Unveiling AI's Transformative Power with Isar Meitis and Mark Latimer on The AI Training Podcast

Hello, hello and welcome to another thrilling episode of the AI Training podcast. I'm your host, Mark Latimer, founder of Grateful AI, and I'm super excited to have you with us today. A huge shout out to our incredible audience. Your support and enthusiasm make this show what it is, and I'm truly grateful for each and every one of you. Remember, you can catch all of our episodes at OpenAI training. And if you're not following us on YouTube and Instagram at OpenAI training yet, what are you waiting for? Go hit the follow button right now to get the latest in AI Insights. Now, today's episode is a special one. We're joined by a phenomenal guest, the one and only Isar Mitus, CEO of multiplay AI. Esar isn't just any CEO.

He is a three time CEO with a remarkable track record in b to b, b to C services, defense, and ecommerce. Talk about a diverse portfolio. And get this, he even scaled one of his businesses to a staggering hundred million dollars. Esar is here to blend his rich knowledge of real world experience in AI business growth, and he's going to offer some real insights that are nothing short of gold. So whether you're here for the AI deep dives, the business strategies, or just to hear from some of the brightest minds in the industry, you're in for a real treat. Stay tuned till the very end as we have some incredible new AI tools to share with you. You will not want to miss this. Without further ado, let's dive into today's episode with Esar Maitas. Let's get this show on the road.

All right, how have you been?

Busy.

The more important thing, how is the bass practice?

Getting better. Getting better. I didn't get a chance to play this past week because I was running like a madman. But I'm loving every minute that I do get to play

That's amazing. I've been playing enough for the both of us lately.

Awesome. Good for you.

Singing every day. And yeah, even last night I had three songs I got to sing and it's all original. So it's been very heart opening and just very grateful to be here, but also super appreciative of your time and so happy to get a chance to talk to you. I know you're doing really interesting work in AI and I normally follow a format of ten questions, and because they're great questions, it's really easy to get a lot out of it. So I'm going to stick to those ten. I've probably interviewed at least 100 people with these same questions. So we're looking at a larger data set, and some of them I interviewed nine years ago. So the first one's really easy. Please share who you are and what you do.

Okay, so my name isar Matis and I am AI educator. Let's put it this way, I help companies figure out AI in multiple education ways. I have a podcast that is free. I have courses that I teach either closed groups or open to the public that people can join. I speak in conference on conferences, both virtual and live conferences, and I consult to companies. So various types of education.

I love it. I've always been a huge fan of education and what a great opportunity we have right now to learn about something and share it with people who may not have been presented the same information in just the right way. And you're going to articulate different than, say, somebody else would based on your experience, of course. Yeah, it's really quite interesting.

For me, the interesting thing is, this is the fourth company I'm running, and most of them were tech companies. And so most of my career I held leadership positions in tech startups. And so when I look at this whole thing is very much through the lens of a CEO of a company, and how can I transform a business using this? So, while I love all the use cases, I look at it a lot more from a holistic approach of business, like a cross business, multifunctional systems processes. People like, how do you actually implement this versus, oh, here's a cool use case that I can do tomorrow. And I think the right combination is basically both these things together. It's like finding low hanging fruits and doing them, but also figuring out from a business perspective, how do you approach this from a strategic approach?

Yeah, it's interesting the way robotic process automation dovetails with AI and process discovery. I used to work for a company called Tangentia, and they're a big IBM partner, but they transition, like many companies, into bot building and RPA partners with some of the big guys. And it's just very interesting how training people to be more educated about how these systems work allow them to have the light bulb moments to say, oh, here we go, this is the opportunity. Because without the education, you could be sitting on a 20% cost savings for your business. You can't connect the dots. So, yeah, the upside is huge with education. Okay, well, welcome to the show. This is the new grateful podcast, and we're currently at our temporary studio at a cowork in Sayulita, Mexico. I've been doing, like I was mentioning, these interviews for nine years.

I took an eight year break while I was living india, but I recently followed up with some of the folks that I'd interviewed nine years ago with the most ridiculous follow up email nine years later. Edutaine interview follow up. So if you got a nine year later follow up, you might open that one. I think our open.

