AI As Your Teammate: A Conversation With Evan Ryan

Gord Vickman: Welcome to the next episode of Podcast Payoffs. My name is Gord Vickman here with my pod partner, Dan Sullivan. Dan, we have a very special guest joining us on the show today.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, Evan Ryan, who I share a couple of things with him as we're both Ohioans. And so Ohioans are sort of the true secret conspiracy on the planet because they go far and wide. And Evan has agreed to join us from Italy today, in a beautiful spot of Italy, which he will describe when he comes on. And the reason why we feel so excited about having Evan on is that Evan is probably a sign of the future in many ways, because he's got deeply involved with artificial intelligence, probably right out of high school or college. So even though it seems new to a lot of people, it's been actually a decade for you of exploring the possibilities, especially the entrepreneurial possibilities of AI. He has a wonderful book, which we purchased and gave out to all of our clients, AI as Your Teammate. We had a discussion group, Babs and I have had a longstanding discussion group, and we made it the featured book for the discussion group, both in the case of my reading it and the case of our discussion group members reading it and discussing it, and then Evan made an offer we couldn't refuse that he could set up an actual program, a Zoom program, where he would take our entire team through six modules and kind of get their feet on the ground with this, not just from a knowledge standpoint and from a skill standpoint, but from an emotional and psychological standpoint, to actually say, you know, this is a new thing, probably a huge new thing, but you have to approach it like any other new thing that we've been encountering and then getting our sense of comfort about it in the technological world going back forever for most of our team members. And then Evan joined our Free Zone Program and did his first workshop. From all the evidence, he seemed to enjoy it. Anyway, so Evan, it's a real pleasure having you, and just to give a feel for our listeners, could you just talk about why, in your early 20s, you got so interested in this? Maybe even in your late teens, you got interested in this, and what was it that said, I think this is gonna be a big one? And I think you're fortunate that a lot of teenagers and 20-year-olds get interested in the big one, but then they have to go to rehab afterwards. And this has drug-like qualities, but the rest of your life is going to be rehab.

Evan Ryan: I think that that is the product of a great family and mentorship. But thanks for having me on. Always great to talk to in Ohio. I'm a Midwesterner. I think Ohio is one of the best kept secrets in the whole world. And my story with AI is really that I went to a technology conference when I was a senior in college. I just started my senior year of college. But before that, I was really good at science and I was great at technology, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And there was actually a note from my guidance counselor in my record at Ohio State for the day before I started classes as a freshman at Ohio State. And it said that Adam does not want to be a doctor anymore, but he doesn't know what he wants to do. So he's going to continue to study neuroscience, which was my undergraduate degree. I went to the technology conference when I was a senior in college, and they had this gentleman by the name of Jeremy Howard speaking. He, at the time, was the world number one ranked researcher in AI. And he was talking all about the stuff that you could do with AI back in 2016. But what kind of sparked my interest was, he had a company that could use AI to better diagnose cancer, I believe it was breast cancer, from CT scans and MRIs, than a team of board-certified doctors. And I thought, oh my gosh, if this is what you can do now, what you're going to be able to do by 2050 is going to be out of this world. The only problem was that I didn't know how to code. So the next day I discovered some coding programs and I taught myself how to code and the rest was history. Where I really fell in love with it, I think though, and where I decided to make a difference with AI, was that I have zero tolerance at all for boring things in my life. I like to do fun stuff and I like to do interesting stuff and I like to help people, but I don't like to do boring stuff. And when I realized that you could use AI and you could use automation to make your life less boring, that to me immediately sparked something. And here we are today. And yes, Free Zone was spectacular.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Then hook us to your entrepreneurial use of AI.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, so in my company, we only try to do one thing, which is use AI to free people up to do more creative, fascinating, motivating work. That's all. I think a lot of people think that technology happens to them. And now there's a new world that I'm forced to live within it. And for the most part, I think that that's true. For most people, they've never really taken an active role in the technology in their life. Maybe the most active role that they had was they decided to buy a new iPhone. But even the iPhone auto-updates its software, even your computer auto-updates its software. And our focus is really on helping every person inside of a company take an active role in making AI their teammate, making AI a partner that helps them accomplish more, get more done in less time, and I think be more and live more inside of their Unique Ability.
 
