2422 - Moving Beyond Chatbots to Build AI Agents That Understand Your Company with Agentic Brain's Jake George

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it is Jake George. Jake, you are the founder of agenticbrain.com. And to our friends that are listening, I bet you know what we're going to be talking about. And I couldn't be more thrilled. Agentic AI. Jake, it is great to have you. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Josh. Super excited. I always love talking about this type of topic and everything. And, you know, it's like, you know, a agentic AI is what I like live and breathe. So it's like a super exciting time to be.

1:23And I look forward to it every single day. Yeah, it is exciting. I watch a lot of YouTube content about agentic AI because of just what's possible, which is I think is just the most mind blowing thing. And we're going to talk about that in just a second. Before we do, though, I always love when someone has a very interesting hobby. And Jake, you've got one. What what have you been doing when you're not at work? uh yeah so recently what i've been getting into is uh brewing mead so like uh honey wine viking wine you know it's kind of how people think of it a lot of people you know probably don't you know drink it too often but i feel like you know you probably heard it in a movie or something like that but um yeah you know it's uh i uh how i kind of got started on it was i went to the renaissance fair uh last fall and they had just the best um caramel apple mead and i don't think i'd ever had it before that I drank it I was like that is probably the best drink and it was like nine percent too so you have a couple couple cups you're feeling pretty good at the rent fair and I was like oh that's I was like I gotta find where to buy it and so as looking into finding where to buy it I actually uh found out how to make it and so um yeah I got I got about a gallon of it brewing up right now and it has about five more weeks until it's ready to start drinking and super excited so you don't have to go into all the teas but generally how do you make it very simple actually it's one of the most simple it's just like honey water and yeast pretty much because it's like the yeast will convert sugars to alcohol the honey has sugars so really that's kind of the base and you know what a lot of people it's kind of one of those what's cool about it is you can kind of like freestyle the recipe however you want you can put all this different stuff in it so i decided to go for this uh caramel apple boche which is kind of like what they have at the red pear.

3:07So you kind of like caramelize the honey a bit. I use some apple juice, some water, the yeast, all that good stuff. And then put like some cinnamon, vanilla beans. So yeah, super excited to taste that when it's ready. Wow. So let's go from a technology from long, long ago, medieval times to modern day, 2026 technology and talk about the world of agentic AI. If you could start by just giving us an overview of what is agentic brain, by the way, your website, agenticbrain.com. Yeah. So I'll give you the background and kind of how we started, what we do. So at our core, we're really like an AI consulting firm because where we're really seeing the best results is like starting by like understanding the specific needs of a company.

3:52And then we also build custom AI employees, we call them AI agents to actually do that sort of work. And it will make more sense of like kind of how we got started. So I've been doing a lot of AI stuff like three, four, five years now. And so how it started is I actually met my co-founder on LinkedIn. And so he's been a fractional CRO and a business consultant for like over 18 years now. And so what we found is there's kind of this gap of like a lot of, you know, a lot of times it's not really about the AI. It's not just like, oh, slap the same AI platform on everything and you get the same result.

4:27What it really is, is actually digging in, understanding the unique challenges and goals of the company and building AI agents to do that. So easy way to think about it is just like, if you're to hire an intern, and you just put them in your company, don't really brief them, they don't understand the company, you didn't fill them in at all, you really expect them to do give that good results. But if you have someone that can take that, you know, higher level approach and really understand the ins and outs of the company, and then you're like, then go at it, you know, it's like, you're just going to get a way better results.

4:56It's like, you got to tailor the solution to the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's certainly, like I said, Jake, you know, you're alluding to this. There's a way to break stuff. And there's a way I've seen this poorly executed. And I think a lot of founders that I talk to don't want to make mistakes, right? We want to be running more tests. We want to see what's possible. And I believe that there's probably some use cases that are pretty tried and true and can likely save a client a lot of money, produce better outcomes for their clients and customers, and improve overall the quality of life for our teams.