I think people will open those, yes. Assuming they still have the same email address or they're even alive. It's nine years. You never know.

Yeah. Fortunately, a lot of the folks are doing well, and it's been great to reconnect. I'm intentioning in a nine year follow up. I'm sure we'll be chatting before then.

But that's at least I'll put it on my calendar. 

Okay.

I like it.

I like it. It's a great idea. So tell me, Isar, what do you love most about the work that you do?

Wow. In general, and I've said that for years, if there was a good way to make a living as a teacher, that's what I would have been doing. And I found my passion for educating and training other people when I was an instructor at the air force academy. And then I've learned that helping people be more successful in something is probably the most rewarding thing you can do in life. And now I get to do this combined with stuff that I'm really passionate about. So I'm truly having a blast if you want. My dream is to be able to do something I really enjoy doing while teaching other people how to use this thing to be more successful in what they do. It's a dream come true. So that's just a great mix of things I enjoy doing.
 

Yeah, I'm listening, and I'm hearing you're echoing some of my thoughts regarding when I'm training my team. It's some of my favorite moments where they're in a short period of time. You can see them grow and be very appreciative of new skills. Right?

Yeah.

So that's super cool that you get to do that as your career. Now, can you tell me, what did you learn early in your career that has made the biggest difference?

So many. I would say that people is the most important asset you have in life and in business, because I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly of leadership, and I've seen both extreme sides of it. Like, what happens to a team when you have a really bad leader. What happens to a team when you have a really good leader and then how successful or painful the process becomes depending on how you treat people. And this has been the lighthouse for the rest of my career. Right. It's like, make sure you a put the right people around you, but also then give them the resources, the education, the tools, the support, leadership, the companionship, like whatever they need in order to make them be successful. And it comes back tenfolds.

Yeah, it's so important, right? That first step of like, is this someone we want on our ship? Are we all going to be rowing in the right direction? And I like to think about when we're all in Mexico together, is that a person I want to be cheersing at the end of the. So we're very important. I wanted to ask you, how important have mentors been in your career?

Huge. And it connects back to the first point, right. So when my first boss was an asshole, and it definitely reflected I was very much into that job because I was really enjoying the technical aspect of it and meeting the clients and doing the integrations. I loved the job, but I hated the workplace and I stayed for very long. So despite that situation, I really enjoyed the work that I was doing, but that was always kind of like in the back of my head and probably anybody who worked there. And then the second person who hired me basically gave me the keys to the ship and said, okay, you run it. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah, I trust you. And he's been mentoring me to run very successfully from that moment on.

And I went from being a manager, that somebody has had a whip above his head the whole time to somebody who could really grow and run forward and do much bigger things. And he was just the first of a list of a few people that helped me later on through my career. But it's a huge difference when you have somebody who can. And people think mentoring is mostly skill, and I think mentoring is at least 50% mind and conviction and positive environment. Going back again to the previous point we talked about, like, if you can help people have a healthy and healthy confidence in what they're doing, they will excel. And if it's the other way around, if you keep hitting people because, oh, why'd you do this? Or how'd you done that? You should pay attention.

They won't move forward and they won't take risks and they won't grow, and that will hurt you and the business because people stay behind.

Right. Having that sounding board of people who've been there who have the. They like you enough to spend an hour a week or something just shooting the shit. And I think if they don't want to spend an hour with you, well, that's not going to be your mentor. Probably needs to be someone that you like spending time with and together you get a mutual benefit from the interaction. And if you can set that up with a small group, now you kind of have your cheerleaders that will make the phone call for you if needed, make an introduction. And, yeah, it's an underrated, I think, strategically approached thing to say. Okay, who are, it's like the nights of the roundtable when you look around that mentor circle who's at dinner. Right?

Yeah

And then maybe you connect your mentors, increasing the value of the group that you put together. 

Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, and going back to the first point that you said what I learned the most, if you're surrounded by the right people, and it doesn't matter whether you report to them, they report to you. You're in parallel positions. They're not even people working with you. It's just people like you're saying that you can consult with or have an open conversation with that's going to make you or break you both as an individual and in business, because having the right people around you is the thing that will lift you when you're down and will lift you higher when you're up. Right. It's that simple.

