AI’s Promised to Transform the Economy. Where Are the Results?

Explore API-driven IT advisory with CIO Analytics, a single platform to run your IT department that brings together your data, AI-powered analysis, and expert guidance to help you improve IT performance. Check it out here: https://www.infotech.com/cio-analytics?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=cio-analytics-youtube-organic As AI reshapes work, help your team build the human judgment and practical skills to adapt with McLean & Company’s Human-Centric AI Program here: https://hr.mcleanco.com/training/programs/human-centric-ai?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=digitaldisruption AI promises to transform the economy. When will that promise translate into measurable business growth? Entrepreneur and Silicon Valley Girl creator Marina Mogilko explores the gap between AI hype and economic impact, sharing where she sees opportunities for businesses, workers, and entrepreneurs. Marina joins us to discuss AI productivity, entrepreneurship, and the future of work. She examines why AI’s economic contribution remains difficult to measure, even as it helps small teams do more and creates new revenue opportunities. Drawing on her own experience, Marina explains how AI could lower the barriers to starting a business for solopreneurs and women entrepreneurs. She also questions the idea of a one-person billion-dollar company. From organizing company data to building targeted AI agents, the conversation explores what it takes to turn AI adoption into business value. Marina shares why experience, strategic thinking, and accountability remain essential, and how leaders can prepare their teams for sustainable growth. Follow for more conversations about AI, technology, innovation, and digital transformation. In this episode: 00:00 Intro 01:04 Why AI’s economic impact is hard to measure 04:16 The case for optimism about AI 05:49 How AI is changing tasks and productivity 09:24 CIO Analytics: API-Driven IT Advisory 10:15 Turning AI productivity into new revenue 13:16 Lowering the barriers to entrepreneurship 14:43 Can one person build a billion-dollar company? 17:18 The AI agents marina uses in work and life 20:19 Which tasks are worth automating? 23:32 Why better AI results start with organized data 28:28 How AI can reinforce bad business decisions 30:53 Using AI as a data analyst while keeping human judgment 32:01 Building an authentic brand without chasing AI doom 37:44 Making AI useful and accessible to more people 40:23 Women, AI adoption, and the need for relatable use cases 46:49 Why education still matters in the AI era 49:29 Questioning AI predictions and taking responsibility 53:10 Lessons on entrepreneurship and long-term success 55:55 Avoiding burnout and knowing when to pivot 59:20 Finding the confidence to change careers 1:00:52 Why telling your team to “Use AI” isn’t enough 1:02:50 Building entrepreneurial teams and managing AI agents 1:04:55 Lead AI adoption from the front 1:05:36 McLean & Company’s Human-Centric AI Program Connect with Marina: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ X: https://x.com/siliconvalleymm Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marina.mogilko Our links: Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  When I talk to scientists and people who've been working on AI for more than 20 years, they are mostly worried. So their predictions are it's moving too fast, we're not controlling it. And I was just talking to Eric Greenerson, who leads Stanford's Digital Economy Lab. And we're talking about measuring impact of AI on economy, and it's zero right now. We don't see what's going on inside the labs. Maybe they're seeing something that makes them say that.

• 0:31Geoff Nielson?

  What are the people inside AI labs seeing that the rest of us aren't? And what should businesses actually be doing before the technology catches up to the hype? Today, I'm joined by Marina Mogilko, the entrepreneur and creator behind Silicon Valley Girl. We discuss how to separate genuine AI value from speculations, why some people are making worse decisions with these tools, and what leaders need to build before AI can truly transform their organizations. I'm Jeff Nielsen, and this is Digital Disruption.

• 1:04Geoff Nielson?

  Well, Marina, thanks so much for joining today. Really excited to have you on the program here. Maybe to kick things off, I mean, you talk to dozens of AI builders, thought leaders, you know, kind of a who's who in this space. And I'm curious, there's so many perspectives right now about what the future is going to look like. And maybe if I can, you know, frame it one particular way, where do you personally fall based on your own beliefs in these conversations, kind of on a scale from, you know, an AI jobpocalypse, everybody's going to be put out of business by this technology, to actually seeing explosion, and this is net beneficial for, you know, people working?

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I think it's a very timely question. A lot of people are talking about this. And when I talk to scientists and people who've been working on AI for more than 20 years before it became a thing, I mean, like a thing that everyone has some connection to, they are mostly worried. So their predictions are it's moving too fast, we're not controlling it. And we've been seeing and hearing this from tech leaders as well. But the thing is, when you talk to economists, when you talk to people who just use AI for their work, they are not seeing anything that is game changing. And I was just talking to Eric

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Greenerson, who leads Stanford's Digital Economy Lab. And we're talking about measuring impact of AI on economy, and it's zero right now. So there is no way to say, oh, AI has improved our company's performance by this amount of dollars or by this percentage. So we're, yes, we're hearing about some layoffs, we're seeing jobs being augmented. But for me, also like as a user of AI, we've seen COVID augment our day to day significantly. We hear a lot about AI, but we still haven't seen this effect. And according to Eric,

• 3:04Speaker 00

  we're gonna see it in the next, maybe year, maybe two or three years. But for now, you know, also, when I hear from those tech leaders, right, and I talk to a lot of them as well, we don't see the models that they're talking about. Like, we, we hear them say, oh, my God, this is gonna destroy this, that. But also, we know that they are about to IPO first, IPO soon. And they, like, it has to be the right scale. I like, I don't, again, I'm not, I don't see the models that are inside the labs, and we don't see what's going on inside the labs. As someone who's using AI, I don't see this, like, impact

• 3:45Speaker 00

  where I can talk about, like, humanity being destroyed in the next 10 years with a 10% chance. But maybe they're seeing something that makes them say that way. So it is an interesting, ongoing conversation. For now, again, my, my choice is always, let's stay positive, and let's see what we can do with this technology today to improve our lives. Because worrying about the future and constantly worrying about the future doesn't make you healthier or happier. And let's execute on what we can today.

• 4:16Geoff Nielson?

  I really, really like the way you sort of framed that up of, you know, yes, there's these frontier models, who knows what's in them right now, you know, you and I can speculate, but, you know, there's an awful lot of stories flying around. And, you know, there's a place for, you know, potentially for caution there. But that's very different from the tools you and I and everybody else is using today, and, and the potential good that they can actually create and the way that they can actually augment what we're doing. Is that fair?

