. She is the author of a best-selling career book, a TEDx Talk speaker, and a social media influencer.

Cheng was named a Girls in Tech 40 Under 40 in 2018 and nominated as a Marketer of the Year by Min Magazine U.S. in 2013. Her work has won 20+ awards including the Webby Award Best for Shopping App, The Communicator Award, and the Rising Star Award of Social Network Category by Mobile Village. She is a volunteer career coach who has inspired thousands of young professionals and currently serves on the volunteer boards for the North America Taiwanese Engineering and Science Association, Taiwan Tech Arena (a non-profit supporting minority founders) and STUF United Fund (a non-profit supporting charitable causes.)

Cheng received her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Master of Science degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from Northwestern University. 

Learn more at Taelor.style.

About Dave:

As an elite-level Sales and Leadership Coach and Founding Partner of Southwestern Consulting, Dave Brown has trained hundreds of thousands of sales professionals across the globe. A sought-after keynote speaker and certified trainer, Dave strives to help individuals and organizations reach peak performance in business and in life. Dave has a passion for empowering salespeople everywhere with key principles to make selling more emotionally and financially rewarding. Dave himself knocked on more than 50,000 doors before he was 25. Since then, he has made more than 200,000 cold calls to companies worldwide. His infectious excitement continuously encourages his audience to embrace their roles with passion, blow through their belief barriers, and achieve unprecedented success. Dave currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Emmie, two sons, and daughter.

Learn more at ServantSelling.com.

About Dr. Amy:

Amy D’Aprix is an internationally respected expert on lifestyle issues relating to retirement, aging, caregiving, and family dynamics.

With a Ph.D. in Social Work, “Dr. Amy,” as she is affectionately known, provides down-to-earth, practical, and professionally informed guidance on Life Transitions to individuals, professionals, and organizations.

A compelling, pragmatic, inspirational speaker and coach, Dr. Amy has addressed thousands of Financial Advisors and their clients across North America. She has consulted for the financial industry and trained advisors for over 20 years, providing sound guidance in navigating Life Transitions to ensure the success of overall life goals and financial plans. 

This passion is reflected in Trusted Advisor of Choice, a program for financial professionals to better understand their clients’ concerns and LifeMap, an exclusive membership site to help advisor’s clients proactively prepare for the life transitions they face.

Amy is a Certified Professional Consultant on Aging (CPCA) and sits on the Board of Directors of the International Federation on Ageing.

She has authored the book, From Surviving to Thriving: Transforming Your Caregiving Journey and co-developed an audio coaching session and companion journal, Building the Bonds of Friendship at Midlife and Beyond. She also created the Life Memories Journal and Caring Cards to inspire more meaningful conversations between generations.

Dr. Amy is regularly sought out for her expertise to be featured on podcasts, radio, TV and in publications.

Learn more at LifebridgeStrategies.com.

About Gayathri:

And finally, Gayathri Krishnamurthy, also known as G3, is a global Go-To-Market leader, musician and an avid traveler. She has run global GTM strategies and Product Marketing for several leading B2B  SaaS companies, including RingCentral, NICE, ServiceNow and SugarCRM, to name a few. She is currently the Head of Product Marketing at Level AI.

Learn more at TheLevel.ai.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Emcee
So, whether you’re using it or just considering it, or you’re terrified of it, a conversation about AI and its role in the future of business is a conversation worth having, and our next segment is a panel discussion on exactly that topic. It is presented by the Action Catalyst, the flagship program in the Southwestern Family of Podcasts. Launched in 2013 the Action Catalyst is a premier entrepreneurship and leadership podcast which has found its way on the best of lists from the likes of Inc, Entrepreneur, Business Insider and many, many more names that you’ve definitely heard of. It stands at nearly 500 episodes strong, with listeners in over 160 countries. It is a free podcast, and we think you’ll love it, but if you don’t, we’ll give you your money back. Since 2022 the show has been hosted by Adam Outland, president of Southwestern Consulting, and in over 20 years at Southwestern, Adam has served as an elite level coach, partner and leader, founding the Southwestern Student Coaching division, helping both professionals as well as youth unlock new levels of success. And in that time since 2022 Adam has welcomed many of the guests that are now gracing the stage onto the podcast. Anya Cheng is the founder and CEO of Taelor, a revolutionary AI based apparel platform, and she has also served as head of product for Facebook, eBay, Target, McDonald’s and more, as well as an adjunct lecturer of Product Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University. Hardly a company, she has not been a head of product for. Dr Amy D’Aprix is the president and founder of Lifebridge Strategies, part of the Southwestern Family of Companies, an internationally renowned expert on lifestyle issues relating to retirement, aging, caregiving and family dynamics, with a PhD in Social Work, Dr Amy has provided guidance on life transitions to individuals, professionals and organizations for over three decades. Dave Brown is a founding partner and executive level sales and leadership coach for Southwestern Consulting who has trained and spoken to hundreds of 1000s of sales professionals across the globe. He has reached almost as many people as the Action Catalyst Podcast, in addition to being a consistent top producer himself, Dave serves as vice president of recruiting for Southwestern Coaching. He’s also a guest lecturer at Vanderbilt University and has authored two phenomenal books, Painless Prospecting and most recently, Servant Selling the essential handbook for closing more deals and giving your customers exactly what they need. And finally, Gayathri Krishnamurthy, otherwise known as G3, coolest name on the stage, is a global go to market leader, musician and avid traveler. She has run global go to market strategies and product marketing for several leading B2B Sass companies, including Ring Central, NICE, ServiceNow and Sugar CRM, just to name a few. And she is currently the Head of Product Marketing at Level AI. And everyone, this talk is being recorded for a very special Live episode of the Action Catalyst podcast, our very first, so make a whole lot of noise for the Action Catalyst panel!

