IRL - John Arnold 1
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Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Innovative Revenue Leader Podcast. I'm your host, Seth Mars. Join me as we deliver practical insights to help B2B CROs Find new and innovative ways to grow in this fast changing environment. The Innovative Revenue Leader is sponsored by Sandler, a triad company, empowering sales professionals and leaders to master the craft of selling at all levels.
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Innovative Revenue Leader podcast. I am, uh, I'm really happy to welcome back a good friend of mine. He's an AI go-to-market strategist, former principal analyst at Forrester in the B2B revenue marketing space. He's an innovator that I've worked with before when I was at Forrester.
Always really appreciated his opinion and his insights. He's a B2B marketing authority, published author. He's done pioneering research around AI, um, and, and worked with Fortune 500 companies on AI adoption. He spent over five years at [00:01:00] Forrester working with C, with, with C-level executives, Fortune 500 companies, talking about things like ABM, revenue marketing transformation.
We also did a lot of sales and marketing alignment work together. He invented Forrester's r- lifecycle revenue marketing methodology and served as a featured B2B summit keynote speaker at, at North America, EMEA, and APAC. He's also built and scaled strategic advisory practices and marketing teams across leading technology brands, including Adobe, Demandbase, FullContact, and Return Path.
Jon, so great to have you back on.
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah, good to see you, man. And, uh, I'm at a, I'm at a conference. I won't say the name of the person, the, the entity that's putting the conference on, so, but I hope the background noise isn't too bad here,
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: yeah, we really wanted to get to you and we wanted to squeeze this in because you've got a, you've got a cool report that's coming out that we're gonna talk to. So we're getting you kind of, um, in the moment sooner rather than later. So we'll put up with a little bit of background [00:02:00] noise to be able to get this, get this one out to, uh, to the listeners.
Be-before I start into kind of the report a little bit, I just-- there's a question we ask everybody, and I mean, for right now, what you're seeing, what's the, what's the most innovative thing you're seeing in B2B?
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Well, I mean, clearly it's AI, right? Uh, AI is, is not new.
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Little deeper, John.
Little deeper,
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: it's be- it's been around a long time, right? I mean, we've got-- we've had AI a long time. We haven't had generative AI and agentic AI, right? So agentic AI is what really everybody's talking about when, when it comes to go to market. You know, it's everything from, is this gonna replace some of those jobs all the way to, you know, how can we get the AI to work better with people or to, you know, reinvent the work that we're doing or transform the business?
So, you know, lots of different conversations at all different levels about that. So, um, I think the innovation is not actually the AI, the innovation is actually what companies are changing because of it. So that's the innovation
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Yeah. So [00:03:00] the, the way that it's being used and the way that you bring it to life in your companies
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah, you're not just deploying it. Like that's not the secret, right? You-- getting the AI, you can, you can get AI, you can buy AI, you can build AI agents, but what are you doing to the work, right? Because with go-to-market, people forget ROI doesn't come from AI, ROI comes from the business. ROI comes from what the business does. and so, you know, you're gonna apply
AI, And how you apply AI is becoming a strategy
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Yeah. And I mean, it, the, it's a, it's a great lead in because the rest of, the rest of our discussion is gonna be on the AI report that you're putting out around adoption. And one thing that's really cool about this is just the way that you have it set up is really, really interesting. It's insightful.
It's, it, I think it scratch a, scratches a layer deeper than what you typically see in these types of reports. So it's, it, I, I, I definitely plan to steal a lot of these data points [00:04:00] from you. So I wanna dig in. In the first area with this, I'm gonna start with, like one of the biggest fears that people have, right?
Is AI going to take my job, and what, what is that gonna look like? And the headline on this actually was really encouraging. 89% of companies expect AI to augment work compared to 9% saying that it's gonna, that it's gonna lead to a headcount reduction. I, I, I think that's a relief to a lot of people. One thing I found though is when you double-click into the year-over-year change, it's even, it's even more interesting.
