When the tools just don't cut it (live)

**[00:00:00]** and welcome to the web talk show. Today we're having a special episode with Mike Carlo and we're going to be talking about all sorts of fun things including which tools are out there and do they cut it. Welcome Mike. How are you? >> Hello. Thank you so much. So we're going to try to simoc cast this stream. So Armando's doing some things. I'm going to do some things as well. We're going to try and push this out to all the social media platforms. We'll see how well we do here. Uh but that being said, for those of you who are following from my channels on the other side of the world here around data fabric and PowerBI related things, this is going to be an open discussion around like business, small business, starting up businesses, what does your process look like, which has a lot of data attached to it, but not necessarily uh a data direct discussion today. So, we'll see how this goes. We're trying something new today. Armando is a great friend of mine. We've been talking kind of offline here for a bit and we're like man we're both trying to unpack this world for us which is AI agentic things working [snorts] through um where do these tool pieces sit and how do you how do you run a business with a aentic things in the space and we're we're working through it right now and this is kind of where we're going to bring this conversation to what do you think Armando? Yeah. So I think there's a lot for a business owner to handle nowadays if apart from all the [laughter] inner workings of running a business and having employees and having payroll now it's like yeah okay **[00:02:00]** so I need systems but do these systems do what I need and then also this AI stuff and should I get into it? When should I get into it? How should I use it? Is my data safe? Like where am I going? And I think many people are sort of in that position of but I I know I should get into it but uh where where do I stand and what can we do? So this is where I'm I'm kind of like working through as you get to be like a start like if you're a single person I see all these things on like you know YouTube shorts or YouTube I see a lot of individuals like man you can run your own company by yourself. Look at me. I've made a you know $35,000 a month business on this single app. I've got my funnel and it look at it ramp up. And I'm like, dude, there's no way. Like, there's no way this is happening. Like, a one-man show is solely using AI to build all these things and like make this an effective use of their their time or effort here. I just I'm skeptical. And so, as one who's been running a business for a number of years now, and as I'm now looking at the way I used to do things and the way I want to do things now, we've been trying to unpack like all all these different tools that you use. you have like very specific tooling things in in my world it's very Microsoft so it's like teams it's Outlook email it's um I do a lot of video things so it's you know all you know stream or clip champ we're doing a lot of **[00:04:00]** the video editing side of things and it's like none of this stuff really just kind of fits together there's no glue that helps me build business process around all this >> yeah and also like you fortunately have the Microsoft ecosystem that has a lot of different tools for each of these things that you mentioned. Yeah. >> And in my case, >> we use the Google stuff, right? Google workspaces, etc. Sure. And a lot of people have this situation as well where maybe you started using Gmail a long time ago and then it's like, okay, so workspaces is the next logical step instead of moving over to something completely different like Outlook, etc. Now, Outlook and and all the 365 things have gotten really good as time evolved. So, from being sort of an onremise kind of exchange thing for those in the enterprise space to something that everyone can use. I mean, it's it's a fantastic ecosystem. >> So, now sometimes I'm thinking, well, yeah, Gmail and all that Google Workspaces things are good and they're getting better like with all the Gemini stuff and and recently some clients have been reaching out through the the Google chat. It's gotten a lot better too as well. >> Yes, very much so. >> It's It's great. Okay, so we we get some things, but then we're still missing essential parts like we were discussing the other day. But what if I want to have my CRM here? Is there something that allows me to just keep all my data in these same the Google ecosystem instead of just their contacts app? It's not really an app. just like a contact >> like an Excel sheet or like a Google sheet of like here's the list of **[00:06:00]** all the people I should talk to like how like how do you track this stuff? So, and I'm also thinking here like I'm not I'm not so naive to think like this all has to be built from scratch. Like I honestly like there has been companies that have invested let's call it hundreds of millions of dollars into like CRM systems and you know getting contacts in and leads in and but when I look at like me as a small business like I feel like they're missing the market on me and that that CRM communication world I mean it's expensive to jump into that. I mean, you've got to be making some serious bucks >> to really step into like proper marketing, proper um, you know, messaging across all these platforms. And I I look at all these things and think, okay, >> I need to step back >> and look at what the process is. And again, to kind of pulling your strings here a bit more, Arando, around Google or Microsoft, Microsoft, I think, is one of the better business focused solutions out there. You can do things in AWS or but again, it all seems to be very fragmented. You can build whatever you want. If you're a developer, you love it. >> Google also feels like it has a lot of like individual project lines like it's Gmail, it's Google chat, it's like Google video calls, like that feels like there's a lot of like very like Google calendar. >> Those are seem to be like very good product lines vertically, but there's very little integration across them. >> And so, again, Armando, you keep challenging me and I keep I keep resisting. And I don't maybe I need to get over **[00:08:00]** myself, but you keep talking about like how Air Table is this amazing like table in the cloud that just kind of works and then it it integrates with these different like AI models and I I just struggle. This is I mean a lot of like I don't feel like I know enough. I don't feel like I can push hard enough into one of these particular