Show Notes
Are we behind the curve on AI, or ahead of it? Some days it depends on who you ask.
In this episode of Office Hours with Jason Lovoy, host Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Jason and special guest Russell Marbut, the new AI Integration Lead at Infomedia. Russell has been with Infomedia for almost 10 years. He started as a production developer and is one of the most practical voices on AI inside the company.
Jason, Carrie and Russell talk about why Infomedia created an AI Integration Lead role, where the company sits on the AI spectrum, and why they decided to grow this role internally instead of bringing in an outside consultant. They cover how AI is changing client expectations, why service and strategy still set Infomedia, Uptick and Tempo apart, and why being a beginner again could be the best thing for everyone right now.
Whether you work at one of the Lovoy family of companies or run a small business of your own, this conversation gives you an honest look at what it actually takes to use AI well in a service business.
Transcript
Carrie (00:00): Hey, welcome to Office Hours with Jason Lovoy, with the one and only Jason Lovoy. I don’t know — people, other people might have your name.
Jason (00:15): I don’t know of any.
Russell (00:15): Others.
Carrie (00:16): Well, the one and only Jason Lovoy. Let’s go with that. This is a behind the scenes conversation with the CEO of Infomedia, Uptick and Tempo. I’m your host, Carrie Rollwagen, and in each episode, Jason and I sit down for a casual chat about where we are as companies, what he’s thinking as a CEO, and where we’re heading next. And today we also have a guest on the podcast, Russell Marbut. Welcome, Russell.
Russell (00:43): Hi. Other people do have my name.
Carrie (00:46): Oh, the one of many, Russell Marbut. Russell is our new AI Integration Lead at Infomedia, and we invited him on because today we’re going to mostly talk about AI, which is a topic I think everybody is hearing about everywhere.
Jason (01:06): Every day.
Carrie (01:07): Yes, exactly. But I do think, as we’re getting a little more traction with where we’re going as companies, I thought it was a good time to talk to you about it, Jason. Ask you why we have an AI Integration Lead, what that position even is, and just talk more about it, so all three companies can know more about our direction. So all right, let’s get started.
Jason (01:37): Are you asking me the question?
Carrie (01:39): No, I just made it weird. Really. My first question is, there are a lot of different companies that are at different stages in AI. Some of them are really embracing it, you know, laying off their staff, or 10xing their output, or whatever. I’m just using buzzwords here. They’re really all in. Some companies are barely using it. Maybe they’re just using Chat GPT for writing emails or something. And then some companies are more in the middle. Where would you think we are in the spectrum? And you can say that as all three of us, or each company, whichever you prefer.
Jason (02:21): I would say that we’re probably somewhere in the middle. But I think it definitely depends on the day that you ask. Sometimes I feel like we’re behind the curve, and sometimes I feel like we’re ahead of it. So I think Russell uses the analogy of the wave, the tsunami.
Carrie (02:45): I believe.
Jason (02:46): The way I kind of see it is, we’ve got a board and we’re going to try to surf the wave. We don’t know necessarily where the wave is taking us, but we have to get on. I mean, you have to get on.
Carrie (03:00): Yeah.
Jason (03:01): If I said that right. But you can’t just be flat-footed, not doing anything.
Carrie (03:05): Yeah.
Jason (03:05): I think the days of just asking Chat GPT instead of Google for better search is six months ago. Maybe it was a year and a half ago. I guess someone may say that’s so 2024.
Carrie (03:22): Yeah.
Jason (03:23): I think having Russell step in is, at the end of the day, you may have a lot of different fragmented parts that are utilizing AI for different things. I know at Infomedia we’ve got coders that are using it for testing, maybe helping write, maybe coming up with solutions. I don’t really know. You would know better. And in project management, I know we’re experimenting with it, but also using it for strategy and for coming up with ideas on things.
Carrie (04:01): Yeah.
Jason (04:03): I think the idea of someone like Russell is, instead of everybody going out different ways and experimenting, let’s figure out how, as a company, we can make sure we’re moving in the right direction. Or the same direction, maybe.
Carrie (04:14): Yeah.
Jason (04:15): Wrong together.