So like creating capacity and growth jumped 10 points and moved ahead of augmenting teams with headcount changes. So that, uh, so you had creating capacity jumps 10 points, augmenting head- teams with major headcount changes drops 14 points. Can you talk through the difference between these two responses and why you, why you think a change like this would happen?
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah, it's super cool [00:05:00] that we're-- we've been doing this survey for two years and we d- we are able to kind of compare last year's answers to this year's answers. And, um, with, you know, six hundred and eight business and IT decision makers behind it, you know, you got some, some leeway to cut the data in different ways and everything.
So, um, so you can really kind of stare at this report, which
is pretty long. It's like forty plus pages of data. Um, and in this particular instance, you know, the, the number of, or the percentage of, of leaders that said that they were going to replace people with AI was eleven percent last year, only nine percent this year.
So despite all of the headlines that you might be reading about, you know, whether layoffs were due to AI and all of that, I think, you know, the conversations going on inside the enterprises that are adopting AI are much different than what's being talked about in the media. So it's a very small percentage, but I think the most meaningful change, as you pointed out, is like, last year a lot of, um, business and IT decision makers were saying they expected AI to augment people, right?
So we're not gonna replace them, but we are gonna augment people. There's this like people connection of AI [00:06:00] being that, that twin or that sort of, you know, companion tool that, that everybody is using and
it's augmenting your work. And that is still true. So we still see thirty-four percent saying that I- AI will augment and, and work directly. Um, but what emerged and what changed and grew even more was, um, greater capacity and growth from the AI and, and the cur-- for growth for the current staff, right? So one of the stats in there is we saw the, the percentage of people that said AI would create new jobs has doubled. that's a big response change. Um, and now we're seeing that agentic AI conversation emerge. So we see companies thinking about AI in terms of scale and capacity, and creating different work for people. So you're still augmenting the work, but you're augmenting potentially different work than you thought you were in the first place. Um, so lots of nuance in that, um, those findings, but, definitely you're seeing like an evolution of what [00:07:00] AI is good at, what AI is for, and how you're again applying that as a strategy.
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Yeah, 'cause I mean, it's really-- 'cause i-if you take the first one, like when you look at create capacity and growth for current staff, the natural inclination is to go to, that capacity would go to less staff or more, more work. But most people, up until probably a year ago, have been talking less. Do you, do you think there's anything to, like, just the, the o-overarching tenor of AI taking jobs having kind of permeated through where I would say a year ago everyone was talking about it, and now even like the top providers of AI are kind of moving away from that because they've realized that people don't like companies that say they're going to kill their job.
Uh, y- do you think there's anything to that? Because it kind of feels like in, to a certain extent, 'cause those first two, like the, the create capacity and augment are s- very, very similar, but it seems like the narratives have [00:08:00] more moved towards more a human plus approach versus last year it was more dooms, doom and gloom
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah. I think despite some new doom and gloom headlines that are floating around, you know, around the, the major providers.
But, um, but I think, uh, you know, shifting to what we see in the real world, you know, Creatio customers who are doing this stuff for real, you know, in the real world applying AI and automating things, um, I think what happens is you start with that first cycle, which is the easy low hanging fruit, which is to automate some of the work that either isn't automated today or not automated very effectively. And AI is a new way to do that. So you, you know, had traditional workflow automation before and applications and people, and that, that's all you had. Now you add AI to that, and it changes the equation. So you can either do more automation or more sophisticated automation right away, and there's a productivity gain that happens right away.
