11 | AI Adoption Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing AI in Your Organization with Karl Yeh, an AI implementation expert

0:00Hello, and welcome to Leveraging AI. This is Isar Metis, your host, and our guest today is Carl Yeh. Carl is a brilliant professional and he's an AI enthusiast that is leading the AI charge within his organization. And in this episode, he's going to share exactly how to drive grassroots AI adoption the right way within a larger organization. At the end of the episode, I'm also going to give a few quick updates of really important things that happen in the AI world this week. So stay tuned for that. And now for the amazing episode with Carl Yeh.

0:35In the next few years, AI technology will change our world dramatically. Whether you are a business executive trying to catapult your business forward, or just somebody who refuses to be left behind and want to advance your career, this is the show for you. I'm your host, Isar Maitis, a serial entrepreneur and an AI enthusiast. You'll hear invaluable practical tips from innovative business leaders, AI practitioners, and some of the brightest AI minds in our world today. on how you can leverage AI in ethical ways to advance your career and grow your business.

1:15Hello and welcome to Leveraging AI, the podcast that shares practical, ethical ways to leverage AI to improve efficiency, grow businesses, and advance your career. This is Isar Maitis, your host, and I am truly excited about today's topic. So AI tools are popping up left and right at a really scary pace. My guest and I literally joked just before we started recording that we did the preparation for this two weeks ago, and the world changed three times in those two weeks when it comes to the tools that came out and the capabilities that were introduced. So these are amazing announcements that are happening literally every day and sometimes a few times in a single day.

1:55And each and every one of them represents an incredible breakthrough in means of A, technology, and B, the business implications and society implications that they have. That being said, most people don't really understand, and definitely businesses cannot keep up with that pace of new tools being presented. On the other hand of that, it is very clear that companies and organizations who do not adapt and start implementing AI tools and generative AI tools and uses technology will move significantly slower than companies who will implement these kinds of tools. So there's going to be like the digital divide.

2:38There's going to be a much bigger divide now with companies who implement AI capabilities into their workflows, into their product, into their services versus companies who don't, who will run out of business. There's no other option. That creates a very problematic formula, right? On one hand, there's all these tools and bells and whistles and tactics that you can use that are coming out at a scary pace. On the other hand, how do I implement this into a business because otherwise I'm going to run out of business? So while this is a very clear problem, there is an approach that can help you as an employee of a company, as a manager in a company, go through a process that will allow you to introduce new tools and new AI-driven strategies into a business in a way that has a higher chances of being successful in the implementation and hence can help the business be more successful.

3:30And that's going to be the focus of today's conversation. The conversation is going to be with Kahlia. Kahlia is a marketing demand generation expert by trade, and he's an AI tools magician by reputation. And he has done this in his business. So he has went through this process himself. So he doesn't just talk the talk, he also walks the walk. And hence, I'm very, very excited to have him on the show today. Carl, welcome to Leveraging AI. Thank you so much, Isar, for inviting me because I love this conversation and what we're exactly going to talk about today. Carl, let's go back to your view of this and looking at this from somebody who's a senior employee in an organization, but not the guy running it.

4:19And you have this passion for this topic, hence why you're looking at the reviews and you're testing stuff out and you're playing with this and you're following all the right people. And they're saying, how do I take this into the organization so the company I work with can become more successful? What's the starting point for all of this? I think when I wanted to take this to our organization, I'll use ours as an example. I think even before going into the tools, going into, you know, oh, ChatGPT could do this, or as we've seen, the hundred prompts that you could use to do all sorts of, you know, make money, change your life.

5:00It's illegal to know these, like before even getting to that, I think the key thing is what is the level of knowledge in your organization about this topic, just in general, right? Some people could be using it. Some people could just be dabbling in it. And some people, their day-to-day activities, their job just doesn't require them to use it at all. And they have no interest in it. So you have to kind of figure out where is that interest level, not just from like individual departments or people, but also from an organization itself, like what is their knowledge and what is their interest in it?