Adam Outland
Let’s give one more hand of applause for our amazing MC who did a great job. Yeah, good job. Zach. Zach puts the whole Action Catalyst together for us. So it makes my job incredibly easy, because he does all the editing, so you don’t hear the ums and the ahs, so you may hear a few those today.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
A special shout out for him. My full name with 26 alphabets. He nailed it. Gayathri Krishnamurthy.

Adam Outland
So good. All right, so we’re gonna get started. How many of you guys are excited to learn a little bit about tech and AI? Show of hands. Okay, let’s get going. So we wanted to start with Anya today with a special question. You got a little bit of her context and background for just a amazing variety, variety of work that she’s done. You’ve won awards for your work on product across a number of these different companies target, meta, eBay, meta, you helped bring the internet to countries that didn’t already have it as their Head of Product Marketing. So you also helped build an E commerce platform that many people here should know for Facebook, right?

Anya Cheng
Yeah, if you buy something that’s useless on Instagram, sorry about that. That was my fault.

Adam Outland
So if you wouldn’t mind, though, tell us just, just in a few words, a little bit about Taelor, your current business that you’ve founded, and we’ll go from there.

Anya Cheng
I started a company in the AI space. We use AI to pick clothes for man, definitely not you. You’re too stylish. But you know, all time, people have like said. 70 have human stylists, but now with AI, everyone can have stylist in their pocket. So tailor. Ai, we help people to pick clothes, but we send them real clothes for them to wear for couple weeks like this time you come to the conference from Boston, for example, if you are busy man, you change your address, you ship the hot clothes to the hotel lobby. You wear whole weeks. Once you are done tomorrow, you put into the return envelope of your dirty clothes. You go home without doing any laundry for the day to day, if you are just busy. Man, every month, people can wear like 10 clothes per month in our AI, pick the outfit for the purpose, and from there, no more shopping or laundry.

Adam Outland
I love that. So with that context. And given that AI is the capability of being this, we’ve heard a lot that AI is the next internet of things, right? It’s going to layer into everything that we do. And given the experience that you’ve had, what are ways that you’re learning to embrace that functionality in your business?

Anya Cheng
I think most important thing that I’m learning still is to make sure we’re solving the right problem. As a business leader, we tend to focus on what are the right solution. We have problem, problem, problem, but many times, solving the right problem is a lot more important. For example, at Amazon, the things that hey, truck drivers, they don’t have a hand to turn on turn off a light in the truck, so they decide to use AI to make sure that when the AI detects someone is in the truck, the light goes on. Perfect. Works. In a day when AI can see a human, the light goes on and the driver doesn’t need a light during the day, right? And then in the evening, the AI couldn’t see the guy, so the driver, the light wasn’t go on, and the driver needs the light. It wasn’t working because it’s a wrong problem to solve. The same thing at eBay, when I was at eBay, we thought people would love to snap a picture and write all the descriptions with AI, we launch a feature. Love it now the customers, they are not using it because of what they found out that they actually love to write information because they care so much the item being sold, so they don’t mind spending time to make sure it’s correct, and they can sell well. So the AI writing description wasn’t working at Target, we launch a feature for mom to go to a store. You will become a store. GPS, turn right, turn left. Amazing. You’ll never forget one thing moms didn’t use it. Why moms are going to a store to get lost. They like to be back to the store. They don’t like store. Gym, yes, it’s a way of getting away from the noisy kids, right? So, perfect. Oh, my God, forgotten me. I have to go back again. Husband, can you take a look at the two kids? Thanks, right? So finding the right problem to solve still very important before you figure out how to use the technology to solve the wrong problem.

Adam Outland
Well said, and I think so many people identified in the audience that story. Dr Amy, let’s go over to you for a few minutes. Tell us a little bit in your words, a little bit about Lifebridge Strategies to give some context, and we’ll go from there.

Dr. Amy D’Aprix
Sure, Lifebridge Strategies, we are working with Wealth Advisors, but will be coming to a profession near you, so hang on. We help Wealth Advisors deepen their relationships with clients by better understanding the life transitions they go through. And we say transitions are the stages, changes and events that we all go through during our life, things you know as we move through midlife and beyond, things like the death of our parents and retirement and caregiving and health challenges, so we help advisors better understand those, learn how to communicate with their clients better around those and then we also give them resources on the life side that they can share with their clients and that their clients can only get through them.

Adam Outland
We had an interesting interaction. One of my good friends in Houston leads a Houston firm for ultra high net worth clients in the advisor space. And this gentleman and I that we had breakfast one morning, and he told me how he he asked corporate if he could take an additional responsibility, not something people really enjoy doing when they’re very happy with what they’re doing. But he saw something he saw with the with the integration of AI, that there was a big change potentially coming for the financial services space. And so he volunteered. They may have paid him, but he volunteered, initially, to take on the role of client experience nationally for their firm. And I asked him why, and he began to talk a little bit about predicting the future and wanting to have a position where he can get ahead of the curve. So I’m sure we have a lot of folks in this space, out here in the audience, and some folks that are obviously not in that space. But what are some of the larger firms doing to prepare for the progression of AI?

Dr. Amy D’Aprix
I get the opportunity to work both with large firms and with individual advisors, and my team does as well. And I was I was sharing with you that last week, I was actually in front of a very large firm that wanted me to talk to their technical planners, who partner with Wealth Advisors. And the technical planners are client facing, but almost a little bit one removed. But what they. Realize is AI, as we all know, is starting to at least enhance what they do, if not replace some of the planning skills. But what the firms realize that their advisors and planners really need are the human connection skills at a deeper and deeper level. And so firms are really working to upscale on that, and I never call them soft skills. You know, Simon Sinek calls it human skills, which I think is so much better, because soft skills make it sound unimportant. But large firms are really looking at, how do we deepen our connection with clients to make sure that the clients are sticky, and how do we convert prospects into clients? It really comes down to relationship, and firms are spending a lot more time focusing on that in the time of AI.