Yeah, it's a great point. And to expand on that idea, you've been podcasting for a while also. I know you could have mentors at any stage. Have you been able to find mentors through podcasting that you built a relationship with and now you're kind of in touch with some people that maybe weren't on your radar before?

Great question. The answer is no. I probably should have thought of that when I started podcasting four years ago or somewhere along that path. But I do have a lot of great business connections with people, and I do connect them with the right people when the opportunity comes. So I literally had a very interesting conversation a couple of weeks ago with a guy that is currently my client in my AI consultancy, together with a CEO I interviewed, I don't know, two years ago, because they're a good fit and it happens. I wouldn't say all the time, but it happens, definitely. At least you will know once every other month that, like, oh, this will be great for this.

And that person that I met through podcasting and so in general, podcasting is probably one of the best ways to build a very solid network with great people. Just because it's a very non committing environment to have an open conversation with people you appreciate and build a level of connection that otherwise is very hard to do. Like my chances to talk to ceos of mid to large company or even small companies just to say, hey, I think you're a nice person. I share your stuff on LinkedIn. Let's chat for an hour. Most people are going to say, well, sorry, I'm busy, I have a life and a company to run, so I'm not going to talk to you unless you have something interesting or important or that I can benefit from.

But if you say, hey, I have a podcast, I want to interview you as an expert, 29 out of 30 people are going to say yes. And the one person is going to say, well, not now, let's talk next month, I'm really busy right now. And so your ability to open doors that otherwise are not openable is incredible. And it's always in a very positive environment because I'm not selling them anything. They're not trying to sell me anything. It's really just trying to educate other people and provide benefit to other people. So it builds a very solid baseline for future relationships. So I didn't find any mentors, but there's definitely people I'm in contact with and definitely it's an interesting rolodex of people that I can refer to when I need to.

To your point, I started a podcast called Edutaine. It's still up@edutain.com. Nine years ago and I was interviewing people face to face in Toronto area, and it got to the point where I was going on the profit 500, Canada's fastest growing companies. So the guys I was meeting were all CEO of multiple fast growth, right? So they're wired a certain way and I started working with one of them. But very different from company to company, what leadership thinks about what metrics are driving them. The more you spend with the business, how many hours the actual owner puts in Saturday, Sunday. So it's great. And I think adding to an interview to say, hey, I do have a mentorship program. It's something I'm building. And then you work towards your roundtable and you could see if it's something that would appeal to someone.

And if it's when, then I don't think it would take too long to build like a really great group of people supporting whatever you're working on. So podcasting to mentorship to. If you already got the microphones, content is very close to you, right? So it becomes this, like you're set up for creation and putting yourself in kind of the best possible light. What are you most excited about?

Wow. Personal life wise or business wise?

These are open questions, so you can.

Open wherever I pick. I'll answer one of both.

Okay. 

On the personal life, I'm really excited about the fact that my kids are getting older and I can do adult stuff with them. They're starting to have hobies that are my hobbies. So my son is now into flying drones and remote control airplanes, which I used to love. And I'm like, now I can do this again, which is awesome. Or playing soccer or doing sports together, going to the gym with my daughter, stuff like that. I absolutely love that. That from, we're starting to have stuff that we can actually do together beyond playing board games or hiking. And so that's something I'm really enjoying doing recently. On the business side is I've done this before, but I started this business, like the AI consultancy and education business around February or March of this year. And things take time to build momentum.

But the last month and a half have been insane. Literally. I can see I'm starting to harvest the fruits of a few good months of hard work. And now all the connections start to connect and I get invited to speak on all these conferences, and a lot of companies want to work with me and people join the courses. And I wouldn't say it's effortless because I put a lot of effort till now, but I'm not putting more effort now than I did four months ago. And the results are seven x bigger because it's just this snowball that's starting to grow bigger.

Right. I can see it as like, there are seasons for things. And during the cultivation period, you are reaping what you sow. Akin to the old farming, right. The patience. I think people aren't patient enough for many things, but this isn't your first time, so you've had the repetitions to understand, okay, if we can get these things done by these dates, I foresee this outcome. And your hypothesis is now being realized. Yeah.