So think, you know, CFOs and FinOps was looking at that savings and saying, "Hey, this is great. You know, we saved some margin or we saved some like frontline operating expenses." And for some early part of, [00:09:00] of the, you know, evolution of AI, were just fine pocketing that. So they pocketed that in the form of, we're not gonna hire some, you know, people that we maybe would've hired as we grow the business, or maybe they did lay some people off or whatever. But I think that's shortsighted, right? And, and then once you've been through that, you can see right away that there's more potential than that. So instead of not hiring a person, why don't you hire a very efficient person, a very productive person, right? So you're adding that very productive person who's on top of this foundation of automation that you've built Um, so what we see at Creatio, which I think is unique to our platform, is that our customers automate the basic work, then they redeploy that savings and point it at growth and more efficient hiring.
So they're still, you know, keeping those people and adding people, but they're very efficient. Um, and they're, they're doing different work, right? They're doing things that grow the business. They're doing things that keep customers. They're doing things that, you know, [00:10:00] cause retention or cross-sell or upsell to happen. But then here's the crazy thing, is that that's not the end either. What you really wanna do is then automate the more sophisticated work. So it's kind of a three-step process. You know, automate the basic
stuff, redeploy the savings, and then automate, like re-automate. And that's a cycle because you can continue to expand that across the business.
And we actually named one of our products, um, uh, the product is 10X. So we're, we were on eight dot three or something when we, uh, got into, uh, uh, you know, naming, naming your release, um, with numbers, right? You go from version seven to version eight and all that. um, we decided to skip right over nine and go to 10.
And the reason why is because we saw companies automating a couple of workflows in this way, right? The basic automation, then redeploying the savings, and then advanced automation. they were achieving, you know, two X kind of productivity gains. then they were expanding that across the business. So you get two X productivity in sales, then you go to marketing, [00:11:00] then you go to service, then you go to field service, then you go to field sales, then you go to, you know, some back office or front office kind of operations. If you do that five times, now you're at 10X. You know, so we're like, 10X productivity is actually not out of the question. And, uh, and so we ended up naming the product 10X, which is, you know, that's because that's what it does. It, it 10Xs your productivity, but it has to do it in that very particular way.
It's not just, you know, increasing 10X of your output, um, but it's, it's doing all of those steps in the right order
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: It sounds like there's a couple nuggets with that one i-in like one is like year over year people realize, "Oh, this cutback idea actually kind of backfired on me. I could actually have done a lot more if I kept the intelligence of the people that I let go of and, and actually used them to ramp the business," which makes sense.
The other side of it that you're talking about is something that I think is important that a lot of people don't realize, right? Like all of us in our day-to-day jobs have a certain amount of work that [00:12:00] we have to do, and there's a bunch of that in there that is probably better done by an agent or someone else.
But all of us also have a layer two above it, a layer one of... Like layers above of things that we aspire to do, but we can never unlock them because we're so mired down in the must-dos of today. And I think what you're saying is companies have finally realized, "Wait a second, I can't, I can't just let people go.
If I just wanna stay at layer, at the bottom layer, I can let people go and tread water, but my comp-competition and others are moving to layer two, layer three. So I have to hire and excel if I wanna stay on the same plane as my competitors or potentially ideally go ahead."
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah. And that's why, you know, this survey is called the State of Enterprise AI Adoption, right? So, um, you know, a minimum number of people and saving a lot of productivity and maybe pocketing that savings is what small companies do, and that's what keeps you small, right? If you just wanna have one person run everything, if you're a company of one, you know, [00:13:00] um, that's where a lot of the, the chatter around AI, you know, reducing jobs is coming from, is those smaller companies who are trying to stay small and just sort of be super profitable little businesses. Um, but when it comes to the e-enterprise, you know, if you're gonna hire or, you know, maintain five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand employees, um, you know, you're not trying to the, the employee base. You're trying to grow. You're trying to grow your market share. You're trying to grow the entire business.
Um, so what you want is you want to grow your headcount, right? You wanna grow more people, but you just want those people to be super, super,
efficient. Um, when it comes to sales, for example, you know, salespeople might be able to have a quota um, you know, a million dollars per sales rep or something like that.