Carrie (04:16): Yeah, we’re being wrong together. Hopefully. I think that answers a lot of people’s questions about why we have this role. It’s to help us make sure we’re going in the same direction. And at Infomedia, we had somebody who was the right fit. Jason, you and I, we’d been meeting with a lot of outside companies, and we just kept finding that they were not a great fit. And then we kind of thought about it and realized — Russell, I’m going to pass this to you. You and I have been talking about a lot, and you and Jason had been talking about it a lot.
Jason (05:09): Yeah. And it’s not just for us. I’m thinking, how can this impact the conversation we’re having with our clients? Because if we’re having this conversation, I know for a fact that meeting with other business owners, they don’t know where to go, where to start. So I would love for us to be part of that conversation.
Carrie (05:39): Yeah. So Russell, how did this come about for you? People at Infomedia know this, but people at Tempo and Uptick may not, that you’ve been with Infomedia for nine years, is that right?
Russell (05:51): Yeah, almost 10.
Carrie (05:52): That’s weird. It doesn’t seem like that long. You were a production developer for a really long time. For the past couple years, you’ve been our support developer. Talk a little bit about — so much of why you’re in this role is that you did a lot outside of work, experimenting, looking into it. Where did that come from, and what have you been doing?
Russell (06:22): Well, I would say the initial impetus was trying to use it for home.
Carrie (06:32): The gym, the —
Russell (06:33): The gym. It’s tough because I have a full-time job, and then I’m running a business on the side. There was a lot of working in the business, I guess you could say, and not working on the business. So I was trying to leverage it to help me with some of that stuff. But at the same time, using it at Infomedia, a lot of it started out with, hey, this plugin is outdated and the developers abandoned it. But the client needs this, and this is going to be really hard to figure out. Hey, AI, can you help me patch this thing so it’s not outdated and breaks the site, or whatever.
Carrie (07:17): Which is something we’d always done with developers in our team of developers. It would usually be, hey, do any of you guys have experience with this? Can you take a look? But then it’s pulling them off of a project, and that’s taking longer. Is that right?
Russell (07:34): Oh, for sure. And nobody likes to do stuff like that either. Nobody’s like, I want to go in someone else’s code base and try to figure this out. So that’s a tough one. But that was one of the light bulb moments for me. I can patch this plugin really easy, and normally it was a huge headache. So I’ve used it a good bit over the last three years in varying degrees. And when the shift happened in December, where it kind of moved into an agentic situation, where these people are launching agents to do a bunch of stuff, I started to feel the pressure. Like, okay, this is serious now. We need to start looking at this in a more serious way. Because the gap between people that were using AI and using AI well — that gap has started to really open up.
Russell (08:30): The good news on that, going back to your initial question, is there’s still a bunch of people that aren’t using it. And there’s a ton of people that aren’t using it well. So if you’re just using it kind of well, you’re still in a pretty nice spot. I was looking at some graphs the other day. A lot of people feel a lot of anxiety about it. But if you’re at least engaging with it on some decent level, you’re kind of ahead of the curve.
Carrie (09:21): Yeah. Doing more than just asking Chat GPT where can I go to get a veggie burger in town. That’s kind of very low level.
Russell (09:34): So 2024.
Carrie (09:35): Yeah, or I need to write this email. That’s pretty basic.
Jason (09:41): Pretty basic.
Carrie (09:42): But if you’re being creative with it at all and trying to look at your workflow and say, how can this take some of those pieces that are really annoying to me off of me, then you’re actually doing pretty well.
Russell (09:55): Yeah. The buzzwords now are like context engineering. So simply put, it’s giving the AI you’re using the proper context so that when you ask it a question, it’s not going out into the world and finding a generic answer. You’re providing the context for your business, your needs, your SOPs, and then it’s going to give you a lot better results.
Carrie (10:27): So Jason, how do you feel about all of that?
Jason (10:35): Well, I mean —
Carrie (10:40): Were you — when the agentic AI revolution wave came in December, like Claude Cowork would be an example — am I correct in saying an agent is more like, you’re not just chatting and using a large language model. It’s actually that AI can go onto your computer and organize your screenshots. Or it can go into your Google Drive. Cowork can create a Google document for me, and I can open it in Drive. Whereas with GPT, I would be copying and pasting it.
