From AI User to Native Leader with Keith Posehn, CEO at Zorz

Speaker A: Organizations have to be saying, look, we don't know what's right, we don't know what's best. We've got to enable people to succeed.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Partnership Economy Podcast. I'm, um, your host, Todd Crawford, and this week we're continuing our dive into AI. Uh, but this time we're shifting from what AI is to what you can do with it. We're seeing in real time that the ability to build custom, efficient tools is no longer limited to engineering teams. Now individuals with deep business context are being empowered to create their own solutions, to dig deeper. I'm, um, excited to welcome Keith Posen to the show. Keith is a CEO and founder of Zores. With over two decades in marketing and partnerships, he has an incredible track record of scaling programs at innovative companies like Uber Square and Masterclass. He now stands at the very center of this new paradigm as the creator of Ultra, an AI platform that enables exactly this kind of individual led development. Today, we'll cover the concept of becoming AI native and why taking personal initiative through the tools at their disposal is the most important step anyone can take in their career right now. We'll also break down how this approach not only drives immediate efficiency, but also positions you as a leader in this new era. If you want a practical guide to building your skills and standing out in an AI world, this episode is for you. I hope you enjoy. Well, hey, Keith, welcome to the podcast. It's great to finally have you on. I know we've talked, uh, about it for a while, but here you are.

Speaker A: Yeah, great to be here. Thank you for having me excited.

Speaker B: Yeah. And we're talking about something that's very exciting, top of mind, I'm sure, to everyone, and that's artificial intelligence, but can't get enough of it nowadays. And I know you've been doing a deep dive, so I'm interested to get your perspective and learnings on just, you know, how do we actually leverage AI, um, no matter what our role is in a company, and then what should we be thinking about? How do we even do that? I think I'm sure everyone here is using the various AI, uh, tools out there as a search engine or answer questions, which is, I think, the most basic use of AI, but not really understanding how you can take that to the next level in creating efficiency and just tools that, you know, don't exist. I think it's just exciting and I know you've been playing around with that, so I'd love to just kind of get some of your initial perspective on what you guys have been doing and m how it's been working out.

Speaker A: It's been a really interesting journey. I mean, going from, geez, marketing consulting. Now really it's just an AI services and infrastructure company at this point. What I kind of learned, Todd, um, I think you talk about like organizations and how they're leveraging it. I see kind of like three classes in a way or three levels at the moment of it. And it's superficial AI use, which it's still a good thing, it's still effective, still important. There's more AI integrated organizations or teams and then there's AI native. And I think there's like these three different kind of categories kind of emerging right now. That of course give it six months, it'll be different. But right now using ChatGPT for a search or something like that, asking it basic questions, is a very superficial use. It can still be very effective and transformative. I mean that's the thing is if you give it good data or you use it right, that's still a transformative use case. But that more AI integrated approach where it's not just a tool that you kind of like ask it some questions, you're actually fundamentally thinking like, how do I leverage this as a tool to accomplish something? That's a more AI integrated approach where you start thinking in terms of making your own custom chatbots, feeding it specific data, using MCPS to connect up different things and say, hey Claude, I want to go ahead and understand this look in notion to find this and find this in Google Docs, like that's a bit more integrated AI native is where it is a fundamental way that you do business. It is a fundamental component of how your business not just operates, but exists. And that's an AI native approach where I think it's so fascinating to find where this is emerging. Like a friend of mine has a moving company and dude has a huge setup that he's using where he's using N8N and other tools to automate chunks of his business. And this is not a technical founder. So I think what we're finding is a dramatic leveling of the playing field in terms of capability.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the, as you pointed out, the superficial use, it's making that jump from that to the next phase is kind of critical. And I think for a lot of people when they're working in a company, they're kind of waiting for that to happen from the top or from the side. And uh, I think that's kind of a mistake that I think A lot of people are kind of waiting for AI to kind of fall out of the sky. If you're waiting, you're missing out on productivity and efficiency and consumption, potentially building your career.

Speaker A: Yeah, you make a really good point. It's like a lot of organizations, I think there's an organizational inertia around. Oh, I have to wait for a tool to be available or organizations say, we've got to make the tool available to you. Like a great example is another company I know a salesperson joined it and they're in the publisher space. The sales lady, she joined and she came in with a cloud code subscription. She's like, I'm going to use Claude, everybody. I don't care about chatgpt. She came in, landed with Claude and went running and started building her sales to and automations from day one. And she's outperforming everybody and the organization kind of wasn't ready for her. But then they're like, nope, never mind, we're good with this. I think that's the thing. We need to. People need to be embracing and running with the tools and leadership and organizations have to be saying, look, we don't know what's right, we don't know what's best. We've got to enable people to succeed.