What if you could have a quota of two million dollars per sales rep? And you could say, "Well, that means fewer sales
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Yep
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: means two million dollars per sales rep and still hire more sales reps, right? So until you can't do that anymore, um, continue to have that mindset of
growing the business and growing the headcount
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Yeah, it make, it makes [00:14:00] sense. So, so like when you, when you looked at this maturity model, I, I really love the way that you put it together. You, you kinda set it up like in a, it based on five criteria, and then you graded them at stages. That, that approach is very different. Usually maturity models are one-dimensional.
I, I do my grade and that's the maturity model. What made you take that approach where you're doing like the five things that you need to do, but then you also s- you also have them at the stage level as well?
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah, we definitely saw in the survey data... So it's a pretty extensive survey. You know, like, we did a good job of, of formulating the questions. We were really cur- we're curious about the market and what it was representing. We weren't just going out and, like, creating one of these reports where it serves the vendor, right?
We didn't wanna have research that was just self-fulfilling and, you know, if you read our report, you're gonna conclude that you have to buy Creatio. Um, you know, our buyers are smarter than that. They're, they're IT professionals in large organizations, so they really wanna know. So, you know, we took that approach and, and because we took that approach, we were able to slice the data in a whole bunch of different ways. [00:15:00] um, so, uh, we looked at the behavior and the activities of some of these organizations, and we discovered that there's two dimensions where they adopt AI. One is depth and one is breadth. So on the depth side, um, we scored them with seven different criterias. They could achieve a score of one to seven in depth. Um, and there were things like, you know, using AI in your daily work or automating core processes with AI or, um, building and configuring AI agents. So we gave them one point each for those seven
things. And then on the breadth side, we looked at how many departments, you know, how are you rolling AI out across the organization?
So sales, marketing, service, customer success, software development, DevOps, IT operations. So you can get nine possible points there for a total of 16 points. So we saw that we could actually apply a score to these, these, um, organizations, uh, we ran that data and we found that 17% of the market is what we would define as an AI adoption leader in the [00:16:00] enterprise.
So the leaders are scoring 10 plus on that scale of one to 16, um, either on depth or breadth or both
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: Got it. So, like, if I'm using that maturity kind of pathway, right? Like, uh, the, the, it makes total sense and it also gives you a level that, that allows you to under- understand things better and understand your adoption level better. How do you know when you've moved to the next stage? 'Cause if you're at fully adopted at stage three, it's very different than fully adopted at stage five.
How do you kind of talk to people who are trying to work their way through that, making great project progress in the stage that they're in, but then moving over to that next stage or knowing when to move to that next stage in AI adoption?
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah, I think the breadth and the depth are actually the places to look, right? So are you, uh, broadly adopting AI? You know, the leaders that we found in the survey are, um, are spreading AI or embedding AI across the organization. It's, it's their organizational strategy is at the core of what they do. It's not just like, "Well, it's an [00:17:00] IT program," or, "It's a sales initiative," or it's, you know, something that we do in the back office. Um, it's actually all the way at the board level strategic. Uh, so it's, it's how they run. It's how they operate. Um, so, so there is no-- there's no f- there's no level five. There's level six, seven, eight, nine, ten. You know, they're just gonna keep on going until they maximize that. Um, and then, you know, again, on the, on the depth side, there's so many ways that you can apply AI. you know, it's not just that chatbot where you pull up a chatbot and ask it questions, and it gives you answers and, you know, it's your assistant. Uh, there's autonomous AI, you know, in the background for a lot of these organizations, and there's really no limit to the way that you can combine AI workflows, people, and applications together, right?
So that mix of different automation styles and types has, has no limit. It has no maturity, destination. It's just, um, the way work gets done and will get done in
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: this is just [00:18:00] gonna evolve over time. So you may keep the frame, but the definitions of the frame are gonna change every year as you do it. Like what your five criteria are will just continue to evolve and change, and you'll move up. It's almost like a pacing thing is y- your maturity map today is gonna be very different.