Russell (11:14): It’s more akin to a worker.
Carrie (11:17): Yeah. So did you feel like there was more pressure once that started happening? Or has it just always been pressure since this started?
Jason (11:31): Pressure since it started. But I would say 2024 was more about how do we 10x our output. And when they said output, you went to any AI talk and it was about marketing.
Carrie (11:44): Yeah.
Jason (11:45): How can I do more content? How can I do more this? How can I post on all these platforms?
Carrie (11:49): What was Jerry just said at our lunch — like, it came after the marketers first.
Jason (11:54): Yeah.
Carrie (11:54): I liked that line.
Jason (11:55): So.
Carrie (11:56): I don’t like the reality. But I thought it was a good —
Jason (11:58): No. Yeah, you’re right. The thing we had to realize too is, you can use Chat GPT as an example and create 10x of bad content.
Carrie (12:13): Yeah, so —
Jason (12:14): It’s like, we always compare it to a chef. I can go hire anybody to cook.
Carrie (12:21): Yeah.
Jason (12:21): But the chef makes sure it comes out a certain way. The way it’s prepared, the way it tastes, everything about it, the whole presentation. So even on the marketing side, just because they’re doing it — yes, they can, that’s a fact. But we continually try to say, how do we continue to position ourselves? Be okay to talk with our clients about it. Early on, clients would be like, you didn’t use AI, did you?
Carrie (13:01): It depends on the client and the project, but yeah.
Jason (13:04): I guess what I mean is, it was like, oh, it looks like you used AI to write this. Actually, we didn’t. I think you’re just saying that. But they were so paranoid about anyone using AI. Now it’s the opposite, in my opinion.
Carrie (13:21): Yeah. Well, especially when it comes to timelines and stuff. I think at least that’s what I’m hearing more. It’s like, why does this take so long? I can use AI to do this in two days. Which isn’t — it’s not apples to apples, that’s not true. But that’s what I hear more from clients. I don’t think most of our clients care if we’re using AI or not, but they are saying I want it faster.
Jason (13:46): Yes.
Carrie (13:46): Because they’re assuming, well, now you have these tools, so why does it take so long?
Jason (13:54): Going from the 10x output to the more creating-the-agents thing — it’s like, oh man, this is great. But then it’s, oh my gosh, this would take a full-time person who was doing nothing but creating your workflows and creating these agents to do all these things. That can also be overwhelming. Just because you have AI doesn’t mean all of a sudden your productivity is going to go way up. You still have to go back and look at your processes and figure out how we can leverage AI into our workflows. Instead of someone like me going to a conference, coming back with 100 different agents you can create and how to create them and all that — I don’t have time for all that.
Carrie (14:42): Yeah.
Jason (14:43): And even if I did, how do I work that into our workflow where I’m not totally disrupting? So anyway.
Carrie (14:48): Yeah.
Jason (14:49): That’s a whole different conversation. But part of Russell coming in is, hey, let’s start looking at our workflows. Project managers, you’re already utilizing Claude. To figure out how we can better work our project managers to leverage different tools, to give a better experience maybe for our clients, maybe a better experience for our teams.
Carrie (15:18): And that’s what I feel Russell’s role is. Russell isn’t going to be the expert on all the AIs for everybody’s jobs. We still want all the individual contributors to be the expert on their job, and honestly the expert in the AI for their job. But Russell is coming in and talking to people about the workflows. So we can see, overall as a company, where are we headed, what are our priorities, and are we plugging in where we should and sharing information. Russell, can you talk about the interviews you’re doing at Infomedia? What are those focusing on? What are you doing currently?
Russell (15:56): What I’m doing currently is just listening. I’ve interviewed a couple departments so far. I have more scheduled. I’m interviewing heads of departments, some of the people that work in the department. I’m asking them questions. Some are more feelings-based, and some are more input-output.
Carrie (16:21): Feelings.
Russell (16:23): Not a fan. But I am, for the purposes of this, I’m a huge fan. No, in like input-outputs. Who do you get your work from? Where does it go? Who do you give your work to? What tools are you in? What tools does it come to you in?
