Welcome And Why AI Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another show of That's Delivered. I'm your host, Trucking Ray, and we talk with people that are shaping the future of trucking, logistics, and the industries that keep America moving. Today we're diving into AI, digital transformation, and what actually looks like for real-world operations, not just theory. I'm joined by Evan Schwartz, Chief Innovation Officer of AMCS Group. With 35 years of experience, Evan has helped organizations build AI and data-driven strategies into industries like waste, recycling, and logistics, turning big ideas into real measurable results. Evan, welcome to the show. Living the dream, man. You? Yeah, I'm doing well. So glad to um have you on the show, talk about what you're doing. I'm always excited about the guests that that you know take the time out of their day to come on the show and talk about what they're doing, the changes that they're making in the industry and beyond. So um can't wait to hear more, man. You know, I know you're out there traveling and you took the time out to come on. So uh what's the week been like uh getting started?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Oh yeah. So the week is uh mostly traveling and it's full of logistics, right? The uh air traffic, it's not what it used to be. I I'm old enough to tell you I could just throw cash down, walk out on the tarmac, climb on a plane, and be off. Those days are gone. It's it's not great these days. So maybe that's something we can work on. Maybe AI can help improve that little strategy. But I'm in Dublin right now. Uh we're having an off-site meeting. So I'm speaking to you from the hotel room. I hope that's okay.

Evan’s Path Through Real Operations

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, that's perfect, man. So uh let's let's let the listeners know. Give us a little bit about your background. Um, you spent decades out there across operations, um, agriculture, um, I think, and and now innovation. Um, what's been in the common thread for your career? You know, how do you held those roles as chief officer, architect, or COO, now uh was it chief innovation officer? So how has that perspective on technology changed as you've moved closer to the business role?

Fleet Optimization That Saves Fuel

SPEAKER_01 2:07

So, interestingly enough, I started in the gaming industry as a teenager and I started my first company writing games. And, you know, I thought I I was really attracted to creation, creating something. Because I remember when I opened up my PO box and pulled that big bag of orders for a game I had built, I was hooked. I was hooked on business. Um, later I've refined it and found that it's not just the creation, but it's the creation of value. Seeing how software or digital systems improve the lives of everyone and produce value, I'm really attracted to that, particularly around how it gets into the real world. Uh, I as I left the gaming world and went into the first business venture, which was it started in the insurance that got me kind of hooked. And then I went into what I would consider the wealth industries, where you see trucking, where you see the movement of material. You know, it's the I my best-selling book, People, Places and Things, is written all about the fact that it there's people involved. You got to pick something up from one location, move it to another, buying and selling things, right? And it was in the natural gas industry, the transportation of gas around the country, having to get it sold, how to give it truck, uh, the trucking with the oil and distribution of gas to various gas stations introduced a lot of interesting logistics. That led me in strangely into the forestry side of the world, where log trucks had to go out into the woods and get a whole load of uh wood. Some of it was hardwood, some of it was pulp wood to be able to make paper. Um, and again, I was surprised at the level of complexity built into those businesses and how hard it was just to be able to schedule a truck, to be at some point in the woods, to pick up a load of logs to get it to the mill, because that mill can't shut down. I mean, it's a million dollars an hour for that thing not to run. So it has to be fed. And then as that industry changed from virgin fibers into secondary um, you know, OCC, DLK type of uh fires that got into the waste and recycling side of the world. And it was then really you started to see all the connective tissues between all the industries. Like even in the forestry business, no part of that tree would go to waste, right? The terpenes got extracted out of it during the paper making and got sold into the chemical industry for flavorings and fuel additives and some of the pulp non-woven. There's a sheet of paper behind a flat screen, I'm sure you're staring at right now to see my ugly mug. All of these industries are connected and they have waste components. And it's trucking, it's logistics that has to move this around. The entire scrap metal industry, which is really a hyper-focused version of the waste and recycling side of the business, will tell you that scrap doesn't like to move far. Every mile you have to take that and move it down the road, it's just killing the margins in it. So there's such a huge focus on the logistics, the operational side, keeping trucks in good working order, being able to maintain a fleet of vehicles, making sure that you know what they're doing, when they're doing it, every minute they're not producing is a minute of waste opportunity. So where I really kind of landed was across that connective tissue of all of these industries at AMCS group. How can what we've learned in the forestry business help the scrap business, help, you know, just general logistics and field services and predictive maintenance to make sure that I can maybe even predict using algorithms on whether I need to take that truck out of service, you know, or I might need to put that truck up for auction. I've gotten about all the life I can get out of that thing, and I need to go shop for a new truck. All of those things drive bottom line value. If you're concerned about environmental social governance, making sure that you're having a light touch on the uh the environment, some of this software, we have 700,000 plus trucks around the world under management in our software, and we're shaving 17 gallons of diesel a month off of the burn rate by just optimizing how those trucks do their work.

unknown 6:18

Wow.