Gord Vickman: Evan, here on Podcast Payoffs, we cover the intersection of teamwork and technology. Dan handles the teamwork quite well. I do the technology to the best of my ability. The first question I wanted to ask you, now that we've established what you're all about, this may be self-evident, but I don't think it is. I'd like you to cover what AI is and also what it is not. Because I'm sure there are some people who believe that they know there's an AI that can play chess really well. They know there's this program that can answer all of your questions. But some people may be waiting or thinking that there's a button that you can push that says, automate my business because I'm going to the bar. And they're just waiting for that button. So I do believe that people know what AI is to a certain extent, entrepreneurs specifically, but also what AI is not in terms of its limitations right now. So start with what it is and then we can move on to what it's not. I think that will give some context for what we're going to talk about on this show and then on the next show that you'll be joining us on as well.
 
Evan Ryan: The way that I think about AI is to start with the business as a whole. There are, in my opinion, two kinds of problems that any business faces: a growing business problem or a dying business problem. And historically, growing businesses are businesses that are using their team, they're using their employees, they're using their teamwork in better, newer, innovative ways that ultimately create bigger and better value in the marketplace. And what AI is, is it's an enabler for that. So it's a tool that allows humans to do more creative stuff, more human stuff. It's a tool that allows humans to be less robotic in their lives. We define AI as a computer doing something that a human used to do. It doesn't matter how complicated it is or how simple it is. If we took something that a human was taking, that's a huge… What AI is not, is it's not a lifeline. So it's not a shiny object that's going to help a business that is not using their team well, that's not creating bigger and better value in the marketplace and transform them. And all of a sudden now they have this safety boat or this life raft that's kind of carrying them to shore and bringing in the age of abundance for businesses that aren't doing well already. So there is no way around using great people really well to create great value for your customers. AI is just a tool that enables that. It's not a replacement for the human.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, there's a couple jumps that I made in my mind. You know, I basically started coaching right when the concept of microchip was first being used. So this is 1973, and I started my coaching business in 1974, so it'll be 50 years next August. Several of the writers of articles I was reading said, this is probably the most significant invention in human history from this standpoint. One is that all existing inventions can be continually upgraded with the application of microchips. And the other thing is the microchips can be used to make even more powerful microchips. And it's that double combination of multipliers that it can multiply everything that already exists, but it can also be used to constantly enhance its own usefulness at higher and higher levels. So if you start with that 50-year-old framework and apply it to now, it seems to apply the same way.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, so I think where humans are really great, or have been really great historically, is in bringing intelligence to the equation. It's in taking something that can't think and then helping it think better, or using it in a new way. Where artificial intelligence is really valuable is it eliminates, or it makes it so that you can add intelligence without needing to add humans. But what artificial intelligence is not, it's not artificial wisdom. The human element of that wisdom and of that creativity is really, really crucial to continuing to create better value. But having the augmented intelligence in there is really helpful as well. That's what's freeing up the humans.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So from the standpoint of your own use of it, I mean, you probably have a game plan for yourself, to continually be upgrading Evan Ryan's use of AI, but also just Evan Ryan's usefulness, period, as a person and as a team leader because you have your own company, and then your clients. So how do you approach it? Because it seems to be like the microchip, which I think really set the framework for this. I think that if I'm looking at it from your standpoint, the life that you have ahead of you is that you realize that this is an endless project. There isn't a point when you get to the point where, okay, now we're on top of this technology.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, it's sort of strange being in an industry where I feel like I have to upskill myself and my company about once a week. But in reality, our process is quite simple for me and for everybody else in the company, which is pay attention to everything that you do, especially to the stuff that you don't like. And let's work on figuring out how we can get that off of your plate. And so in my world, I spend a lot of time paying attention to stuff that I don't like to do and figuring out either how can I delegate that or elevate that or how can I automate that if I can. But also, how can I be continually taking stuff off of my employees' plates and off of my teammates' plates? Yeah. That way, they can be creating bigger and better value. So I really feel like inside of my organization, my primary role is to free up the rest of the team so they can be carrying us into the future doing bigger and better stuff.
 
Dan Sullivan: And you have an interesting project which you shared at your last workshop, I think we were just in a breakout group and I was chatting with you, and you said that you have a quantitative goal of freeing up a million work hours.
 