Carrie (16:43): Yeah. They’re mostly like — you’re not asking people particularly how should you be, how do you want to use AI? You’re more like, what are your pain points. Is that right?
Russell (16:54): Yeah, definitely. What is a repeated task you do all the time? And also, where do you definitely not want AI in this process? A lot of that is pretty obvious. But just hearing from everybody how they feel and what they do on a day to day.
Carrie (17:22): And you’ve even found some things just looking at the workflows that are like, we can fix this without AI, or this is a problem that doesn’t involve AI at all. You’re surfacing problems that I think has been really cool. We just don’t generally have time to globally look at a company. We’re all in our silos working on our part of the relay race to send it to the next part of the relay.
Russell (17:52): So it’s like, when I was talking about home, most of us are working in the business. We’re not working on the business. And we’re all busy. So I’m trying to take a step back, look at the whole thing and see what we can do. And — I hate using this word, but I can’t think of a better one — empower people.
Carrie (18:21): You hate feelings, you hate empowerment. It is —
Russell (18:26): It is what it is. I am who I am. I think we’re positioned pretty well, like you were talking about. You were talking about layoffs before we talked. I don’t think we’re in a position where we need that.
Carrie (18:43): Which is what I was saying, just for the record. I was just saying that’s a popular question.
Russell (18:52): A lot of these layoffs were from bloated companies already. They were already bloated from COVID. Everybody was staying home and playing video games. Game companies hired a ton of people, and then now people are back to work and they’re like, we have 10,000 more people than we need. That kind of stuff is happening. I don’t think that’s the situation we’re in. We’re very well positioned.
Carrie (19:20): I think it’s — we talked about this at the Infomedia Homecoming, but Uptick and Tempo weren’t there. We are not looking at laying off our people. We’re looking at creating more work for our people.
Russell (19:35): Not having to work harder.
Carrie (19:37): Yeah.
Russell (19:37): That’s a big part of it. Not like people are going to have to work harder. They may have to work a little differently. But the goal isn’t everybody needs to work harder. It’s maybe you’re even working not as hard. That would be crazy, right?
Carrie (19:53): Well, creating some margin in our jobs. So many of us at our companies want to be creative. We want to do creative work. But we are limited on creative work, because we don’t have the margin. Creativity takes more thinking time. You’re working on something, and then you have a little more time, you’re taking a break, you’re having a conversation, and the idea comes to you. But you don’t have time for that when you’re just grinding all day. So we’re not trying to use AI to do the creativity part. We’re trying to use AI to do the other parts, so that we as humans can be creative.
Jason (21:18): Yeah. We’ve tried to build scalable teams so that — well, we don’t know what the future is. So if things change, it gives us a little more flexibility.
Carrie (21:33): We started doing that at Infomedia when we had too much work. We started freelancing out design and dev instead of hiring somebody when we first had more work.
Jason (21:47): Through virtual assistants as well. Stuff that’s sometimes hard to fill — we’ve been able to flex doing things like that.
Russell (21:58): I would say historically, the freelancing stuff was a super smart play. I think we’ve done a great job — y’all have done a great job — not putting us in positions where we’re going to have to cut five people. That’s never really been a thing in my entire 10 years at Infomedia. So I think that’s pretty cool.
Carrie (22:34): Jason, the way you run companies is very slow to hire, slow to fire. We really want to justify bringing somebody on, so we don’t have to turn around and do the opposite. The other thing that I think really protects our staff is that so many people at our companies — I can’t think of anybody who only does one thing. We have so many people who’ve been here a long time and specialized but then moved to another department or taken on different projects, or done something outside of work that they’re like, oh, we can do this as part of our work. So we don’t have anybody who’s like, this is your only job, and if AI starts doing that, you don’t have a job. We have people who are good at six things. So if one or two of those becomes eaten up by AI or just isn’t as important, there are still four other places they can absolutely contribute.
Jason (23:56): And not just as a company, but as individuals. We have to be flexible, and we have to be willing to change and adapt. We’ve said this before — if you don’t like change, you don’t want to learn. You can extend that and say, if you don’t like AI, well, that’s not necessarily true. Because you cannot like AI and still use it.
