031. Alexie O’Brien: How To Use AI To Drive Growth In Your Business

Speaker A: Welcome to Digital, a podcast brought to you by Attention Media, a location agnostic digital growth agency helping businesses become iconic brands. On this show, we dive into the hottest topics, the latest updates, and what's working in social media and digital marketing right now to get you up to speed and keep you informed. And if you want to grow your business through strategic digital marketing, head over to attentionmedia.com, click on the Book a Discovery Call tab, fill out some details, and we'll be in touch. We'd also love to know if you're listening to this show, so please take a screenshot, upload it to your preferred social media account, and tag us. Uh, Tension Media Agency. Let's get into the show.

Speaker B: Lexi, welcome back to the podcast. It's not the first time, um, we actually recorded an episode back In November of 2021, would you believe?

Speaker C: Oh, my God.

Speaker B: That was a quick three years, wasn't it?

Speaker C: It was life. And the world has changed again.

Speaker B: Well, that was in the thick of COVID Yeah. So I was going to say it feels like yesterday, but a lot's happened in that three years. Yes. And we were chatting about a few different topics. We talked about, obviously, your background, um, and your experience, and also a whole bunch of business in general. And the landscape's definitely changed over the last three years, evolved rapidly. And, um, you're now very much in the space of assisting people with AI, so it would be great to talk to you about that.

Speaker C: Ah, yeah, Fantastic. Thanks.

Speaker B: Excellent. We've just had the pleasure of Alexei having a session with Attention Media, um, and showing us a lot more of how we could utilize AI much better in agency. So definitely wanted to be able to put a, uh, episode together and, uh, chat a little bit more around what AI can do for businesses, what we can expect in 2025. And I know that it's a very contentious, uh, topic, but, uh, hopefully we can break it down a little bit more for people.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to be here and talk about it.

Speaker B: So perhaps could you just give us a bit of an overview of what you're up to now in terms of business and, uh, what you're doing to help people.

Speaker C: Well, I still am doing business coaching and executive coaching.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker C: Um, passion and love, talking about leadership and communication and helping leaders advance and learn. And with the business background, I have, um, really seen that with AI coming in to businesses, it's all about how can we make, how can we help businesses do things better, create return on investment, create more productivity, um, and win in business, um, whether it is in leadership or in um, products that they sell. How can they service their customers better? Um, and I started on this journey really from a director's lens. Um, was at a AICD conference last year or this year um time, um, and one of the keynote speakers spoke to us through the uh, director's lens of governance and data privacy. And she also said that as directors and as business owners there is not a single business on the planet that shouldn't be looking at generative AI to make roles more productive, help people enjoy their work more, upskill them um, but also help businesses be more creative, um, more strategic and um, get more done and more competitive I think. So that was a real um, eye opener for me. She's actually been in the Dr. Ayesha Khanna, she's been in the AI and machine learning space for 35 years.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: So someone that I really took seriously when she was saying that. And what I've seen this year, we'll talk about 2025 in a minute, is people really starting to um, grow in awareness that it's generative AI. We've had a lot of predictive type of tools, useful um, um in business for a little while. That's continue. But generative AI people are starting to look at well how can I explore this in the context of um, our business? And there's been a lot of noise out there this year is like jobs are going to go and then we're going to have lots of prompt engineers or AI skills shortages into the future. And I think there's anything in between um, will actually happen. But what I'm seeing certainly this year is people are going from the indifferent stage to AI curious and needing to explore how can we learn more about this to help our people? Because it's tough.

Speaker B: It is, it's a competitive environment. It's harder than ever. And uh, I think basically again what you've touched on there is AI is now another string to your bow essentially in terms of your expertise and how you can help businesses. Um, but also the fact that like you just said, AI is not necessarily something that's new. It's been around for a very long time in different formats but it's now coming to the forefront, becoming much more mainstream and essentially a non negotiable really. Um, because of that competitive landscape.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I work with a group of consultants out of the US so there's 120 of us from 25 different backgrounds and industries. So it's not just like a tech m, um perspective that we need to be looking at it for it is a non negotiable if you are looking to, you know, because if it's not you then you know, be sure that your competitors exactly, you know, certainly are looking at how they can use this even as um, a talent um attraction mechanism. Looking at how do we change um, the shape of our organisation to help people enjoy their jobs. Burnout is absolutely a factor of people's jobs and feeling like they just can never get that work life balance right.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: And how can we you know, help our employees and our teams actually focus um, on that a little bit more?

