Speaker 2
Are you behind? No. Are some of the things coming out tomorrow extraordinary? Yes. What is the great thing about this technology? It will teach you how to implement itself so you don't even have to rely on experts.
00:00:16:19 - 00:00:31:09
Speaker 2
one of the questions we get from business owners, people we work with, colleagues, friends all this as well. Why do I feel like I'm so far behind in AI at the moment? And this is an interesting conversation because
00:00:31:14 - 00:00:40:11
Speaker 2
for those of you who are old enough, you were to remember, this was very similar in the early 2000 or late 1990s, early 2000 when the.com era was around.
00:00:40:12 - 00:01:00:06
Speaker 2
Like, unless you were online, you've missed out. It's done. The all all stores were all retail stores offline will close down all this sort of stuff. And there's no doubt there was a massive disruption during that time, no doubt. But the reality of it was there was this huge wave of moving digital, huge raises, huge investments, huge stories going on.
00:01:00:06 - 00:01:06:07
Speaker 2
Everyone. I'm online, I sold this. I've already made more selling online than I ever did in my retail store, blah blah blah blah blah.
00:01:06:09 - 00:01:27:07
Speaker 2
then you had the big com crash. And then the question then becomes, well, does history repeat itself? And it's not that the technology went away because obviously everything move to online or online became an enhancer of your current business, the current things you did a great way to access more clients, different clients, all the all the wonderful things that come with a shift in technology.
00:01:27:08 - 00:01:51:00
Speaker 2
So we're seeing exactly the same thing with AI, albeit it feels a lot quicker. But I think that feeling of AI becoming integrated into our lives so quickly is part of the technology, which is you can talk to it and it can also tell you what it thinks you need to listen to. It manipulates what you've seen in the early stages.
00:01:51:00 - 00:02:11:22
Speaker 2
It's creating rapport. It's creating a reason for you to keep using it. It's creating wow moments. And then when you look under the surface, you go, well, wait a minute, this is completely wrong. And then you see that all the things that come with an early technology. And don't get me wrong, I'm I think the AI era is incredible and I'm one that thinks that's going to be a liberation of humanity versus the death and destruction of all.
00:02:11:22 - 00:02:39:21
Speaker 2
And I hope I'm right. But how and why are you feeling behind, or should you feel behind at the moment? And the answer is we are in the very early throes of use cases of AI, even building an AI technology ourselves. We've had to build the thing four times over. Not just I'm talking about adapting like complete changes of how you build a product, not only an expensive process and time consuming.
00:02:39:21 - 00:03:03:20
Speaker 2
And if I had hair, it definitely would have been gone again. But the anxiety that comes when you feel like everything's moving and you're not sure what to grip onto at the moment, that's something that you need to pull back on. We've seen these moments in history over and over again, and we've seen the early adoption use case settle, and then people actually worked out where is the best use in return on investment?
00:03:03:20 - 00:03:32:05
Speaker 2
I'm going to get particularly people sitting here as business owners. Are you behind? No. Are some of the things coming out tomorrow extraordinary? Yes. What is the great thing about this technology? It will teach you how to implement itself so you don't even have to rely on experts. These things are getting so smart that their whole objective is, how do I make sure I'm useful without you having to do anything?
00:03:32:05 - 00:03:33:11
Speaker 2
This is the agent.
00:03:33:12 - 00:03:55:22
Speaker 2
So if you're looking, they're going, I better do this course. I better do this. I'm so far behind, I better spend tens of thousands of dollars catching up. This is one of these great technologies where you get to pace yourself a little bit. And I'm not saying there are advantages for early adopters, but there's also a hell of a lot of people have spent a hell of a lot of money right now and actually are no better off.
00:03:55:24 - 00:04:13:04
Speaker 2
but you're at the same place where you can still adopt. These things are evolving at such a speed that you get to enjoy how you want to use them. So the anxiety should be maybe reframed as the excitement of where I can start using AI to enhance.