Speaker B: That to me is the most exciting kind of component of this is it's democratizing AI, uh, tools at the individual level. And I can't imagine how powerful it would be if everyone in our company@impact.com had 4, 5, 6, 7 tools that they built for themselves and had all these agents running and creating all these efficiencies. You turn a, uh, single employee into 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 20 employees, and just imagine what that does to a company and how they can scale. I mean, it's like a rocket ship suddenly.

Speaker A: And this is like a broader concept I have is that, um, cultures are not homogenous. You know, cultures vary. They have pockets of different things, different ways of doing stuff. And organizations are not homogenous in terms of culture. Um, at the same time, I think that notion of like AI superficial AI AI integrated AI Native, I think that's going to vary across an org too. So you're going to get a ton. You're going to get some AI Native people that vastly outperform everybody or at least are leading the charge and pulling people along with them in the right organization. So what you're talking about is how to allow people to be AI Native, how to allow people to develop and to create those efficiencies and then I think the other component too is how to make an organization where those people naturally are seen as leading in this and are naturally able and encouraged to make those changes effective across the organization. To say, I built this tool and it works for me. Hey everybody, here's how I'm using this. What else do you all need? Let me show you how to do it. Let me help you make the same tools. What that does is that kind of pulls everybody because to your point, that rocket ship, when we want that rocket ship, everybody needs to be on the rocket ship. So how do the AI native people in this make that rocket ship happen and kind of get everybody going with them.

Speaker B: If you build a tool and iterate on it and get it to do something that makes your job easier or makes you more effective, you're going to use it. If someone down the hallway or in another city builds an AI tool and says here Todd, this is for you to do your job better. My adoption or embrace of that might not be as great as something I know I built myself. Individuals, as they start creating these agents, these tools, these solutions, they're going to be more inspired and leverage them to a greater degree. I uh, kind of look at it as a bottom up revolution almost in business, right? And the people that are able to learn and start excelling at it now, these are going to be the new leaders.

Speaker A: And the tools to your other point are also democratizing. I'm finding people that you would not consider to be technical tool users are the ones sitting down and making the tools now saying okay, Claude code. Like having a person who's never touched a line of code in their write an app with Claude code and deploy it. I'm like uh, this is amazing. But at the same time like it's happening. These are, this is the new type of leadership. And I think it's, you know, I wonder what it does to organizations, I wonder what it does to teams. When you get a, ah, really interesting differentiation between the native users and the ones who aren't native to it. Native users can do so much and impact so fast. How does that shift and change organizations and cultures and how companies are effective?

Speaker B: It's really about context. These AI tools have the most potential when there's deep context. With search engines in the past you'd have to re enter an entirely new search where with this it can give you results and you go, okay, but you know, exclude this or change the price point or whatever you want and it understands what you've already asked it and it keeps going. So it has this iteration capability. This is the thing I think people are all worried about, what's AI going to do in my job? You know, and you're in full control because AI can take you to a level you're not going to get to without it.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's absolutely. Like a friend of mine works at a, at a big tech company and we were talking about a lot of the AI build that he's doing in there and the organization kind of has the wrong attitude. And I've been helping him tell them to say, look, it's not about making the organization need less people. It's about making everybody in the organization 10 times more effective. Imagine 500 people in the sales org having the power of 5,000. That's an incredible lever. And if you can make that lever, you can completely dominate a market. Instead of an efficiency play, it's an output play. That's one. Another one is adoption is trying to say, well, you have to take the barrier away. You have to say, make this something everybody can use. I think it also brings to one of your other points that when we look at teams and we look at orgs that again, AI, native people can lead the way. But how do you make it accessible to everybody and make it something that can naturally take someone beyond a superficial use into a more integrated or native approach?

Speaker B: The thing that makes a person so valuable in an organization is that they understand the why behind the business, not just the what. And that context is really powerful in building these tools. And it's like I said, that's where a human, an individual can really take advantage of these things.