Speaker B: Amazing. Amazing. So you know, with that in mind and I think obviously there is a lot of chatter around, you know, AI, you know, taking over, making people's roles redundant, et cetera and so forth. Um, can we touch on that a little bit? I think you know, for most people, you know they can sort of be in a bunch of different baskets. Whether they're all for AI and totally into it, whether they're totally against it, whether they're somewhere in the middle and just a little bit confused. Um, you know, but for anybody who's listening in, maybe where to start and or what are some of the most practical use cases, even if we just pick one particular industry, um, for somebody who really doesn't know how AI can help, what are some basics? Like where do we start?

Speaker C: Yeah, A um, couple of questions in there that you've asked me. I think one of the first things is that there is a bit of ah, a AI psychology process that um, um businesses and individuals will go through. Starting from skepticism and m. A little bit of indifference um to AI then into a little bit of fear. It was like wow, it actually can do parts of my job better, faster, more effective.

Speaker B: Um, reality hits.

Speaker C: Yeah. Then into a little bit of embarrassment. It's like I actually don't know how to interact with it or it can actually do my job, parts of my job better. Maybe not all of it but parts of it. Um, and what we do is help people transition um, and take them through each of those stages then through into confidence and transformation and becoming an AI advocate. So you know I hear a lot as I've trained probably over 350 people now we've got a black belt program. You know, I hear a lot of businesses you know, say that oh well we've got to have this, this and this in place. We've, you know, we've got to have our um, AI roadmap and digital transformation roadmap and our policies and all these things in place, um, and it stops them actually getting started. And I think that, you know, the easy way, well, not the easy way, but, you know, a way to start is actually pull a pilot group for businesses together, um, give them some awareness and some training that they can then apply into their own specific roles and develop use cases. And I think one of the other important things, um, that we like to use and leverage is, um, a return on investment kind of calculators. How do we know that what we're training and what we're doing and how we're utilizing AI is actually making a difference? So being able to track that and make sure that we're actually looking at how much time would it take before AI and then how much time will it take us after AI. So we're actually really understanding what that return on investment is. So when you have that pilot program, you start to build out some return on investment, or this is how much we're doing and how much more work we can get done, or, um, then we can start to look at, well, how can we bring that into the rest of the business, um, as well. And then I think the third part of your question was some specific kind of use cases. Um, I mean there's so many, yes, so many, so many. The possibilities really are endless. Um, there is the ability for us to use ChatGPT, uh, or any LLM tool to create copy and to help us with communication. Um, internal communication, external communication. Um, being able to leverage, um, ChatGPT for documentation or strategic thinking is also really important. Um, leveraging it as a thought partner.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I love about it.

Speaker C: Yeah, being able to bounce off ChatGPT. Hey, here's what I'm thinking of doing. Here's a problem or an area of business that I'm struggling in. Or we're stuck using, um, Elon Musk as a really out there different thinking partner or, uh, Steve Jobs. How should I tackle this in my business? So really leveraging frameworks or Personas to help rethink what you're currently doing.

Speaker B: And that's one of the things that I love about it the most from a business perspective is helping with that creative fatigue or just the natural tendency of, rather than me personally being able to come up with maybe five or at a stretch, 10 iterations, ChatGPT or generative AI can help you produce 100, 200, 500 different and just expand on that so much. It just gives you. Plus it happens in the blink of an eye. So you've got that efficiency plus all that improvement as well. It just makes perfect sense.