If you do nothing and you're the most mature per-- most mature company today, and you do nothing else, in a year from now, you'll slide down that into earlier stages because you're not keeping up with
new insights ways of using them
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: Yeah. I mean, it's moving so fast. Just to give you an example of how fast it was, last year we asked boards, we asked organizations, how many, of your, of your boards of directors, you know, are considering AI as a strategic investment? And back then, a, a year, just a year ago, um, eighty-six percent of organizations thought that AI would be a strategic concern within the next two to three years.
Okay? So they had kind of this three-year, three-year time horizon. One year later in the survey, [00:19:00] seventy-eight percent of organizations plan to scale AI across the organization within twelve months.
squadcaster-4078_1_10-19-2026_160926: That's insane
squadcaster-e108_1_10-19-2026_160925: it went from AI as a three-year kind of strategy to we're scaling within twelve months. Um, that's a pretty big change.
So, you know, yeah, if you sit still as a leader or as any, any organization that's sitting still on AI, um, you know, this, this philosophy of like the second mouse gets the cheese, that's not how AI is working. AI is working and furious. Um, and you've gotta do two things. You've gotta adopt and you've gotta, you know, push it forward, but you also have to have governance and you have to have a foundational layer of and, you know, governance, um, because that gives you the confidence to
scale. you're just throwing it at your organization, you know, it's not gonna... It's, it might scale, but it's not gonna scale well. And that's where you read the headlines about AI, um, causing some problems
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Okay, [00:20:00] so one of the counterintuitive things about this report was your focus on governance. So like, it, it's-- and the value of it being an unlock for AI value. I would say that the majority of people that are working with AI in their businesses would not categorize governance as an unlock for them. In a lot of cases, they're kind of mired in that.
So is this really about governance as the driver, or is it really about-- or is it more about the company that says governance can't get in the way, and I want to have a plan and I wanna consider it, but I'm not gonna let it stop what we're trying to do with AI, so you better work together type thing?
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. I mean, here's the thing about governance, right? IT wants everything kind of locked down and super safe and, you know, they want everything to, to work flawlessly, and security is a big, big deal, and, and as it should be, right? That's a good thing. Um, but then, uh, you know, sales, marketing, service, they wanna run ahead, they wanna serve the customer, they wanna get out and use AI, and AI can do all these [00:21:00] amazing things for them, and they're super excited about it, so they wanna move at the speed of light.
And you see that in some other data. We didn't talk about this in our survey, but I've seen other surveys that talk about how AI is sprawling in some organizations. You know, it sprawls because, um, people bring their o- their own AI and, you know, they are using Claude or ChatGPT, and they're bringing it to work.
It's on their phone, but it's not officially endorsed by the organization. Or, know, IT is running chasing that trend and, and they're adopting the Claude or ChatGPT accounts at the enterprise level, um, but they're, you know, struggling to govern it. They don't have any governance, um, model in place. So, uh, we wanted to know about that. You know, we were-- We wanted to know if governance was slowing organizations down. Is it, um, you know, are they concerned about it? And, and what we found is that twenty-nine percent of organizations have fully, what they call fully established governance. So not very many. And another forty-four percent are, are [00:22:00] partially established, so they're establishing this governance. But when we drilled into that and tried to decide, you know, what does that actually mean? Everything from like, you know, security reviews to risk assessments and AI usage policies, these are all things that companies are trying to implement. Um, there's a, there's a lot of, like, gaps in that. And it's because when companies go out and adopt these like large language model, um, frontier models, um, it's not on a platform that thinks about governance across systems or inside of workflows or, you know, in that go-to-market context. So it's just and it's, um, you know, you have to build that governance yourself or you have to wait for it to be built in that environment and, and that's really tricky.