Carrie (24:22): Yeah. I wouldn’t even say that I like AI, if I’m being honest.
Jason: Definitely a love-hate relationship.
Carrie (24:29): Yeah. We’re all on different parts of the spectrum there. For me, personally, it’s just — it’s here, and I haven’t seen any technology that’s like, this is going to go away because I don’t use it. Especially because we all work in technology, so I don’t think we have an option, really.
Russell (25:02): There’s not a lot of crazy news coming out of the plumbing world.
Carrie (25:07): Yeah.
Russell (25:08): So not yet.
Carrie (25:11): True. There are industries that are more stable. But we are not in plumbing. We are in tech. So we don’t have a choice. It hasn’t always been like this. It’s just the pace is way different right now.
Russell (25:29): The term I’ve been hearing a lot lately that’s kind of silly is, what is it — anxite, I think they’re saying. They’re basically just comboing anxiety and excitement. A lot of people are in that space right now. They’re kind of excited in a way, but they also feel some anxiety about it. I’m probably pretty squarely in that to some degree.
Jason (26:08): I think if I weren’t in our industry, I’d probably be more excited.
Carrie (26:13): Yeah.
Jason (26:15): Being in our industry, I feel like we have no choice but to be innovative. I’d love for us to be ahead of the curve, but truly, we have no idea. But I do think we’re doing all the right things.
Carrie (26:33): Yeah.
Jason (26:33): We’re taking the right steps. Russell being a big part of that. So —
Russell (26:39): Everybody feels like that. Andrej Karpathy is like the man right now when it comes to this. He was the lead guy at OpenAI. He went on his own for a little while. He just announced yesterday he got hired at Anthropic. So he’s working at Anthropic now. A lot of people follow what he says. And it’s because he’s done some really cool stuff. It’s not just hot air. Even he went on a podcast recently and was like, I’ve never felt more behind. So everybody’s feeling this to some extent, even the top people. So I wouldn’t let it get to you too much.
Jason (27:24): I would be more nervous if we had rolled out a product as an example. SaaS based, or whatever. Even like if I was Mailchimp as an example. Or QuickBooks and HubSpot and all these guys. Anthropic or whomever is coming after you.
Carrie (27:43): Yeah.
Jason (27:44): Because these are things that they can figure out ways to improve upon. You’re already putting in workflows. Why not go ahead and pull in the accounting piece? Why not pull in the CRM piece? Why not pull in these pieces?
Carrie (28:02): Some of the things we’ve been talking about a lot in meetings are the things that set all three of our companies apart — our service and strategy. Those things are platform agnostic.
Jason (28:20): And that’s what people want. People are wanting us in all aspects of what we’re doing to tell them — to be the guide and help them through whatever it is. Whether it’s a website or web strategy, telling your story, marketing, advertising.
Carrie (28:40): Yeah.
Jason (28:41): More and more with AI, people are asking more and more questions. How can we do this? Can we do this? How can we leverage this? And what part can we all play together?
Russell (28:53): This is the most sentimental I’ll get on this podcast. There’s a lot of people betting on the human interaction coming back in a big way on the other side of this major wave. We’re talking about strategy, which is a big part of it. But there’s a million companies that can do what I want. Who do I like more? Who seems — who do I have a better relationship with? Who seems like a real person? Some very rich people right now are investing in sports and stuff like that.
Carrie (29:39): Like us.
Russell (29:40): Yeah, exactly. We’re very rich, you know.
Carrie (29:45): We do own a sports team. If people are listening, that’s why.
Russell: Yeah.
Jason (29:50): Give it a plug.
Carrie (29:51): Go Twisters!
Russell (29:53): Twisters up. We’re the best team, the best looking team.
Russell (30:04): The community side is going to come back. The human-to-human interaction is going to come back. And I actually believe in that. If I had to predict it, I would say that’s probably correct.