No, when I work with businesses, even on AI, it's a lot about trailing indicators and leading indicators, right? People are like, oh, I want to implement AI and then I want to see 40% savings. Like, okay, you will, but that's not going to happen in week three. That's going to happen in month six, but in week three, we want to look at stuff that will tell us that we might see those returns back in month six. Meaning what are the things that I can look at that are KPIs that are leading indicators saying I'm doing the right things? And like you're saying because it's not my first rodeo. Like the two companies ago, I was running 100 million dollar travel company that I didn't start. I told you, that's the guy. He basically put me in charge of that thing.

But when he put me in charge, it was very little, small and not functional. And within a few years, and with his support, we grew it to $100 million in sales. But there are steps in that process. It wasn't like, oh, we're now? No, it's not the way it happens.

I'm going to pause there. Congratulations on that because a lot of people come into a show and they're like, I don't know who this guy is, but that's quite an accomplishment. So I just wanted to ground that because it's something you did, but after it's done, it's like, oh, yeah, I did it, but it's still something to be.

I'll say one thing, it's not I did it's we did it. You're right out this guy and the supporting environment and the amazing leadership team I had with me, this wouldn't have happened.

And that's spoken like a true leader

No, but I'm serious. I wouldn't have been able to do that without the people that were a part of that process, that were all extremely good individuals, extremely capable individuals, forward leaning, helping team players, like all the things you want to have were there and that's why were able to make it successful.

Understood? Yeah, it resonates loud and clear. Tell me what motivates you?

What motivates me? Curiosity. I'm a very curious person and so when I see stuff, whether it's a problem or an idea or a new direction, I'm like, oh, I wonder what? And then whatever the follow up question is, and I will follow down that path just out of sheer curiosity. And this could be across anything, personal stuff, sports. Now I'm completely sold on pickleball and I've been playing three, four times a week. Amazing. But it started with, okay, somebody told me, do you want to come and play pickleball? I'm like, I don't have a freaking clue what that is. Did you just made that thing up? It's like, no, it's a real sport. Like, you should come and check it out, you're really going to like it. And so that's just a personal example.

But books that I'm reading, things I'm interested in, it's all just sheer curiosity. And the same thing in the business. Like, the reason I'm truly enjoying what I'm doing right now is this new field of AI is brand new. Nobody knows. So when I learn new things, it might be the first time anybody has learned it, which is amazing. Think about it. That never, or it very rarely happens in history, that you have the opportunity to be the first one to learn something and then share it with the world.

No, it's true. With all the tools, there's almost not enough time to properly curate things, right? So you do have to have teams in place. You do have to have people testing. We've got our grateful AI internship that I started. That is a two month program, and it's giving high schoolers as well as people, even with mbas. An internship in AI is like, in my opinion, worth a lot because then LinkedIn is full of all the words that you learned about and prompt engineer and all this great stuff that companies are already like. I want that as part of your education stack. And where do you get it? You either have to take some training, which I'd be hard pressed to believe that even the training isn't always a little behind. Right? It's just like there's a lag.

So if you can have micro projects that you're working on that are very highly specific on some learning outcomes, then it really should be like a sandbox of like, try this, try that. Work as a team, see what you can come up with. And very much sandbox mode, right? Where it's like, we don't know. Let's all figure it out together.

Yeah, absolutely. When people ask me how do I get started, I'm like, just get started

Yeah. 
 

ChatGPT,  middle of the envelope, right? No other fancy tool don't pay other than for ChatGPT. Pick up one simple use case, either for personal thing or for your work, and figure it out. Get your hands dirty, start playing with it. So you understand how it works. As you're listening to podcasts, reading blogs, watching YouTube videos, yeah, educate yourself. But you're not going to really understand how this thing can impact your life or your business without actually doing stuff with it. And as you start doing stuff with it, you come up with more and more ideas and more use cases and more things because you start again, you got to be curious and you got to be somewhat a geek.

But if you are, then you'll have 20 ideas a day and then, like you say, not enough hours in the day to try stuff out.

Yeah. It reminds me of when I first learned to ride a motorcycle. I did not know how. I rented it india. He gave me the keys and then I said, okay, I'll see you later.