products or tools to feel comfortable about it. And I'm worried about like vendor lock in to some degree. like you know what happens if this tool doesn't stay open and kind of free and at the right price point anymore. What happens when it starts really like someone comes in and buys it or changes it? Do I get then stuck with this process and how easy would it be for me to refactor into something new? And so this is a hurdle that I'm like thinking through is like I'm trying to grow as a business. You've got more leads coming in. How do I track those all in an easy way? >> Yeah. And the problem I see as well is that as a business owner, you're bombarded with ads and things about all these different tools like, oh, or even people, they're like, yeah, yeah, just get HubSpot, right? Or get Soho or get whatever. And while these tools are great, >> you have to look at the fine print. One part as Mike just mentioned very importantly is vendor lock in which is a big thing especially if you start putting all your data inside but I think the biggest part for a small business is going to be pricing. So once you get into HubSpot, >> you're like, "Yeah, yeah, you can start for free." Okay. **[00:10:00]** Yeah. >> Yep. >> Start for free. But then you start using it and then you see, oh, I've got the smart CRM and I've got the pricing sheet open here. And so it's like, oh, smart CRM. Okay. 41 $45 a month. Okay. It sort of sort of works. Okay. Um 45 Oh, one seat. Okay. So if I have another employee, then I need to pay $90 a month. Oh, okay. And that's annually. Okay. So, if I go to monthly, then it's $50 a month. And then I have 3,000 HubSpot credits, whatever that means. Um, which I imagine I'm starting kid with limits, right? And then it's like, okay, well, yeah, fine, fine, fine. Let's use it. But then, oh, it has the marketing hub. Marketing hub looks nice. It's got omni channel campaigns, so I can send things in different channels. And I have like lead scoring, personalization, advanced personalization, teams. Okay, good. Good. Uh oh. $890 a month and it includes three core seats. Additional core seat at $50 per month. Does not include required onetime professional onboarding fee of $3,000. This is what I'm talking about. Like it just it keeps snowballing and I'm like, so now I'm looking at this going like, okay, small business guy, right? What do I need to do? Can I make my business run? Again, maybe I'm playing some the Alex Herozi book here a little bit as well. Like Alex Hermosi is a gentleman on YouTube that does a greater number of like businessspeaking things. Like where's the most effective use of my time? Yes, I can buy these programs out of the box. Yes, they do what I want, but I can already just I know what I need to do. Like I I should **[00:12:00]** be focusing on making the content, getting the information out there on the social medias, uh educating people on the solution. I don't want to be sitting here burning all this money and capital on like these other solutions and tools to get things just trying to get them to go. And so this is where I have a lot of like heartburn I guess I would say is like these all these tools feel like they are very nice at the beginning but they keep selling you more and more and more and at the end of the day all I really want to do is I have many different sources. I need very easy API integration to get the stuff down to the same place. And this is where a tool that I'm beginning to explore which I'm very fascinated with. It's this this feeling of N8N. N it's very difficult to say. N the letter N 8N N8N is the tool. And Armono and I have been talking about this for a bit and he's like you just got to start. You just got to get going. I'm like okay let me try this. So I spent a half a day this afternoon yesterday afternoon Armando with the tool and it is fun to work with. Mhm. >> It's easy to understand and get started with it very quickly out of the box. And to me, again, I'm looking at this going comparing this back to what I see at the Microsoft level. This feels a lot like Power Automate >> and and it just feels like it's a better solution to it. The wiring feels more creative. The it it fits a lot of how my mind works. And another tool I I hate PowerPoint. I **[00:14:00]** can't stand it. My other big favorite tool right now is Miro. Miro is amazing tool. And so Miro, I do everything in Miro. That's where my my brain works in like these boards and like wiring things and like a little bit more unstructured, but like it still lets me I can focus on a particular topic, write down what I'm thinking and then move on to the next topic. So it this nan feels very similar in this kind of like very fluid, easy to use space and within another a couple minutes I had a web form updated. I used um chat GPT5 to help update my website and now I have a new contact form on my website that's using a web hook that when people fill out a form it sends me a message in teams a team's message that says hey someone sent a message. So I'm going down this journey of like okay this is starting to feel like automating those microtasks >> and then if I do enough of that things just start data just starts going where it should go and it needs to land where it needs to land. What is your impression of this Armando? You've done a lot more in NA than I have. >> We have, but it's I think your example is very good because if we unpack it, it sounds simple enough. Oh, you have a web form and it goes to teams. That sounds trivial. >> Yes. >> But is it right? Because before you would need to do all sorts of jumping through hoops to be able to authenticate properly, have that go somewhere that then gets processed that then gets sent to teams, etc. And with what you've done now, not only **[00:16:00]** does it go to teams, >> now you have this magic box where the data came in and it can go anywhere. So you can trigger any sort of automation after that. So once the form was submitted and it's an N810 that means yes it could go to teams but at the same time it could go to a CRM and at the same time it could send them a text message and at the same time it could send them draft them an email using a GPT and using your knowledge base with your type of voice and everything. Send them the email. Call them with a voice agent letting them know that you like you could do all that just from what you're >> overwhelming. [laughter] Let's let this is where I'm getting overwhelmed. I mean, I like I love this idea. Like, this this is exciting to me. Like, and I'm I'm like, "Okay, this is this is the lynch pin that I think I need to get over