Carrie (30:19): And that’s why I feel like we are actually weirdly well placed as companies. A lot of our competitors went hard into, we’re going to give you the best data, or we’re going to have the most trendy website, or we’re going to have whatever. And Infomedia and Uptick and Tempo are like, you’re going to like talking to us. You’ll understand what we’re talking about. We’re not going to talk over you. We’re not trying to use a lot of jargon to prove that we’re smarter than you. We are actually connecting with people. That is something that will be really important. Because even though people are using AI to do this, people aren’t typically wanting to only interact with AI. They like having a person to be like, yeah, that’s a good idea, or have you thought about this, or just have a conversation. All of our companies do that really, really well. I think this is a difficult transition, as we all have to relearn how to do our jobs and what our jobs mean and grapple with existential issues. But I’m actually not worried about our companies and how we’re positioned. I would be more worried if we didn’t have that service aspect.
Jason (31:37): I would be worried if we weren’t innovating.
Carrie (31:40): Well, both.
Jason (31:41): But yeah, I mean, just repeating — the companies that are not thinking about how to get ahead or how to stay relevant, I’d be more worried about them.
Carrie (31:55): Yeah.
Jason (31:56): I agree we’re having the right conversations and making the right moves.
Carrie (32:00): I don’t think innovation has to be cutting edge new technology. It can be — there are different things in all the companies that are like, we couldn’t do this before, but now with AI we actually can. On the Infomedia side, things like accessibility. We couldn’t physically go through a long audit before and make the changes. Now, Daniel, Brad and others have worked on products where we can do that. Things where we just couldn’t do them because they needed a ton of human time to go through and look at a million different things. Now they’re easy.
Russell (32:46): And I would say, for me personally, my goal with Infomedia — getting back to what he’s saying — is, if we failed, it wouldn’t be because we didn’t do anything. It would be a bigger problem. Like, the nightmare scenario of AI, or whatever happens.
Carrie (33:13): Like, if the Terminator comes.
Russell (33:16): Yeah.
Carrie (33:17): Coming out, because we didn’t figure out —
Russell (33:23): I normally say that not as nice, so I was trying to craft it that way. But yeah, if Skynet happens, Skynet happens. But outside of that, we need to be positioned properly. And that’s what we’re trying to work towards.
Carrie (33:40): I think you said this on your LinkedIn, Russell. Or at least your AI agents did.
Russell (33:48): On my last post. Nobody loves me.
Jason (33:51): I —
Carrie (33:52): I liked it.
Jason (33:55): I liked it.
Carrie (33:56): But you were saying one of the things you like about Jiu Jitsu is that everybody has to start, and they’re not good. You have to be bad at something. And that’s to some extent why a lot of business owners and developers like Jiu Jitsu. You become a master at something, and then actually, it’s good for you and your brain and the way you look at the world to be bad at something for a while. They go to Jiu Jitsu, they feel like I don’t know this at all, I have to start from the beginning. And starting as a beginner and being bad actually teaches you a lot about stuff. That’s what’s scary about AI, and also what could be good. We all are constantly having to feel like we’re beginning again. I get my feet under me a little bit with GPT, and then it’s like, oh, Claude is a thing now. And then I’m doing this. It’s always feeling like a beginner, which can be uncomfortable for sure. But it’s also actually can be really good to develop, and it can be really good for you.
Russell (35:06): As far as using like the cutting edge tool, and then another cutting edge tool pops up in six months. Everything’s moving at a rapid pace right now. Who knows when that’s going to slow down. I don’t see it slowing down anytime super soon. But we’ll see. You would still be better off for having used the tool that just deprecated. You’re still going to be better off than the person that just throws their hands up and is like, I just can’t do this. I’m not saying you have to jump on every cutting-edge tool. That’s not always the play. But you just got to be in the mix a little bit. You’re going to be better off than someone who’s not in the mix.
Carrie (35:56): Moving forward, every company is trying to figure out how we can invest a little more in training. How can we make sure we’re investing in tools that help people. We can’t pay for every tool for every person, so we’re figuring that out as we go. But the biggest thing to me is — let your manager know if you’re interested in a tool. I know Russell just paid for a lot of tools himself. You’re paying for those for your other business and learning how to use those tools. We’re not telling everybody to do that. But if you think there’s a tool you would learn, just make your case to your manager about why you want to use this particular tool.
Jason (36:55): That’s right. If there’s a case to be made — this is going to help me to be able to do X.