Speaker A: Agreed. And I think to your point as well about this, there's a concept I call dimension of agency. Um, agency and people, I think is actually made up of two things. You don't just have agency or not. It's not a one dimensional, low to high agency or no to high agency. It's two dimensions because there is intrinsic agency, the agency that comes from within what you yourself bring to it. Then there's extrinsic what the organization or environment around you enables and embraces. And, and I think that to your point about this, the people that are going to do best at this are the ones that have agency and are in an organization that instills that, that has high extrinsic agency that says we expect you to do this, we expect you to leverage these tools. And that's a leadership change in teams that may not be high extrinsic agency, that may not Embrace that saying, you know what, we may be super rigid and process oriented because that's how we've succeeded before, but maybe when it comes to tools like this, we can't be, because that will destroy adoption, that will destroy the agency of people to find those values. And I think another thing too is the people that do use these tools and become native to them are now choosing their jobs based on where they can do it. They're looking for the places where they can have that agency where they can say, hey, look, I'm coming with my own ways of doing things. I want to bring my toolbox with me. And they're choosing companies based on that. They're choosing companies based on the company's willingness to give them token budgets so they can spend money on the HD on the API calls. Like literally that's happening. So I think to your point earlier, they need that agency and that ability to really embrace it. And the organization has to make that not only possible, but expected.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the other piece that the company needs to do on this is to bring as many data sources, content from the company, make it accessible, whether it's in Slack, email, um, backend database systems, documentation, all that stuff needs to be part of what these tools can pivot off of or play off of or access.

Speaker A: No, totally. And I think it's like Google Docs and Slack and others being an example here. So someone comes in like, Google is good at selling Gemini to people like, oh, use Gemini. It's in your organization account. You can get it added on. But the problem is, can I sit down and use Gemini to make an app that connects Google Docs and Sheets and Slack and this and that and that. The problem is almost like a registry of tools and the ability to say, uh, like I can't in a bigger organization go get an API key for a major tool. I'm not allowed to do that. And of course I shouldn't be allowed to do that. But I might say, hey, look, I need to be able to tie these things together to do my job more effectively. So the organization has to make that possible and has to make the tools available to say, look, whether you're using Claude or Codex or Gemini or what, these are the mcps. This is how you can connect these up. So if you want to be more productive, here's all the tools in the toolbox for you to do that. I think Organs are still struggling with that. Big organizations are really having a hard time because they're getting locked into these bigger enterprise deals with Providers and then going, well, I can't hook up everything and a person says I can't still. I may have this tool available but it doesn't give me the access that I need.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of companies don't see themselves as data companies. You know, they're providing a service or whatever it is, they're selling software, they're doing whatever. And so it's not intuitive for them to say we have all this information that we have different people using and relying on, but we don't have it all kind of open and accessible. And I think it's huge for your career path because again the people who are fluent and have a proven track record of being able to take all the business context and turn it into something that creates a lot of efficiency and effectiveness in an organization. Like you talked about that person in sales at Woman. I mean they just come in and they just are plug and play. It's like, I'm going to do all this. Those are the kind of people that are going to succeed in this AI future. Which I guess we're in the middle of it right now.

Speaker A: But it's, you know, we're at a point where we're getting compounding acceleration and the tools are getting better faster and faster in every iteration. And so it's just like, you know, to your point, we're living in this future. It's happening. Um, I'm just, I'm disappointed by the distinct lack of flying cars. But then again I have the entire world's knowledge in my pocket and now I have and I have a intelligence that can do so many things available to me. I'll take that. That's a great future.

Speaker B: Publishers or affiliates have been very good at innovating and creating new business models that literally are custom built for performance, uh, marketing. Right. They're not display models or uh, anything outside of affiliate. They really um, build into that. And I'm just imagining with all this AI, that scale now that efficiency not only just within a publisher organization because it's the same with any organization, but the tools or the capabilities for the consumers, um, and the affiliate, uh, revenues that can be generated through leveraging AI I think is going to dramatically accelerate things.