Adam Outland
Thanks. Dr Amy, so it’s true, right? AI can accelerate the math formula of maybe making a stock selection, but what AI seems to struggle more with is the human relation component. People want that human touch.

Dr. Amy D’Aprix
And that’s where the gold is really right. That is our ability to connect. I always say, I think one of the greatest human needs is to feel seen, heard and understood, not always agreed with, but seen, heard and understood. And advisors who do that well are the ones who are most successful.

Adam Outland
Love it. Dave, you can pick up on this. You’re obviously founded and helped build our coaching business, our training business, in a world where AI seems to be taking over so many different positions, we’ve even seen it encroach a little into our space. We’ve had different companies that Tony Robbins has Dino AI that, like, has a little voice that duplicates himself, and the first time you hear it, it’s, like, really bizarre, because it’s Tony crafting a message for you. But he’s not there. It’s his AI impression. And you go, Is this really going to be the norm? So, you know, with some of these entries taking place into our coaching market, you know, are you concerned about the implications?

Dave Brown
Not concerned. I’m more curious. I’m getting more curious with it and but you’re right. Like it’s, there’s this article that came across my phone The Wall Street Journal article, and I took notes, because I don’t want to miss anything. But it says, AI is coming for the consultants. That was the name of the article. So it was like, of course, let me click on that one, right? Don’t you love those titles? But it was about McKinsey, you know, the largest consulting firm. Something was alarming was they went from 45,000 consultants to 40,000 the last couple of years. And what’s even cooler, again, not alarming or anything else, but what’s cooler is they have 12,000 AI agents that are now working with them. So they’ve created these bots to complement their projects. And that’s a place where it’s like, oh my gosh. You know, job, everything else, what’s going to happen for me? But every one of their projects has got two AI agents on it, on average. So us kind of stand ahead of that. That’s a place where we need to evolve as a business. And I think that’s the question that all of us need to be asking, is like, how can we get more curious about this? How can we go, how can be playing in this space? And and I have been it’s, I wrote this little kind of quote down as I was piecing things together, AI, it almost mixes the best of our instincts with the processing power, right? It’s all it is information. It’s not human instinct. It’s blending technology with humanity. We can almost ensure that our decisions are not only data driven, but they’re also grounded in critical thinking. And AI doesn’t replace what makes us human. It enhances it. So that’s what I’m always kind of thinking. I’m not thinking of, oh, how I’m gonna go fix this and just type this in and give me all the answers. How can it enhance me? Yes, many of you know this name, but the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, said, with the pace at which AI is evolving, entirely reasonable, that we’re gonna live in a completely different, functional world in five years, not 10, five years. So that’s getting me to go, all right? I need to know about this stuff and how I can best do as much as I can with it. So yeah, a lot of other resources that are out there, but I need to get curious, and I need to learn as much as I can about it.

Adam Outland
Some of that curiosity led us to pick a certain vendor that’s on stage with us.

Dave Brown
It did.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
I want to comment on one point he made.

Dave Brown
Good.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
Which is, Hey, you are an awesome sports person. AI is never going to replace a sports person.

Dave Brown
It can give you some strategy though. It can give you some strategy.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
Exactly. There are a lot of roles which will not be wiped out.

Adam Outland
Let’s piggyback on this. So, you know, one of the things we did was we were doing some research, and you figure out, how can we interact and engage with AI in a way that would be relevant and supportive of the business? And that’s where we came across level AI. So if you wouldn’t mind g3 instead of me doing the whole preview, why don’t you share a few words about what level AI seeks to accomplish, and we’ll piggyback on that.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
Sure. I was meeting a lot of you guys yesterday. You’ve been using so many amazing tools in AI and one thing that struck me was there they are very disparate tools. What level AI does is it brings a lot of tools, AI tools, but it’s all trained. Built on a common company data, which is important because an AI tool cannot operate in silos. So level, AI is all about getting a lot of models together and really honing in on the domain of customer experience, building great customer relations. And to your point, Amy, it’s all about, you know, the human skills and what level AI does is really gives you a lot of analytics and insights into customer interaction. So we take all your customer interactions, we do two things. One is give you great insights from every single conversation that’s happened that can really surface what the big problems are. Number one. Number two is it helps to automate a lot of processes, like taking notes, updating, automating, and all that stuff. And the beautiful thing about this is, when you automate, you want to see how it is going with the customer, meaning, what’s the insight that I can get after automation? So there’s this beautiful loop of there’s insights that I get, I automate, then I get insights and I automate, I kind of course correct, so you have a human and an agent balance. So that’s what, in a nutshell, label AI does to help you with all the customer insights. Automate where possible, and keep that continuous loop going.

Adam Outland
And let’s, let’s continue on. So one of the key challenges today, and we Dave brought this up a little bit. Isn’t the collection of data. We’ve been able to collect data for a long time. I was with one of our other clients in Houston, looking at his giant warehouse of paper. Right? He was in the paper collection industry of scanning and digitizing paper. It isn’t the collection of data that’s so difficult today. We’ve We’ve managed that. Tech has helped us with that, but it’s how the data is interpreted. So how does AI help us actually do correct interpretation of data? Get there quicker, more effectively? What are ways and areas that AI data interpretation can be most helpful?