5:40I think that's like a key piece that I've learned when I've done so many presentations to our executive teams, to different departmental heads. And you'll notice the different levels of understanding and the different levels of wanting to use it, whether or having a perspective of, hey, this is a huge opportunity for us, or, oh my gosh, this has a negative impact. It could replace a lot of us. So just having that understanding is so key to from just when you're thinking about introducing AI into your business. I love your answer. I think the biggest thing that I'm seeing, and I'm now teaching courses on this, is understanding the level of the person you're trying to talk to.

6:27And the variance is insanely big, like the gap between the people who know absolutely nothing to the people who are like you and me who follow the news and play with the tools is vast. And it's growing every single day because new stuff is happening literally every single day. And to have a conversation that is beneficial, you have to adapt it to the level of the audience you're talking to. I want to ask a very practical question. How did you set up the stage to even have the initial conversation with the executive team to introduce these things to them? Because if you're a C-suite person, okay, you raise your hand in a meeting and you can do this.

7:06But if you're not, you have to walk in through the door of somebody and say, hey, I think as a company, we need to pay attention to this. I want to introduce this to the leadership team. How did you approach it? What was your approach to introducing this? I initially started by, I've had an interest in AI since about 2016, understanding what's now Google DeepMind. But really, just like every one of us, we were surprised about the uptake of ChatGPT when it was launched in November, right? The end of November, in December, it just started blowing up. So even with people who have had an interest in just researchers and talking to people who've been in AI for decades, they're like, we don't know what exactly happened in November.

7:49but it just, it went mainstream. And that was the end of that. And even Sam Altman said, GPT is a terrible product. Like they never thought that would go anywhere. Right. So that was an interesting point. And how I started, I guess, getting noticed in the organization was we have Slack channels. And then I would say, Hey, have you tried this? Have you tried this? This is actually going to make your work a little easier, not knowing at all that I was going to start presenting all these facts, but I was taking in. And then what's happening is people were starting to notice, hey, wait a minute, this isn't just another crazy Carl-like tool that he's promoting, but it's actually impacting.

8:30And then I can hear about all these people talking about it at the same time in my networks. So it's making that connection. And then how I got into the leadership aspect is I'm pretty close with a couple of our executives just because we work together on certain things. And then that trickled up to just one of them saying, hey, you know, be nice is if we could, we're hearing about it. One or two of our CTO, she used to be a data scientist. She'd love, you know, she's really passionate about it. But I think from a whole, we've been seeing a lot of the stuff you're doing and can you give us a presentation?

9:10And that was it can you just give us a 20 minute and i fought the 20 minute and i said hey i can't do a presentation in 20 minutes for you i need you to give me at least 40 minutes and we went back and forth until i got the full 40 minutes and it was very beneficial that we got that 40 minutes because there's no way we could have covered an entire presentation on ai in 20 minutes and then oh and make sure you have room for discussion yeah there's no way you could do that so for me it was just more about like sharing the tools and then, Hey, do you check out this new thing? And just kept going and going.

9:43And then people started noticing. And that's really how I got the initial conversation with the executives, which then once the executives learned about it, and then it just blew up in our organization. And then everyone's like, Hey, can I see your presentation? Brilliant. I want to touch on two things in the backend of what you said that tie to a lot of things that I believe in and I know that you do too. One thing is you took a playbook out of demand generation, which is what you do, to the inner side of the organization. So in the world, if you want to create demand and have people pay attention to you, it's about providing value upfront.

10:18If you can show people the value of something and you do this without asking them for anything in return, they will pay attention because you're literally helping them do what they need to do, regardless if it's B2B or person-to-person within your organization. And literally that works every single time, including when you try to promote something internally like you did. The other thing that you said that is so critical and I think is going to be the holy grail of this AI era is that human relationships will become even more important to anything that we do than ever before because everything else can be automated and become more efficient.