AI Needs Context And Change Management

SPEAKER_01 6:18

That's a lot of fuel not being burnt. That's also a lot of fuel I didn't have to pay for. Right? So we're we're starting to drive beyond the let's just be environmentally responsible because it's the right thing to, oh, you know what? It also happens to make money, right? If if I don't have to burn that fuel and spill that into the environment, that's money I don't have to spend. You know, if I if I know exactly how to maintenance my truck optimally, and I don't have to have a historical predictive algorithm going, well, we maintenance it every six months before. Let's keep doing that until it breaks. And I can take an oil sample and tell you exactly what's going on in that engine and what you need to do with it. Now I can be more responsible in the way that I'm maintening the truck. I'm not taking it out of service, I'm making sure that it's doing its job. And more importantly, I'm not putting oil into the environment that has to be cleaned and disposed. Everywhere there's a high carbon footprint in your business is an opportunity for efficiencies and bottom line impact. And the only reason why we didn't run at it like that before is because we didn't have the solutions of software or or the passion to chase it. And now with AI and some of the tech we've got in this world, it's easy to do. But the most thing that brings me here today, Ray, is the passion about people, places, and things. That there is a future of AI without people. Why are we doing it? I'm trying to make sure I'm getting the message out that the future is not happening to us, it happens because of us. We have a choice, right? Take ownership, don't be the victim, own that future. And the reality is we just spent a year and a half and a whole ton of money by a lot of smart people on AI that didn't work, didn't succeed. And they let a lot of good people go with their business. Sure, this thing was going to reduce headcount, and it was just the way they did it was wrong, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

So, what do you say about that? I mean, AI and real world operations, there's a lot of noise around it, like you're saying, and the perspective of how businesses can actually leverage AI to modernize operations or improve efficiency without complicating things. Um, it's got to be a challenge in itself, or just uh trying to package it correctly.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, it's it's an OCM, organizational change management. It's a person problem, it's a people problem. The tech is there. What makes AI useful is the person who can clearly communicate to it, give it a very clear instruction, and can designate the data context it needs to perform the job that you just asked it to do. Where AI goes off the rails is it's like a super smart young intern that's come in and they know a lot, but they don't have your experience. They don't have your intuition yet. The difference is that intern might be a little self-conscious and tell you they're not really sure about this. AI, on the other hand, super confident because it knows everything there is to know about your industry and your business, but it knows nothing about your business, the way you want to operate, the way you work. So it's so confident knowing everything, it doesn't come back and go, yeah, you didn't exactly give me enough context. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look down in my super big brain that knows everything, and I'm gonna get the answer from that. And that might not apply to your business, and that's what we call today hallucinations. Every time you see a hallucination from an AI, it's because the task we asked it was too vague, or the data we gave it to be able to perform its activity was incomplete, the context was incomplete.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