So, the better model is, you know, you wanna have one platform, one technology foundation where everybody is building. So it works with Creatio, for example, is you have, uh, the ability for your sales marketing service people to build their own [00:23:00] agents with no code. So, um, and you can also build, uh, enterprise agents on the IT side of the house, and both of those do it on one platform.
So you're s- you know, you don't have AI sprawl, you actually solve AI sprawl because everyone's building on the same, on the same space. Um, and that governance does give you the confidence to scale and confidence to grow And move very, very quickly because now you know that you're not gonna, break something.
So also in the survey is, um, 59% of leader- leaders have established governance, of those, um, 71% of the fully established governance, um, organizations say they're very confident in scaling AI. So governance precedes confidence, and that precedes speed and scale, you know, and security
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. It, it, it makes sense logically. It's just, like, not the life most people lead when they think of governance. So it's, it's a useful insight and hopefully a broad insight that [00:24:00] you could take to, like, people could take to their leaders and go, "Look, governance isn't the problem. It's how we're handling governance that's the problem."
It could really be an unlock if this would be a work with us rather than try to shut us down situation.
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. And a lot of organizations are just cautious, you know,
and and that's okay. Um, but some aren't, you know, some are s- just moving forward. And then I think that's where you get these headlines that say, you know, the governance is, um, is in place or not in place and, you know, we're getting these huge AI bills or, you know, AI is not returning any value or AI is hacking into other people's computers or some of those headlines that you're reading.
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yep
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: you know, all of that is happening because organizations approach it differently. But in the enterprise, again, and this survey is all about enterprise organizations, um, they're all concerned with governance, um, especially like banks, financial services, healthcare companies, you know, some of the companies that we serve in those industries, um, governance is critical.
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. Okay, I got one more for you on the survey. [00:25:00] One thing that came out of it that is a, a point that you made is the next phase of value goes beyos- beyond time and cost. This is, like, a huge one for us. Like, one of the things that we believe is that the value of a seller is gonna become even more... It's gonna become even more important as a seller because of AI, 'cause it makes them more effective.
They- it's, it goes back to what you were saying before. Instead of a $1 million quota, you could potentially do a $2 million quota. So the value of a seller goes up in, in that, in, in that area because they are able to do significantly more, generate significantly more revenue. As marketing leader, do you agree?
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, that's the promise of AI to me is all about doing what people do best, right? So you think about the s- the sales rep's job, right? A sales rep's job is to build the relationship, to grow the relationship, and to turn that relationship into revenue for the company and, you know, a, a [00:26:00] long-term customer and value and all of that.
And if sales rep spends fifty percent of their time logging data into a CRM,
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Soul crushing
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah, that's not what they're built for, you know, for one thing. And for another thing, it's just not gonna create sales. It's creating, you know, work. Um, so what happens when that work just disappears? well, maybe you have more sales reps hitting quota, or maybe the quotas are higher, or maybe salespeople just enjoy their work a lot more, and the customer experience is better because of that too. So there's a lot of benefits. You know, there's soft and hard benefits in that. From the marketing perspective, you kind of have the same thing. You know, how many, check boxes and processes and handoffs are there in creating a, a campaign? You know, if marketing has to create a campaign and generate leads and, or run an event, the logistics that have to happen get that to, to go out are, are enormous.
And so, you know, think about what, how [00:27:00] marketers are wired. Marketers are wired to be creative and to, uh, you know, do new and interesting things and to design things and to think about the customer experience. if they're bogged down in all kinds of sign-offs and processes and approvals and dependencies, then that keeps them from doing the thing that they really, really enjoy.
So, know, my perfect world is where AI, you get out of bed every morning, you get to do the work that you love because AI's doing the other stuff
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. I think that that's the end state, the ideal end state for everybody. So let's shift a little bit and talk about, about you. So, uh, you and I have worked together on, um, as, as coworkers at Forrester on reports and, and presented together and, and done a lot of this work, and one thing that's very genuine about you is you love this stuff.