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Totally. I, as, as I said, I try to stay positive. And a couple, I talked to Andrew recently, and he's the one who's been in the space for more than 20 years. He started Google Brain, he, Kavon Korsara, and he has one of the best courses on machine learning. He's very positive. And I tend to trust him because, you know, he's seen the, the market, he's seen the, what was going on. But he's also practically using it. And he thinks that, you know, when we talk about airplanes, for example, yes, there is a small chance it's gonna crash, right? But the amount of good it brought to the world with, you know, travel, me being here in the US and my family being in Thailand, isn't that amazing that

• 5:30Speaker 00

  I can just hop in the plane and see them? Same with AI. All the, hopefully, amazing things it's gonna be able to do when it comes to healthcare and, you know, creating drugs that don't hurt you, but only help you because they're made for you. So yeah, trying to stay positive.

• 5:49Geoff Nielson?

  I, again, I really, I really appreciate that positivity. And, and one of the things I like about your approach with all of this stuff is, you know, you do talk to some of the big thinkers, you are interested in the stories and the development. But so much of your approach and the way you talk about this is so grounded in the practical, like, how do you, what do you actually do with this stuff? How do you make it useful? And, you know, before we dive too deep into that, I'm just curious, Marina, broadly, you know, we talked about AI is something that is useful for augmenting what people are doing. How broadly do you see it being used, whether that's, you know, in your own life or with some of the people who, you know, are listening to you and following this stuff? Where are

• 6:31Geoff Nielson?

  the places that it, it is actually creating the most benefit? And when you see it, I mean, there's, there's a tendency to be like, oh, yeah, AI can like do my homework for me or whatever. Like, it can now write words or answer questions a little bit better than before. But to me, that's not necessarily all it can do, right? Like, like, how transformational are you seeing the way that it impacts people's jobs right now?

• 6:58Speaker 00

  So as I said, what I'm seeing now is part of the job that is done on a laptop, on a computer, can be done with the help of AI. But when it comes to physical world, of course, we're not there yet at all. So we're talking mostly about knowledge workers, researchers, people who work with a lot of information. And their jobs are being augmented. But when we talk about a job, we're talking about a set of tasks. So my tasks as a creator are sitting in front of the camera, doing my research, posting it across different social media platforms. And of course, I have a team that helps with that. But some, some parts of my job are being augmented. Like, it's so much easier to do research

• 7:40Speaker 00

  now with AI. And of course, we still check everything. And there's still a lot of work going on. But it's different type of work. It's not just reading and scrolling, it is analyzing which information makes it to the actual script and which doesn't, which information needs double checking because it doesn't look to, to, maybe it looks too good to be true, and we need to verify it. So when, I think, like, for my team and for me, 20 to 30% of our jobs is now being done with AI. And it helps us onboard people, it helps us become better at what we do, but it's not replacing 100% of that. And the same

• 8:23Speaker 00

  is happening at other jobs. I was just talking to a marketing team of a huge corporation. And yes, they're like, okay, we have this morning briefing agent, which I think at this point, a lot of people have. And we do a research with AI, and maybe there is a dashboard that we vibe coded. But I have never heard a person say, oh, my God, like, my job has changed completely. No, it's just certain tasks, you know, I think, it, to me, it's similar to an era when we started having all those B2B productivity tools, like Notion appeared, and then Monday.com, and all of these tools. And you're like, oh, this helps me organize everything, this helps me build my second brain, this makes

• 9:05Speaker 00

  me so much more productive. To me, the effect right now, and to a lot of knowledge workers, I think it's similar. It's not like, oh, my God, it has changed the whole thing. No, it's making me more productive. So this is where I think we are right now. And this is the feeling that I'm getting from talking to a lot of people.

• 9:24Geoff Nielson?

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• 10:05Geoff Nielson?

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• 10:15Geoff Nielson?

  Both of those stories, the marketing team and your experience, they're teams, right? Like, it's not like you said, "I'm a creator, but I'm firing everybody and just me and AI and we'll do it all ourselves," right? And it sounds like, and I wanted to, you know, I wanted to confirm this with you, but it sounds like it's just sort of that force multiplier, right? You can have the same number of people, suddenly you can get more done, you can have a higher quality of output of what you're doing. Now, the piece I wanted to ask you, though, is coming back to what Eric Brynjolfsson said about the economic impact being zero. Is that your own personal experience as well? Like, is AI just helping you be a little bit more efficient or increase the quality a little bit? Or do you think, and I don't

• 11:00Geoff Nielson?

  need to dive too deep into this, but is it actually helping you, you know, make more money as a creator or keep your costs lower as a creative, like get to that actual level of economic impact?

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the number, the zero that they ended up having is that a lot of companies are still trying to figure out how they measure the impact of AI. And it's very hard to isolate the impact of AI from, like, overall market conditions, or hiring better people, or just, you know, market shifting. For us, I think we have a very clear example where I can totally attribute that, well, not 100%, but part of it to AI. For example, we started posting on LinkedIn, and I don't like writing texts. I'm not an English native speaker, and even in my own language, I don't like writing. I just don't like writing in general. My thing is being in front of a camera. So I was looking at all the LinkedIn creators. I was like, "Amazing. I don't have time for that. I can't trust anyone to just write

• 11:57Speaker 00

  for me. So we'll just skip it for now." Same with newsletter. And then ChatGPT appears. And I start talking to ChatGPT and it produces okay texts. Like, it's still sometimes very AI-ish, but we can work with that. And I hired someone who's now helping me with LinkedIn. And the way it works is that I talk to my AI. It creates a draft. And then the person helps me post it and like, make sure it looks good for LinkedIn. So the whole LinkedIn platform appeared just because of AI. And of course, there is a lot of legacy coming from other platforms because people knew my face, and there's this person who's helping me. But maybe we can attribute like, 20% of that revenue to AI. We still have to figure

• 12:42Speaker 00

  out what's the right attribution and over the years, how that evolves. But I think for me, definitely starting a couple new mediums that became a revenue source, I can totally attribute that to AI.

• 12:56Geoff Nielson?

  Well, yeah, I love that example because it's so, it's so clear, right? Like, as you said, you just would not have done that if you didn't have the tools because the, you know, the amount of effort for you, you know, relative to, you know, what you like doing, what you think you're good at doing, just isn't necessarily there. And now, you know, suddenly you can do it. So when you...