Evan Ryan: 10 million, 10 million work hours. So our kind of big moonshot is to take 10 million hours of boring, repetitive, mundane work and hand that over to the computers. Right. And it's been quite focusing so far.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. Would you mind sharing where you are number wise along the way? What's the milestone right now?
 
Evan Ryan: Right now, right now, 115,000 hours. 115,000. 115,000. Yes. But the number has been more than doubling every year. So I'm looking forward to seeing how next year goes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, that's not many doublings. That's not many doublings. Just reflecting on your experience, the six-module experience with the Strategic Coach team, one is, what's gone pretty well the way you thought it was going to be, and what's surprised you? Because ours is a fairly large team. We're not a small company. We're what's called a midsize company. Yeah. So what went just the way that you expected it to go and what kind of changed some of your thinking about how you do this with a fairly good-sized team?
 
Evan Ryan: With Strategic Coach, what we expected with most clients, they grow and grow and grow over time. And they hire people first and foremost to put out a fire that exists in their business. It's like, I've got a problem. I'm going to hire you and you're going to solve the problem. And they invent processes. They invent ways of doing business that they never go back and readdress. And so with most clients, it's pretty easy to be a hero because you go back to some of the processes that they invented 10, 15, 20 years ago. And you say, well, why do you do it this way? And usually their answer is, I have no idea. But with Strategic Coach, there's such a culture around Unique Ability Teamwork that we had a feeling already, and the teamwork is so advanced, we had a feeling already that there wasn't a lot of that that was going to be happening. Which that was really, I think, quite refreshing. And the more mid-sized businesses that we work with, the more that we actually see that that happens, which is not the case with large businesses. And with large businesses, it usually goes back. But the biggest surprise, I thought, was a certain level of timidness in our first session with the Strategic Coach team. The Strategic Coach team cares so deeply about the client experience, about the way that they're delivering the value that they deliver, the way that they're being a hero to the Strategic Coach clientele. And I think they were really sort of timid about making sure that AI is used in the right way. And that instead of AI happening to Strategic Coach, or AI becoming the culture of Strategic Coach, the already sound culture of Coach can utilize AI to become 10 times or 100 times bigger. And watching the transformation between the first session and the sixth session was really, I think, personally magical, because we went from most people being very afraid, having a lot of uncertainty about AI, to many, many, many people in the organization running continuous experiments with AI. How can we be automating this? How can we be using stuff better? And my hearing about it through the grapevine from the lowest levels of the organization all the way up to the senior leadership, AI was not really a thought beforehand. And now people are continually experimenting with it to find new ways to offload stuff that they were doing before.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, one of the things that if you can just extend an existing concept in Coach, which is Who Not How, that basically it's not really putting out fires. There are unusual circumstances that come up, but usually they're not internally generated crises. They're usually that something's changed in the world and we have to adjust to it because it's affecting our client base. Okay, so for example, right now there's a, what's being called, and I've heard it called this about four or five times in the last month, a venture winter, a venture capital winter that basically venture capital has I would say up to 90% disappeared as just a normal capability that people would have when they are expanding, when they're bringing out a new innovation, where America is the greatest capitalizing economy in the world. In other words, from a new idea to an actual new product in the marketplace is the shortest span of any country in the world, just generally. I mean, other countries will focus on a particular innovation and they'll throw everything behind it. China does this. But the United States is just happening in a million different places for different reasons on the same day. But the Who Not How, when I first heard you talk, I said, well, this is just another Who. AI is just another Who that you're bringing in. And it's a custom-designable Who, that regardless of what the activity is, that you can immediately identify the part of the activity that the person really wants to do, the person really loves doing, the person is really skilled at. And then there's what is left over. Gee, I wish somebody else could have that. And I'll look for a Who can actually love doing that. But here it's not a question of love. The AI loves doing everything. I mean, if AI could love, it loves doing anything and it loves doing everything.
 
Gord Vickman: I'm sure those robots are coming any day now. The AI love robots. There's plenty of perverts out there who are looking for the human element.
 