And then the input that's a lot of work to get it right.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yeah, it is a lot, and then the third leg of what I'm calling the AI steward, that person that sits over top of a bunch of AIs to get a lot done, has to know what good looks like. You don't have to know the answer, right? That that's I get some pushback sometimes. Well, if I know the answer, what do I need AI for? You don't need to know the answer, you just need to know what it gave you doesn't look right. And now I'm gonna dig in and just validate it, or it does look right. It that's about where I expect it to be. Let's move forward. So, stewards are really good at communicating that task, knowing the data it needs, and knowing what good looks like. We're moving away from repetitiveness as a burden of humanity and into rapid iteration. I need to be able to do a lot more. I don't mind if it messes up because the cost of doing that iteration is so low, I can just fix it, do it again. And when I get it right, I can do a hundred thousand of those things where I couldn't come close to that level of iteration without the power of AI, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, I mean, that's there's pluses and pros, you know, that or cons that come with everything. So uh there's gotta be you gotta look at both sides of the coin. I mean, when these companies are working with uh all this AI and automation, what's the biggest mistakes you see when they try to adopt AI or automation? We just kind of call that out.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, look, the biggest number one mistake is thinking that I'm gonna save headcount. I'm gonna put this thing in, it's gonna run this little section perfectly. And if I had 10 people, I can now cut it down to two. And no, it's not gonna work that way first. You when you're applying AI, get yourself a positive outcome that's gonna justify the cost of it outside of headcount. At the end of the journey, Ray, if you want to right size your business, fine. But what AI should be doing is asymmetric growth. I should, with the number of people I've got right now, I should be able to grow my business not by an extra 20%. That's that that's a child change. I should be able to use this tech to go 3x, 4x, 8x in growth, right? And then if I've looked around and I've grown as big as I want, by all means, right size your business. I'm not gonna tell you how to not right size your business. But if you go in with that sentiment first, you're gonna get caught with your pants down. There is a change management that you're gonna go through. Now, there is gonna be a certain natural attrition if you decide to adopt AI. And maybe the comfort of a lot of your listeners, except for those who are running their own businesses, is a lot of this is gonna impact the SGNA side of your business, the back office work. Those guys that are boots on the ground with a blowtorch or a wrench getting it done today, their life is gonna get much, much easier, but not change significantly for a while. But the back office is gonna change significantly. And today, you can't go out into the market and hire an AI steward. Now, my role at JU, we're building a curriculum around getting our first master's graduate as an AI steward. And they have domain domain expertise. So you'll have AI stewards that are good at finance and AI stewards that are good at logistics and dispatch, and AI stewards that are really good at front office customer service modules. So they have breadth of knowledge, they're clear communicators, and they understand when I ask the AI to do something, it's gonna need access to this data to achieve it. Right. And then when I can watch it, because I've got metrics and I know what good looks like. So now I could manage maybe a hundred of these agents, and these agents are calling subagents to be able to do refined work. That's gonna be the back office. And if anything, they're able to grow that business so rapidly that you're gonna see, especially if your business deals around logistics, service vehicles, the truck is tied to the revenue, like a garbage truck goes out and does it. So that's that's where the money is. That's the offer, right? That's the service. You're gonna see that grow. You're gonna be adding 10, 15, 20 trucks to keep up with how quick the business has grown. That's gonna be one of its biggest problems. But thinking that you're going to reduce headcount as a first measure of success almost always ends in failure. Almost always.

The Headcount Trap In Automation

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah, so we got to change the culture. I mean, it's a lot of industries out there that are adopted that, thinking that hey, that's the best way to go because maybe that's how we used to do things back in the day is cut back on on headcount. But moving forward, you got to keep that experience. You don't want to lose that value. So what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Um AI doesn't have yet is your experience. There's a difference between knowledge and experience, big difference, right? We got tons of knowledge in a book, but a book can't look at the the walk around a truck and tell you whether or not that vehicle is in trouble, you know, whether those tires need to be changed. You're gonna have to, there's a certain amount of experience that you have to know how to look under things, check your chains, make sure if you're a log truck, how you've got those logs situated, what the unbinding station is, how many trips a day can you make to the to the woods? That all comes out of experience, grading the material. If you're the driver and you're responsible for the material and you're just taking a quick look at the material you picked up, because your livelihood counts on that material getting across a scale somewhere. AI is not doing that yet.

Practical AI Wins For Drivers

SPEAKER_00 15:17

And it's not going to do it for a long, long time. So, I mean, margins are tight out there for trucking industries. You got fuel costs, like you mentioned. Uh, what does AI do? That uh, you know, where does it create the most impact for immediately for companies?

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, look, that's a great question. So, from where you see a lot of it, and it's not the AI that everyone talks about, the the chatty transformer AI, it's in predictive algorithmic AI is the routing optimization. If I'm if I'm doing servicing within a city and I'm running the same routes over and over again, optimizing the way that those routes should be run is the immediate best say. But where the new transformers, the agentic AI is really adding value into anything to do with trucking, long haul, short haul, logistics, equipment, maintenance, all of that is the way it's transforming the driver's existence. The driver gets up in the morning, let's just say that you've got a route, you've got 2,000 stops, you got a service today. You you basically have a morning debrief, a stand-up, you look at what your day's work is going to be. So that's eating up some time, you get in your truck, and you're now also the guy that's having to collect details on any exceptions that occur along the route. Take all that away. Get in your truck, do your job. It'll tell you where you need to go. You have faith that someone has worked out all the logistics, what the servicing is, what you need to do, make sure that all if you've got any repair, if you're doing servicing, that your van has all the stuff in it that it needs to have. That has all been done for you. You were to maintain safety, get to the service location, perform the service, and then get back in your truck and go on to the next one. And that becomes the drive is to maintain safety. You know, we were talking before recording, is that you could go back eight years. There was no tech on a truck. And now they're mobile data centers. I mean, they're practically mobile offices, they've got their own cell uplink, their IoT. You can learn everything there is to learn about that engine on the road. There's cameras all around it recording full video feeds constantly for safety, but also those are now being able to be tapped in by AI so that I can see things. I can look out at the service area. One of the things that we're looking at right now is to be able to tap into the public feeds. Most cities have public feeds for cameras. So if I'm a garbage truck and I'm going to maybe a restaurant to pick up their container and empty it, and his bread truck is blocking it. If the cameras in the city can see that block 15, 20 minutes ahead of the truck, so now AI can call that restaurant and say, You've got a bread truck block in your container. My truck's going to be there in 20 minutes. If you can get him to move, you won't have a missed collection. Wow. Imagine the efficiency in that. Now you're getting consistency of service area every time you go to a particular service. You're going to see it in those kinds of ways. Like right now, I get up in the morning and I do my usual routine. I get up, I eat breakfast, have coffee, take a shower, and then I go and I get my car, and the first thing that pops up is my phone pops up and says, Oh, you're 20 minutes from work. I didn't ask it to do that, it just did it. You're going to see that intuitiveness start to permeate all aspects of our lives. We're going to go somewhere and we're just going to be prepped for where we're going. It's going to be ready. I don't have to do a whole lot of activity. If you've got um listeners that drive across a scale, they have to be weighed to get into a facility and go dump it. Used to be I had to get up there, position my truck, get out of it, go talk to the scaler, or if it's unmanned, I had to sit there and figure out what punch screen I need to hit. And now I just drive up, it knows it's me. It knew why I came there. It just validates that I'm there, takes the weight, opens the gate arm, I go on in, and I never get out of my truck. Right? You're gonna see those kinds of efficiencies impacting the edge.