• 13:17Speaker 00

  I just wanted to get back to solopreneurs with you. I think we're gonna see a lot more of them. I haven't seen any recent stats, but there was a recently released gap, gender gap report by World Economic Forum. And what we've seen the last four years is that we went from women being in technical roles in startups from like 2% to 8%, which is 4X, which means that it became so much easier, well, four times easier to acquire technical skills because of AI. And they linked it, they linked it to the impact of AI. So I think we're gonna see a lot more solopreneurs, a lot more women entrepreneurs who are not

• 13:57Speaker 00

  technical but building something technical because AI enables that. And I think we need a few more years to fully recognize the impact. But seeing some of the creators who just started and they don't have a team, and they would have never done it five years ago because it would be impossible time-wise, we're gonna see a lot more of that in the economy. And I think we're seeing some examples. We haven't seen the actual stats yet, but it's just, it makes me so happy because I started as a, you know, someone, it was just me and my husband, and we were doing everything manually. And it took us so many months to just get started with a company. And now it basically takes an hour of talking to AI.

• 14:43Geoff Nielson?

  Which I have to believe is gonna have a huge economic impact. Like, I love the idea that it's just easier for people to start a company, make their own income. And, you know, now we've talked about two different models here, one being the, as you said, solopreneur, one being, you know, a smaller, more focused team, but still using AI, you know, to do that. There's this sort of myth that floats around about like the solo, the billion-dollar solopreneur, that like one person plus AI is eventually in the next few years gonna get to, you know, a billion dollars in revenue. You know, do you believe that? Or do you think that's just sort of a, you know, a nice fairy tale that helps us see the potential?

• 15:26Speaker 00

  You know, I think I'm a little skeptical because when you run a billion-dollar company, you don't want to be responsible for every process. If you're running a billion-dollar company, that means you're responsible for finance, for marketing, for legal things, for, you know, for accounting. You don't want to do that typically as an entrepreneur, unless you trust your agents 100%. And I don't know a person who trusts their agents 100%. You still want to control every critical output. And from talking to, I had this conversation with the Box CEO who runs a publicly traded company, he said I could potentially delegate this and that to AI. Do I want to be responsible in front of my shareholders for the AI's

• 16:11Speaker 00

  output? No. I'd ideally have a team who's responsible for that, so I have someone to hire. Like, that is also coming from a person who is responsible, right? And I don't, even with my content, I'm not like a huge media person whose words are being scrutinized every single time. But I still don't trust AI. Like, I would never just trust it to take over my profile and use my voice to communicate. Starting up and building something from the ground to a certain level of revenue, totally possible. And this level of revenue is probably 10x higher than what it used to be five years ago. But billion-dollar companies

• 16:56Speaker 00

  sounds like a lot of responsibility you want to delegate to AI. At least in the next two to three years. With technology moving so fast, it's hard to predict. But for now, I just don't see this happening.

• 17:09Geoff Nielson?

  It makes sense. And it would be an awful lot of risk, too, with that responsibility, right? If you're the one person doing everything. So, you know, we touched on this a little bit, but, you know, for something like, you know, you talked about LinkedIn, or anytime you're using AI, maybe even more specifically, do you find yourself using agents to actually just kind of automate any of your workflows? And if so, where do you see value there? And, you know, what level of oversight do you demand for things that you're outsourcing to AI?

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, great question. So I have an agent running right now. This is an agent, well, this is Granola, recording every conversation, like every podcast that I'm doing. And then it's gonna sync automatically with my Perplexity. And Perplexity is gonna run analytics on how I did, what could have done, could have been done better. If it's me interviewing someone, it's gonna compare the output to questions and tell me, you know, if I maybe pushed too hard or avoided some questions. So I will get instant feedback on how I did. And this is all done automatically, and the report is sent to my email right after the conversation is finished. I created it a few weeks ago, just because my brain is always

• 18:25Speaker 00

  so perfectionist. And after every conversation, it will start telling me that I did really bad. So I thought, you know, we want someone who's less negative, something that's less negative than my brain, to give me actual feedback. So I built this agent, super useful. There's another agent that I absolutely love, is the agent that runs analytics on my company's finance. Every 15th of the month, I ask it to review my margins, how I'm doing against the budget that we projected, also run some tax strategies if it thinks we could do some optimization, especially now towards the end of the year. And it also monitors some

• 19:08Speaker 00

  of the CPAs that are posting online about some of the timely tax strategies you could apply. And it gives me advice. So that agent, I absolutely love it. I used to do it manually once in the middle of every month. Now it's just proactively doing that for me. Then there is another agent I love. As a mom, every Sunday, I get a briefing of everything that's going on at school, and it fills my calendar with all the school events so that I don't miss them. And I know for every kid what will happen this week. Then I have an investment agent who helps me identify dips in stocks that I'm tracking, and whether that dip is worth executing on. Because I don't have time to watch the market, but

• 19:50Speaker 00

  it's always good to buy the dip if you're watching a particular company. So yeah, there are a few agents running, and they're very useful. Some agents are not useful at all. Some, like building a morning briefing agent, actually just gives me a lot more information I don't want to know. Just because if news are happening, the right news, it's gonna find me. But I don't want to be, I don't want to see everything that's happening in the world. It's just too much for my brain. Yeah.

• 20:19Geoff Nielson?

  I find it so interesting just hearing about just like the sheer breadth of agents you're working with, right? Like, and to your point, it's not an everything agent. It's not a morning briefing agent that's just, hey, here's a bunch of news that's dumped onto my plate. It's help with very specific things. And it feels like, it feels like there's sort of a through line of you're treating these agents almost like advisors or coaches or researchers for you that just, they compile information, they help like synthesize it and just give you, you know, these, not a morning briefing, but very specific briefings that then you get to decide, what if anything am I going to do with this to, you know, make better content decisions, business decisions,

• 21:04Geoff Nielson?

  you know, parenthood decisions? And I like, I like that framing. I find it, I find it really helpful. Do you get the sense, you talked about morning briefings being kind of the, the go-to here? It feels like most people are probably doing this wrong. Is that your sense as well?

• 21:22Speaker 00

  I think so, just because you think that, well, it's just so easy to build, right? You connect your Gmail, you tell it what you're tracking. But do you actually, like, the question is, do you actually have this problem that in the morning, you don't know what you're doing? And for me, like, I open my Gmail, I see what I have to do, right? It's not like, well, maybe somebody receives a thousand, like thousands or hundreds of emails. That's not my case. I do receive some texts on Telegram, this is where my team runs. I do receive some emails, but, um, you know, some tasks, they take you a couple of minutes and they're not worth automating. They are not worth like creating a separate system to manage.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  And just because the morning briefing agent is so easy to build, your attempt, and go ahead and try building it, like, maybe it works for you, maybe you do have this problem where there's so much stuff happening in your day. But for me, it's easier when an agent just puts everything into my calendar and I open my calendar in the morning and I see, oh, this color is for my kids, this color is for the promotions that we're doing, or like brand deals that we're doing, and this color is for my normal schedule. So, and it works for me. I think AI makes productivity very personalized and it's up to you to decide what makes you more productive and what makes you more like overloaded with the information that you don't need.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  And for me, the morning briefing agent became that agent that just loaded me with information I don't need at all. So I decided to shut it down, but I do realize that when it comes to tracking stocks, when it comes to tracking my company's performance, it's actually very useful because I would still go and look through all the spreadsheets that we have and ask my COO, where's this number, where's that number? Now my AI just does it for me. So I save my time and my team's time.