Carrie (37:03): Yeah.
Jason (37:04): It should sell itself. Honestly, it doesn’t even really matter what the cost is, if you can justify it.
Carrie (37:12): That’s on record.
Jason (37:14): As long as you can make the case — because this tool, and it costs X, is going to allow me to do Y.
Carrie (37:24): Yeah.
Jason (37:25): Then if the case can be made, it’ll at least be considered.
Russell (37:30): Something I would caution everybody — caution may not be the right word — but there’s a lot of companies out there right now that have a lot of motivation to get people to use their products. There’s a lot of people out there spending a lot of money on influencers to tell them about their products, good or bad. There’s a lot of great tools. There’s a lot of tools that are just being spun to sound great. So just use some caution. If you listen to a YouTube video and someone’s singing the praises of Hostinger — that’s one I’ll say.
Jason (38:12): I don’t know what that is.
Russell (38:14): It’s a hosting platform. Anyway, look at a couple more sources. See the cons. Because there is a lot of money getting pumped into this right now, and people are trying to swallow up the market.
Jason (38:30): I’m not saying go out and look for these AI tools. I’m talking about tools in general.
Russell (38:37): Well, if it’s —
Carrie (38:38): Like Claude versus Gemini versus GPT versus Grok, or whatever. Or a special tool, like I started experimenting with Opus for clipping video.
Russell (38:52): That’s one of the big ones. Stuff like media is going to be different tools. It’s not going to be Claude or whatever.
Carrie (39:03): So our media team is going to be like, these are the tools that I specifically am interested in. Designers may be the same. Devs the same. The agents or the AI that devs are using is typically not what our project managers are using. That’s going to continue to niche down as we go.
Russell (39:27): To a large extent. There’s going to be some collapsing and some niching. It may end up all collapsing. From what I understand, I think Claude wants their product to be the interface that goes and talks to QuickBooks. Like, you’re not logging into QuickBooks. You have this interface. This is where it interfaces with QuickBooks. You’re working through this single interface. I think that’s where they’re trying to position themselves. But who knows what’s going to happen.
Jason (40:18): Who knows? They want to work with the small business and figure out how to make their job easier. So they’re not trying to put the small business —
Carrie (40:29): Yeah.
Jason (40:30): Out of business.
Carrie (40:30): They literally just announced that they’re trying to do the opposite.
Russell (40:38): What that’s about is training. They have this enterprise product where they’re embedding people into these larger companies. That’s like on the huge enterprise scale. But they’re also now doing that for small businesses in a slightly different way. What’s kind of cool is they chose 10 cities, and Birmingham is one of those cities.
Carrie (41:13): That is pretty cool. Jason, as we wrap up, do you see a future where either Russell or somebody will do a similar thing with AI integration at the other companies?
Jason (41:28): Honestly, when we were talking about Russell, I was really thinking about him more or less with all three. He just happens to be employed by Infomedia at this point in time. But the idea is he’d be having these same conversations with folks at Uptick. There may be a time in the future where Russell says, hey, we’re going to need — I don’t know, because we don’t know what the future is. But there may be more there than one person can do.
Carrie (42:06): This gives us a flexible way to actually still get a bird’s eye view of what’s going on at each company. To make sure we’re sharing information and we’re not all reinventing the wheel everywhere. It helps us look toward the future without having to bring in an outside consultant, which would cost more than one of our salaries. We risk — are they pushing a certain product? Are they pushing their product and their service more than they’re really looking at what our companies are doing? This lets us have somebody who is kind of for our companies first.
Jason (43:08): Yeah.
Carrie (43:08): Can also vet those consultants and companies and say, yeah, they would be a really good fit for us, or maybe in six months but not right now.
Jason (43:16): Sure.
Carrie (43:17): All right. Well, thank you, guys, for coming on. Oh, I have an outro. That’s it for Office Hours with Jason Lovoy. Thank you for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.
Carrie: Thanks for listening. Thanks to both of you for coming on. I really love that we’ve been bringing more people from the companies on to Office Hours. So if you’re listening and you have a request for, I want to know more about this or that about your company or one of the other companies, we would love to cover it. Let me know. Thank you.