Why ERP Rollouts Fail

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Man, that's awesome! So digital transformation, you got ERP. Um, you've done extensive work around those implementations. Why do so many ERP rollouts struggle or fail?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah, so it's that is a digital transformation, you can tie it right back to the rollout of AI. It's the same thing. I'm implementing a piece of tech, and what I mostly have about my business is myths and legends. So if you've ever worked with a business or something and you start talking to everyone talks like they know the process, and then when you dig in, that's not really how it's run. You know, they find out there's an Excel spreadsheet that someone has to do a manual update, or there's some you know, access database in the corner that's somehow holding up your entire business that was only discovered once you started the implementation of the rollout of the ERP. It's it's kind of like if I asked you to chart a trip to New York, but I didn't tell you where you're starting. And I didn't tell you how long you're gonna be there. What are you gonna pack and how you're gonna chart that where are you gonna chart it from? And so it's the same thing. If you don't really understand what your business has when you're trying to roll out this software, there's no way to put book ins. I have my as is process and architecture. Here's the 2B, that's where I'm trying to get. Now I can plot the journey from here to there. I know what my decommissions are, I know what the changes in my organization are gonna be, and what I'm trying to get to. Nothing's more frustrating. I'm sure your listeners have ran to this where all of a sudden they come in one morning, and now here's a new piece of software I got to deal with that I've never seen before. It clutches everything up. The ivory tower doesn't always understand what the boots on the ground are doing, they're hitting their metrics, but as far as the process, maybe eight years ago we loosely drew out a process and I haven't touched it since, but it's evolved because that's what happens. So when you look going back to the AI discussion, that's exactly why AI needs a human steward. Because the second you take it out of your POC or the lab and you put it into the wild, entropy hits it. The world that you had yesterday has changed. And it's the same problem that you have with ERPs. I buy a piece of software, I have this nice requirements list that I want. So then I spend all this time trying to get the vendor to tick off every single box I wanted. And you spend 18, 20 months. Well, here's the problem the software you need today isn't the software you're gonna need 18 to 20 months from now. So now you're in a perpetual, constantly trying to evolve that software to catch up to you. It's not gonna work, and you're gonna end up having scope creep. And before you know it, you're gonna the vendor is gonna get exhausted, they're gonna walk away, and you're gonna end up paying for a piece of software over the next five years that doesn't do what you need it to do, but you're still paying for. You can't even use the software. I've seen it too many times. You're just going to write it down as a failed implementation, get mad at the vendor. And nine times out of 10, this is what I see a lot of companies do. They grab the keys to their business, hand it to the vendor, and say, Call me when you're done. No one's going to take care of your house like you. Right. Own your customer journey.

Vendor Partnerships That Actually Work

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yeah. The experience that goes along with what they're selling is a lot that has to do with it being successful. I mean, you can't just uh roll something out and expect people to buy into it because they don't really have a great experience to attach with it. So that's really that's really huge. I mean, those relationships, strategy, execution, uh, one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is the relationship between companies and their technology vendors. So I I really appreciate you bringing that out. So for more additional industries, you know, traditional industries, excuse me. Uh, what's your advice for implementing digital transformation without overwhelming the team? I know you say you come in and you see things coming in. What would you say to them to be more successful?