That sounds safe.

I went to a little restaurant and watched a YouTube video. It was about five minutes and then I got on the bike. I stalled right away. But after some time, I know how to ride a motorcycle and I don't think the risk is very low. Right. To go to OpenAI.com, start using Chat GPT, you sign in with your Google and you just ask it to start the same stuff you would google and see how it works as Google and then go beyond that. And if you use it a couple times a day as a replacement to Google, you're probably going to change the way you think about input.

Yeah, I always like to tell people, start with a use case. Like start with something that's true, whatever that may be. Right? You're a salesperson. Help me write my next sales email. If you are in marketing, I want to analyze this data from the last month for a campaign I was running. If you are in HR, help me write questions for interviews of these kinds of people, like whatever the case may be, and explore a little bit in that direction because it's very much an iterative process, working with AI and large language models. And if you don't know how to start and how to do it properly, when you're going to get really disappointed with what you're going to get in the beginning because you don't really know how to work with it. It's just like any other tool.

And so it's just as if you know how to use a hammer, but now I'm giving you a power nail gun and you're going to shoot it all over the place and not going to get any work done and you're going to break the walls and like, okay, that's pretty dumb. I'm going to go back to my homework where if somebody showed you in one simple YouTube video how to use the nail gun, you're like, oh, okay, now I can put 50 nails in the same time. Would have put three. All I know is how to use the tool. And it's the same thing. Like if you get basic idea on your use case, like how are people using Chetchy PT to do this, which is a real use case? For you that you will actually benefit from.

And then you go back and like, okay, I'm going to try this out now. I have an idea and I'm going to try this for not three times, but 30. By the 30th time. You're like, oh my God, this is incredible. But it will take repetition and iterations for you to figure it out for you and the specific use case you have, even if you don't start at zero. And if you start at zero, it's a mistake because then there's so many people like me who just share everything they learn about AI on every platform you're in, right? It doesn't matter whether you're on LinkedIn or TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, there's multiple people who's going to tell you how to do specific use cases.

Just find them, learn the basics, and then start playing with it yourself until you figure it out for yourself.

I've gone down that rabbit hole myself of following a ton of accounts of people just talking about this stuff. So part of my experience of scrolling becomes education. And hey, this guy's 1 minute video on Instagram that started with this great hook about three things that you need to know about AI right there in a minute, I just learned something. So I'd encourage people to follow some free accounts on their social medias that teach you a bit about AI. And then over time, you might catch the right thing that might trigger you to want to try something that you didn't know about. So worth the investment. Isar, what is your biggest challenge as a leader?

It ties back to what I said before. I fall in love with people too easily, and I'm really bad.

I'm really bad at firing people that probably should be fired. And from a company leadership perspective, that's not a good thing. Once you know somebody is not a good fit, they're not a good fit. And if you're going to keep on fighting to figure out a way to make them a good fit, you are usually wasting a lot of resources, time, money, mental health, whatever the resource is. Energy. Right. And I've done this multiple times in my career, which is not a good thing from a business leadership perspective.

Tough conversations to have.

Yes. And mostly with myself. Right. It's like, you know what the right thing to do and I just can't get myself to do it.

Got it. Let's talk about prioritization. How do you prioritize what's most important?

Tough question. So from a personal perspective, I probably don't do that enough. Like, I find myself, I'm going to now give myself an excuse. Like probably most people, I found myself kind of like doing the day to day just by doing the day to day. And not enough times go back to saying, hey, what's really important to you in life? Do more of that. Even though I try to look at how do I spend more time with my wife? How do I spend more time with my kids? How do I spend more time doing stuff that I like just to fill my passions, like playing bass guitar or playing pickleball or riding mountain bikes or doing stuff with my kids? Right. It's these kind of things. But on the business side, it's actually a very built, like, it's built into my process

Like, every morning, I start with a stand up meeting with my assistant, and we add new tasks based on things that have in the last 24 hours. And I reprioritize my tasks based on either level of importance or urgency, some kind of combination of both, literally every morning. So I look at my task and say, okay, today this is more important than that. Like, today I got to finish these two tasks, and then what's number three, four, and five? And after that, it doesn't really matter, but I will look down the list to see if stuff needs to go up in priority. And I do this every single day. So I literally daily define priorities from a work perspective, which helps me focus on the right things from a business perspective that I need to focus on.