10:55And so you having the personal relationship to the right people is a huge step forward in promoting whatever you want to promote. And again, this could be inside your organization, between friends, in social environments, or in businesses. So just highlighting these two points. Let's dive into the process of once you get people's attention or once you have something that you've identified that can help your organization, what are the steps step-by-step that you need to take in order to make it the highest chances of having a successful implementation in the organization so yeah when we were talking about this before i like it's evolved over over the course of that presentations to other departments and so on but i really think there are some key things that you have to look at if you're presenting And it depends on who you're presenting to.

11:50When I was presenting to the executives, I had to make sure I tied it back to whatever our business goals were, what the direction of the company was, and also what their, it's such a demand generation term, what our objectives and key reports are, our OKRs, like how do you tie it to them? Because no matter how cool a tech is, hey, does it actually solve our business? Like, does it solve our business challenges and our business problems? And so the big key part is, like you said, knowing your audience and whenever you're presenting. But one of the key things that, you know, I guess to list them out is can you identify any low hanging fruits or really simple things that can make the business be either more efficient or improve performance?

12:44What can you do to make the person who, let's say, has so much, like a majority of their job is taken up by, let's say, just the amount of meeting notes that they're doing? AI could definitely help with that, right? Something super simple or the team having to create so much, like we'll talk about emails, how much emails we have to generate for not just prospecting, but internal stakeholders to our clients. Can you help with that? So what are those key things that you may have to look in your organization? These are super simple things that will immediately improve efficiency. And we're not talking about taking over jobs here.

13:27We're talking about giving the ability for that person to decrease the burden of these repetitive tasks and get them to actually do things that their role requires them to do. And that leads to the second step is really to identify, to me, these key three things. Is the task data driven? Is it repetitive? And is there prediction involved? Any one of these things, there's definitely an AI opportunity. Any two or more of these things, you're definitely going to get, there is an opportunity, but you're probably going to get a disruption too. So having, you know, looking at it from that point of view, you looking at it from those three lenses, right?

14:11And then we're how we're in the next stage of that where we are is really, how do we go about testing different tools to help, again, improve efficiency, drive performance? And that's where the big caution is, where all these tools are coming up. I think Futurepedia, I think in December had 300 to 400 tools in its database. I saw today it was like 1 ,400. So we're talking 1 ,000 AI tools created in what? Three, four months? That's crazy. And a lot of these tools cannibalize each other. And then out comes Microsoft Copilot and just wipes a whole bunch of them off the map. And Salesforce and HubSpot.

14:58Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, the next step is to really test. Right now we're in the process of testing. Hey, Otter, Firefly, which one of these tools? And then today, I just learned that Zoom came out with their AI capabilities. And then Teams obviously has come out before. So which one of these tools can really help us out, whether it's meeting notes, summarizing meetings, whatever it is, going through those tests and seeing which one has long-term implications for the business, but also knowing, hey, there's a tool that could potentially cannibalize this next week, or a Google could release something like that.

15:44And why would we need to have these individual tools? So I think that's right. I like what you're saying a lot. I think it starts with really identifying opportunities before you dive into the tools themselves. And I think the categories you define are perfect, right? It's data-driven because that's the way this system works. It is repetitive because again, then it's just tedious work that can be done again and again. And is it a prediction involved? Meaning, is it stuff that I have to figure out, which an AI can probably figure out better than, not probably, can figure out better than all humans.

16:17So each and every one of those is an opportunity. Like I said, all of them together combined are a huge opportunity. The other thing that you're saying that I think is very important today and is even more important in mid-size and larger organizations, all the big tools you're using today, all of them, 100 % of them will come up, if they haven't already, in the very near future with AI-driven capabilities built into the tools. Meaning if you're thinking, oh, I should pick up a writing tool that will enable me to write social media posts or marketing emails or copy for the website, don't do that because you will use HubSpot or ActiveCampaign or Salesforce to do these things and it will have it built in.