right now, which is like, okay, I'm just starting to get some very bare minimum information in the door, right?" >> And so, now it's a matter of, okay, what business processes do I feel like I need to document? So, I'm I'm looking at this tool going, okay, there's a lot of opportunity here. What does that look like? How's what's the best way I can connect back to my customers, which it can send? Like to your point, I think the first thing I'm going to start with is form filled out. >> You know, write this information down somewhere. And I'm still trying to figure out like where to put the customer data of like the contact form cuz I because that's something you **[00:18:00]** should be reviewing, right? There should be like a backlog of here's all the people that reached out to you. Do you want to turn them into like an opportunity? Do you want to turn them into like no, they're just asking about things. I'll just respond with an email and see where it goes. So there's all these kind of like leads best practices on how to like keep people the build the relationship. And I kind of you kind of inherently know how to do it, but it's like putting a tool and a process around it that helps you guide you through this. >> Um, which is extremely useful and very powerful here. But again, you're overwhelming me, Armando. And I I am excited about it. The fact that I can now bolt on in nan like chat GPT large language models. You can send this form message in and you can have it like evaluate the message that the customer sends to you and say, you know, if they're asking about something or they want a product demo, you know, write up a brief that's specific to them or go find the the last domain name of the people that emailed you, go to the web and search that company and see what they do and try and customize it using the language of their business and how this tool would meet their needs. Like there's a lot of other things I think that could really be interesting here that again keeps that lead warm uh gets them in the door. And you do this inherently, but it just now instead of me doing it, I can kind of get it started a lot more in the the nan or the agent space, which that's exciting **[00:20:00]** to me. I think you hit the nail on the head there because it's the whole turning your manual process into an automated one, not starting to automate for the sake of it. If you don't have leads, you don't have sales, you're not doing, don't try to automate something. First, start doing it by hand. Just start >> and then, okay, what do I do? Typically, if I get a contact form, let's say you're solreneur, you get that, you're like, what do you do? You get excited. You're going to look them up, see what they're, like you were saying, you see what their company does. Okay, perfect. So, now let me draft them an email. And you you sort of explore and then try to connect with them in a very personalized way. Well, that once you do it step by step and you write it down, now you can do okay, I'm going to automate it so that all these steps can happen on their own. And to your earlier point, >> yes, we need somewhere for all of this to go. And that's I think that's a big starting point, like you don't have to sweat it if you don't have anything. It's like, yeah, okay, you could just use a spreadsheet like you were saying before. You could have a spreadsheet and just put in your contact information right there. First name, last name, company, when they contact you, etc. Just keep track of everything because as you have data, you can prototype in basically a spreadsheet and eventually migrate it into a system because prototyping in a spreadsheet is very easy to just move anywhere. >> Yeah. >> Prototyping in another system that's closed, that's a problem because do they have export features? **[00:22:00]** How does the data export etc. And so that's where the whole vendor locking that we were talking about goes into play but you mentioned air table at the beginning. >> Okay. Yes. So >> I know nothing about this to be clear like like literally only what you've demoed to me Armando is what I know and and so this is kind of your space a bit more than mine. >> I like air table. I it's not the best tool in the world by any means. It's just a good tool that does something really well. So, if you're used to using spreadsheets to sort of manage the whole business, right? You have expenses, you have payments, you have products, you have orders in your spreadsheets. Well, Air Table allows you to have that same sort of spreadsheet interface where you can just edit very quickly and have formulas and all that, but all the cells for the different columns can be something different. So they could be images, they could be formulas, they could be buttons, they could be actions, they could be all sorts of rich data. And so the benefit of doing that is that it's no longer >> something that >> it's just stuck to the sheet and then you have to sort of map in your mind what what is that? Should I build a chip for it or not or whatever? you can visually have all the information there and getting it further. It allows you to create these little dashboards. So, in a day, especially if you use their omni tool, which is like their AI, you can tell it, hey, I I'm an electrician. I run this electrician business. I these are the things that I keep track of. I **[00:24:00]** need to know who I'm visiting, what the thing is. Um, I need to know the time. I need to know what tools I'm going to take. I need to know how many people I need blah blah blah. So you tell it their omni tool and it will go in and generate all the structure for you. So for those of you who are not like Excel oriented. [laughter] So it's great because it'll do everything and the lookups and it will relate you have multiple tables and it'll relate your different tables to it and and you just start working like literally that same day you just start working with your data in it. And that's why I like it because it's very easy to prototype on it and if you tomorrow need to add a new cell or a new column, you just add it and it integrates very nicely with NA10. So you can have things happen over here where you enter something in a row and automatically it does something else on NA10. So going back to your sort of storyline, it's okay, I get this contact lead, maybe it goes there and then it triggers something else that happens and then once I talk with the person or they message me back on Teams, then I can then write back to that Air Table and keep track of the interaction. So maybe I have a table with all the