• 23:14Geoff Nielson?

  That's really cool. It's, it's almost like, it's like you've got a chief of staff or something, right? Like you've, or an executive assistant or whatever, you've got the agent that can follow up with your, you know, your, your other staff and say, where's, where's that stuff that I need?

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 23:32Geoff Nielson?

  So, so maybe just, you talk to an awful lot of people who, you know, outside of what you're doing, you're, you're helping them actually use AI better, you're collecting stories of people who are using these tools. And yeah, to your point, all the, I guess this is my perspective, but so much of the value gets unlocked, not when you have like one general purpose tool or like one general purpose use case where it's like, hey, write this copy for me or like, you know, synthesize the news for me. It's, I found some sort of task, some sort of process that I'm now like turning AI on and it's completely changing the way I do it.

• 24:14Geoff Nielson?

  What are some of the coolest use cases you've seen of people doing something, you know, unusual with AI or just something that, you know, maybe you didn't think of or, you know, doesn't get the, the press it deserves?

• 24:26Speaker 00

  I think the layer of organizing information doesn't get talked about enough. A lot of people try to use AI by just asking a generic question or just asking for a strategy, like, give, give me my business strategy, here's my business. That is not enough. AI thrives when there's information. AI thrives when there is information where it can spot patterns and predict the future based on those patterns. And your task is to provide it with the right data and also ask the question the right way. I was just talking to a couple of doctors, one from Stanford, one from UCSF, and they said, when it comes to medical questions, and it can be extrapolated to business questions

• 25:09Speaker 00

  as well, when you are kind of hinting the right answer for AI, it's going to try and please you and try to make the answer fit your questions. If you're asking, oh, do you think this is this thing? Of course, it has to consider that you suggested that. There's more probability it's going to suggest whatever you're suggesting. So when asking questions, you have to be as neutral as possible. Here's my data, so what's going on? Can you analyze and give me a verdict without like predicting anything? And I really like the tip, non-related to business, but I'm still using it in business. What is the most common thing this could be indicating? And what is the worst thing I should be considering when seeing a situation like this?

• 25:53Speaker 00

  This is a great way to ask question to AI. But if you're trying to hint at something, if you already made up your mind, AI will try and please you. So first of all, it's organizing your information, having a file, whatever, like if it's a business question, right? Having a file with your business strategy for this year and making sure it's updated because business strategies change every quarter sometimes. So updating that file, making sure you have your, maybe it's a personal constitution, if it's a business that depends on you, personal constitution of things you will never do and things you love doing and things you want to be doing more of. Your personal voice, if you're a creator, your budgeting strategy, your profitability

• 26:38Speaker 00

  for the past two years. Like, the more information you give it and the better you structure your prompt, the better the outcome is. So in my company, we have certain projects for different tasks. For example, when it comes to booking guests from a podcast, we have a certain project that has all the analytics, how certain guests, it's connected to our Notion, Notion has all the analytics on how certain guests performed. Then we gave certain weights to things that we value in a guest, whether they have a clear opinion on AI, if they have necessary credentials, how the videos with them are performing on YouTube, everything gets a weight. And then whenever we have a guest suggestion, we used to, you know, run it manually, now

• 27:21Speaker 00

  we just put it into the project and it tells us which tier this is and suggests titles and thumbnails. And we can make decisions very, very quickly because we get so many inbound guest suggestions. And being very specific with tasks, as I mentioned at the beginning, your job is the number of tasks. Deciding which task is being sped up with AI is key here because if you just want to like do everything in one chat, it's going to be a mess. Separating information, telling AI which information to look at is actually a lot of work and a lot of strategic work and it makes you think about your business a lot. It's one of the best exercises you can do for your business.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  And just sitting and distilling this and thinking about things you should be thinking about when asking this particular question is the way you make AI work for you, not just give you weird information or like advice that can be attributed to any business, can be applied to anything that you do. So I think it's the information organization layer that's not being talked enough and the way you prompt it. And there's this research I like quoting, it was done by Harvard and Berkeley. It was in one of the African countries where they, I think it was Kenya where they gave AI to entrepreneurs who had experience and AI to entrepreneurs who didn't have experience. So people who had experience in business made their business even more successful with

• 28:45Speaker 00

  AI and people who did not have experience just basically killed their business with AI, just because they were following strategies that did not apply to their business and they didn't know how to judge. AI is judging when applying advice to their companies.

• 29:03Geoff Nielson?

  I, I think that's a really important insight and I've, I've seen it firsthand and I've, I've, you know, sort of, you know, described it as like AI can help you make like the stupidest decisions in the world at AI speed, right? Like it just can accelerate going, you know, full speed in the wrong direction.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  And it also, and along the way, it's going to make you feel great about that decision. It's going to make you feel like you're the smartest person in the room. So you have to be very critical.

• 29:34Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, there was like a tweet or something about like, you know, imagine that AI is telling the dumbest person you know that that was such an insightful idea or they're like on the right track, right? Like it, it doesn't have judgment. And no, I, I really like that insight that you, you know, you can't, the more thinking you do beforehand, it sounds like the, the better the prompt is going to be, the better the output is going to be.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:00Geoff Nielson?

  It's, um, yeah, and I like the, I'm, I'll have to read that, that Kenya study because that's, that, that's really interesting to hear about. I, I've thought about that anecdotally, but I haven't seen the, the evidence there. And that's something that I think is, is just such an important reminder for people. You know, coming back to what you were saying about, you know, if you lead, if you ask AI a leading question, it will give you an, it will give you the answer you want to hear, right? Versus giving you the right answer.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 30:35Geoff Nielson?