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Understand that it's put people at the top of your plane. It is a transformation, not of the systems, not really, it's a transformation of the people that are running those systems. People have three properties about them, two of which aren't great. We're lazy, we're greedy, and we're messy. So you have to steward people across to change. So if you're gonna come in and change everything about every facet of your business all at once, that's too much change for your business can to take. So once you've got your book ins, once you know what your as is is and what your to be is gonna be. Let's just say that software's missing 20% of the stuff. The problem is so is that software when you first bought it. You've grown into it over 15 to 20 years and you've worked with your vendor to get it to that nice, comfortable, fitting pair of jeans that you're enjoying today. It's just outlived its usefulness, and you need to go to this new software. Uh there should be three tops, four things in the vision that pay for that entire software. But no upfront, you're not going to get every single thing you want. And it sure as hell isn't going to replace the software checkbox by checkbox. Stop bringing the solution to your vendor, bring the problem to your vendor. You're hiring them because they do this for a living. How would you like it if I came to you and I started describing to you how you should manage your trust to service my account? You get a little upset. It's like, look, this is my job. I do this, right? I I'll I'll do that part. What do you need? And then I'll tell you how the best way is for my vehicles and my my company to go handle that business. It's the same thing with software. Invest in your relationship with your vendor because I guarantee you what you think you need today is not going to be what you need 18 months from now. It isn't. The world's changing, everything around it changes, compliance, governments change, presidents change, everything's always in a state of change. So you're looking for a vendor that will walk that road with you, walk that journey, be able to help you get the pieces that you need in your software, whether it's AI or it's an ERP system under the hood, to that gets you the greatest value. I've seen entire projects get derailed because of a checkbox on the customer screen that says has or has not done the credit check. Well, that's great. Software company added a checkbox there. We added it. Well, then now it hits this other thing. Well, I needed it to be able to do this. You didn't ask for that. You asked for a checkbox on the customer scene. It says credit check or not. So then before you know, they're spoon feeding that requirement. And it's 18 months later, tempers are hot. Nobody can explain how we got here. And that's just one paper cut of thousands that occur doing a major ERP. Pick your battles, figure out the best way to implement it. This is particularly true with AI. AI will increase by orders of magnitude and asymmetric ability to deliver. So if I just look across my business and say this thing has the greatest opportunity for margins, and I go and I up-level it with AI, and there's something that they feed, you're about to overrun that next step. Because this step is now producing 18 times faster than it was, but the step it feeds into is still the same rate that it was before. So you just you're either running them over or they're asking you to slow down. So now you spend a bunch of money improving this one process in your business with no way to get money out of it because you have to slow down so you can move up to the next one and then move up to the next one. Get a partner that can help look at your processes and find how am I going to implement this? What's my transformation model look like where I can get maximum value out of AI during the rollout? I don't want to get a success in a pilot and then have to pump the brakes because the next guy in line is overrun by my new efficiency. That doesn't give me any value for the product.

Hard Lessons From Failed Implementations

SPEAKER_00 27:27

A lot of respect that you have to give to the individuals out there. I mean, that's huge. I mean, you gotta you can't just go around assuming that you know, because you're knowledgeable and you got a lot of experience, that uh, you know, you got to spread that knowledge with everybody. No, you got to actually work together. And that's yeah. I mean, I think you you're immolating that. That's amazing. How did you uh come about to have those qualities or to implement that with your your work environment?