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
So if you look at the customer conversation, it is happening over phone, over websites, over social media, so there’s no dearth of data. So what’s happened in the past is we have had some analytics tool which is able to parse through that get some insights. And what AI is doing is really putting literally, it’s on steroids, and the reason being, 90% of the data is unstructured data, so getting a lot of insights from an unstructured data was tougher in the older iteration of AI. Now with the newer iteration of AI, that’s the huge aperture that we’re widening up. So what happens is now you’re able to make sense of data, and not just 100% of data. And again, think about this fact, 100% of all the conversations that your customers are having is brought in, and you’re putting an AI on top of it, the kind of insights are going to be great, not just because you had access to data, but also the type of insights. For example, you can find the sentiment, you can find the effort involved in resolution. You can find maybe the resolution, whether it happened or not, maybe the agents say they resolve it, but it’s not really resolved. So there are multiple parameters that are more AI driven that you’re able to get at a large scale. So every conversation mind for sentiment and all of those. And in fact, we have inferred CSAT on every conversation that gives you a lot of view in what’s really breaking right? For example, if you look at all the 100% conversations and you’re saying, my top issue you thought was maybe billing. But then, for all you know, it could be something else. It could be pricing that you didn’t look at it. So the the idea of just looking for certain things and watching out that era is gone. Now you have to be proactive and listen. You have to be a listening post. So AI really helps with that. So I feel like one of the biggest things that we look at from an AI perspective is, how can I use that insight, how can I use the customer issues that are bubbling up, and take that and drive your operations, really getting into that outside in view, because we are quick to automate stuff. Okay, let me automate Okay, updating CRM, let me automate it, getting a summary of a call, let me automate it. That’s great. We’re getting lower returns, but the biggest, larger value is gonna come when you’re really looking at the customer and pivoting your operations to align with it. That’s where I feel the power of AI is not just in the automation, but the insights connecting the two. I think that’s where, you know, I’m gonna the one thing that I would leave with you all is really getting that insight from the customer. You know, putting that lens as like the primary lens, as you do, especially in small business, because that’s kind of. Heart of a small business, the customer relationship, that would be one of the things I would leave with the audience here.

Adam Outland
And it’s amazing how AI can take a data set and then self optimize with that data. So if it’s listening to 100 sales calls, it can potentially learn from its own set of data, and as long as maybe a human helps indicate what’s good versus bad, initially, it can spool it can spool up its learning and provide more accurate feedback.

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
Exactly. And you can use that to train, you know, C player to an A player and all that kind of stuff. So it’s like, now that you’ve really found the insights, it’s, you know, it’s easy to kind of look at the correlations and all that good stuff.

Adam Outland
Love it. Anya back to you in what way is AI allowing you to scale your business? What roles did you find it replacing in your industry and space to allow you to scale quicker, faster and serve more clients?

Anya Cheng
I think first, when you guys are using AI, first think about what’s the biggest value? Because star 8020, rule, right? So star is the biggest value. For example, we found that our customers, they are not here just about renting clothes. They are here to buy a success, chance to succeed. So they don’t care what they wear. They care getting a job, getting a day, close a deal. The reason they are using our AI style lists and closing rental service is that they want to achieve that goal, and they want this become a tool to help them get their girlfriend boyfriends. So starting with that and doing the laundry. So who say I cannot do the laundry, right? So, so the first thing we do is like, okay, the key value is number one, styling. But styling take a lot of people in the old time. The human style is a white celebrity have stylists, because it’s expensive, right? So we start by looking at, okay, that’s biggest value for the company and for the customer. So we start doing AI styling. So we ask people to upload a few pictures, ask them for their high end way, which we don’t always use, because our customer, for some reason, busy men, tend to think they are thinner and taller. So data is important, but garbage in, garbage out. So when you have wrong data, you won’t get the right outfit. So we tend to ask verification question, go to your closet, pick your favorite outfit. Oh, my God, when am I becoming extra large? So we asked some other question to make sure the data is right? We ask them like, fit issues, all the sleeve too long, pants too tight. We ask them to ask some questions, like, what brand inspire you? And then our customer will say, Armani and Louis Vuitton. Where are you shopping today? Costco and unicola. Okay, great. Now I know where you are. What kind of clothes should I send you? So we use AI stylers to do so. But then after the most valuable part, now we come in and look at our company’s workflow. Where are we spending time? How can we streamline each part? For example, getting customers number one, right? So we use chatgpt for SEO, so G Suite said about something very, very important. I want to highlight one more time. She said, different from Google Chat, GPT, search optimization is including a lot more unstructured data means. What means for you guys who are doing SEO before you need to make sure this image has Adam’s name behind it, write down the text. Otherwise Google couldn’t read nowadays, chatgpt, the AI, they can read unstructured data, the image and video and other stuff. So the logic overall still the same, but the generating content become different. So we use it for SEO purposes, which I can share more later. We use it for styling. No. When we send our customer clothes, the old time, the stylist will say, pair this two top, believe or not, when we send seven items to our customer, they still ask us, oh, there are two top which one should I pair with these two pens? Which one? So we write down the styling, no, using AI, and we say, okay, pair this with these sneakers, white sneaker, make sure it’s clean, and we send out to them. And then from there, for example, we use it for customer sentiment before human styles will have okay with 1000s of a customer who is most likely to churn. We need to have a human to write down all these guys angry. So we probably have to give them bonus item. And now we simply use AI say, okay, read all of the text message before and email this information and review and tell me which customers should I give bonus item, otherwise they might be churning. So number one, looking at the value. Number two, looking at your workflow, where you can use AI to optimize.

Adam Outland
Wow. So there’s so many different ways that you can you have data sets in a business, and there’s ways that you just shared that I didn’t even think about how you can take that specific data set and have aI help you, like you said, optimize and make better decisions, versus having a bunch of humans with tally sheets and doing the homework themselves. You know, I might stick with you on this next question then. What are the ways that you see AI enhancing the capacity for marketing and driving web traffic?