  And I'm sure there are, I'm sure there are lots of people who, they just, you know, tell me I'm right, you know, they want to, they want AI to reinforce what they're doing versus do what's right. But it's, it's like a clear, you know, it's a clear issue there. So, sorry.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  It's not even a strategy, it's, it's your, I, I think about AI as my data analyst. It is so good at analyzing huge amounts of data, spotting those patterns, highlighting patterns for me, but not telling me what to do. I see the patterns and I extrapolate based on my business strategy, based on what's going on, because just extrapolating numbers in the next two years doesn't work for a lot of companies. You have to take into account the market conditions, what's been happening to your business. But again, having this data analyst and a second opinion is really valuable.

• 31:31Geoff Nielson?

  And sorry, what?

• 31:35Geoff Nielson?

  It's really valuable, but what I hear you saying is like, you still need to be responsible for understanding it, right? For like, it can package it for you. You need to understand as a business leader and you need to be the one to, you know, make and own that decision.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  100%. Yeah. You can't rely on just AI doing judgment for you. It presents data and you execute on it, or you don't.

• 32:01Geoff Nielson?

  So I'm really curious, Marina. I'm trying to not go too far down like the rabbit hole of like content creator questions. I know like, I'm also a content creator. So like, I, I, I find a lot of the use cases here, you know, really fascinating and especially the stuff you had about, you know, sort of guest optimization and, and, you know, content optimization, I guess.

• 32:26Geoff Nielson?

  Let me maybe ask this question this way, because I think, hopefully this is something that's interesting to people who are not just, you know, having podcasts.

• 32:34Geoff Nielson?

  One of the challenges I've found in this space is there seems to be a lot of reward for, we talked about this earlier, for being a little bit more doom and gloom, or being more, you know, kind of in your face and aggressive versus, as you said, you're more of a natural optimist, you want to help people. And I have to imagine you're getting recommendations from Notion and from your tools that are saying, you know, give your interview this crazy, you know, the sky is falling title, or like be as provocative as possible, maybe in a way that doesn't jive with your brand. How do you, how do you manage that?

• 33:16Geoff Nielson?

  And I guess coming back to something you talked about before, this notion of a personal constitution, how do you make sure that when you're giving a platform to everything going on with AI right now, that it, that it reflects what you think is true and what you want people hearing versus just the most sensationalist stories?

• 33:39Speaker 00

  So it's a great question, but it's actually the opposite when it comes to data. Long-term, being negative doesn't work for you in terms of like overall, I can talk about creator metrics, retention rates, people coming back, people subscribing to your channel. I think, of course, there are people like doom and gloom, and this is what they think, and that's a community on YouTube. Just because I've been creating content for 12 years and I am who I am. I've always been positive. I'm always smiling. I think my audience does not like, they actually hated when I started with these titles and thumbnails like, oh, that's it, we're done.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  There's so much negativity in the world going on right now that they come to me to get some positive insights about the future. So when it comes to me, yes, if I, like, some of my first podcasts that I did a year ago, Reid Hoffman, he said, you have two years. And we put it on the title and it worked. But you have two years had a positive context that you have two years to start using those tools, because in two years, they're gonna make you a superhuman, super worker. And I've had some of the scientists that were negative and because that was the whole conversation, we of course put it on title and thumbnail.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  And we try to have them from time to time, but overall, 80% of our content is positive and AI actually spots that as well. Whenever we put a negative title, it would tell us like, hey, you know, you tried this, this and that with this guest, the negative title, and you see it, you can run all the tests on YouTube. I think it's my audience as well that is positive. And I think for me as a creator, I like being positive about things. So it doesn't really work for me. I know it works for a lot of other people, but then, once you attract the negative audience, you have to live up to their expectations. And that's the thing, you might get 1 million views and then another video, you get a million

• 35:47Speaker 00

  views, but then you make a positive video and that audience comes to you and says like, no, no, no, no, no, why are we positive suddenly? And so you are the one, whatever you do, you have to be leading with your own ideas and how you see the best case, like the best performing case. Because if you try to optimize for one thing that doesn't really reflect who you are, and I've tried that many times as a creator, optimizing for views, optimizing for hype, that audience starts dictating who you should become to keep living up to their expectations. And you don't want that. This is not your happy place. So I deliberately choose maybe lower views, but staying positive and staying optimistic

• 36:32Speaker 00

  versus hyping on negative titles. And again, it comes back to your personality and what you're comfortable with. Whatever I'm doing, I'm trying to do that in a way that I can build longevity. I've been on YouTube for 12 years. I've been doing Silicon Valley Girl, not as a podcast, but as a business channel for eight years. I started my podcast a year ago and I want to make sure I can continue building it for the next five years at least. That means staying true to myself, being positive, work-life balance, kids, but also, you know, work and travel. So I think it's all about coming back to yourself and asking, do I really want to optimize for that metric? Or do I want to optimize for being happy and having longevity in my career?

• 37:16Geoff Nielson?

  I, I love that as just like a really balanced, thoughtful approach versus just, you know, go full throttle, letting the, the metric steer or getting pulled into this sensationalist stuff. So, and I, I mean, it's amazing to hear that you have an audience that, you know, responds to this and like feels like it's a really good fit for, you know, your message and, you know, everything you're doing within your channel. Can you, I mean, for people who are listening to this and are maybe not your audience, or maybe they are your audience, but they just don't know it yet, like, do you have a sense of like, what is like the core, like, like the core hunger of your audience that, that

• 38:00Geoff Nielson?

  you nourish them with? Like, what's, what's missing on YouTube and on these platforms right now that, you know, Silicon Valley Girl and Marina are trying to feed people to actually help them?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, my goal with every podcast is that my audience walks away with something really actionable. Like they've heard about building the data layer, they're like, oh my God, this weekend, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna lock up in my office and I'm gonna build out this data layer and I'm gonna run some prompts and I'll see how my work process is augmented. Or a mom hears about starting on LinkedIn and a year later, it's her career. I want something super actionable, because I've been lucky enough with my career to move to the US, to meet all these amazing people. And for me, the primary driver of all of that was education and entrepreneurship in languages, three things that I absolutely love and try to preach.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  So my goal with my podcast is to give this mini lessons of how people can use AI to live the best life, to execute on their passion, to start even if they're afraid, even if they don't have necessary skills. Because the thing is, you start and things start coming to you and you start learning. Nobody starts as a perfect businessman or a perfect creator. It all, it all comes with longevity and having this positive approach. So my goal is to, with Silicon Valley Girl, is basically translating the technology of Silicon Valley to everyone else who maybe doesn't follow AI news, doesn't really want

• 39:35Speaker 00

  to build a solo company with 50 agents, but just want to have more free time and breathe out and stop thinking about the apocalypse or the apocalypse in general. And use technology to help them, you know, maybe it's this morning briefing agent that helps mom not forget about the pajama day, or maybe it's a mid, middle of the month briefing agent that tells an entrepreneur, you know what? It's a good year, you're gonna pay a lot of taxes, let's think about your 401k plan. And the entrepreneur goes and starts the 401k plan and now suddenly, his retirement is being taken care of.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  That, that's the goal, practical stuff that you can deploy right away.