Dan Sullivan: So just reflect on that. Just seeing that AI is just a constant, increasingly useful Who going into your future, but you're the one who has to say that.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, you have to take the active role. And a lot of times the way that I try to kind of convey this concept is, who would you hire if you had a budget to hire somebody to be your assistant? Or what's the stuff that you would offload if you had a budget to hire an assistant for 40 hours a week? Okay, you have no budget, but we still want to offload that stuff. And usually all of a sudden everybody thinks, oh, this is great. This is going to be just like a teammate, except I don't have to delegate to it. And it never takes a vacation. It never asks for a raise, that kind of stuff. But in our opinion, the way that we're using it, it's not something that's going to take over the world. That's going to render the humans obsolete. It's a Who that's enabling the humans to do more, just like electricity enables machines to be faster, better, bigger.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or entirely new machines.
 
Evan Ryan: Yes.
 
Gord Vickman: Evan, the way that you structured your work with Strategic Coach, this is something that our listeners can steal if you're an entrepreneur or an individual. The way that you structured it, I thought, was very interesting because when you came in, you weren't trying to sort of ram it into areas where it didn't fit. You were asking individuals, look, you identify the inefficiencies. You tell me what you don't want to do anymore or what is boring or what is not interesting to you. So when you think about learning programs, so for me it was as an audio professional, Pro Tools and Adobe Audition. 20 years ago I said to myself, I'm going to learn this audio editing software, DAW they call them, Digital Audio Workstation. So if an occasion should arise at any point in the future that I want to fix an audio clip, I will know how to do that. When you're approaching these AI tools, because it seems like there's just a limitless volume of them out there, to say to yourself, I'm going to learn AI tools, so if an occasion should arise that I need to use an AI tool, I'm going to have the capability to do that. But you flipped it around, and it works in a different way. You identify the problem first, and then you go and find the correct AI tool that will solve that problem for you. It's not just having that capability and having the knowledge of that software sort of in your backpack, so to speak. It's find the problem first and then go and find the tool that's going to solve that, which is sort of backwards to how most software learning was done in the past. Was that a conscious thing or was that something you just figured out right off the start?
 
Evan Ryan: It came from the fact that I didn't want to do some stuff anymore. And I became fed up with doing those activities. And I said, I need to find another way. But at the time, I didn't have any money. So there was really only one way that was going to be able to do it, which was a computer. But I think I'm taking this quote from Steve Jobs, but I think it is apropos to the situation, which is that the best way to kind of release any technology into the world is to start with the transformation that you want to see and then work backwards to what technology is needed. Otherwise, you end up being a solution that's in search of a problem. And usually that's only going to get you a 50% or an 80% solution to a 100% problem.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and usually you get a lot of hit and run situations where there's casualties when you have a fully-fledged solution that starts costing other people, you know. Just with reference to going to look for a tool, how do you keep track of the tools that might be useful? Or do you just take account of what's the next tool that's actually needed and that just adds to your inventory?
 
Evan Ryan: So I go through a process of continually expanding tools for a period of time, and then I kind of contract, and I go back, and we narrow down. But the way that I find tools is I'll have a problem. And I think the most effective way to do it is I'll go to an AI tool called Perplexio AI, which operates exactly like ChatGPT, except it can search the internet. So I'll say, I have this problem, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What are some tools that can help me solve this? And then the AI goes out and it finds all sorts of tools for me. But we keep a running list inside of our business of the technology that we're using and why we're using it. And then on a quarterly or a semi-annual basis, we'll go back and we'll say, does the use case for the technology continue to fit our needs, yes or no? And if it doesn't, then we'll stop using it and we'll go find something else that does fit our future needs.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. So if you just took a rough guess, let's say a quarter, three months, what would you say that just as a natural course, these are the number of new tools that will generally get added because of the various projects that we're working on, because you have a team and you're working on projects, they're working on projects. But if you had to add, just to get a quantitative sense of this, just a rough quarter, not especially dynamic quarter, but just a business as usual—not that your business is usual, but you have a normal sense of what a quarter is in your business right now—so how many new tools would be added that would be significant for ongoing use?
 
Evan Ryan: We probably add or test 10 tools in a quarter, but we will only keep two or three. One of the interesting things that I found with the tools that we keep is those tools work in the background and they send us a note if something looks funny. So instead of us needing to log into a tool, we're not going from website to website to website to website to website to website. We're instead trying to find tools that make it so that we don't have to access any of the websites anymore. And they're just sort of taking it on for us. So we usually keep the tools that we don't have to manage. They are kind of self-managing AI tools. But what I will say is that everybody in the company, it's only an estimate because everybody in the company has a budget that they can use to find and test out and try new AI tools, and so there are a lot of tools that I'm sure the team is using, but I have no idea, but my message to them was, if you can find something that saves you at least an hour a month, we're going to buy the tool.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And then is there a little sort of seminar or workshop where the person who was most interested in the tool and find it most useful where they demonstrate to the other team members?
 