Like, you love this stuff. Like, being able to go in, strategically think about how these businesses run and grow is just a, a huge passion for you. When, when you were a kid, were there any indications that you'd be this nerdy about this type of stuff? Because, [00:28:00] like, a- a- any connection points that you can make
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: Uh, I think tot-totally, yes. Like, you know, um, anything new that comes out, I've always been all about new technology, new ways, um, trying new things, you know, doing things differently. Um, I've always been a person who likes to break the mold, break the frame, know, try a million different things and settle on one and, and all of that.
So, you know, AI being as new as it is, um, there hasn't been anything that's come along in my career that's been this big since, I don't know, maybe the internet or something like that. So, um, definitely I couldn't be more excited about it, because of the newness of it and because it's an opportunity for everybody to sort of learn this new way of working. Um, I say this a lot when I go out and speak. I say, you know, ask people to raise their hand, and I say, "How many of you remember what it was like to go to work and there were no computers?" And there's always a few people in the audience that are old [00:29:00] enough to remember that. You know, they'll say, "Yeah, yeah, I was there.
There was no computers." And, have a fun conversation about that. What did you do? You know, what did you do with paper and files and, you know, all this stuff? And, you know, work got done. And then I'll say, you know, "How many of you remember what it was like to come to work and there were no laptops? then there were no iPhones, you know, no smartphones." Um, and you know, a few more hands. But everybody remembers what it was like, unless it's like your first job ever, what it was like to come to work and there were no AI. Uh, there's no AI in your, in your business. There's no AI running anything, um, except maybe, you know, in, in some division of IT where there's, know, some AI running that's doing some back office stuff.
But, um, you know, today we have AI agents sort of everywhere, and it's something that everybody remembers not having, and everybody is figuring out together how this works and you can turn that into a strategy.
Um, so, so [00:30:00] that's super exciting. And, you know, every, every company is gonna compete in the future on how well their AI works together with people.
That's just the to me, um, in go-to-market.
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. See, you even turned a story about what you was like as a, as a kid into some, into a nerdy AI story. I We'll have one more for you. Um, one piece of advice you'd give yourself graduating college that, that you think would be valuable for you at, at that point in time
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: For me, graduating from college, man. Well, first of all, I probably would've stayed in college longer if I had to... Had to kind of quit and come back. So I'm, I'm a bit of an entrepreneur at heart, so, uh, even back then, starting a few businesses. So, you know, sticking with things is something that I would definitely, challenge myself to do.
But, um, you know, always, I think using technology and people, um, in, in some combination, [00:31:00] I think is, um, is the most important thing that you can learn about technology is its impact on people or how it relates to people.
And, uh, you know, so call me, call me a nerd or whatever, um, really not about the technology to me.
None of this is about the technology. It's really about people and how people use technology and how they take advantage of technology and, um, know, how they use that to improve our lives, pr- improve your business, yes, but ultimately we're all doing this to, um, you know, to make our lives better or to make something better.
Um, it's not just all about work. So as you can keep that perspective, um, you know, the earlier the better. The sooner you can get to that perspective, the better
squadcaster-4078_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah. That's awesome. As, as a fellow nerd, I, I completely agree. So, uh, yeah. Thank you very much, Jon. It's always great talking to you. I, uh, looking forward to having you back
squadcaster-e108_2_10-19-2026_163437: Yeah, you too, man. Sorry about the background noise in the conference, but, uh, hey, you know, conferences are of what I do, so it's hard to catch a [00:32:00] break. But I appreciate the conversation and, and all of the, uh, the insights that you've brought to light and your listeners too. It's great
Speaker: And that wraps up another episode. Thank you for joining. For show notes and other episodes, visit us@innovativerevenueleader.ai. The Innovative Revenue Leader is sponsored by Sandler, a Trilia company. Sandler provides top corporate sales and business development training while empowering sales professionals and leaders to master the graph of selling at all levels.