interactions, how many times I've talked to them, when was the last time I talked to them, like what did we talk about, all the notes that you have for your calls, you could put transcripts, they could go in there. So recordings of the calls, they could be automatically transcribed, moved into the Air **[00:26:00]** Table as well. Okay, like >> I want to pick on this part. This this one this one I like. Okay, so this this is one that I'm actively trying to like solve here to some degree. So let me give you a little bit of world of like what I'm thinking through and how we do in our business side of things. And again, we'll talk to your side too as Armando. I think this is good to unpack you I've I think I've seen you Armando you're doing like hey there's a video call I put this video call the recording to that I can just put it somewhere right and then it it it goes into this n it says hey look a video shows up and then now it becomes a triggered workflow and you can say okay video URL pass that in uh transcribe video and then key summarize like so you can do all these other really cool things like transcribe the video put this transcription here read the transcription and then um summarize it in these key points. Now, this is where I get a little bit like bent a little bit is cuz I look at tools that I already have from Microsoft and they're doing this already. Like I I go into my teams and I can have a Teams meeting. It does the recording. It even transcribes the whole thing for me and then I even get like a summary and some key bullet points and and outputs from it, which is great. Really nice. Where where does it go? I This is where I'm like you've already done the hard effort for this. Where's like the API to go download? Like so to your point Armando like this is **[00:28:00]** where I'm like the business world is disjointed in this regard where I'm using tools that do provide some effectiveness inside the tool and I'm stuck in this kind of like vendor lockin piece where I'm now looking at this going okay I've already I do a lot of calls throughout the days like I'm on video probably six to seven hours a day just doing and creating things right and then and talking with people about solutions and stuff. So from all that look all the wealth of information and summaries and other value that could come out of this. None of it's searchable. I really can't mean it's kind of there but it's kind of in Microsoft's ecosystem but how do I get the transcriptions out? >> How do I keyword search? Where do I put it all? There there's a there's a problem here. And it feels like part of this and again I'm speaking more from the Microsoft land. If you take all those videos and just move them over to a SharePoint site, great. And you can have a video library and you can search through things and look for key phrases there, but it's like very inside that particular item. Like it's only there. I can't take the transcription out. I can't have an AI read that and then provide summary notes or to your point like other things downstream of this. And so that's kind of where I feel like the the tooling today. Everyone's building these very specific siloed kind of tools and we're just now starting to get to the point where people are like, "Oh, it's actually more valuable if we integrate across them." And this is where I I want to start seeing more progress because I I don't **[00:30:00]** I I do want to leverage some interesting tools like okay fine. Let's talk about sales dynamics. >> That's that's a really good tool for CRM and it's reasonable. Again, to your point, it's reasonably priced for me to get started. I just all I need to do is put a list of customers down somewhere. Right now I'm managing in other places. That's probably not the best place to be doing it. So, how do you leverage that kind of tooling and then back to your point earlier, I was looking at another um email marketing or other marketing tools. Microsoft has another one, but it's like $1,700 a month. And I'm like, "No, I'm not doing that." I'm looking at Mailchimp. I have things over there, too. It's like, "You've got 14,000 contacts now. It charges you $250 a month." I'm like, "This is absurd. >> It should not I mean, I'm I'm literally looking at the solution at Microsoft and saying like, if you want an email service, you can send an email for like 600 of a cent per email. It's like so cheap. >> So, so why why would sending 14,000 emails in a month cost me 250 bucks >> when I know you can send all of them for like a fraction of the cost?" >> It just >> the markup on this CRM stuff. >> Oh, yeah. must be insane right now. >> Yes, it is. And it's all based on from my side of what I what I expect, it's all of it like I'm going to set a tier because most people fit within this and I'm just going to charge that, right? But it's not it's not friendly for the business owner because yes, for some they just want to **[00:32:00]** have fixed pricing. Okay, I understand that part, but like you said, the markup is ridiculous because it's not it doesn't scale that way. The costs don't scale. It should be lower, not higher. So, if >> I want to send now I have 14,000. That doesn't mean I'm going to be sending 14,000 emails every time I do a broadcast. Like, I'm not sending 14,000 emails a day. It's like >> I would I would do I would more, but it would cost me more. Like so yeah, >> but I don't because again also the automation doesn't exist, right? So we're doing again let's let's take this >> video cast we do right now. >> How great would it be to just take this thing and have it just become part of like our mailing list and like this video comes out goes through gets transcribed key points informational things blog post already written of about this thing and then boom here's the email that you're going to use. Hey, you want to talk about tooling? Here's some maybe valuable information that these guys are talking about. Like this should become video will become the standard media for everything. >> And so now I'm looking at this going, man, I really need like all of I want to it's easy for me to talk and communicate via video. >> How do I distill that down into as many media platform pieces as I possibly can? You know, we're already using AI to build shorts of videos and have it autogenerate the best hooks for us. Uh, congratulations those of you who are listening to this podcast. Either you're listening to it live or or you're going to get a whole bunch of shorts from Arando and I recently **[00:34:00]** around all these little pieces and snippets of like what we're talking about