Anya Cheng
Yeah, so tap on the SEO things. We recently won American Marketing Association excellent in marketing award and with other finalists, I including Netflix and Google Pixar. So how we do is we got 10,000 10 million impressions for free from chatgpt. Now, if you search chatgpt For two years old startup, if you search chatgpt 2025, men’s fashion trend, the answer isn’t from GPU. Is from Taylor how? So we start looking at the same thing as the old way to do SEO. Start with a user journey. When will user asking what questions, right? So for example, oh, I’m going out dates, and what kind of office should I use and asking those questions? So we start with human generating some of the outlines. Then we use AI to generating the data on the contents, and from there, most important part here is AI human. Ai human like what productor mentions. So AI generate content. A human stylus will add inputs from there, then you send it to a customer full of styling, no and customer will provide feedback because we are a subscription business, say, $100.10 codes per month. So customer tend to give feedback right away, wanting to make sure next shipment is better. So the customer feedback come back to the content, and now we put those content on the website, so that website generating more traffic coming to a site, and again, they come back to our loop that we send the review to the customer, etc. So AI human, AI human, the most important thing is AI enhance your capability, but it’s human to make sure it has empathy, authenticity and relevancy, so both to combine. That’s how we were able to get 10 million impressions for free from chatgpt.

Adam Outland
I love it. And just maybe a tag on question, do you feel that since you’ve started your journey with Taelor, has AI gotten smarter at optimizing from the AI human feedback? Do you feel like it’s continuing to develop its own algorithm and getting better and better at predicting?

Anya Cheng
For sure. And that’s why nowadays, like what G3 mentioned, is extremely important that you have your own data set. What does it mean? For example, my dog, my friend, is a doctor, is dentist. You just have one small practice, but he has been doing that for 10 years. Means what he has the data of the image of teeth issues that other people don’t have for teeth issue for people who live in Silicon Valley, right? And I’m sure all of you guys, even no matter how big, how small your business, you have some unique data that no one else has. And now is your era, because this era, different from before last generation, is algorithm, Google, this giant box, black box, you put something, someone rent high so you need very, very, very expensive engineer in the past. So the last era was all about big company. But nowadays everyone will use large language. Model means what everyone use? Open AI, Elon Musk, AI, Mark Zuckerburg’s AI. None of us are going to build that. But the goal is, you bring your own unique data set. You sit on top of that. So as they grow, you also grow, but you are always one step ahead. So nowadays, building AI is easy. You will need once kids outside of a college school, out of college, in a week or two, can build something. But most important is what problem you’re solving if you have unique data that other people cannot repeat from you.

Adam Outland
Well said, so I saw Dr Amy’s gears turning as we’re talking. She’s like, how can we even adapt more to that? So, Dr Amy, I mean, let’s talk about a certain data set in person that you work with. You know, in the documentaries on Blue Zones and regional zones where there’s a heightened lifespan, we’re talking about retirement, right? So one of the key factors scientists have identified contribute to longevity is community, right? And the absence of community is a pain point for health issues. So when we go from AI to talking about the human component, the human touch, we’re seeing there’s a scarcity of community. There’s a scarcity of human contact. Is that a pain point for the retirement market that you inadvertently serve?

Dr. Amy D’Aprix
It’s a huge pain point. And first of all, I should say I love AI and I love the AI human, AI human. So we use AI in my business, you know, we see it as something that frees people to be able to have more of the human connection. So it’s not AI or human, it’s both combined, right? That’s what we’re talking about. And yeah, the lack of community, we know, is a huge issue for people as they age. You know? We know that people who have, we call it social support, who have good social support as they get older, live longer, live healthier, both mentally and physically, are less apt to end up in a nursing home. Heal quicker from illnesses, and the latest research shows it has a protective factor against Alzheimer’s disease. So it’s huge, and we know it’s a big problem. In in the UK, they have a minister of loneliness. I don’t know why they didn’t call it a minister of connection, or something a little a little happier than a minister of loneliness, but the last time I was over, they had in the subways, I saw these signs for have tea with the with an older person in your neighborhood. You know, it’s this idea of connection. So this, for us, who are professionals, there’s a huge opportunity here. Again, it comes back to that connection. And how do we be part of the community, community as professionals, not just in our personal life both. You know, one of the studies that I love was done by Vanguard a few years ago. And I quote this a lot, because I think this applies across professions, but if you’re in any work where you need to build trust with your clients, Vanguard interviewed high net worth clients and asked them what created trust in the advisory relationship. And there were three things, functional trust, ethical trust and emotional trust. So I’ll let you think about what was the most important in that functional Trust, which means your ability to do your job, 17% now it doesn’t mean it’s not important. It’s table stakes. They assume, if you’re in this position, you’re doing that the second was ethical trust. And ethical trust came in at 30% and the remainder, 53% was emotional trust. Now think about what that means. So when we talk about, again, getting great data, which people, you know, advisors need this, and helping, you know, put the plans together, that frees you to have the conversations. And this goes across whatever industry you’re sitting in here, you know what, whatever your connection is, I think we keep saying, how do you use AI to free you to then have more time to interpret that and to apply that to the person you know? Another thing I’ll share is that if you look at who is unhappy with financial services, it tends to be women. The studies show that about 70 to 80% of the time, if the husband dies first, the wife finds a new advisor within one year. So I work a lot with advisors just to close this gap, because think about the opportunity here. You know, do you want to keep prospecting new people, or do you want to keep the people you already have? So when we talk about women and how do you keep women clients? It’s making all that data that you’re getting from Ai relevant to what’s going on in people’s lives. I say that every life transition has four implications, practical, emotional, family and financial, or financial, legal. Well, as when I’m working with advisors, obviously, their lane, their sweet spot is the financial but your client lives in all those other areas too. Life and money go hand in hand, but it’s up to the advisor to bring that together and make it relevant for the client and be able to go to where the client is express empathy, as you said, and I always say empathy is just I see you, I hear you, I get you, that’s all it is. I get you, and then be able to segue to the business conversation and go back and forth between life and business. And this is where I believe AI. And again, it’s not a threat to the business of advisors. It frees them to do what builds the relationship that keeps the clients, that grow the business, and that has people refer and say this advisor really got me, and they worked with me as I moved through these different stages of my life.

Adam Outland
Well said. And I think, just to give a little context, you know, you’re a thought leader in the space, you get asked to speak about this continuously. You know, with life bridge strategies itself, how, like, what are some of the functions of your program that equip advisors to do a little bit of that work?