Speaker A: Oh totally. I think we're starting to see and it's an industry that naturally lends itself to this. You have it filled with extremely high agency people that are dissatisfied with any place where they can't have that. So I mean I was a full time affiliate for years. Like you know, I get it. We, we Sat down. We made a ton of stuff back in the days of search Arb. Cutting our teeth there, figuring out clicks. Was it exact phrase or broad match? How do we do negatives? How do we, like, pull money out of the ether? And we did for years. And that industry is there and matured. But I think to your other point, it's an industry that naturally lends itself to the, that, that, that creates that kind of mentality. And so I am seeing that kind of adoption being driven. But it's also one where, you know, I think it's still in pockets. I think there's pubs that are being very smart going like, oh, I can make this right now. And they're getting ahead of the game while nobody's quite looking. I think this is an industry where right now there is two kind of camps right now. Uh, very much AI native and very much just not. And I don't see much of a middle ground. But I see quickly some people figuring it out and suddenly going native, quickly figuring out how to leverage it in their publisher business. Like one that I know that does search arbitrage, largely does it all AI driven now. I'm like, that's amazing. I think for partnerships there is so many ways you can do things, so many ways that you can quickly, quickly build and create value. If you want to make a, you want to make a chrome extension, you can get that done inside of an hour and make something that works and then you can quickly iterate on that. And so you could have for your own brand, a chrome extension for something. You could make a cashback site in a day at this point. So a lot of advantages that bigger stalwarts have are also evaporating quickly. And so I think that that makes the barrier to entry even lower than before. Like coupon sites, remember were such an easy way to get in. Like, oh, everyone's searching for coupons. I'm going to make a coupon site. But then got crowded placing that was really hard. But the technical challenges to make things like cash back and rewards and, you know, extensions, even games or apps, those are old, all disappearing so fast that I think it's gonna be interesting to see how people in the partnership economy are going from arbitrage opportunity or thinking monetization first and instead start thinking product first, which is where the most successful publishers have come from. Anyways.

Speaker B: I've always been amazed over, you know, almost 30 years, uh, the innovation in the affiliate space. On the affiliate side of this space, right, because the brands, you know, they're Innovating on their own, but they're, you know, and uh, obviously retail media is a big innovation there, but the big play is going to come on the publisher side that's going to accelerate and grow this industry, you know, further. You know, what is your backbone? That's what I think people have to think of like what can I build or what can I access that can, you know, that is this backbone?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's players like Impact and others that have those APIs that have the data accessible that functions the backbone that to your earlier point, like have the tools like again the AI. Native publishers are the ones that are going to say I want to work where I've got access to all the data and the tools I need. So if they can say, look, I can get product feeds, I can get action feeds, I can get click feeds, everything I need to know to do this right. They're going to go to the place where it's easy to get easy to pull together and easy to build from. And so we're going to see that next wave of publishers that are already emerging saying, I'm making a very product focused use case, focused site. I'm creating like a really powerful use case for a market I've identified and I'm doing something that technically I was incapable of doing before. A lot of people are doing that now. I've been in this space for so long. I've always been kind of native with it, but now suddenly I'm like amplified massively and able to do more of them. And now people that have never been able to are suddenly able to do or suddenly have this tool and going, I'm going to make this, I'm going to be a publisher for this and I don't have to spend all the time to pull this together. I can realize my vision in full much faster. I think that's going to create a huge wave of competition but at the same time so much value both to users and to brands and to publishers.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I see people uh, building one off tools in our industry right now where they're, you know, it's another secret sauce or it's just making their job easier. And some of them are turning those into products and selling them to their peers or other, you know, whoever it's appropriate for.

Speaker A: We're also seeing the knowledge acceleration, um, like case in point, like you know, my wife has been learning, um, learning Godot or Godot, uh, however you say it, like a video game, a game engine, and was struggling with some of the programming concepts because the scripting system behind it's pretty obscure. But then I got her claw, she sat down and within a day she was able to accomplish far more than she was able to with for weeks before simply because it gave her the information she needed. It didn't do the job for her, it just gave it to her. Bam. Here you go, here's what you need to know. And her knowledge accelerated rapidly because she was able to move so fast. So I think we're seeing a huge knowledge acceleration too because they're able to use these tools and say, hey, how do I do this? Don't do it for me, just how can I get this done? And they can do it. And then they understand faster because they have an incredibly smart partner helping them get these concepts, helping educate them. That's incredibly valuable.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's confidence too, right? Like once you've done it even badly, you're like, uh, it worked. You know what I mean? Yeah. I created a little, a little thing and you know, I think like I said, that's really the hump to get over. And uh, I'm really, I'm looking forward to seeing. I mean we've been pushing this out inside of impact.com uh, and we've enabled almost all of our systems to be internally part of that kind of walled garden of our data, but also obviously external data. So you get a very powerful tool in everyone's hands. It doesn't cost them anything, it's our investment. But um, it's creating just so much opportunity and potential and I feel like we're just, I mean really at the tip of this. It's just going to be so exciting very soon.