because these are speaking from real experience. So, if these resonate with you, like this is a real change I think we're seeing in the market here and AI is is an accelerator to a lot of these other experiences. I guess I'll maybe maybe produce it this way, too. >> Video is becoming a commodity. Anyone can produce it and AI can cut it up and make it look effective for anyone. So, all you're going to see is a proliferation of more and more of it. >> Yes. And there's going to be so much AI generated video that it's good. It's good to a point because you can if you don't have the skills or you're not good on camera or whatever, you might not do live video or recordings of yourself, but you can still get your message across using AI generated video. That's that part is fine. >> Yeah. But there's going to be so much of it and and more of a superficial type fluff, right? That it's going to become more and more valuable to have real content >> made by humans, right? And so >> correct. >> And that happens with everything like human interaction will stop being that commodity and be like, "Oh, that's a luxury." Like, "Oh, you got to call someone like real person." And so that that's going to happen. And so Creating a lot of content yourself, like Mike was saying, is so valuable. It's one of the most valuable things you can do right now for yourself, for your business, is build that brand around yourself. Just creating content. And that could be things like this. It could be a podcast, it could **[00:36:00]** be videos, but it could also be like you were just saying, calls, like you're having your calls with your clients, with prospects, with your employees, etc. You don't you don't need to publish all that. But from each of those, you're going to get nice little nuggets. And so, >> okay, I'm gonna I love your idea. This is amazing. I'm smiling. It's really big right now because I'm thinking when when do when does any product for this matter? Like Google or Microsoft, whatever it doesn't matter. When do we get shorts from our from our actual meetings that we send back to our clients? Like, will there be like we need to invent this Armando? This could be a billion dollar idea right here. Like this is just free. We're going to get someone out here right now. So like why not take your meetings, run it through the AI, have it figure out what's the most important notes of that meeting and have them written out as shorts with text on them. And then when you send the message back to the customer, hey, thanks. Here's a couple snippets from the the conversation like that. You would stand out so much and you'd have like all these like and and to be honest like it's those lasting impressions. >> Mh. video is so engaging at a deeper level now. You can now have this man there's there's so many there's so many interesting things that are coming out now that just feels like all this is is changing so fast. >> It's it's funny that you mentioned that because I you know I use Riverside, right? And Riverside now now does the the cut. By the way, we are on Riverside right now. It does the **[00:38:00]** cutting of things for you. We use OPOS clip but but Riverside also does some of it. And so it's funny you mentioned it because >> recently I've been putting some of my meetings into Riverside. >> Oh, okay. >> Not for that purpose, but like because I needed a transcript or because it just the latency is great, etc. And so then you go to the project and suddenly it's like here are these new shorts for you and it's like short from the call. >> Yeah. >> And so funny because they are valuable. I I hadn't thought of like Yeah, sure. If you send a debrief after the call with the shorts, then maybe stakeholders are like they just read the summary. They see the shorts, they're like, "Cool, this looks good." Like they know what they did >> and you're racist. >> Yeah. I mean, how I mean, think of it like think of the the app that's like, "Okay, you here's the meeting summary. Here's the full meeting and video. Here's the summary and keyyn notes. Like here's here here's some key search terms that's coming out of this." Again, all this stuff is being already autoproduced for you. And what about this little you the bottom? Like there's like the reels of the meeting, right? And so what do those reels look like? I mean, it could be like a funny moment that's inside the meeting. Like everyone's laughing like and >> I would rather consume that than to consume like watching the entire thing. >> Who's going to watch it? >> No one's going to watch it. It's just there. But but it's it's distilling it down to the and everyone's now already been autotrained in like the reals and the short clips **[00:40:00]** of everything. And so, you know, when you're talking to your client about like here's the important thing like and you could even start changing like your language and having key phrases that you use so that the AI knows like, hey, this is something I should really clip out, >> right? I'm hearing you say and then kind of give it your little thing. So if if you even maybe think about more strategically about like how to like use your language and your conversation of things you want the AI to kind of pick out through the conversation, you can now use voice prompts within the video potentially to even like help it find those clips. Um and I I even now I'm me personally I'm trying to take the end of my meetings when I get close to the end is summarize them. Hey, in summary, here's the things I heard you say that we need to do. Bing bing bing. Here's the next steps. Boop boop, right? And so by having those kind of clearly called out items, I know that the AI is going to do a better job transcribing it at the end of the meeting. And so it it's already been getting better at saying identifying sections of the meeting. So, I actually do think like an agenda is really important. >> Introductions, calling out that you're doing introductions, the meat of the content, uh, you know, if there are multiple issues you're addressing, calling out when those issues are, hey, issue number one, issue number two, issue number three, identifying them in the context of the meeting, which will help you later on, which who knows where this will go. So, anyways, like we got to vibe code this thing now. >> **[00:42:00]** That's good. Yeah. And by the way, Microsoft, I'm looking at the documentation here, but maybe wrong, but it looks like there is a graph end point for meetings, right? To get the recording. >> Yes. Correct. >> Which means your recording ends, you're going to get it through N8N. >> Yes. >> And