That's great. I think it's simple. It's nice to have that assistant, and I'm sure you've had help around you for a long time, to be able to have that sounding board, making sure that there's nothing you're missing, and then executing.

Absolutely.

What are your favorite books?

Good questions. Business books or books in general?

Books in general or a book that you regularly gift or something that you go back to. I know it's a lot of questions, but it is my favorite questions

Okay, so the book I gift the most, two books I gift the most in my life, and they're in a very big spread for number three that I don't even think I can name number three, but I can name number one. And number two.

Sure.

Number one is delivering happiness by Tony Shea, the guy who founded Zapos. He actually didn't found Zapos, but he's like the no. Of the famous CEO. It's a fantastic book on what is great human leadership and how it leads to success in life and business and so definitely the book I gave as a gift to more people than others. The other one. Wow. I can't remember the name, which is pretty sad, because I really like the book. It's something like Flatland. Flatline, flatline. I'll tell you what the book is about, and then whoever's listening will be able to find it relatively easy

Yeah, please drop the note in the comments.

Exactly. So the book starts with a dot who lives in a world that is zero dimensional. And then suddenly something shows up in there, and he's like, whoa, what the hell is that? And it continues. And then he understands it's a line, like, okay, what the hell? How can there be more dimensions than the dimensions that I can grasp? Because I've been living in this zero dimensional world. And then he's starting to have a conversation with the line, and it's the same kind of story. Then the line that lives in a one dimensional world sees something else that shows up that he cannot understand what it is. And it's a square, I think, or something like that. And it's like, whoa, this is crazy. And it goes and continues, right to then a three dimensional world. And it's a relatively short book.

It's probably less than 100 pages. What I love about this book is then it ends up with us living in a three dimensional world. Cannot grasp what's a fourth dimension. How is that? Like, there's no fourth dimension, right? Because we cannot grasp it. But after you read the book, we're like, oh, yes, there is zero dimension. One dimension, two dimension, three dimension. There's no reason why there's not be a fourth dimension or a fifth or a 6th and whatever. And it even gives a weird example on what a fourth dimensional world can look like. But the reason I really like this book is that it forces you to think outside the box. It forces you to grasp the understanding that we only know what we know because of our point of view of things. So now I'm going beyond the physical dimensions.

It's now the mental dimensions, right? Okay. I know what I know through my lens. That's it. None of us really have any objective truth. Like, we have a subjective truth that in some cases, we try to make it as objective as possible, but it's still our subjective truth. And having that mindset, knowing that other people, other creatures, other situations, should be explored, not just through our point of view, because we cannot grasp it through the point of view of somebody else, I think, is critical for us as people to have better understanding of the universe, better communication with other people. Be more open to other stuff, whether it's people with different beliefs, people different religions, people different sex, approach, people, like, whatever you want to measure. And then I think it will make us a healthier human race as a whole.

Awesome. I love that. I think that there's so much that we can learn about ourselves and each other and through looking at things differently. And I love these kinds of conversations because, as you can see, the questions I'm asking haven't talked specifically about any of your favorite tools, but it's great to learn about you and what get into the ideas. Right. This is the last question unless I come up with a bonus question. If you could give advice to your 20 year old self, what would you say?

That's a tough one.

That's why it's the last one.

It will go back to something that we talked about a lot, which is be nicer to people and be a better person. When I was 20 years old, I was very arrogant. I was an f 16 pilot. And so, first of all, I think they pick people that already have very high self confidence, and then they make you and competitive, and they make you have even more confidence and be even more competitive, because that's how you succeed as a fighter pilot. And it took me a lot of years and a lot of scars to understand that it's a very unhealthy way to live life, always trying to prove to others that you're better than them. And probably took me 1520 years to turn that around, to get to the point of the understanding that, no, it's the other way around.