00:04:13:05 - 00:04:36:23
Speaker 2
Where am I experimental? How do we have some fun? What looks logical? Because these things come back to logic early. Money gets thrown. There's all this excitement and all the things you see, but it's not necessarily the money that makes money. Look at the web 2.0. What are we? 25, 30 years later, fortunes were still and are still being made in a technology that supposedly already had taken over the world.
00:04:36:23 - 00:04:46:16
Speaker 2
Everyone fall behind and then some kids starts a business that no one sees 20 years too late and makes millions and millions and millions of dollars. It's the same thing.
00:04:46:21 - 00:04:58:15
Speaker 2
We like to think of it as going back to your core business. What do we do really well and what is this technology from what we know of it allow us to enhance and even things like, well, I don't know that question.
00:04:58:15 - 00:05:18:00
Speaker 2
Well, you don't even have to worry about that anymore. Things like backup or like the other LMS, you can literally go in and say, hey, I have no idea what I'm doing. Here's my business. Take back, for instance, can you tell me how to apply AI and what we should do and take me through step by step? In fact, could you do it for me now?
00:05:18:00 - 00:05:47:07
Speaker 2
If you can literally rewind this video and take that verbatim, you're pretty much going to catch anyone in AI because these things, as they evolve, will tell you how they can continue to help. They will find opportunity. They will start to niche into areas of your business, your personal life, your health, your relationships. And these things will start to grow intelligences in those niches and you'll start to see the same way we used to think, well, Netflix is going to take over the movies and all TV, but it's not.
00:05:47:08 - 00:06:08:07
Speaker 2
There are a whole lot of different streaming services. There's a whole lot of different niches and different things. Why will this be any different? We expect there to be an AI for your car, for your home, for you, this whatever it is. So if you are growing a business, the part that you should be most fixated wrong now, right now is I know this technology exists.
00:06:08:09 - 00:06:23:22
Speaker 2
How do I stay curious and how to use it? If it's anxiety, it's probably getting swept up with all the hysteria. I mean, we've seen this and we've spent literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in research and development over many years.
00:06:24:01 - 00:06:46:17
Speaker 2
And the beautiful thing about AI is you can cross-check with it and it's so relatively cheap. So for me, we take a position of the awareness of this technology is going to completely change how we all operate business. Yes, the technology is designed to make sure it can integrate with you. So that's an amazing shift in terms of all other technologies.
00:06:46:17 - 00:07:05:16
Speaker 2
Do I need a technical skill? Not really. Not to get the 80% you'll probably need for your business, your personal life and all that. Literally their job will be to how to make the integration easier. And as we've seen over the last 12 months, 24 months, the things that we were doing 24 months ago are so redundant to what we can do today and tomorrow.
00:07:05:18 - 00:07:23:02
Speaker 2
You know, we obviously we get to peer behind the curtain is it is so incredible. I'm give you an example for me. Like I run a business. There's always people needing things from me. There's it's not just management teams and all this stuff, but I might get slacks. We've got eyes at the moment that are coming to me and say, hey, we need an answer on this.
00:07:23:03 - 00:07:39:20
Speaker 2
Here's my understanding of how I think you should answer it based on what it knows about me. Would you like me to send this off to the relevant people? Simple things like that as just a starting point. Being able to get communication quicker, to write emails, to make sure I'm not spending time on things that don't need me.
00:07:39:20 - 00:08:13:04
Speaker 2
Once these intelligence start learning areas of my business, my personal life, and all this sort of stuff, it sounds a bit scary, but that's just a simple example of hey, how do I get rid of things off my desk that actually I don't need to be doing? And this is where I think the menial task will become redundant, where as a business owner, you get to start really focusing on where do I need my intelligence, how do I apply my intelligence, how do I now do the things that I've always wanted to do in my business, but never had the time or skill because I no longer need that skill?