then you can process it, chop it up. >> Yep. >> With what we discussed before because we can like something like the Node Core Architects uh something whatever. uh you can have it chop it up, do the styling and everything and put it somewhere that makes sense in the one drive or wherever you need it. And then also those transcriptions can be used to generate that summary at the end. Send everyone involved the summary that they need to read via teams or wherever or slack message or email or whatever you use for your infrastructure. >> And it could all be automated. This is sort of the thing where you step out of the outside the box. It's not like, oh, I just need a CRM. Yeah. Yeah, that's good and very important, but then there's all these extra things that just allow you to do your job better because it it gives you all the insights. It gives you all the summaries and it does it pretty automatically, which then gets can be added to like a vector store that you have with everything. And so then you have this little agent. You can just ask it stuff like where are we with this thing or where are we with this project because you start off as one person two person five person team then you're 20 30 100 now you don't go to all the meetings you don't know what **[00:44:00]** everyone of your employees is working on so >> sure y >> instead of just asking people and interrupting them during the day you'll be able to have your little agent thing that you just ask it hey how's the >> Microsoft project going and then it'll tell you okay so they're in this part of the project they're in milestone. These people had this meeting. These are the results. Uh they have this blockage, etc. And that's the stuff. That's the >> That's cool. >> And I'm going to double down on what you're saying there because that is so important. There's a lot of motions happening in your company all over the place. >> Where do you stitch it all together? >> Yeah. >> That's that's our problem here. >> Mhm. And and like you're the expert here on fabric, PowerBI, business intelligence, all that stuff. And I was talking about the other day like it's great >> too much credit. >> No. Well, more than me by [laughter] by a mile and but still like even like you have a team that's like solely focused on this stuff, right? And >> if I'm a company and okay, I want PowerBI, I want fabric and all >> still with it being so fantastic, I still need to call you and be like, hey, could you build this report for me? Me being a CEO of a big company, right? So I still can you build this report for me that has this this and this right? >> Great. And and you do it right. But >> I don't know if you you heard this part. I I was talking about the other day on the live stream. I I thought it was comical, but imagine >> going back **[00:46:00]** to our other conversation on like disposable interfaces. So let's say you have your little thing, your CEO, you're walking down the plant with with like a fellow partner or whatever investor and you're like, "Oh, >> so what?" Then they ask you like hey what's the how I don't know what's your your issue rate with these artifacts you're like oh let me check and then you just tell it like hey what's our issue rate uh right now with artifact widget A or whatever and then the thing can in that moment go through all the different data source like you were saying and then you have your your data lake and you have everything right because someone like Mike already set all that up for you but instead of having to call you have someone do a report bring it back tell you the next Hey, you could at that moment the agent could just like get all the data, structure it and then build a little dashboard for you right there like just with the items that you need in real time to show it to the guy or the girl and be like, "Oh, yeah. Look, this is this is where we are." It's like, "Oh, cool. All right." And then you never use it again. >> Yeah. Correct. Toss it. Like this is and and also I mean Armando, I was I'm going to make a prediction here and I think this is maybe even closer than I think it is, but I think we're within 6 months to a year. I did this on the explicit measure podcast. I think we're in six months to a year of like you won't even build a website. You'll just talk to an agent and say, **[00:48:00]** "Hey agent, I'm selling this product. Here's the marketing materials that I want you to kind of like use like the image. Here's some messaging. Here's what we're doing. Here's a couple YouTube videos." And you'll basically say, "This is the information that you need to produce to someone, right?" Okay. And it builds like when you search the URL, it would search the URL and the AI will will test out a inline real time like it's it's basically all built by AI. I mean this is kind of what Meta is doing already with Facebook already because Meta and Facebook are doing well not with well kind of with ads but like thinking like whole websites like so Facebook has like I don't know at any given point in time they have like a thousand different tests running that are that have like success metrics and KPIs with them. Mhm. >> I mean, imagine you imagine a point where you can just say, "I need a marketing website for my product. Here's all the product details." And then me as a as a the expert, the PM, the the product, you know, PM of it, I describe what the product is is and how it's supposed to work. And then the AI basically customizes the web page for every single user that shows up. And it just does like a thousand times of AB testing. Everyone who shows up, they get their own version of the page. it starts catering it to them and imagine clicking on like a button for like learn more or purchase now and it the page doesn't even exist. It basically builds the page on the fly and says here's what you need to see. Right. >> Have Have you have you used **[00:50:00]** cloud imagine? >> I I have I'm using grock imagine right now >> but I haven't used cloud. >> How does Grock imagine work? >> It's it's a image generator but you can you can send it like an image or you can prompt it with something. It just basically generates an image or something that but I claude magic imagine may be totally different. It's this is more image generation. Claude imagine is like what you you were just saying like they're experiment and it's experimental but it's ridiculous. I did a stream on it the other day. >> Oh, >> but they're doing a software. They're not doing the websites yet. That's software related, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like it's in the