Dr. Amy D’Aprix
So we have two offerings. One’s called trusted advisor of choice, and in that, it’s an eight module program. And we also were impacted by the pandemic, and we came out just at 2020, and our program, we were positively impacted. I hate to say that, but we were because our training is bite sized videos with lots of resources, and then group coaching after each of the eight modules, and it’s through the lens of life transitions and teaching advisors how to better understand the practical, emotional family. And then we teach a trademarked process for how do you go between the life and the business conversation? And what came out of that was we saw a gap that once advisors got great at having the conversations, they said, Okay, so now I’m good at empathy, and I get what’s going on. I could use some resources on the life side, not just the financial. So just this spring, we came out with life map. Which are robust resources for clients on the life side of transitions that they can only get from advisors, and that we have designed it so it deepens the relationship between client advisor without taking more time for the advisor. And so we keep looking at where’s the gap that we can help advisors deepen the relationship, meet the client’s needs and grow their business. And those are the two offerings we have right now. And I’m sure in a couple years we’ll be able to tell you about another one.

Adam Outland
I love it. Love the partnership, and we’re gonna stick with this, this human component. Dave, so there’s an author and award winning journalist, Sebas younger. He wrote in his book called tribe, that never has it been so common in human history to live in the most populated city and yet feel so utterly alone with evolution of technology, community and the human touch. But you know, becoming more and more scarce. How can business owners and individuals use the scarcity to their advantage?

Dave Brown
Yeah, just wait a second. Let me type that into chat GPT to get you an answer on that one, I joke, but it’s like there is a threat to that. There really is, like a threat to some, some of the humanness going away. There’s a connection of mine allowed his daughter to have a conversation with one of the one of the bots, like it was grok, grok and about, and she just started talking to it. He opened it up. Did it while they were driving home, 10 minute long conversation, and she started telling it about her day and friends and some of the interactions. And it was, it just kept going, and the voice got more compassionate over time to connect with her. So it was one of those things where it was like, Whoa, like, okay. But it also opens up for him to have a conversation with her about human connection interaction, which is great, because we need to be ahead of this stuff. I mean, I don’t know those you have smaller kids whenever you watch them play, like YouTube kids or whatever. Unbelievable, how those those algorithms give them exactly what they want when they want it, right? And so it’s like, that’s not the real world. We all know that, that we’re growing up, so just that, that being hypersensitive to that. And I always say this about our industry, how important connection is. And we learned this, Emmy and I from our marriage coaching that we do, but our Chris, our guy, said years ago, he said me, said, Dave, if you want to be the most efficient you it’s about being connected with your spouse, that’s how you become the most effective and efficient you. And that hit me, and it’s really helped me in the most important relationship I have. But I’ve also taken that principle and tried to apply it in like my relationships, people that I work with, the people that I’m friends with, because I think there’s three components to the next generation of those of us that are in sales and that are trying to move our business forward through growing the revenue side of our business, people buy from us. We’ve all heard this before, because they like and trust us, right? We all know that there’s a third part, though, is connected. They like trust, and they need to feel connected to you, and that’s something we get to do. That’s not anything that a computer program can enhance AI is a thought partner. It’s not a replacement of it at all. And I mean, so many pieces of the connection piece I could talk about, but it’s our job. This is the evolution of strategy, right? Our job as leaders in our company is to stay ahead of of what’s happening and whenever things are going down in the marketplace, we almost need to protect our business from that, and protect our people from that too. And we need to level up in this game, because it’s not going to put you out of business. There’s a lot of that fear that’s going around right now that’s just hype. It’s not but you know what it will do is it’s going to enhance other people that are competing with you if you don’t choose to embrace it, and that, that’s the game that I’m trying to stay ahead of. And I mean, so in so many ways, but the thought partner piece, like we have, one of our consultants, created an AI agent for yourself to basically contrast your way of thinking, flux. And as we’re reading through fluxes characteristics, flux knows who he is based on all of his personality profiles he’s ever taken and then we created one that was the antithesis of his personalities. And we’re reading through these characteristics because this is going to be a thought partner of his in everything he’s doing this, flux is going to allow him to be a better coach, because it sees different angles, right? It gives them awareness of how he he doesn’t see it alone. So that allows, that enhances his human connection, that is, enhances the game that he’s playing constantly and that we all want to play. And I’m trying to encourage many of our people to be playing that game as well. That’s something that I need to be staying ahead of, too. So I’ve got many, many other examples I could do even our fantasy football draft Adam that you’re a part of, I might have used AI too. Is that why you’re winning? But you can give it situations and talking points and, of course, context and past history, but it’s something that’s allowed me to kind of have more, more of a connection, and I hope to do that throughout our business.

Adam Outland
Since this is also one of the tools we’ve chose and you use with Level AI, G3 can you comment on this? Like, how can level AI and AI in general to tag on to what Dave said, help elevate those human interactions we have?