• 40:23Geoff Nielson?

  The actionable piece is something that really resonates with me. And I like, I made a mental note that I want to talk about this data layer insight stuff in a minute. That there's a number of things based on your answer, Marina, that I want to talk about. One of them, and this may prove unpopular with my audience, but I think it's important and I want to talk about it anyway. You've talked about moms a couple of times now. And one of the things I've seen borne out, both in the data I've seen and my experience, is it feels like women as a demographic are being underserved here. I've seen, again, the most recent stuff I saw, saw that uptake of AI tools is substantially lower with women than it is with men. I've certainly found like, I struggle to reach a female audience.

• 41:06Geoff Nielson?

  And like, I'm a guy, I get that, like, that probably makes it slightly more difficult. But it feels like there's, underserved is the word that comes to mind. I'm curious if your audience skews female and like, what are we missing? Like, to me, to me, the answer can't just be like, oh, AI is for men. Like, that is like the stupidest thing I ever heard. And so I'm curious, like, do you see this as a problem? And what do we do about it to like, get everybody on board and thriving?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  I actually want to check my analytics in real time and see what's going on. Cause it's been 80% male.

• 41:45Geoff Nielson?

  Wow, wow.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  It's a different case on Instagram. It's also YouTube is more male driven, I think, because we have top creators like Mr. Beast and they're like more like guys entertainment. But Instagram is different. I'm gonna, I'm gonna check Instagram. I think Instagram is more like, is more girls for me. Let's see. Well, 60% women on Instagram, 64, which is better.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  It's, it is what it is. And this is how the world works right now. But I think when it comes to marketing of AI tools, I think it's just, we need just more use cases. And I'm talking to a lot of companies who are making those AI tools. And when we think about marketing campaigns, I'm telling them it has to be very niche for a very particular audience. If you want to market to women, like, very often, women run family finance. Let's make a video about family finance, how you can automate it with AI. They run, well, my favorite, the most anticipated thing in my household is the laundry robot. And I think a lot of women can relate.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  Women run schedules for their kids. So creating use cases where someone can start using AI in their day to day, and then also extrapolated for their job is very necessary. Cause the, this all starts with very like small lifts, like, okay, I'm gonna connect my calendar.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  When it comes to job tasks, very, like, I think, again, in Silicon Valley, I think in like, marketing departments, women are really well represented and I see them using AI. When it comes to across the world, I think the situation is different. But again, it comes to very practical use cases. And this is, again, the goal with my podcast, so that everyone can be like, oh, let me try this. I've never heard of this. I only use AI as search. Let me try and connect my calendar and ask it to plan out my next trip. Maybe I have time for this museum or that thing. Like, the relatable cases, I think it makes it really helpful. And also having women voices in AI, because sometimes I, well, you know, I was at this dinner

• 44:07Speaker 00

  and I was sitting next to all of the top tech AI podcasters. Of course, they were all guys. And of course, they like, connected with each other more than with me, because I live in a slightly different world. My life is slightly different from their life. But if we have more women talking about AI, it's gonna make it more relatable for other women as well. So I think it's really important to elevate girls. And I, I'm super happy to see like, I'm in the Bay Area. And five years ago, there were like, maybe a couple of creators in the Bay, like, a little, a couple of small YouTuber, not small, but like, a couple of YouTubers, right? Now, we, whenever I go to an event, there are so many women creators who make short videos about

• 44:50Speaker 00

  data science and analytics and AI and engineering. And it makes me so, so happy that with different mediums and different formats, women start posting online and talking about things that they are professionals in. Which is great, makes me really happy, which means I have more girlfriends now.

• 45:11Geoff Nielson?

  No, that's awesome. It's, it's, it's exciting to hear and hopefully like that, you know, nobody likes to hear that change takes time, but I feel like it, like, being able to see that it is changing is promising.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  The problem is, again, the, the gender gap report. My daughters, when they grow up, they still gonna see pretty much the same situation. It's gonna take more than 120 years to change. And the, the, the report says the best countries, I think Norway, Sweden are, they almost closed the gap. But for us here in the US, I think it's 120 years, or in the world in general. So, yeah, it's gonna take a while, but I think it's just great to see more and more women doing things. And I want my daughters to be, to be able to see a woman they admire and that gives them, who gives them motivation. For me, that was Susan Vajreski, who was running YouTube and having five kids

• 46:07Speaker 00

  and being there for all the things that kids needed her for, like SAT prep. And I have never met her in person, but I've heard a lot about her from her family. And, you know, just seeing a woman who can build a career and also be a mom of five, super inspiring.

• 46:26Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's, we could spend a long time talking about this. And just watching the clock, we, we probably should change topics. But yeah, it, the demands, the demands are very high, as you said. And they're frankly, probably a lot higher than they should be, just based on the imbalances and some of the, the other areas of your life. You've, as I've said a couple of times, you've talked to an awful lot of people in the space and, and probably fewer of them are women than we would prefer. And maybe that's changing, maybe that's not changing fast enough.

• 47:02Geoff Nielson?

  The, the people that you've talked to in terms of AI leaders, do any come to mind as conversations where they profoundly changed your thinking about either the future of technology or the future of work, like what this stuff can actually do?

• 47:21Speaker 00

  The thing is, conversations can change my thinking, only actions can. So I, I'm very respectful when it comes to, you know, talking to people about their opinions. Does it mean it's gonna change my mind? Like Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft AI, told me, don't save for kids' college. AI is gonna change education dramatically. Gives me peace of mind, yeah. Not saving for kids' college, awesome. Do I still do it? Yes, I do, of course.

• 47:51Geoff Nielson?

  Well, yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Education changed my life and I, I don't want to, if there is an opportunity for them to do college, I think it's still gonna be super relevant, especially when it comes to top tier colleges or studying abroad. It's the best experience I've had in my life, going to another country and studying mathematics and German. Oh my God, something that I will remember forever, right? And I want that experience for my kids. So I'm still saving for my kids' college despite, you know, hearing that opinion. And there is a lot of that opinion, like, education is no longer needed. I actually think it's the opposite. I think because taste and strategical thinking matters the most now, you actually need a lot more facts and a lot more data to build your taste on.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  You need to know a lot more to, when it comes to anything, business strategy, art, psychology, you need to see as many examples as possible to start building your own taste, which makes me think education matters even more. So yeah, I, again, because I hear so many opinions, it just comes back to me sitting down with my laptop after the conversation, trying things out, seeing if they work for me, and then making my own decisions based on what's actually working.