Speaker C: Yeah. And the combinations and different thought processes. You could throw two or three completely disparate ideas together and come up with something that you wouldn't have thought of before as well. It's like just don't even know how to draw these bows or strings together and it can actually do that for you.

Speaker B: Well, which in our session we had today that was one of the overarching themes is if you're not sure about something, ask ChatGPT, ask the language model and it'll give you some information on how to best go about answering that question.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: It's amazing. What about um, one of the other things we worked through today was the basic setups with the GPT as well. Um, and if we're looking at it from a, a lens, from a business perspective rather than just using the basic version and as you call it a long form prompt and just continually asking questions, what are the options there around customizing a GPT or creating one that is specific to your requirements or your business?

Speaker C: I just will touch on there's other LLMs out there as well other than uh, ChatGPT. So there's Gemini and Copilot and a lot of businesses have a Microsoft environment.

Speaker B: Very true.

Speaker C: Lends itself quite well to leveraging Microsoft. Um, Copilot. Uh, and um, at the moment what our consulting group does is really leverage ChatGPT, uh because of the ability to really um, interact with it in automations, um adding knowledge files and images and code, um analytics. Um the others is we're in an AI arms race.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Um, all of them. We can say that something is better today in ChatGPT, um, however it mightn't be the case next week.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: That's right. So they're all improving all of the time. Um, so I think it's just what is the framework in the environment for the business and using um that. But it's just get started and let the teams allow the use cases to emerge for the appropriate level of their roles and their businesses and you can develop guidelines and frameworks for appropriate use for understanding bias and transparency and um, making sure that our data privacy regulations are um, topic. Absolutely. Um, and that we're not. That we're turning off any kind of training of the algorithm or using a paid version um, like teams, um, the more advanced um, secure versions of these LLM tools so that that training um, is not there and then it's inside of your business following the same data privacy rules. We don't want to be putting employees privacy, private salary information or um, customer data out there at all. Um, can we anonymize that data? If we're wanting to do any kind of analytics. But we've got to make sure that we're operating within the rules and guidelines that already exist, um, as we're applying this kind of tool, um, and that our teams understand. And that's again back to train them.

Speaker B: Exactly. That's right, yeah.

Speaker C: Because the reality is that ah, they're using it anyway. Um, you know, 93% so recent survey I think was last week by Google. 93% of Gen Z are using two or more including an LLM tool a week. 75% of millennials. And that's the future of our workforce.

Speaker B: It is.

Speaker C: They're wanting it, they're using it. So we've got to actually give them some guidelines and some training on how to actually use it. The most effective inside the context of our business with the frameworks from a safety and a governance and a data privacy perspective as possible

Speaker B: and the privacy data, all that sort of stuff. Obviously for any organization that's a really important topic and I think people can definitely feel, rest assured that uh, there are frameworks, there are strategies, there are boundaries in place with AI to make sure that you can have all that protected and set up the way that it needs to be. Obviously any of these AI platforms are backed and built by very big businesses and they know that business is going to use it. So it's not like that's been completely disregarded a hesitancy there from a privacy data, you know, those sorts of issues. There are ways and it's going to constantly keep getting better. So that's all protected, like it's just going to be the way it is.

Speaker C: But you wouldn't start a business and have a team full of people knowing that we've got, you know, OHS type of policies and legislations out there without actually training it.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.

Speaker C: Like you train people on your OH and S systems and your specific policies and what, what's okay and not okay. You would do the same with the acceptable use policy for AI.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. It's another string to the bow. Essentially you have all the different departments and all the different organizations uh, within a business and AI is just another one that needs to fit in. As you said, do some work to understand it, see what's possible, go through some training and then make sure that it's suited to your business and your organization. Absolutely amazing, amazing. Um, in terms of policy and governance, you Touched on this earlier. There's obviously more coming out in terms of the government's role and the government's impact when it comes to AI and its usage. Uh, can you share just your thoughts on that and what's sort of happening in that space?