browser. So, I was like I told it, well, I've been meaning to build this because there's nothing really there. There's something but it's not practical and you have to pay for it or whatever. Uh, I need to know what I wore the last time I did a podcast and the last time I went to our kids school and the last time we had a part like because sometimes you're like what should I wear? Where did I you have to go to your picture library. So I was like just a thing where I just go in and I tag things like I take a picture of myself now and then podcast and then next time or I saw Mike or whatever. And so next time I just open it up and I'm like Mike podcast. Oh, definitely not wearing that. So I wear something else. Right. >> Yeah. >> So I told the thing live while I was doing the live stream I went in and I was like okay **[00:52:00]** so I want to build this. is going to have you have to have the camera blah blah. Okay. So, it starts and it generates the interface like right there as I'm talking to it. It's a live conversation and so it generates it and then as you click it builds >> so you click take picture and in that moment it creates the interface and the code to for the picture for the picture and then and then it gives camera access and it actually gave me camera access took a picture of me with this camera. >> Yeah. live while I'm coding, while I'm streaming, and then takes a picture and then saves it, tags it, and even does image recognition and writes like plaid shirt, headphones, microphone, like in real time, and it's like save and then it builds the UI for the save when you click on it. And so what you're saying is like yes, I think we are close to something like that. And that would be amazing because if all websites work that way, I mean, I don't mind if it takes a little bit longer to load if it's like generating exactly what I need to read. >> Yes. Well, in that moment and it's also like it doesn't need to generate that every single time like so so but like the f like there's a there's like this generate it on demand as you go. I mean that's it's highly inefficient for you to like continually for every single user. You got 14,000 users like it makes no sense for you to autogenerate everything all the time. But what you can do is you can you can let the code generate like okay the idea is like okay you've built the **[00:54:00]** site and you've gotten like the main functionality pieces done. you kind of have to give it some guard rails to say what you're going to go down here to your point right uh I need an image cataloger of these things you know and you know take the live image tag the item put it somewhere put it in a place where we can have like the AI kind of scan through these things and I think this whole uh graph database is very interesting and intriguing to me right now like things that are related and like >> I'm very big on graph databases in general most of our software is built on top of graph databases because they're just so efficient for getting from you know routing relationships between different objects and it's super flexible very very very cool technology but as I'm looking at this now like what you're describing like at some point the app kind of like settles down a little bit right it's got like the main functionality down it it doesn't really do anything too drastic but maybe what it does you know it does like the first >> couple hundred users it kind of like builds the site and then over time it starts refining itself like you know updating and you can then come back and prompt it and say I don't really like how the screen looks you know, can you move the buttons to the left? You know, colors don't quite match. Can you switch this? Can you add a feature here? And like that's I saw another demo of a video that was like someone was inside their website >> and they literally highlighted something in text on the page and said, "Fix this." And so what **[00:56:00]** it did is you were you were highlighting the HTML. >> It knew where that was in the codebase. >> It wrote a prompt. the agent read the code, adjusted the setting, made a pull request, dropped the code in, committed it, and said, "Okay, it's done now." Like, it's ready for like review. Like, that's the kind of stuff that I'm like, I'm excited about that. That that's and as a business owner looking at this going, "Okay, so let's let's aside, >> let's come back to like what does it take for us to run our businesses, right? >> Every business has the same stuff." And so how do you build microervices, microtasks? I don't know what it is, but there's there's a lot of these like little like, okay, every customer needs a leads table. Every every customer needs a CRM system. That that's a given. Got to have that, right? So how do you build that? Where are the examples of this? And how do I build this in a way that is like easy to maintain andor slightly adjust? I this is going to again I'm probably going on a limb here as well but this is extremely disruptive for the companies that have been doing this for years like if if Microsoft Dynamics doesn't make sense for the way I do business it may I may need to shape my business so it matches Dynamics but if I can do the same thing at less cost with like I'm let's just I I don't know Amando this is it's so un unknown at this point for me this at this point I feel like I don't even what's up and down anymore. It's so crazy. Like, can I just go to an agent and **[00:58:00]** say, "I'm building a CRM system. This is what I want. I'm going to have things coming in from Teams, from Outlook, from this. I want you to land the data in this database or this file structure or this uh Cosmos DB." Like, you just describe the things that you're using and it's just going to be like, "Oh, look, I found an MPC server for this. I found a integration here. I found this over here." And you just kind of like weave these things together. And so it's all kind of like loosely tied together with glue. >> Yes. >> And it feels a lot more it keeps it keeps it keeps in my mind it keeps unpacking as if it is like a >> it's like working with people than it is working with computers. >> Because I can describe I can go back to Armano and be like, "Hey, I need help. >> Here's what I want. I describe for you the system." And Armano is like, "Yeah, I know exactly how to do this. I need you going." And then you go write code that makes the air table, you know, the nan workflow, the integration points, here's your messages coming back in teams, like you could, you know, how to do this. >> That's the same thing the AI is going to