• 49:08Geoff Nielson?

  I, I love the way that you address that and it makes, it makes complete sense. And I'm not gonna make you say it, but with apologies to like, Mustafa Suleyman, like, that seems like absolutely crazy advice. Like, and like, yeah, easy, easy to say when you're like, you know, CEO of Microsoft AI, like harder when you're, you know, everybody else in the world. So, so maybe with that in mind, I'm curious, I'll ask you a slightly provocative question. You know, are there other cases where you've been interviewing people, you've heard their opinions? And, you know, maybe haven't felt comfortable as, maybe haven't felt as comfortable pushing back as you, as you wish you did? Or just thought, like, made a mental note of like, I don't think that's right.

• 49:51Geoff Nielson?

  I don't necessarily subscribe to this narrative that this person is sharing.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, totally. I had two conversations with Roman Impolsky and I told him, he's a doomer, gloomer, like, this is not gonna, but he, he has his own opinion, I have my own. He thinks there is a huge chance we'll live in a simulation and he has a lot of people supporting him. Does this, it always, again, for me, it comes to practical things. If I think we'll live in a simulation, does it give me peace of mind? Actually, maybe, because I think it's all a game and I can try different things and I can be more brave about my ideas. Yeah, but do I want to be irresponsible because we live in a simulation? No, I don't. So, yeah, maybe I adopt some of that thinking of it's, if it's a simulation, maybe I have a chance to build this, this and that. Like, let's try, it's a game.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  But I also, you know, I remember that I have to be a responsible human being and I live in a society of other humans. So I don't want to act as if everything around me is a game. It is okay. It's it's fine that people have their different opinions. Again, being a creator for 12 years, people come to me and say all the weird. Well, for me, they're weird. For them, they're normal and it's fine. Like, we're all different. But at the end of the day, you are the one responsible for your decisions. If you listen to someone online, or even if it's someone very respectful and you had a conversation with them, that person is not going to help you with consequences of your decisions, even if they're based on their opinion, because that's not their job. It's you.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  So whenever it's even my, you know, parents or my grandparents telling me things, they're not going to solve the problems that will arise after me following their advice. So it's up to me.

• 51:34Geoff Nielson?

  I like that a lot. And I'm still laughing about Roman Yampolsky. I interviewed him as well.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Oh, you did?

• 51:41Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, no, I did. We had, I'm sure we had a very similar conversation where I, that was one of my more argumentative conversations, I would say, because, and you know, the thing about, and we don't have to spend that much time talking about him, but the thing about Roman is like, I don't necessarily think that he's like wrong, but you know, if he's talking about like, oh yeah, it's going to kill us all. Okay, well, when? Sorry, 100 years, 200 years? Like, it just, nothing feels like actual, actually practical to what we're doing right now, or changes the way we live in the moment. And so it's like, it's like philosophically interesting, but it's not something that I feel like, you know, really is grounded in,

• 52:25Geoff Nielson?

  you know, the actionable piece that you were describing.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And again, the whole goal of me being online is giving people an answer to the question, what can I do today to make my life better? Does it give them any actionable points? I don't know, something to talk about at dinner with their family? Maybe, great, great conversation. But just living with this thought of, oh my God, we're all gonna, but again, for some people, this thought gives them more freedom to execute on their wildest dreams. Hopefully, they're respectful to other members of our society and is just executing on their passions to make the world a better place. If it gives you, you know, more courage to do amazing things, then why not?

• 53:09Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's well said. And you know, I'm thinking about wildest dreams and as you talk about your story, it really, like, I know this is a bit cliched, but like, it just has a flavor of the American dream in it to me.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  Oh, it does. It is 100% an American dream. I'm so grateful to this country. It is an American dream.

• 53:30Geoff Nielson?

  You're right, but you did it. And you know, I'm, I'm sure you did it. Like, the part people don't see, or maybe they do see, is like, you know, the toil, the like, all the hard work beyond, you know, required to making that happen. And you know, I was curious, Marina, you know, Silicon Valley girl, Silicon Valley girl is not, you know, your first foray into this. You know, you started out doing, you know, learning languages. And I'm curious, as you've been on this sort of creator journey, you know, what it's taught you? Like, what are the lessons that you've learned from it? That, you know, you would want to share with people who are aspiring entrepreneurs or, you know, just kind of getting their feet wet?

• 54:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it comes back to something that I mentioned in this conversation, longevity. And it comes from many different factors. Building your day to day in a way that's sustainable, that allows you to achieve your both personal and business goals. Because I think it is sustainable to work for 20 hours when you're in your twenties. It is not sustainable to work for 20 hours when, you know, 30s and 40s and willing to have a family. When it comes to relationships with humans, some people think, oh, I'm just going to do this to that person. And, you know, just because it benefits me, it doesn't matter. In reality, it's a very small world. And being a good human and being someone people can trust and rely on

• 54:57Speaker 00

  is really maybe one of the most important things. Because again, the world is really small.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  I think, yeah, longevity, when it comes to relationships, your lifestyle, you being true to yourself, because sometimes you think, I'm going to try and do this. I don't think it's a good idea, but maybe it's going to make me more successful. Well, is there longevity in that? There, there isn't. So longevity, magic things start happening after five or six years, for me. Five or six years of doing one thing, you start seeing real magic. Before that, it's grinding, dealing with all kinds of things you're experiencing for the first time in your job. And it's okay. After five, six years, maybe now it's faster with AI. But then you've lived through so many things. You're like, oh, I've experienced that already. We know how to deal with it. Let's move on.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  And this makes your, this makes it all more sustainable.

• 55:55Geoff Nielson?

  The longevity piece, I want to, I really want to talk about how we make that actionable. You know, to continue along that theme. And the, the thing I'm thinking about is burnout. Because, you know, I, I'm sure you know firsthand that you could be working 20 hours a day on this stuff, right? There's 20 hours worth of stuff a day to do in this space to get you ahead. There's probably 100 hours a day worth of stuff. And, and, you know, that's just an absolute recipe for burnout. And I have to imagine that's something you've experienced at some point. How do you manage that? Like, how do you find, I don't know if it's courage or discipline?

• 56:34Geoff Nielson?

  How do you prevent against burnout and, and like, set up that sustainable pace for yourself?