Training Stewards And Future-Proofing Skills

SPEAKER_01 27:52

A lot of face planning. All of these, I'm not coming to you smarter than anybody. I just tripped and face planted on the ground over stuff. I mean, I can tell you my first implementation of my software, I was so proud of myself. It was at a scale, and we we had one of these things, it's a mouse, and I'm old enough to tell you we introduced it. And this is a scaler, right? So, this is uh probably a security guard or something that you know was sitting there doing his job, and I saw that guy grab that mouse and white knuckle it into the desk trying to get that pointer to move, just he'd never worked with one before. And of course, I'm a nerd for nerds, so I'm thinking, yeah, you don't use a mouse, that's ridiculous. And I had a mentor at the time saying, You've got the messy part of people, you left people out of your solution, Mr. Wizard. I I used to get a lot of Mr. Wizard when I was growing up. It wasn't a very an endearing statement. He's like, So, because you didn't include people, your your product that you love so much is going to be rejected because people can't use it. So then we took it back, and I was like, Okay, let me think about this from a person. Let me go talk to a scaler who's never used a mouse. He goes, Look, I can hit the keyboard or I can see that screen. And back then we didn't have touch screens, we had punch screens, they were like gooey screens, if you remember. So he's knuckle punch it. When we switched to that and got rid of the mouse, and it just popped up, that guy would see a truck come up on the scale and the tickets up before that guy can even really settle his truck. I was like, Are you reading the screens? And he's like, No, I just got muscle memory, and that's but that that's learning how people interface with the solution, right? I regardless of what you think people are intelligent or not intelligent, they're diabolical, all of them. They will find a way to do the best at their job, even if they come up with undocumented features of your software, Mr. Witcher, that you didn't think of to use. They're getting their job done. So all of it, and in the book, I've got 35 years of just narrative after narrative after narrative explaining where a lot of these principles and concepts came from. But I can tell you whether it's an ERP system or AI, keep people at the core of your vision of the project. Have a vision. I can tell you the number of people complaining. I didn't even know this software was changing. You didn't tell your front lines people you were swapping out the software, and they're surprised on the day it disappears, and you're wondering why it's going so bad. You know, and most of most of the time, because uh this happened to me, I was we spent months around uh a conference room table prepping this um pulp and paper company. So this was the mill, so they brought chips in, cooked them up, and made paper. And we're rolling it out. Everybody's proud of themselves, you know, cutting ribbons and popping champagne. I'm saying this old scale, he must have been 60. This must have been like a retirement job for him. So he's sitting there and he didn't do anything, he was just there in case a driver had a problem working with the screen. He was just supposed to help him and be secured. So he's sitting there and he goes, Well, um, how do you get a chip truck out if you sell some chips? I was a much younger then, so don't judge me too harshly. But I was like, No, no, you see, this is the mill. You don't sell chips here, you you bring chips in and cook. So I'm now this guy's had this job for 30 years, and I'm arrogant enough to now proceed to explain to him how paper's being made from chips. Like I said, much younger, full of piss and vinegar at the time. And he goes, Well, that's fine, Mr. Wizard. Tell me how there's a chip truck right there that the Foresters want to sell because those chips are worth more than that paper. So you tell me how I get that chip. So I had to call up there and go, Do you guys sell chips out of the mill? And he's like, Oh, we only do that every once in a while. Well, today it's once in a while. So every one of those stories are just tripped, fell, had to learn something from it. And they all come back to the same message it's people, right? So that's your software vendor needs to be people. You need to have someone in your company very close to the people in that vendor company. They all everybody wants to do the right thing. No one's not wanting to be successful, everybody wants a successful implementation. So if you build that strong relationship with your vendor, it's going to be successful, if you be honest with it. If you don't know, it's like I think I know how this thing runs, but I don't really, because Barbara's been here for 35 years and she really runs it. God knows what process she's come up with to make it her life easier. Fine, we need a discovery. You won't be successful if we just throw this thing down everyone's throats. Have a vision. What are the four things you want to get out of this new implementation? Just four. It has to be able to do your core business, but it's not going to do it the same way as your old software. And neither will AI. AI will not do it exactly the way you have it today. You've built a process for people. And this is a wholly different paradigm. It's meant to repeat iteratively very quickly. That's what it's designed to do. So you and my best advice take the necessary low value steps of a process and delegate that to AI. The high value, bring that and keep it with your humans. These, you know, I like to call a customer success. So we we've learned this at AMCS. We have our customer success people. They call and interact with our customers, make sure they're happy, they're getting value out of the product, all of that stuff. But at the end of that call, that same CSR has to go and write an email talking about the conversation we just had. Are there any action items? Is there anyone else in the organization they need to connect? Let's put some meetings on calendars and all that stuff. So there was a maximum number of customers they could call because of all of this necessary, but that's low value work. Now AI does all that for him. So he can flip a switch on a call, have a meeting like this. It all goes into the AI. The AI handles all the follow-up, the action items, schedules, all the people inside that need to have the meetings, and he can just go right on to the next customer. That has dramatically improved customer satisfaction in our company.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

That's what we want. Customer satisfaction that drives revenue, uh, keep people coming back for more. I mean, what would you say to a lot of the younger ones out there that they may not have the experience and they see AI as a way to get into these doors and say, hey, you know, I can do that job. I see what it is. But uh, you know, like you said, too, you had some experience um, you know, face planting. Um, what would you say to the younger ones out there? I mean, maybe they just they they're afraid to do the face plant.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