Evan Ryan: Yes, there is. But that stays pretty much within the functional groups. So a developer is not necessarily going to be talking to the sales team or the marketing team about a tool that they found. But we do definitely have… When somebody experiences something that they think could alter the course of work for somebody else, then definitely there's a presentation or there's going to be a video sent out on what's happening, why it's happening, and how it's useful.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I'd like to share an experience here. One is that I got to college late. So I was five years after graduation when I finally started the four-year college that I actually stuck with. And it was an unusual college which exists in its exact same form today as it did in 1967 when I started. And it was the Great Books College, St. John's. And all you did for four years is read and discuss the great books of the Western world. Some of them are great and some of them are very good. And some of them are, from my standpoint, I could have missed them and not been penalized for missing them. But the reason I'm asking you this, because the process that you seem to be talking about here in the development of tool knowledge seems to be very, very similar to how ideas have developed over, I think the first book was 800 BC., and that was Homer, and then there was the Greek philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, and then there were the mathematicians like Euclid. But it really strikes me that the process that you're already describing has taken place since your senior year in college, takes on the example that one idea creates a new idea, and then another idea, what I would call a meta-idea, comes along and it takes all the discrete ideas and it starts forming them into an approach or a philosophy or a methodology. So it seems to me that this is just following the way in which ideas connect with each other and create new ideas.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, it's a little bit like the scientific method in that way. We're just going to have a new idea. We'll test it out. If we like it, we'll continue on. And if we don't, we throw it away and try something else.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. So it's very, very interesting that it's not so much technology is being developed here as intelligence is being developed here.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, and there's something to be said, I think, for the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yeah. And so it's the same process that was followed by the Greeks and by the Romans just applied to a new domain.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I often say that smart is smart and that the smartest people 2,500 years ago in relationship to their environment are just as smart as the smartest people today. And some of them a bit smarter, you know, some of them are a bit smarter. I mean, Aristotle is probably quoted a million times a day somewhere on the planet, and he's been in the grave for a couple of millennia and more. Gord, can you talk, because we've been discussing it ever since you became a manager, that I gave you complete freedom to investigate new tools that would enhance the production of our podcast, that would make it easier for you to process from recording to release into the public. Could you sort of tell Evan what your mini biography here just related to the subject of artificial intelligence has been.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah, so I oversee the production process. We have a wonderful team here at Strategic coach. We have an audio engineer, Willard Bond, who does our editing. We have writers and we have those who handle the websites. If there's a problem, no one's coming to save me. So I'm the one that gets reached out to if there's a problem and I just have to fix it, find the Who that's going to help me fix that problem. That's the general biography. So there's elements of podcast production. For example, this show is going to get notes and everything that you mentioned, Evan, everything that you mentioned, Dan, if there's a link or some resource we can direct people to, that will be included in the notes. You just tap more, depending on where you're listening to this, Apple, Spotify or on the website. There are AI programs right now where you drop your audio in, it transcribes it for you, it will give you a summary of it, it will give you bullet points, it will write a blog for you, it will give you your socials, and then there's built-in agents. If it did not give you something you're looking for, you go back in using prompts and it will give you those pieces. So our writers are using those tools. We have AI audio assistance in terms of editing. We just discovered these recently. Of course there's those that, I shouldn't say of course, maybe you don't know, but there are programs out there right now where you can edit audio by editing text. Just as simple as you would edit a Microsoft Word document, it will translate that into the audio. And then there are other programs that you can do your first pass on a file to take out non-words, ums, ahs, dead air, any kind of grunting or moaning, you can isolate that. So our eyes are open because, as we sort of mentioned earlier on, we wanted to cut down the time spent in terms of the production process. So we found the tool to do that to help us with the notes. We wanted to cut down on the time spent in the editing suite. So we found an AI to do that. It was starting with the problem and then working backwards. And they're always getting better. You know, some of them are a little clumsy right now because they're just out of beta but as the years go on and as they refine these tools it's going to cut down on the things that people do not like to do which will allow us to be more creative, more fun, and do more interesting things with the podcast production process, saving time, allowing us to do more fun stuff. It was never about shaving away billable hours of people on the team or freaking anybody out. It's, I've been editing audio and producing audio pieces, fixing poor quality audio for two decades. And I know that there are elements of that job that are just not a lot of fun. It's the same thing every time. So if you can get some tool that will allow you to wipe that off your plate, then it opens up your creativity and allows you to do the more fun things.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, Gord, just tell Evan about your trip to Denver at the annual big conference for podcasting.
 