Speaker A: Oh yeah. No, it's interesting just how fast it's gone and how far we've come in such short period of time. Last December, I got tired of using Microsoft VS code for writing code. So I used AI to write my own development environment. And now that thing has evolved so much, it's changed so much now. It's like, I call it an agentic orchestration environment. And it's just suddenly you have this tool available to you that you can just go crazy with. Uh, it's, it's, it's amazing. It's amazing m. How really what I

Speaker B: hear in your voice is this fluency and confidence that you just know there's nothing you can't do, right?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Once you figure, you know, you get so far down the road and this isn't like a ten year journey, right. I mean this is months or Years for most people, um, you know, where AI, I mean, AI has been around, but it, it really hasn't gotten to the level it needs to until just recently, in my opinion. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's actually the last three months, in my opinion. Has AI software gotten to the point where it can produce an output that's of consistent quality, that you can ship, that you can look at and go, oh, this is actually something I can rely on. You know, I still have to review everything that goes out, but I'm looking at it going like, the quality is increasing, the mistakes are decreasing so rapidly that I'm like, well, I actually can see the point where it's not far off, where I'm just not even bothering. But still, it's interesting. It's a really fascinating thing to deal with.

Speaker B: Maybe they're already feeling like they've waited too long, the AI, uh, train is passing them, or it's not. It's just getting started. It really is. Because it took a while for it to get smart enough and fast enough.

Speaker A: Where it leads is going to be really fascinating because I don't know. And there is so much value to be made and also so much value to be lost. I think we are going to go through some huge shifts in the market in terms of where value is going to go and who will win from that. But at the same time, there's so much opportunity that it's like, why would you cut yourself off from it?

Speaker B: Exactly. Like, can't. I'm so excited about it. I can't wait to see more people leveraging it. Um, and, you know, it's not even, as we said, it's not even to build something, a new business. It's really to fuel an existing business. There's a lot of this, right. The efficiency and the expansion, um, is just waiting. It's waiting for everyone to do it.

Speaker A: And organizations are waking up and realizing, like, no, we need to not hold people back from this because people are choosing based on what they can do now. And the best performers are the ones who are saying, no, I want to be able to do this, and if I can't do it here, I will go somewhere else where I can.

Speaker B: Yeah. And look, if you're a company and you're looking for a vendor to do X and you talk to three potential vendors, that conversation is going to revolve mostly around, okay, how do you meet my needs? And how are you using AI to do that? Like, if you, uh, don't have a good AI strategy as a company, you're missing out. But that's the same with an individual. I want people that have even just a little confidence in AI so far that they can continue to build and grow because those are going to be the most valuable employees.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a thing that just like being able to use a word processor in the early 90s, being able to type and print and use basic M computer stuff. This is a skill that will become or is already table stakes. And it's just a matter of do you have it in your toolbox or not? Um, a friend of mine and I were talking. We use the toolbox in Alij a bunch. I'll give you this one. All you had was a hammer. We had a few tools and you had to figure out how to do it to set a tool. You know, a toolbox filled with amazing tools. But I think where we're headed is a toolbox that has nothing in it. And you reach in and suddenly the tool you want is in your hand. I think we're heading there really fast. And that's what this is. Enabling.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's like the matrix on steroids, really is. I mean, well, hey, Keith, I greatly appreciate all your insights that you shared here. And, um, you know, the future's bright. Just gotta get everybody on board. And, uh, it's never too late.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's not. It's not too late. And God damn, it's a lot of fun. I think, like, it's been so fascinating to see how quick this is going and just the, just the sheer volume of stuff happening, trying to keep up with it is a. Is impossible. But it's a lot of fun to try.

Speaker B: All right, thanks, man.

Speaker A: Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it.

Speaker B: It's impossible to have a conversation like this without acknowledging the anxiety many people feel about AI, uh, replacing their jobs. What I find so powerful about Keith's perspective is that it offers a clear and proactive counter narrative. It challenges the idea that you need to be a technical expert to innovate. The real asset is your unique business context combined with the willingness to experiment with these tools. The barrier to entry for creating real, impactful tools is disappearing faster than we think. And I think that's amazing. The path forward isn't just about keeping your job. It's about making yourself exponentially more valuable. By using AI to solve problems you intimately understand, you shift from being a user of tools to a creator of efficiency. And that is a skill set that will get you noticed and help you move up in this new era. It's truly a call to look at our own workflows, identify any inefficiencies, and see it as an opportunity rather than a chore. For me, I'm excited to see our teams already leveraging AI to create efficiencies here at Impact. I I am confident that this ground up adoption will push our company forward and accelerate our growth. We are on the cusp of a massive evolution and I don't want to see any of you left behind. It's never too late to get started, but the sooner you do, the better off your future will look. I want to extend a big thank you to Keith for coming on the show and providing an empowering framework for how we can all think about our career development in the age of eight. Uh, AI, thanks for listening and I look forward to next time.