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
You know, Dave, you hit it on the nail. It’s not the AI which is going to take your job, right? It’s the person with AI who’s going to take your job, right? So, and I’m gonna echo this panel’s thoughts, just you need the human in the loop, right? So thinking about like, maybe you know you’re flying, and you know you have a co pilot, so you’ve got the speed, but you need the control. So I think that’s the way I look at AI. So you you get the speed, and the controls that you put in are really the guardrails and you choose to use what you want to use. For example, I’m not going to lie, but I put these questions in chat GPT for my panel, and I was I read through two and then, like, no, sorry, pass. This is not going to cut it. I want to be authentic, and I know what I’m saying, right? So really, there’s this fine balance, but I always consult. So it’s like you consult and take the best out of anything that anybody has. That’s a common human psychology, right? So you take ideas and take the one that works, so that’s going to apply for AI, too. And the thing, again, is like the speed and the insights that it gets is so invaluable. All of us here know how fast you can do things. And there’s this new Moore’s Law of AI, where you know, every seven months the tasks that an AI can do, just say, for example, right now, it’s like 10 hours of tasks that a human can do. The AI can do, it keeps going at every seven months the speed is doubling. So anyways, non geeky side, it’s all about like AI is going to be faster, more powerful, and it’s up to us to kind of leverage the power. And in our example, you know, from a coaching perspective, classic is, as a coach, you want to spend more time coaching, not looking at data. So in our in our platform, for example, you could score, automatically, score any call in multiple parameters, right? Empathy, CSAT, this and that. But what it gives is like a quick way to kind of look for that specific areas, versus like spending, instead of spending like 80% of your time looking for data and finding out what to do. You’re going to flip that. You’re going to use 20% or less of time to see what’s going on. Then you’re going to use that 80% of time to really get things done. So that’s going to be the big change that I’m looking at. Like, how can you really, you know, drive value of your your thought partner to me, I always view AI as that thought partner who sees, like, really, really strategic in thinking, but it might not have the context right. So you got to kind of map it out. So that’s how I see the see the map.

Adam Outland
So this will be a question for you G3 and Anya. So maybe toggle back to G3 for this. What are some of the current limitations of AI? And you’re already commenting a little bit on this right and how chat GBT doesn’t always help you. For the questions, what are some of the aspects that the market has overhyped or over promised and and maybe not yet delivered on?

Anya Cheng
I think something not yet delivered, but I think it’s something that we will see is look at your own chatgpt experience. When I run Nashville, I no longer ask Google say best restaurant in Nashville. I say, Hey, I just first time in Nashville. I’m from San Francisco. I don’t eat spicy food. My husband is tech alone because he said he also want to help out. Where is he here? Oh, wow. He said he also want to help out. And unfortunately, he’s, unfortunately, He’s a chef, and so have to be something delicious. Well, what would you recommend, right? So you give a lot more context, right? Give our context. The same thing for our customer. When they use our service, they are not just give me the best outfit. They say, Oh, next week I have two meetings with the board meetings, and then I go on a client meeting in Philadelphia. In their meeting, I want to feel fit in or in the next meeting, when I go to meet with the CNN company, then I want to feel that I’m standing out right. There’s a lot more context on what you want to achieve. So that’s where the difference between now in the past, when people are searching, people are looking for people give you a lot more information mentioned, and what it means, means for back to the previous point, it means you need to have company, have to unique data to serve the answer for people to solve the problem. You are no longer just trying to get best keywords there. Restaurant, Nashville. Restaurant Nashville. No, the keyword thing is that now it’s about, can you solve their problems? For example, in my business at Taylor, we have a lot of unique data. For example, when people are. We know their true preference, because when you go on Amazon, where Macy’s to buy something, it tend to be not just because you like it, also because the price tag, right? Oh, it’s $1 perfect. I like it for sure, right? So, but now with like Netflix, when go on Netflix, show, we watch a show isn’t because the show is on discount. You do like the show. The same thing with our model, we are memberships. So then we know customer true preference. Or AI only know the past. Ai doesn’t know the future. So in our business, we work with 300 fashion brands, marine layer, Johnson Murphy, bonobos, you name it. So then they are designing something for the next year’s collections. So we know the future. Or, for example, we buy two company. They have 10 years of styling data led by human style. This in Hollywood, so we they were wasn’t able to scale, so we bought their data set into our AI. Or we are rental company, so after people return a close, we know their true quality. Johnson Murphy, you say this pen will lease 50 times. Watch, no, I can tell you 20 times you fall apart, right? And have this unique data that no one else has, and it’s on me to turn this unique data into the answer to solve the customer’s problem.

Adam Outland
So now everybody’s gonna put into chat GPT very specific requirements to know where you’re going out on Broadway tonight, and it’s going to tell you the exact bar. A lot of context. G3 do you want to comment a little bit on where AI is a little over hyped, maybe where they’ve over promised and have yet to deliver?

Gayathri Krishnamurthy
Yeah, I’m going to echo anya’s point, and it’s all around the accuracy, right? There’s a lot of hallucinations still going on, and even the best models out there, they are probably 80% maybe accurate, especially without the context, it’ll be even less. So the more and more that you can point all your data together, have a feedback of the data coming in continuously, you’re going to refine the models. So I feel like hallucination is so real, however much we’re going to fine tune, and there’s so many variables, and it’s going to, it’s going to, it’s going to be evolving as the models evolve. But hallucination is real, so giving the right context, and I think there was so many of them, which happened recently, there’s an airline where somebody asked for a refund, they gave it, and, you know, the chat bot was not supposed to give it. So really, that was because we didn’t point to the right data, right? So we didn’t point to the refund policy and so on and so forth. So where is hype? This the hallucination part, which could be solved if we point the data. But here’s the big, big, big, interesting report that I read from MIT, 95% of AI projects which were done are a failure, and the reason was data like, you know, not pointing the data, not getting the right data out of multiple systems, because all the systems are talking to one another order systems talking to pricing, is talking to CRM is talking to all of those. So really, getting that problem solved is important, and having that common data layer and training it over and over again, I think that’s going to be so critical for the success of this. And I think we’re also inspirational, aspirational about, oh, there’s a bot who’s which is going to go talk to another bot and get all my stuff done, which is still there. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of research going on on agentic, AI, where there, you know, one bot, let’s say, hey, I want to go to a vacation. Can the bot do all sorts of planning as well as go and make those reservations? Yes, they are building those systems. But I think what we’re again losing sight of is the strategy, the vision. Everything is is available today, the technology is available, but then as you start implementing and putting things together, there’s going to be failure points. So I think having a good proof of concept, we have been in some situations with our clients where they had some of the basic data and really old on premise systems that you can’t even pull that data. So these are very practical challenges that will kind of limit what you can do. So, so I would say hallucination, you know, data limitations, the integration part, security, is still a challenge. I think we have to, we have to, really, you know, think about how we were reluctant to put stuff in Gmail and Google, and now we’re fast forward. We’re like everything is being used by everyone, so especially the huge liability issues in people who are in finance insurance. So really, having good guardrails and the advancement in terms of security, have to keep up with this. I. Because, the way, from a technology perspective, this is a different kind of a thing that we’re trying to do right, like so AI operation security is still evolving. So those things where I’m trying to go is technology is one. There are so many other surround elements which have to kind of AMP up to security, data integrations, all of those from him, and also the change management that’s also huge. We’ve had clients where we put a lot of AI tools, but then the option is not there because we are used to doing it a certain way. So how do you change behaviors? Right? That’s a very real problem. So I think the limitation is right there. In terms of HR, change management, technology, operations, all of them have to sing this from the same song book, so to speak. So it’s a lot of things that have to go together to make it a reality.