Speaker C: Yeah, I can. Um, last week there was a uh, recommendation ah by a committee that was set up by the government to look at well what do we do to regulate in this space? M. Um, so in the EU they were very quick off the mark. Um back in April, May they announced the legislation um, that's just recently been adopted. It is really quite restrictive, very risk based but it still is, it's legislation um, compared to the U.S. and Canadian and Singapore um, which have really. Singapore has created a framework for guidelines for their business because they're an economy that really relies on investment and innovation. And so you know I think that we don't want to, you know we want to be aware of risks. Um, but I also think that for Australia we're a similar kind of culture that we want that innovation and we don't want to stifle that and we don't want to restrict the ability for investment into Australia and um, have it you know, certainly for small to medium businesses be restrictive. Yes, um, we've got to be aware of it. And I think a, a framework of guidelines that also builds awareness around transparency and bias and um, privacy and a risk based approach certainly balances out like it's got to be a balance.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: That's right. Yes, correct. Yeah, yeah, 100% in terms of um, the five stages of AI. We also spoke about that earlier. Can you share some more about that?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So there are five plan stages of AI. Um we are really only in stage two. So the first uh, level you know 3.5 was chatbots. You know that's been out for a couple of years. Interacting with chatbots. We're into the reasoning phase, phase two, um, you know certainly with ChatGPT, you know the new preview and O, uh one model, you know more advanced reasoning and thinking capabilities, um, being able to analyze um code and quantum physics type of problems and you know understanding, reasoning and relating to um, emotional based responses a little bit more. So more advanced thinking.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Um, is phase two, um stage three is um AI agents. So being able to do um, tasks across multiple different aspects of an organization in an automated way. So enter, you know I want this output from uh, in code, in a interaction with an LLM tool and it will go through the thinking, through the different lenses and the different roles it will need to go through before it gets that output. And at the moment today we're manually doing that and building it into an automated GPT.

Speaker B: And to simplify that, that's essentially putting an input into AI and having a framework to say that it needs to go through this framework or this type of role. And it just keeps passing it through the different layers, the different frameworks to order the output, to give you the output. Yeah, amazing.

Speaker C: Then into stage four which they're predicting is going to be more in and around innovation and really being able to create um, at a different level of um, thinking and look at tasks and problems in a completely different way. So that'll be stage four and then into stage five which is ah, AI at an organizational level where their goal is um, having a one person unicorn business that the whole organization can be done via AI, which is pretty futuristic if you think about it and um, a little bit scary depending on which

Speaker B: way you look at it.

Speaker C: Companies of course, but that is certainly um, the declared plan.

Speaker B: Yep, perfect. And I'm sure it will be a reality as well. Yes, if you go back far enough in time. A jet flying through the sky was pretty futuristic as well. But hey it happens every day.

Speaker C: I mean you know, 30, 40 years ago we didn't have the Internet exactly, exactly 100%.

Speaker B: It's crazy. Um, so to sort of bring all this to a wrap I think uh, again it's one of those situations where as a business owner myself I have the responsibility to make sure that I'm investigating AI, looking at the possibilities, the pros, the cons and then adapting that in the most suitable way. Um, and that's with every part of a business. So that's definitely something that we're focusing on. And I think again the use cases inside of a business, um, there are different business models and different industries where people might think oh look, that's just not really appropriate for us or we're very hands on or we're trade based or whatever it might be. But there are still so many opportunities that um, AI can help to increase the efficiency and productivity is a massive um, buzzword at the moment, especially from an economic perspective. You know, Australia's productivity levels are way down. Um, so there are so many things that again automation, AI, regardless of what business or industry you're in, that can

Speaker C: definitely assist and just that you know, taking the routine and mundane out of the way so we can actually focus on high level thinking and you know, more creative, uh, more strategic type of thinking and What I've really experienced for businesses that I've been training and again like a huge variety. It's not just like one type of business. So um, optometrists, um, into you know online, um, platforms, into retail, rural digital marketing, you know so many. It's such a different variety. You know a business where it involves people.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: Uh, where we get to leverage AI from a leadership and development communication in a HR space and helping develop our people, helping them learn how to communicate better becomes like a tool that is a 24 hour, seven day a week coach.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Effectively. You know, so any business that needs and relies on people, um, analytics, um, marketing. Which business doesn't need some kind of marketing or sales copy salespeople, um, improving their ability to sell and convert sales copy, um, presentations if you're a speaker or a coach, presentations that can be done with the audience in mind from start to finish. There's just so many different applications and uses across any industry business.