Gord Vickman: So there's a big podcast conference, I will not mention the name because I don't want to harm the innocent. One of the things that I found surprising was how little of the 150 or so speakers mentioned AI. I thought it was startling.
 
Dan Sullivan: And this is not before November of last year when ChatGPT came out, but this was within the last six weeks, really. I mean, it's probably two months, maybe.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah, I thought it would have been a fantastic conference in 2018. It was startling how few of them were mentioning AI. And I did attend the speaker sessions that mentioned AI. Some of them were just mind-blowing. But I believe that this is a common refrain. A lot of people that I spoke to, you know, we do a little post-mortem with people in the industry, and a lot of them were quite surprised at how few people actually mentioned AI in those presentations. It is the Mack truck loaded with steel barreling towards the industry, and you're either going to be on board or you're going to get run over.
 
Evan Ryan: Why do you think that is? Do you think it was because they didn't have a framework for thinking about it or using it? Or are they afraid? Or is there a different reason?
 
Gord Vickman: Great question. I wish I knew the answer definitively. I think maybe they're just a little bit behind the times. Maybe they haven't taken the time to investigate. Maybe there are people who are stuck in their ways. Maybe they don't want to change because change would involve some element of shifting in employment status. But it's a good question. I wish I could get inside their brains and answer that question.
 
Evan Ryan: I asked because I'm curious about the business model of some of those people. Because I've seen that a lot of the people that have been very resistant to AI are those that don't want to optimize their workflows. Their incentives are different than the incentives of the people who are writing them the check. Their incentive is to optimize the number of billable hours. And so all of a sudden, you have all these reasons why the AI is not going to work, or why they're not going to be able to implement it, or it's not good enough, or it's not the way that I would do it. And so I was curious if you followed the money a little bit, is that what's happening?
 
Gord Vickman: I don't think you're too far off. I think optimization for those who are paid by the hour is a frightening prospect. And maybe we're on to something here. Yeah. Or maybe they're just scared of robots. I have no idea.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think it all depends upon what the role of podcasting is for your company. I mean, if it is your company, that's one thing, but podcasting is not the business of our company. Podcasting is a lead tool to establish a relationship with people who might be interested in Strategic Coach to actually write a check and sign up for the program. For example, there's a workshop here in Toronto, and I walked in because I wanted a bagel. You know, I got my bagel and cream cheese, and everybody came up to me. You know, it's a Signature-Level Program. It's not a 10-times Program. And everybody came up to me, and they said, I'm listening to you from morning till night. And about five of them, it was the first time they had met me. And they came up to me, and they said, the moment you started talking, I could tell that this is the voice that I'm listening to from morning till night. I'm in the car. Kids are saying, Dad, please, we're not going to have to listen to that guy anymore. So our whole point with our podcast, we don't have a business model as such for the podcasting, is simply a connector around the world, which has increased enormously since COVID, because the vast majority of our podcasts are specifically on Zoom. And we have relationships all over the world, and they keep getting deeper, they keep getting more expansive, because people say, I'm listening to the greatest series of podcasts. Plus, we have eight podcast series, so all except one is a partner. So I have seven partners on my podcast. So we're looking for anything that extends our reach Front Stage. And in order to do that, I think Gord is saying, how do we minimize our time and effort backstage to increase our reach Front Stage?
 
Gord Vickman: Yep. Couldn't have said it better myself. That's what we're trying to do. And I think, you know, that's an overarching theme for all AI, as far as I know, but Evan, you're the expert. It's getting rid of the things that are not fun to do to create more time, more space, and more creativity for the human.
 