Adam Outland
Thanks, G3. Dave, back to you real quick. I know you’ve already mentioned flux as like example of a use case for AI. And what other ways are you engaging with AI as a support technology as opposed to a replacement technology?

Dave Brown
Yes, and as I was listening to G3 talking to Anya, this was something that around AI that I got challenged with about a year ago, and I would remis if I didn’t put the same challenge out to each one of you, because we’re all business leaders. You all know it by now. Everyone’s alluded to it. AI is evolving faster than any creation ever has in history, right? Two, 50 million books, it’s already consumed. So the information out there. But where are you at in this evolution? Like that was a question posed to me, where am I at in this evolution? We almost can’t wait any longer, because there’s this learning curve that’s going to happen. The learning curve keeps getting farther and farther away from each of us. Away from each of us, doesn’t it? And getting educated, we got to start now. It’s almost getting to the point, and this is something that I might have even heard this morning. You’re getting to the point where you can’t just say, Oh, I’m so glad I got into our industry, because it’s not affected by AI or, you know, I’m glad it’s never gonna replace me in the work I do. Right? That might even be something I ran into. So if you’re comfortable with status quo and waiting for somebody to handle AI for you, I would just caution you, just jump into the pool. I would, I’d caution you on that, because as I’ve jumped into the pool, it’s allowed me to be that better leader. It’s allowed me to connect a little bit better with people. So one of them, flux was one of them, another one. I know this is more of a personal one, but it’s, it’s real. My son, he’s got ADHD. He’s got something called a ring of fire brain. If anybody’s ever heard of this concept, but I am growing as a dad, because the information that’s out there on the Ring of Fire brain and how to react to it. I mean, it’s firing all the time, triggering constantly, and I’m not a very real I’m not as compassionate. I’m more about efficiency and compliance instead of connection, sometimes which I need to get better with. I’ve asked it to give me a perspective from a counselor point of view, with a certain context on how I could have reacted better in this situation, and it’s helped, and it’s starting to help me in that area. A friend of mine just this some mediation. He’s going through with a fortune 100 company. He owns a nine figure great business, part of my C 12 group, and it’s a logistics solutions company. He has typed in the lawyers he’s in mediation with and their personalities and the stance, the arguments that they want to make as a business, and having them go back and forth and go at it, which has allowed him to really have some great strategy. The nine or 10 lawsuits that he’s in with his big business, all of them are still alive in the settlement. Numbers keep getting bigger and bigger. Shocker, right? Because he’s kind of playing the game inside of his head beforehand. It can give you insights, and that thought partner piece that allows you to do it and anything’s available. So what I love, what you said you three, I mean, the amount of data you put in, that’s what it’s going to spurt back out. But also be aware of the data that you want to be putting out there in the world. Because you all have heard of some of the public stuff that’s gone on. It’s gone out about businesses. But also you can verify the hallucinations, like, fact check this for me, that mediation example, there was a couple of times when I was talking to the guy in mediation, he was like, I fact checked that. I just said, AI, hey, give me your your pieces for this. And it said, Yeah, that one’s made up. It’ll tell you what it’s made up, or it was who’s hallucinating. So just some some insight there, I would contend it can help you in any area. And it’s so customized, isn’t it so cool when you get some bit of feedback that’s so customized to you, that’s what I think that’s so unique about this platform, because now we can go it’s almost like we listen better. When it’s customized to fit us in our situation, we learn quicker. So yeah, I would say those would be a couple examples, and I’m trying to look for more, too, all the time.

Adam Outland
Dr. Amy, did you want to tag on real quick?

Dr. Amy D’Aprix
I just think I want to make the last point that I hope we use AI as a way to do all those things more efficiently, so that we have better human connection. Because, you know, we all know the proverb. It takes a village to raise a child. When I do caregiving workshops, I’ll say it takes a village to care for an aging parent, but the truth is, it takes a village just to get through life. And we are that village for each other, and the only way we can be that village is when we work on deepening our relationships. So I see AI as a huge opportunity to free us so that we can deepen the relationships. And I bet there’s no one in this room that would argue that the world needs more peace and better relationships. So let’s use AI as a tool to free us so we can be those people in the world.

Adam Outland
Love it. So you’ve heard from four thought leaders in this space, and I think they did a wonderful job. You know, one thing that you always look for and identify are values that you can duplicate. And I think each of them, you’d find that they have an insatiable curiosity for this kind of work, and it’s probably a big part of what’s put them in the position they’re in today is that each of these folks in separate individual conversations, you can just get this sense of their insatiable curiosity, and it’s such a common thread, when you interview founders and fortune 500 CEOs, is this common thread? And I think if there’s any takeaway today, I hope it is also that you can take that insatiable curiosity back and put it around technology, instead of doing the ostrich method, which is bury your head in the sand and hope it all goes away by doing that, I think we’ll stay advanced and get ahead of the game in every industry you’re in. But thank you to all of our panelists today for sharing such wisdom with us. Let’s give them a hand of applause.

Emcee
Dave Brown, G3, and Amy, Anya, and Adam, A3.