5:40Do you mind maybe just sharing some thoughts on what I'm talking about here? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we see a lot of that, and that's exactly why we do what we do, and just tailoring, you know, and it can range so much, which is why we take the consultative approach. So kind of what, you know, to get started on this, what I wanted to share is like the three main things that when clients first come to us, like the three main mistakes and mindsets that we see them making, and then how to kind of like reframe that mindset and get a better start on AI to have a more effective outcome. Yeah. All right.

6:13Well, what are your favorite use cases? What are kind of like no-brainers right now for use of agentic AI? Yeah. So no-brainers. One of the popular ones that we do a lot is this sales coaching AI agent. And so what we do is companies that have like sales teams and sales coaches, we train this AI on their sales process, what should be said on a call, what shouldn't be said, next steps, things about the product, so on and so forth. And so then when they have a sales call, the ai then goes ahead and reviews it and it gives a full report so sales leadership like sales trainers whatever that would normally have to go and sit and you know watch like these or listen to these 20 minute conversations maybe like a person you know it's so much time they can skim this report and it ranks the per it ranks the call and it tracks the person's results over time so you can actually see metrics on how well they're improving it also like will call out different products that are asked about so that you can see like trends coming up in real time, like seeing, oh, okay, all of our customers have started to ask about this recently.

7:15So it's a really thorough sort of review on that. And it just saves so much time because it's like, if you can take that and you can really distill it down and you could read 10 of those reports and, you know, maybe like 15, 20 minutes in the sale, you know, the coaching is so much better than you can really hone in on those actual, their strengths and weaknesses, and you just get a much better results. That's one of the ways a lot of people don't think of it. They think AI and sales, I should just have a cold call for me. Not a great way to go about it. But something like this, we see a lot of great results.

7:47Yeah. Well, I mean, how does someone like, I mean, how do they get started? I mean, there's a lot of great tools. I mean, I use Claude a lot. I'm a huge fan there. Obviously, there's, you can create agents there. Um, and, and how do you, so when you're coming in with a client, um, I would imagine you probably have a, you start with like a discovery process or does the client kind of know what they want and need? Usually not. Let me ask, let me just point this out. Discovery has got to be exciting at times. Yeah, it is certainly cool. And occasionally they come to us with ideas, but the number one thing we hear is like, what does AI do?

8:33How could I even use it? Where do I even get started? And the main mistakes is that a lot of times what people have started with already, because it's like, they're like, I heard about this AI stuff, saw it online. And so what I did is I went to, I bought a hundred seats of chat GPT for the company and kind of like what I would, you know, and then, and then reviewed a month later and nothing happened. We're no closer to automation and whatever. So like what I would compare that to is like, let's say you look at like Arnold Schwarzenegger and you see like, I, I want my team to look like that. I want them to be bodybuilders, athletes, whatever.

9:04You're like, well, what does he do? Well, he goes to the gym. So I'll get a hundred gym memberships. And then you review in a month, maybe eight people signed up, four people actually went and two went more than once, you know? And it's just like, so it's like, I think that really the issue is a lot of people start with the actual action rather than the outcome. So it's like, they're like, Oh, I need to implement AI. Okay. I checked the box. I implemented AI and then no results. But if you take it, like, let's say, for example, if going to the gym was the actual goal, then it's like someone that walks on the treadmill twice a week and Arnold Schwarzenegger are essentially on the same level because they both go to the gym.

9:44So, and then people are wondering why they aren't, why they're not getting the bodybuilder results on a new year's resolution effort. So that's a lot of really what we're seeing and a kind of the misconception of just like, you know, the model, you know, the model doesn't matter as much. The tools don't matter. It's like, what we always say is like, let's, let's start from the problem and work, work backwards essentially. And that's why the consulting part is so, so, so, so, so important because I don't really believe in this like one size fits all generalized solution. Like if you're using a generalized solution that someone sells to everyone else, is it really going to fulfill those unique needs of your company and hit, you know, actually have quantifiable metrics for the outcome.