Evan Ryan: Well, Gord, I'll ask you real quick. So since you started using these tools, let's call it two years ago to now, do you have an estimation on the amount of time that you have eliminated every month? And then secondly, what's the impact of that been?
 
Gord Vickman: I think I would have to confer with the writers to know how much time they're actually saving and also with our engineer to learn how much time he's actually saving. But if I had to guess, let's just say a dozen hours a month. And in addition to that, I think one of the things that the A.I. is accomplishing is you have writers and you have the A.I. So the A.I. is creating the bullet points and the summary of these things. The A.I. may pull out something that is interesting or introspective about the show that the writer might have missed because they're scanning a transcript. Right. So the A.I. might identify something. So I think the A.I. is educating the writers and the writers are educating the AI at the same time. So it's everybody's benefiting from the relationship. That's how I perceive it. I hope they enjoy using the tools. I hope they don't see it as something that once again is going to be, you know, taking away from their output. But I think that what the programs give us back, I like to think that it is freeing up time for them to do the things that they really enjoy doing.
 
Dan Sullivan: I want to offer you a possibility if you haven't already done it, Evan. This is in another realm of my life, but as you know, I'm very committed to life extension. I'm very, very committed to age reversal for personal reasons. And I think one of my overriding reasons is that I noticed that entrepreneurs tend to think about retirement when they're at the top of their game. They're 60, 65, and they said, well, I've done good, and I stopped my game. And I said, well, what if we could extend you at the top of your game for another 10 years, another 20 years, another 25 years? What would your total economic reward be if at the top of your game, you could acquire a capability that would keep you energetic, motivated, ambitious for another 20 years, right where you are now? And that was a sale that we made 30 years ago. But we've had to really, really get people, force them to get interested in the future. We've had to, to a certain extent, nudge them and persuade them that, you know, the projects that you're going to be taking on next year, if you don't retire, are going to be bigger than anything you did up until now. So that's been a sale, but it seems to me that AI fits in very well. So anyway, the catch of this story, Act 3 of this story, I'm telling you, is that I'm at a clinic, and you know the man, and I think he was in a breakout group with us at the last workshop, David Haase, and Babs and I have spent about $3 million just investigating for the last 30 years of cutting-edge health and fitness techniques, especially repairing your body, rejuvenating your cells. And unbeknownst to me, David Haase has a series of blood test companies that he sends my tests to with my permission. And one of them is called True Diagnostic, and they, I think, are massively using AI. And what they do is they can identify specifically the rate at which you're reversing your age, okay? I don't know if you read it, but he's been in the news for about probably the last six weeks, a man by the name of Brian Johnson. He was one of the founders of Braintree, which at a certain point he sold for $800 million, which, you know, at probably about age 40. Very interesting, he realized that his mania… because if you see him, you realize that he's maniacal about the way he goes about things. He said, you know, I've done this at the cost of my health and fitness. He says, I've sort of ruined my body. And now what I do is I want to now reverse my age, you know, he talks about being immortal. I just think that's not an accessible goal, but reversing your age is an accessible goal. So he created an Olympics. It's called Rejuvenation Olympics. He did it in collaboration with this testing service called True Diagnostic. So David Haase had been submitting my blood tests and Babs' blood tests to this organization for, you know, the reports he got back. And they said, you know, if you would ask your clients to actually give us the permission, we'll show them their rates in the Rejuvenation Olympics. Okay. And so the first report that we got back came back out of 1,300 people who've signed up. I'm number one. I'm showing the fastest age of reversing that we can. I'll just wait here for applause and shouts and everything. Anyway, but the reason I'm saying you're 10 million freed up, I would suggest to you that to get your clients who you are working with, create a thing called the Freed-Up Olympics where you issue reports. And I mean, it's their say so that they freed it up, but they'll have a goal every month of sending you their freed-up numbers.
 