17:02So evaluating six other tools to do that one thing just doesn't make any sense. So my initial recommendation, which may be completely untrue by the time we finish recording this episode, but it stands as of right now, is if the organization already uses a corporate-wide something, and I don't care in which field it is, that tool will have AI built into it. Why? Because the APIs are open. They cost practically nothing to use today. And so putting them into any tool that's out there today is a relatively simple technological task that gives a huge, incredible benefit to the people who will learn how to use it.

17:46And the learning curve within the organization is not going to be insane because we already use Microsoft Office. We already use Salesforce. We already use HubSpot. We already use whatever the case may be. So that will be recommendation number one. Now let's go back to things. So now I've identified the low hanging fruits and I know what they are. How do I test them? That was the next thing you said. I think like the testing has to be with multiple people in your organization. What I found useful in our organization is having a small group of people. And there will be, I guarantee a lot of people in your organization would be very interested in testing out different tools to help them function, right?

18:30And maybe find some of those champions, find some of those people super interested. And there's no way that you can potentially test all the tools yourself. And not only that, some tools would be more relevant for different teams than your team, right? For our team in demand generation and in the marketing team is specifically, the content creation is any type of content creation tool, probably a big one, right? Any type of spreadsheet tool, any tool that analyzes finances, our revenue ops team would definitely do. Like GitHub's Copilot X would probably be beneficial to our software engineers.

19:13So finding those people who test and test how against your workflows. Is it actually making my workflow easier. I know a lot of us, chat GPT, a lot of us can't live without that tool from now on, right? However you use it. But really think to yourself, hey, if this tool tomorrow or the next hour disappears, would my workflow actually change? And if the answer is a resounding yes, and only you know that it's a resounding yes, then hey, it's now an opportunity. Maybe it's time to look at how can we scale that, how get the feedback from other people, like look at how their processes and workflows are going and how we can improve theirs.

20:00And then go back to your team and have that discussion. And what are some of the tools that you could present to the back up into the various groups that you actually want to, want to pay for, right? And when I say pay for, I'm not saying don't do a year membership. I would say like a month or two, right? Relatively low cost,$15,$5, some are$30, but just one-time fee. We're not talking putting$1 ,200 down for the full year. Actually make sure to use it in your workflow and see. And at the same time, be on the lookout for similar tools, because I guarantee you there is going to be another AI tool that's going to come up trying to do the same thing.

20:45And that's why it's important to keep testing and knowing the things that you're testing and also understanding, hey, some things could be coming out. Or a Microsoft come out and just say, hey, we have all these tools, then you don't even need to use any of these writing tools or social media posting tools or so on. So I think that's the kind of next thing that I'm learning to test. Great points. I think the testing part is very critical. I think the interesting aspect here when it comes to testing, one is most companies have some kind of management mechanism in place, which really allows you to see how many tasks you're doing, how fast you're doing them.

21:25So again, from mid-sized businesses and even a lot of small businesses, it's actually very easy to track the impact of the tool now compared to a week ago when you didn't use it, because you can literally go back to your reports and see, oh my God, I got more stuff done and I got these tasks done faster and so on. So that's aspect number one. Aspect number two that you need to ask yourself when you do this is, does this tool introduces new skills that are required to the people that need to be using them? Because part of it is, okay, it's more efficient, but part of it is, okay, are those people that I currently have in place or are doing a good job in their job, have the skillset to use the new tool to get the higher efficiency, or do I now need to either invest in training them to do what they need to be doing or replace them with other people that have those skills to get the higher efficiency?

22:14In both cases, the ROI question becomes murky because it's not very clear. So I think there's more. There's a very big difference in finding a tool you like and using it versus implementing it in an organization. That's one of those points. I think you just touched on when you talked about onboarding, remember, a lot of these tools are tools just like any other SaaS tools, any applications. Even though you might be the person that uses it the most, how are you going to get other people to use the tool in their workflows and their processes to ensure that you're getting value for the enterprise solution that you're now trying to implement?