• 56:42Speaker 00

  So my burnout, the worst burnout episode came from not being true to myself and optimizing for, and a metric that's very easy to optimize for, views. They came when shorts of being popular. And the thing that I learned from it is that I cannot be true to myself for more than maybe a month. Burnout is going to follow. And then another thing actually comes from my mom. And I realized she's been very, like, religiously following this thing. She changes her life every seven years. Like, they move countries, they move apartments. Just because it gives you very new connections and new excitement. I think it's pretty much the same for me.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  I started as an entrepreneur, like, back in the day, I started studying mathematics. Then I became an entrepreneur. Then I became a full-time creator. Then I became a podcaster. Every six to seven years, I shift gears and try new things. I think that also prevents long-term burnout. And of course, just pausing. I think kids are so good at training you how to stop and pause and just enjoy life. Because pre-kids, I will work for 18 hours a day. Now it is much more sustainable. 5:00 PM, they want me to be with them. They want me to be with them on their holidays and I don't want to miss it. So it's, yeah, taking, taking those breaks.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  But again, if you're, if you love what you're doing, even if it slows down, your brain just keeps looking for things it can execute on. That happened with my Silicon Valley Girl channel. It was a talking head channel. I was so, getting so tired of it two years, a little less than two years ago. I was like, okay, I can't do talking heads anymore. And I asked myself, what is this one thing in this channel that I absolutely love to keep it alive? And the, the answer was talking to amazing people. So I'm like, okay, let's just pivot to podcast. And this comes back to nonlinear careers that women thrive in. And we need to make them more common.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Like, yeah, you used to be an entrepreneur and now you're creator. Or you used to talk about languages, now you talk about business. And that comes with backlash, because people do not see you as an expert in this or that. But again, it takes years of doing something for people to see you as an expert. And you just have to keep pushing through. And this nonlinear career approach is something that has been working for me in terms of burnout. You have enough time to build longevity, but you can also pivot any time to avoid being bored.

• 59:22Geoff Nielson?

  You kind of hinted at this, but it seems like this is something that's probably really beneficial for people, you know, specifically women, I'm sure men as well. Like, I'm sure everybody can benefit from being more flexible in their career, not feeling pressure to take a linear path. Is the reason that more people don't do it, like, do people just need to have that leap of faith? Like, is it just about the courage and the belief in yourself that it'll be okay, hearing from other people that, you know, it is okay, like, permission? What, like, why are people not doing this more?

• 59:57Speaker 00

  I think from, again, speaking from my own experience, I remember, well, I still got a message like yesterday, "Oh, you, you were teaching English. Why are you talking about AI? Who are you? You're a bot." Like, something, something mean like that. I still get it. And it's okay, because I'm staying true to myself. I am, I no longer, like, I'm past that stage where I was learning English and sharing all my key learnings with my audience. I still love that channel, but maybe like, once a month, I would do a video, but that's it. I can't do it anymore. And I know people expect, and we like predictable things, right? We like, and everything stays the same. It gives us the sense of safety, but it doesn't give me the sense of safety if I'm doing

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  things that no longer reflect my interests. So I think that's the, that's the answer.

• 1:00:48Geoff Nielson?

  I, I, I love that. Wise words, lived experience. So maybe just as we move toward, you know, starting to wrap this up, do you have any sort of parting advice for, for business leaders, for technology leaders, you know, people using AI? Just, you know, it doesn't have to be technology advice, but just how to best, you know, thrive and, and, you know, I was gonna say get ahead, but that's so, that feels so disingenuous to the conversation we've just been having about being true to yourself. Like, what, what's your best advice for just, like, thriving in this space?

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  I, I think you can also give a technology advice, because I've been talking to a lot of companies where managers struggle to make their team use AI. And honestly, my first experience with this was a failure, when, when I told everyone, "You just have to start using AI for anything that you do. Try out things and share it in chat." Like, they were so, everything was so disorganized. Everyone tried different tools. They tried it with use cases that were not applicable to other people on the team. And the only way that made it work is me sitting down during Christmas break for two weeks and strategizing and masterminding AI tools for every single department in my

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  company and creating this foundation layer for people to build on top of. So it does come from the manager, where you set up the system that works for the team overall, because you see everyone, you see every single process. And it's up to you to start using AI in a way that teams can collaborate and individuals can thrive with AI by building their own things on top of them. So for me, it was sitting down and creating all the Claude projects, loading all the data, testing it, seeing how it performs, and then saying, like, to my guest booking manager, "Go and check this out. Maybe upload more weights to, to the system so we can have proper predictions." That's the one thing.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  And the second thing is letting people and encouraging people to be entrepreneurs within their niche. When I hire people for my company, I really want them to be, when they graduate from my company and go on and do different things, I really want them to be proud of this experience that they had. And I want this line on their resume to be something that they're super proud of, because it taught them so, so much. So whenever we're hiring, we encourage people to treat this as a little business inside our business. So if you're managing one particular thing, go ahead and try those different AI tools, and we're gonna pay for them. Maybe you wanna hire someone, go ahead and let, let's try. Like, be an entrepreneur. Own the process.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  And this is where you learn a lot. This is where our business strives, because we have more independent people with great ideas. And this is how you build your career in a way that's sustainable in the AI future, where you have to make strategic decisions and manage a ton of agents, even if your job is not called manager. It's maybe called, like, specialist, or whatever it is. You still have to learn how to be a manager of those agents. And I think if everyone who's managing people can think about that future in five to 10 years, where everyone has kind of adjusted to becoming an entrepreneur and manage those

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  agents, I think you're doing a lot for our society, for people to adjust to this new world.

• 1:04:25Geoff Nielson?

  I don't have anything intelligent to add to that. I feel like you captured so much insight and so many ideas in that. I completely agree. Like, I love that. I love the idea of that ownership of the, you know, I sometimes call it, like, you know, here, like, being the CEO of your specific function. The exact same idea, right? Like, pretend you're a CEO who is just now in charge of doing this specific thing. And I, I love the tie it, the tie back to AI. Yeah. Amazing final thought. That was-

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Lead, lead the change within your organization. It is happening. We don't have any government institutions helping people start using AI in their jobs and adjust. So be that person who helps your team get ready for the new age. Because it is happening. Maybe slower, maybe faster, but it is happening, and things are getting augmented.

• 1:05:22Geoff Nielson?

  Lead from the front. I, I love it. Marina, I wanted to say such a big thank you for coming on to the show today. I really appreciate all your insights and a fantastic conversation.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

• 1:05:36Geoff Nielson?

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