Evan Ryan: That is spectacular. Absolutely spectacular. I've been searching for something like that. We had the goal and that's public, but I've been searching for something like that to make it really engaging and really incentivize everybody to join in and see how big it can get. I love it. I absolutely love it. I've been considering starting a podcast. I might call it the Freedom at the Olympics. Yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: So thank you for that. Yeah, because I'm not really that competitive. I differentiate rather than compete. But I'm noticing, because I've had the news now for about three weeks, and I told David, I said, I'm number one, and you lay out the game plan where I always stay number one. The founder of the Olympics, Brian Johnson, is number six. He's number six. And I said, I always want to stay ahead of this guy. Yeah, but it seems to me that unbeknowingly, we've structured Strategic Coach over the last 30 years. By the way, our next book is called Everyone, Everything Grows, and it's the next quarterly book, and I'm describing the entire culture of Strategic Coach backstage and how we've done it since 1989. And it just seems to me that our company involved in the Freed-Up Time Olympics, Evan Ryan's Freed-Up Olympics, I just think it would add a little sizzle to our culture.
 
Evan Ryan: Oh, I absolutely love this. That is such a wonderful idea. I can't wait to get started. I'll be on the phone right after this.
 
Dan Sullivan: So we can expect this Monday?
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, Monday or Tuesday of next week.
 
Gord Vickman: Send the check. Send the check.
 
Dan Sullivan: You know your own pricing mechanisms, how you go about pricing, but you know the people who would, right off the bat, who would be interested in this, including ourselves. And I just think it would give a measurable for people's system-wide commitment, our company-wide commitment, that it would enter into the leadership. How many hours did you free up this week? How many hours did you free up this month? How many hours did you free up? And this would be posted internally. And you might think that as part of your Olympics, that you would create a scorecard, an internal scorecard for each of the contestants so that they can do it. And then they would know their number against all the other companies.
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah. If you hear me start furiously typing, it's because I realize, oh, no, I need to be taking all these notes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, we'll give you the recording of this. Oh, thank you. Yeah. But it just strikes me that everything else you've done seems to point in this direction. But when you mentioned your goal, I said, well, just gamify your goal.
 
Evan Ryan: I did not know that there was a Rejuvenation Olympics going on. I follow Brian, but I didn't know there was a Rejuvenation Olympics going on. It's the perfect way to incentivize everybody. Yeah. Otherwise it's just a guy doing workouts.
 
Dan Sullivan: Plus it's the American way. Right.
 
Evan Ryan: The moment it becomes a competition, it becomes really American.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. We love measurement. I mean, a lot of this is qualitative, but somewhere along the line, your qualitatives have to turn into quantifiables. You know, they have to be measurable quantifiables. I mean, just start there and your brain will go crazy because it has all sorts of offshoots to it. It just struck me that there's a great psychological impact, emotional impact. I've just been living with my number one status for about three months and I said, I just said, you know, okay, I've got a goal. I'm always number one.
 
Evan Ryan: So have you extended the lead since, you know, how often do they update it?
 
Dan Sullivan: Quarterly, it'll be quarterly, so. Oh, so we're gonna find out here soon. Last quarter just came out three months ago. So things like getting the stem cell treatments and everything else, that would be part of it because this shows up in your tests. If you take a whole area of your body where the cells aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing and suddenly they start doing, it shows up in all your other tests, it shows up in your neurological tests, it shows up in many, many different health tests. But it seems to me that this is a neat intersection between AI and healthcare and health fitness.
 
Evan Ryan: I absolutely love it.
 
Gord Vickman: I can't wait. James, let's wrap this one. Evan, you can stick with us for one more episode? Yeah. Evan, where can people find you, find out more about you, hear about your company, learn more about what you're doing?
 
Evan Ryan: Yeah, you can find us at teammateai.com or you can check out my book, AI As Your Teammate, which you can purchase on Amazon.
 
Gord Vickman: Very cool. Dan, any final thoughts?
 
Dan Sullivan: What's really interesting, I consider it a rare pleasure that one is I've met someone who really, really started this probably almost as early as you can with the proper education to go forward and to kind of be able to track your progress, your entrepreneurial progress, and your thinking progress, Evan, because this is totally new territory. Everybody who's doing this is essentially a cartographer for people who can follow behind your map making here. But yours is a unique one because everybody's focusing still on the sole individual and what the sole individual can do. But you started off in the proper place, I think, with teamwork. The multiplier here is in teamwork.
 
Evan Ryan: Well, thanks. And thanks to you and to the Strategic Coach team for helping form some of that, because I felt lucky to be able to join Coach so early and be able to have some of the formative thoughts, the formative ideas come so early on. So, yeah, thank you.
 
Gord Vickman: Thanks for joining us today, Evan.
 
Evan Ryan: Thank you