So, well, don't, right? But you gotta go fearless now, right? We got to get back to a fear. Think back when your childhood where anything's falling, because AI makes the cost of failing very small. I can try something, see that it didn't work, change my game up, try it again, change my game up, try it again. Adopt an iterative approach, learn through doing, and understand the fundamentals of the domain you're gonna be the steward of. So, like uh one of the classes last year that I taught at JU, we had a concern. AI is doing all this coding. Where so programmers are becoming a bit of a unicorn at this point, but we still need architects. Where do you get architects from? You get architects from people that's been coding for hundreds of thousands of lines, hand jamming in code and understanding how it works, and then they become systems architects or application architects or some other architect. But if I don't have humans doing the coding bit anymore, where do I get these guys? And you know, they're all starting to age out. We're gonna be in trouble real quick if we lose them. How do you get there? So the class put down, well, what if we started with the juniors that understood the fundamentals, but they used AI exclusively and then confirmed their suspicion with the output so I can see what good looks like. I may not know that these lines and these characters produce that, but I understand the principle of solid architecture. So, where did that come from? There was a meme, you may have even seen this, that a photographer took a selfie of himself in a t-shirt and he fed it a prompt, you know, make it stark, dark and white, water dripping, stern look. And that thing came back a museum work of art. And that's what this guy's whole job was taking photos that would hang in a museum. And he was devastated. He's like, I'm out of a job. I'm out of a job. He had an hour of reflection. He came back and goes, Well, wait, wait a minute. The only thing that really changed was the camera. I had to tell it the lens, I had to tell it the refractal of the light. I had to describe the box lights, the scene, the guy, the picture, this the way the color tone needed to be. I had to describe all that, and I used terms that an artist would know, a photo, a photographer would know. And just like, you know, we use these things and we say we're gonna dial someone. No one's dialed anyone in decades, but we still use the term and we know what it means. We know that when I'm dialing something, no dial, I'm calling somebody, right? That's what it means. So we did the same thing with this architecture group. We taught solid architectural principles, fundamentals. We gave them an AI tool to generate the output and then have them confirm the output. What we learned is that first years it was too abstract a thought. So you need a lot of fundamentals. Our second years, who had plenty of fundamentals, actually did the best, spoiler alert. My seniors fought the AI tooth and nail because they had fallen in love with code. Oh, I don't like the way it did it. I don't like it, it doesn't matter. It did it, it produced the results you're looking for. You may have coded it differently, and they could not get past Go because they were fighting the AI. So, what we learned is that at a certain level of fundamentals, knowing your business, you can communicate into AI, you understand what it needs, and you understand what good looks like. These kids produced an entire capstone project in a four-month class. And if you've ever gone into a master's program, these things are passed down class to class. You know, I'll just start on the authorization, pass it to the next master's group, and then they'll build this piece and pass on. These kids built the entire thing, start to finish. We were in the uh Invent for the Planet. Uh, it's 80 colleges around the world, and AMCS got to sponsor it and I was very excited about that. I got to be over there and be a mentor. And we gave them hard problems that we learned folks couldn't solve, like world hunger and food waste at a global level. 40% of all food goes to the garbage and never gets eaten. As a human, which I'm embarrassed that anyone's starving in the world at that kind of waste, right? We all should be. So I gave this problem to these kids, and they took in the problem on a Friday night. They had all of Saturday to work on it, and then Sunday they pitched it Shark Tank style to judges, and they had built an entire app back in commercial market everything in a day that I honestly believe would solve potentially world hunger and most definitely food waste, to the point they got two of the judges willing to offer them a million dollars in finance to take the program forward, to invest in it. That's awesome. The increased iterative capability. There, we're we're getting out of being cogs, we got to change our mindset, and I'm not measuring my value from that work anymore. And that's where the attrition is gonna happen is people who judge their value by that work rather than the output of that work are gonna have a hard time adopting this new world of AI to be a steward.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

You mentioned the cog, you mentioned stewards. Um, you know, get away from the cog, be more of a creator mindset. Um, more so, I feel like you know, a business mindset. You know, you gotta be a self-starter, you gotta start somewhere. Yeah. And that's great. And great examples to show that, you know, you can be successful. You just gotta put your feet down, start one foot at a time, and uh you'll you'll get there. Um, sometimes you feel like you're running out of time, but that's just something I think anxiety or something is getting in the way. So push past that.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Yeah. Yeah, look, creativity is still the dominion of humanity. So you have plenty of time because you'd be surprised how quickly you can learn the skills to be a steward over it, as long as you already have the fundamental knowledge, you can quickly take that on. Yeah, I would be shocked and amazing that if say a per I'd say more than 50% of your audience decided right now, having that if they never touched AI to go, I'm gonna go learn this. And I know a lot about my trucking, I know a lot about my industry and business. They could come up with a really cool app or a really cool agentic tool and have that thing done within three weeks out there, earning them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. That's the power that we now have available to us.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Nice. I mean, that's really good. I mean, it sounds like you are a great leader. Um, you also uh do a lot of uh personal work too in your career that you bring forward and bring light to issues that people need to see that they can they can surprise themselves along the way. So um, you're also mentoring and teaching, uh, I believe I get that correctly, or you're seeing on the next generation enter into the space. So uh what a what a great example for a lot of leaders out there to help the young ones. Um, so yeah, what what would you say to leaders uh to to be more inspiring to individuals out there?