know how to do. >> Yeah. >> And it knows like and it and now has that feature of like building a workflow for this in it and it will do a pretty good job of it, pretty decent job of it, and then you can make adjustments, but still saves you a bunch of time. There's so many templates out there that that there's like this whole repository of things **[01:00:00]** that people have done before. So, so it's really cool, but I think you're on the right track. The the gluing of it, I think people should take out of this the gluing of it. So, if you already have your spreadsheets and you like them to show your data, fine. That's okay. If you have Dynamics, that's okay. If you have HubSpot, you have the free version, you have some other things, but you don't want to pay for it, that's okay. Like, you can keep the structures that you're used to and then just build on top of, right? Yes. So there's that that other layer that we've been doing this in the website world for a long time where it's like let's use I know a company uses learn dash okay fine and it works for a lot of things really good tool but the interfaces aren't fantastic so we built dashboards on top of them that do everything they need just using the data that's underneath and so the same goes for this like >> the the difference I think the point in time we're on is the difference is you don't need a software development company to do this for you anymore and take six months Now the agents, the LLMs, etc. allow you to like using N810, forget the code. Like now I've got Stripe, I've got QuickBooks, I've got Microsoft Dynamics, I've got Teams. Okay, so now just have these actions and recipes that when data happens here, go here, here, and it's all drag and drop, right? You can add code if you want, but you just move it around and you can see the data flowing, which is a problem with custom solutions that everything is hidden in the code. You **[01:02:00]** never know what's happening. Here you have perfect logging, execution times, when something went wrong, you get a notification, like it's all there visually. So it becomes a well now I could just build these little interfaces, mini interfaces like you were saying to do exactly what I need >> first visually. Then comes the now I just want to dictate it to it and tell it what I need it to do. And now I just walk around in my glasses or whatever and and and tell it like, hey, what's the what's the stats on the inventory for this week? and it'll just tell me. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Order five of these uh pallets or whatever and and then you keep on with your business, right?" But >> it's all it's getting insane. It's getting 100%. It's all getting integrated and >> you and I were joking the other day when we were talking about this. It's like it's almost like the Jarvis effect. Yeah. Right. So, so it's, you know, you listen to Iron Man and and you listen to like the the Marvel movies, like it's lit, aside from the holographic side of things, like it's this idea of like you can give something a task and it can then understand the context of the task and then it thinks about, okay, what's the task I need to do? How do I need to get this accomplished? What are these things happening? And so then you can start orchestrating things at a, you know, you you become less of the developer and you come become more of like the manager or the orchestrator of like what's happening. And so where I feel like my me and my team we're all trying to learn is like **[01:04:00]** okay what level of orchestration knowledge do we need to start gaining like how do we leverage the orchestration piece to become more effective and so that's where I'm really excited about all this and um I can really now step back and I I'm going to really take back this idea of okay what should my process look like look at these different tools HubSpot Dynamics whatever those are and start saying okay let's read up on what these other tools are doing and now I'm at a place where I'm like, okay, well, I don't need those tools. I'm going to just build parts of that process because again, if you think about the small business, let's go back to the small business piece, right? >> Small businesses just start and they have nowhere to go. Like they're just starting. You just figure it out. You figure with what you have. So, if I just keep like prototyping and iterating and making a little bit better like you don't have to just land the entire solution all at once. Sometimes you get parallel, you know, paralyzed by just trying to make the right decision all the time. The right decision is just move. The right decision is just build. And you'll learn very quickly along the way what those patterns are starting to look like. And I think what I'm excited about is there's all these new patterns that are appearing like >> patterns I've dreamed of or thought about or like, man, it'd be really nice if I and then describe the thing. Now those become much more tangible. Anyways, I do know we got to wrap here. This has been an amazing conversation. Armando, we should figure out how we kind of like work through this **[01:06:00]** journey together. Uh we're kind of unpacking this. We're learning things as we go. Um we want to do some more educational pieces around like how are we leveraging AI in these spaces and Armano comes from like the Google world. I come from the Microsoft world. So what does this world look like when you have maybe a mix of both or you know what does n look like for integrations for Google and how does that differ from a Microsoft integration? What can we do there? So I think there's a lot of opportunity here for us to kind of really push on this idea of like agentic process building. Maybe that's where I'm kind of going with this >> and and we kind of unpack that together. >> I agree. I that's going to be awesome. There's so much to unpack that I think a lot of business owners will will really enjoy understanding what happens behind the scenes and what can be done and that you're not limited. Like I think this will open up a lot of minds to the fact that yeah sure it's fine. I use Google for something. I use Microsoft for some things. Can they be connected? Sure. Like there is a possibility and and you can glue your tools together and make it work. So >> exciting. >> It's going to be fun. There's a lot we can do and then we'll we'll we might even get some VIP coding at some point and build something. So, I think we're good to go. I'll let you go, Mike, and we'll talk in the next one. >> Awesome. Thank you so much and we'll see [music]