If you will raise other people, it will make you more successful, and not if you show them that you're better than them. And it's been maybe the toughest journey of my personal life and my career. And if I could go back to my 20 year old self. So you're a fucking idiot. This is how you need to approach life. It would have saved me a lot of those scars

Yeah. To know it now, then probably I would definitely do a few things differently. I'm happy for all of the lessons learned.

Oh, listen, I think we talked a little bit about mentorship, right? Mentorship is maybe one of the only shortcuts that you can take, but they're not shortcuts of like, oh, that saved me three quarters of the way. Because at the end of the day, you need to get that slap on the wrist or slap on the face, like, a big one, to say, maybe my way. Wasn't that right?

Yeah. The confident entrepreneur, humbled and then reset like, okay, maybe my ego can deflate because I know what it's like to go through this. And now I think that's why entrepreneur to entrepreneur, I know anyone who's successful has been through some shit and they came out of it, whatever rabbit out of the hat they needed to make happen, they got it done. So that's great. Go ahead.

No, I had a conversation. I'm working with this younger girl. She's really smart, really driven, and she's putting together this AI symposium and it's tough putting together an event with hundreds of people, it's really hard and she's grinding through it. And I just had a conversation with her yesterday and she's saying, listen, it's not exactly the way I wanted to be. I thought it's going to be bigger. I thought we'll be able to do this and that. I'm like, listen, that's the biggest lesson you can take from this. You just fought for the last ten months to put this event together. The event is happening. There's going to be hundreds of people there. There's going to be dozens of speakers. It's a huge achievement. Huge. Incredible.

And the fact that you wanted to have 2000 people, there's going to be 700 people, makes absolutely no difference.

Yeah, it's almost like when you do the 2000 person one, you appreciate the lessons you learned from the 701 and you would not want that to be your first one.

No, I don't think it's possible. I think your chances of failing completely trying to do your first event are significantly higher than going to the 2000 person event. And the lessons you learn in the six to 700 person event will take you to the 2000 5000 person events in the future, which if you did not do the first one or you would have given up in the process because there's not enough people or you're losing money, whatever the case may be, will never allow you to do the next step.

Yeah, they're called steps for a reason. Right.

And by the way, I looked up the book. It's called by Edwin A. Abbott

I'll have to check it out. That sounds great. So maybe one more bonus question. We can talk a bit more specific about AI, I suppose. Do you have any predictions for AI education in general? Sure.

Listen, I don't know if predictions, I think it's very hard to make predictions right now because things are moving so fast. But I can have a recommendation about AI education.c

Sure.

Because it's moving so fast and because it's going to have such a profound impact on literally everything we do, from personal life to business life to social life. Like, every single aspect will be impacted by this in a profound way. It is critically important for every person who is listening to this to find way to have continuous education about AI. And there's multiple ways to do that. Right? There's. My way is very extreme. I made it my career right now, right? So it forces me to be in this all the time. But most of us cannot afford that. So find the podcast. It doesn't have to be my podcast, but find podcasts that speak your language that you enjoy listening to, that you can listen to regularly. Find people to follow on whatever social platform you're on.

If you like watching YouTube videos, find people on YouTube, if you're on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, like wherever you're at, find the people who continuously share new systems, new things they found. Use cases, research, news, whatever the case may be, keep yourself up to speed and as much as you can, where the things you hear apply to your daily stuff, try stuff out. And if you do that, I'll say something extreme just to put things in perspective. From where I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at this again as somebody who's, that's what I do day in, day out with different companies of different sizes. I just spoke at a conference two days ago, the examples I gave them, which blew everybody's minds as far as stuff you can do with chat, GPT today, that capability did not exist two weeks ago. Two weeks.

So it's things that are available now that are game changers on multiple aspects of businesses that did not exist two weeks ago, not a year ago. And so the speed in which things are happening right now is insane. And a business, as a business, cannot change fast enough. But if you keep on educating yourself and look for the cases, it can have a big impact on your business now you'll at least be ready and understanding enough to be able to pull the trigger and do something versus it scares me, or it's moving too fast, so I'm not even going to follow it.