10:24So that's really what we want that we start focusing on. What is the goal? What is the outcome we're looking for? So in the case of like, like sales calls reviews, for example, I'm sure you can buy solutions and they'll scan the transcripts. And again, probably a great one size fits all solution for the market. But what's, I guess, what's the possibility with agentic AI versus a one size fits all solution? Yeah. So for example, I'll just give you kind of a brief example of like what we did. We were working with this PE, they were doing a whole roll up of like all these like medical equipment companies and whatever.

11:01And they realized that it's like they, you know, what they had more was like a process problem rather than like an actual AI problem. So we went in and like talked to all of their different leaderships, leadership individuals, and then we built the custom solutions around that. And so really, it's more about like tailoring it to how they actually work, because you're right, like you could run it through a generic to say, like, review the sales call, was it good or bad? But it's like their their sales process of like, what they were selling, like how they were supposed to sell these things, the things that they're supposed to say, were so unique.

11:35And like that, that matters, like, you know, the devils in the details, the details matter. So it's like, yes, I mean, you can, you can buy, you know, generalized solutions. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I use ChatGPT and Claude all the time. If you know how to use it, it's a weapon. They're amazing. But kind of what we did for them, so like an example is like we had an agent where it's like it would monitor an inbox where like sales orders would come in. It would reply to the person that put in the order. It would assign it to a sales person. It would add it to the CRM. It would pull the document, read the sales order, and put it in their business central.

12:10And so it's like that's a process of like, you know, there's so many connections there. That's almost like something a human would do because it's like, you got to think about all these steps. You got to like read it, put it in, write, notify the salesperson. So there's all these like multi-step things that like, really, I don't really see a lot of people achieving that with off the shelf. Like if someone's like, oh, well, I already have Microsoft co-pilot. So like I could just build agents. And it's just like, yeah, but it's like the amount of steps in there. And then like understanding, I would say half of the job, honestly, is actually understanding these processes and the outcome and getting it, you know, sort of out of the people that are doing it.

12:47Because a lot of people, they're like, well, yeah, I kind of just do this, that and the other thing. But without a clear process and a clear end goal and all that, it's like, how are you really going to build an effective agent? So there's, you know, it really varies. You can have simple agent you built in 10 minutes, its job, rewrite emails, more professional, super simple, anyone can do it. And then you have like a system I described that, you know, you're even if you know what you're doing, you're in for like, more than 50 hours of work, 50, 100 hours of work. Like it's, you know, lots of little details to consider.

13:15And yeah, kind of, I'd say that there's a large gap in like people that understand like process people, business processes and business goals and people that understand technical, that they're technical people. So Jake, your website is agenticbrain.com to a friend that's listening. What resources would you send them to or kind of where do they go from here? Yeah, I would say the website really breaks it down in a nice way. So I'd say, you know, read through that kind of re-explains sort of what I said. We start with the consulting, getting into the processes, seeing where AI is a good fit, where it's not a good fit, you know, all the information's on there.

13:56It walks you through it. And, you know, if you want your company to be the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the industry rather than a two-day-a-week treadmill walker, that's the kind of people that we're looking to work with. Awesome. Well, Jake George, founder of Agentic Brain, here's my recommendation to our friend that's listening. Please have a discovery call. Anyone who truly knows their stuff about Agentic AI and is willing to have a free discovery call with you, it is going to stimulate ideas. You probably don't know all that's possible. Jake, you probably don't know all that's possible, but you know a lot more than the average founders.

14:36So yeah, can't know everything. No, my gosh. It's, I, we're, we're just, you know, I feel like, you know, it's like we're, you know, the, the, the apes, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago or millions of years ago. And, you know, it's like all of a sudden we've just been given an iPhone, right? It's, it's a little bit of that, like, whoa, what are we doing here? What are we supposed to do with all this? I mean, it's just, you know, a lot of it really comes down to just like, what is possible? And we just, you know, that's the biggest thing. So Jake George, founder, again, of Agentic Brain, found on the web at agenticbrain.com.

15:08Jake, thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a great talk.

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