Free Resources And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Don't buy into the hype that the oligarchs are putting out there that this is some apocalyptic outcome. Future is not happening to us, it's happening because of us. We get to choose it. So if you're gonna take a leadership role, inspire those around you. I'm a huge believer in servant leadership. Your job there is to enable those that you serve to be able to do the best of their job. Introduce them to the capabilities and tools to be able to operate in this world. Get them to maybe change about how they measure their self-worth. That data in an Excel spreadsheet that produces that bar chart, that's not your value, right? That is, it can't be your value and it won't be anymore. The output of that, the decisions that can be made off of that, is what you're working towards. And you're driving agents to produce that quicker, faster, so those decisions can be made. If I would ask anything of leaders is to just stop spreading this apocalyptic view that AI is wiping everything and this universal basic income nonsense. I believe that we have a chance really to put our arms around this and build that future that we want. It just needs to go all the way back to elementary school. We need to change the way we're educating. We don't need to build cogs and business that have repeatable excellence. Like you said before, you know, the reduction of people is going to happen naturally because I got a tractor. Used to have 200 guys out there with hand plows to plow an acre to grow food to feed everyone. I can now do it with two guys in a tractor. And I think even today you can do it with just the tractor and the will for it to go out there and do the work. We're doing the same thing, except we're getting out of the repetitive service side of the world. That burden is now going to be AIs. Our job is to be able to command as many of those as we can within the domain of expertise that we have to make sure that they're producing the output. The work is now going to be delegated to the AI. I don't need to do it. Elon Musk framed this to best, in my opinion, where he said, you take AI out of the equation, you go back 30, 40 years, there were skyscrapers where there were three floors full of business analysts with calculators and paper crunching the numbers for businesses to make decisions on. And today, one guy with an Excel workbook could cook all of those, that whole three floors of analysts, right? So that's just him using a better tool. Put AI where it belongs, a tool to be able to produce output in orders of magnitude that we're really starting to play with. And there's no experts out there. I'm not even one. I'm learning new stuff every day that you can do with this. So just go in there, leap into it, see what it can do, see what you can get out of it. You might surprise yourself.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Well, yeah. I mean, uh, I got a chance to go to Japan and see all the things they do there, the height of a lot of their infrastructure, um, a lot of their customer service that they're able to give. Um, I mean, we can bring a lot of that too when we travel and you see that and you Hey, let's how do we raise the bar and raise the experience? So when someone puts the product in their hand, um, there's there's that just great experience that comes with it. And I think you're doing that. I think your company is emulating that. So keep up the good work. Um, I think we got a long ways to go, and uh it's like you said, the doom, the doom stuff, we gotta stop with that. I may get attention for maybe a couple seconds, but then it quickly dies off because we still got work to do. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Very true. Well, if you're interested in the stories, grab my book on my website. I have all of this information. You can get a deck for free. So if you're wanting to bring AI into your business, I don't charge for it. I'm happy to just send me a DM on LinkedIn. I'll I'll share everything that I have so that you can be successful at.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

That's that's great. And I think a lot of people um should follow your lead on that, man. So we don't have to hold on to these secrets or uh industry secrets that people think, hey, this is what makes me special. No, we can share them and know that people, hey, are gonna be successful out there because they're also sharing that same information and we can work together. So, man, Evan, it's been a great conversation. Um, really appreciate you coming on, talking about what you guys are doing over there. Um, so yeah, don't don't stop, keep going. Uh, for anyone out there listening, wants to also connect. So appreciate the uh the LinkedIn. Um, is there a handle and just your last name?

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Uh it's Evan Schwartz Live, or just go to evanjschwartz.com, all one word, and you can get to anything and everything I'm doing, latest events, podcasts like this, all from that site.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

That's great, man. So I really appreciate you doing this. Um anything else you want the listeners to know before we go? Um, maybe something I missed or you wanted to touch on.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Just it's a lot more approachable than you think. It's not hard. Just try it. You'll be you will surprise yourself.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

Man, I love it. And you know, that's that's why we have these shows, and yeah, we want people to feel emboldened to do more, uh, to take their you know, their knowledge to another level and to deliver that to not just uh the packages and products, but also the knowledge. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Your experience is what makes you unique right now.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

Take advantage of no one can take it away from you, you can only use it to and then add to it. So, yeah, great advice, Evan. So thanks for breaking that down for us in a big way. We really appreciate you connecting with uh listeners out there. For anyone that wants to learn more, please uh share this episode. If you like what you see and like what you hear, uh please share it with an individual out there. And uh, I think we got more great stories coming up for individuals like yourself and many other uh industry experts that are trying to make it make success stories out of what's going on in this world. So really appreciate that, man. So if you got uh this value from this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with someone in your network, and uh that's delivered.