Yeah, I think about it like you've got your classic sales pipeline, but what's your learning pipeline look like? So you've got all these inputs, right, useful. I don't know, should we actually go through with that? But as an ongoing, you should regularly being, at least if you're looking at the leaders, an investment in chat, GPT, knowledge, education at first and foremost, a lot of tools are built with it or on it or referencing an engine, right? So you might as well understand how the operating system works, so to speak, to, like you said, have that regular. It needs to be culture now, right? It needs to be time dedicated, filtered in a way where in short, concise bytes, you're updated on what's new. And like you said, find your guy.

Find the person who I was thinking, hey, if it's a car mechanic and you're a car mechanic, but he's talking about AI stuff as it helps him in his day to day, that's a cool follow, right? It's right in your wheelhouse. Well, this has been a lot of fun. And what did you think about the questions?

I think they're interesting right there. They forced me to think, and they forced me to go back and sometimes dig deeper, both mentally and on the emotion side. So I think they're great.

It took a while to get to these ten, but a lot of them, they're somewhat self serving. Because I'm so curious to know the answers of these ten questions that I get a ton of value from the learnings along the way, especially things like books and prioritization. Everything I ask you I'm deeply interested in. So thank you for sharing your brain with us on the grateful podcast. And, yeah, let's continue the conversation. Love to set up another chat and we can explore ways to collaborate and do some cool stuff. But at one day, we'll be jamming on the guitar, right?

Amen. Amen. Yeah, listen, it's one of those things. And I'm relatively new to the whole bass guitar thing, but it's one of those things that, because they require me to be really focused at them, allows me not to think about anything else. And right now it's really this. And pickable are the two things. And even in pickable, I can. Sometimes my mind drifts to stuff at work or stuff that's happening in Israel or things like that my mind goes to when I'm playing the guitar, I can't think of anything else because I got to really focus on what I'm trying to do. And so beyond the fact I'm enjoying the process and the outcome, I'm really enjoying the fact that it allows me to really disconnect from other stuff.

Well, there's a book I'll recommend. It's called the practice of practice. Have you heard of it?

No, but I'm looking.

It's by this guy, PhD Jonathan Harnham. And it's how musicians get better, faster, and it's awesome. I really like it. I'll send you a copy.

Okay. Thank you

You're welcome. I picked it up years ago and it just helped me think about music practice in a whole different way. Like in a way that everything is practice. So you begin to, I know, by saying that it means, like, if everything is, then nothing is. But he makes a really good point and gives a ton of examples from how different people have learned music from different parts of the world in different environments. And I think as someone who's learning bass guitar, you'll find it fascinating.

I will definitely check it out.

It also dovetails nicely into practice of anything, right? So can be useful in education and things like. So, yeah, I hope you enjoy it.

I know I will. And as we're speaking, kind of like looking at the notes on Google, it looks really interesting.

You'll be listening to the audiobook by.

This afternoon, but I'll most likely I'll send you a copy of it for your library.

Thank you.

Okay, well, this has been a lot of fun. Happy to do it again sometime. And yeah, let's chat offline and all the best of success this year and making time for all the things that are important for you and your loved ones over the holidays.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Same to you.

Okay, thanks a lot. Have a wonderful day

You too.

Cheers.

And just like that, we're at the end of another incredible episode of the AI training podcast. A huge thank you goes out to Esar for joining us today and enlightening us with his deep knowledge and experiences in AI. Before we sign off, let's highlight two amazing AI tools we discussed today that are revolutionizing the way we interact with technology. First up, for those interested in voice cloning, check out elevenlabs IO. It's a groundbreaking platform that's pushing the boundaries of what's possible in voice synthesis. Then for the creatives out there, don't miss out on exploring Runwayml. That's Runwayml.com. This platform is a game changer for anyone looking to create stunning videos from images. It's tools like these that are making the impossible possible and reshaping our digital landscapes.

These tools are not just innovative, they're a glimpse into the future of AI and its limitless potential. So dive in, explore, and be part of this exciting journey of discovery and innovation. Thank you all for tuning in. Remember to follow us on YouTube and Instagram at OpenAI training and visit us@openaitraining.com for all your favorite episodes. Until next time, this is Mark Latimer, encouraging you to keep exploring, stay inspired, and always be on the lookout for the next big thing in AI. Take care and keep innovating.