23:02Because we do a terrible job of that with the current tools we have. Imagine trying to now apply AI into only two people will be using AI, the rest aren't. I think, though, that'll be a little different because of the speed and then how AI is fundamentally changing SaaS itself. But I still think you have to think about it. Hey, this is a tool that we need to onboard. This is a tool that I need to ensure that how are we going to teach all the people in my department how to use it? What are the benefits are? And are there learning modules for this? Is it part of the employee handbook? Is it how are you going to train new employees?

23:45Like all those things have to come into consideration when you're even purchasing it. Because it isn't just, hey, this is Carl's tool, Carl's going to use it, and only Carl knows how to use it. That is the worst possible thing, because there's just so many things wrong with only one person understanding how a tool works. I think you have to have every single person or as many people, whatever it is, using the tool itself. So I agree with you. I think that takes us to the next thing, right? So you did the grassroots thing, right? You found tools you like, you shared it with people in the organization.

24:17Some people said, oh, this is cool. I want to use it as well. Probably came and talked to you. Some was more formal, some was less formal. Some people just found the tools and said, okay, this is pretty easy. I can use this. Then you started thinking like, okay, what are the other implications from an organizational perspective. Now you have both components of this formula. One hand, it's a tool. I've tested it with several people. Here's what I think is required to implement this corporate-wide. How do you present this to leadership in order to get this moving forward? I think this is where you go back to how you would present any type of technology to leadership, right?

24:57We talked about, hey, what is the benefits to efficiency? What is the benefits to our performance? And it has to be put up to that, especially if you're doing it in an organization or in this economy where every dollar is probably being scrutinized a little bit more so than maybe the past decade. It's like, hey, we're going to pay, I don't know,$10 ,000,$20 ,000 for each of these AI tools, right? Now you're paying$100 ,000 a year for four or five AI tools. So if we're going to pay for that, what is the actual outcome? And I think this is where when you present to your teams, like, why are we going to pay a Jasper?

25:39Why are we going to pay, I don't know, a Firefly? Why are we going to pay for these models? And what is it going to do for us. And understanding too, the questions that is inevitably going to come up, hey, is this going to replace these positions? And I'm not saying they are, but understanding that aspect of it, because that is going to come up, that guarantee that's going to come up, because you'll have a CFO that be like, wait a minute, if we could do this, could we do this? And that's, to me, that's just the reality of where it's going. It would be irresponsible in one sense for someone to say, hey, do we need this many resources when we can start doing this now?

26:25But it would also be irresponsible to think you can replace people just with AI today in its current form, because that would be irresponsible too, because we're still at a stage where we need the human input. We need the people, we need the, I guess, the capabilities, you know, all these things are just trained on to predict what's coming next, right? It's really, but these are the questions you have to think about when you're putting your presentation together, because they will have ramifications across your business that you may not think just because it's just a simple tool that you created.

27:00So those are some of the key things that I would think about the performance side, the efficiency side, and then the impact from resourcing, impact on onboarding, and all the different, just like how you would present any tool, but this tool has major implications, like significant impact to your business, right? I like what you're saying from many different reasons. But the first thing is it has to be as if you're presenting to investors in a startup, right? You have to go and get a buy-in for somebody to make a change across your organization. You You have to come up, not just, oh, this is a cool tool.

27:35I've tried it. Here's what it's doing. But more of a view from a CEO's perspective or a CFO's perspective, which means ROI plays a very big role. Implications across HR and so on has a very big role. And you touch on all these points. I think another thing that we talked about a little bit in the beginning is the whole FOMO aspect of it. Your competition will do this. They may do this today. They may do this next week. they may do this in six months, but they will. And then by definition, they're running faster than you. And then you're left behind and you cannot compete. And so I agree with you with not throwing cautious to the wind, but I also think there will be a growing sense of urgency in making these changes within organizations because your competition won't be sitting still while this is happening.