00:08:13:04 - 00:08:31:16
Speaker 2
I can take it to a certain point and then show people this is what we're doing, or this is how I write a proposal now. So being able to get those technologies to interpret, to understand, to take the ideas out of your head, to then translate into action faster, I think will be a completely liberating thing. And it already has been.
00:08:31:16 - 00:08:52:13
Speaker 2
So our position in AI and and what we've seen over the last decade is it's only just begun. It's exciting, it's interesting, but we haven't even scratched the surface of the power of these technologies. These this is the noise era that we're in. It's all wow, this is amazing. Look, it generated a picture similar to how social media was.
00:08:52:14 - 00:09:10:23
Speaker 2
Look, we're all taking pictures of cats and food. You know, the first thing people did with AI. Hey, look, I can put my head on a cat's body. Look, it makes a picture and all these sort of funny things. The technology's just begun. And the beauty of it is that its purpose is to work out how to integrate and make your life easier.
00:09:11:00 - 00:09:11:17
Speaker 2
So the three
00:09:11:19 - 00:09:18:00
Speaker 2
things about AI that you want to be thinking about right now as a business owner and someone who's invested in growing your
00:09:18:00 - 00:09:33:07
Speaker 2
future through a business, is this, first of all, you're not late. You're absolutely not late in any way. We're at the beginning of a new technology. And if you look back at all historical moments when new technologies were introduced, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of action, there's a lot of excitement.
00:09:33:07 - 00:09:50:24
Speaker 2
And then the steadying off and then people actually work out how to best use it. What are the best brands the way we're going to do it? The beautiful thing in this technology is you don't have to worry because it's going to work out how to integrate with you. So I think that's the first thing. The second one is AI is going to take over every job and there'll be no work left.
00:09:50:24 - 00:10:16:20
Speaker 2
That's not true, as we've seen with any form of history, as soon as we start to evolve what's possible, what can be done faster, bigger, cleaner, easier, more accessible, everything moves up, the game changes, but you get to change with it. So this is an opportunity to innovate, to be entrepreneurial, to be excited about where you can take your business, excited about how you can run your business.
00:10:16:20 - 00:10:39:07
Speaker 2
Everything now becomes an opportunity to work out exactly how you want to use it, and literally the whole playbooks thrown out. Again, this is an area where you get to redesign how you run your business. We've never had that in the history of humanity, and I think the last thing with AI is look for the excitement and how it applies to you, and try and block out all noise.
00:10:39:09 - 00:10:58:16
Speaker 2
The noise at the moment is people, like in any new technology that will make you fear you've missed out on something and charge you for the privilege of feeding you rubbish. Just ignore it. Don't get swept up in the hype of people needing to sell you things because you're falling behind. Trust me, they know less than you do.
00:10:58:17 - 00:11:18:10
Speaker 2
They're just commercializing on fear. We see it every historical breakthrough. You want to know what to do with AI? Go to any AI and start putting in some questions. Hey, this is me. What do I need to do? Obviously, the agenda we've got is back because it'll do it for you. But don't be scared of it. Don't buy in the hype.
00:11:18:11 - 00:11:39:22
Speaker 2
Have fun with it. The only mistake you can make during this AI transition or historical era of innovation and technology changing, is to put your head in the sand. It's here to stay. Now how do I enjoy using the technology as it evolves, to test, to try things, to move things, and to do the things you've always wanted in your business.
00:11:39:24 - 00:11:53:03
Speaker 2
That's where you want to start, because this is the liberator of people's lives and their companies. And this should be a very enjoyable period for those who are open to change and open to the future.
00:11:53:05 - 00:12:17:05
Speaker 1
And there's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying a business by yourself, not the work exhaustion, the alone exhaustion. Backbone is your AI co-founder. It knows your business, your goals, what you need next. It's not a tool. It's a partner that's always there. It's free to start. Just go to Backblaze. The links in the show. Notes.