Speaker B: So what does in your mind, what does sort of 2025 look like? Um, and beyond. But yeah, more so for next year. Um, again hard to predict things but you know, what do you think people should be aware of or what do you think the landscape's going to look like?

Speaker C: And whatever I say it'll probably change in a week or two.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's iterating that fast as well.

Speaker C: It is.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: Um, I think you know from but what I've seen this year we're still so early in the, you know, people are in the awareness and early adopter stage really still um, in terms of bringing it in house and exploring how can it really um, help us in our roles and in our business in the shape of our organizations, even universities and um, education programs going forward. Gonna need to change.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: Um, but I think that for into 2020 people know that they need to be looking and exploring this. So I think we're going to have more businesses putting pilot programs together, pulling some more official acceptable use policies in place for teams investing in the systems and the tools uh, for their teams. So the paid versions from a security perspective and privacy and then also um, aren't training um teams on how to actually use it as well. Um, and I think businesses certainly on the larger end actually setting up internal AI academies as well. Um, I think is definitely the next stage that there will be internal teams of uh, specialists um, into the future, um, and uh, past that.

Speaker B: Who knows, who knows, who knows.

Speaker C: But I definitely think that um, all businesses need to be taking a look at their business Model how the organizations, how we even recruit. Uh, I've worked with recruiters as well. Everybody can now use generative AI to perfect their resume and um, their um, cover letters. So it's vanilla. Everybody's going to be able to do and create the same level of output. So do we need to change the way that we recruit and hire people? Instead of having a resume and a cover letter, we go straight to a skills based assessment to prove that you can actually do parts of these jobs.

Speaker B: Wow, that's a rabbit hole.

Speaker C: So things are going to shift and change. Um, and 66% Microsoft survey out earlier this year, 66% of leaders said that they would rather hire a leader or someone in a role less experienced that have AI skills than a more experienced and more expensive candidate that doesn't have them.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's it all wrapped up in a nutshell, isn't it?

Speaker C: It's definitely going to change the way organizations are shaping up um, to be in the future.

Speaker B: And I think what we'll also see is the separation or it'll become more obvious in people who are making ah, the most of AI and or organizations that are making the most of AI and those that aren't, um, and there'll be a note, noticeable gap that starts to form, um, for everybody who isn't being as efficient as they could be. That's something else that we'll see as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I mean margins are lean out there, business is tough, competition is tough, it's hard to get cut through on marketing. Being able to specifically speak to your ideal customer avatar, um, is critical. And being able to attract great talent is critical.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's inputs and outputs like attracting people to your organization. Having the best output from your organization goes both directions. Amazing. Uh, uh, Alexei, can you please let everybody know if they would like some more information or you would like to speak to yourself. How can they go about doing that?

Speaker C: Thank you. Yeah, they can reach out to me, um, through my LinkedIn profile, Alexa O' Brien, or my website website leadership, uh, Academy AI and they can um, hook up with my calendly link and book a chat.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Thank you very much, Appreciate your time. And I'm sure at some stage, perhaps in 12 months, we'll have to sit down again and have a look at what's changed in that short space of time when it comes to AI.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Thank you very much.

Speaker C: You're welcome. Thanks.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker A: So that's it for another episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. As we mentioned we'd love to get your thoughts and feedback on this episode. You can do that by heading over to our Instagram tensionmediaagency and letting us know what your thoughts send us a message we'd love to hear from you. We'd also love to know what you'd like us to talk about in upcoming episodes. So uh, send us your topic ideas. We are always interested. And if you'd love to know more, head over to the website attentionmedia.com that's all for now. We'll see you in the next episode.