[00:00] Anthony Amunategui: Welcome back to the podcast. You know, you guys talk about using AI to get automated. Oh, listen, I talk to you all the time, Anthony. How do I automate this? And I look, we’ve brought the pro Ghazenfer Mansoor is the, is is the experts gonna show you how to automate your company And, and look, you guys keep saying you’re ready to do this.

[00:20] Today’s show will guide you down that path. I wanted to take some notes out here. Get a pen and paper out Ghazenfer welcome to the show today. 

[00:28] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me, Anthony. 

[00:30] Anthony Amunategui: You know, people talk about, I wanna automate my business. I, I wanna jump right into it. I wanna automate my business. I wanna use ai, but I don’t know where to go.

[00:37] A lot of us look like cats chasing a laser point around the carpet. You know, what about this? What about that? What about this? How do I start to. Really understand, Hey, where, where do I start and what’s, when I wanna say automate my business, let’s say that I’m a construction company or a flower shop, or I’m a, um, I’m a a, a telemarketing agency.

[00:58] How do I start to look at where do I automate and how do I automate? 

[01:05] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So good question. That’s a very common question I’m asked. So there is no one solution fit all, uh, every company has its own DNA and I don’t even look at it. Okay. I wanna start with automation. I would say, I’ll go back to whiteboard and see what problem are we having, where are.

[01:27] Whatever processes. Where are the bottlenecks? Where are the things that are taking so much time? I would start with some of those processes that are bottlenecks, that are complicated, that are creating, um, inefficiencies in the business. What can move the needle? What can bring more efficiency and more efficiency mean?

[01:54] Um, more growth, more revenue, more. 

[01:59] Anthony Amunategui: Well, you know, we, we look at it all the time. The construction world. We follow a process, right? And if you really look at the process, what we’ve, we’ve done is we’ve really looked at, you know, from the day that we get a project that comes into our organization to bid on, right?

[02:12] From, as a general contractor, a new project comes in from business development, right? We’ve even gone back and we’ve even automated business development. Uh, outbound communications, uh, uh, client information storage, data collection, data management, uh, you know, timing and scheduling communication tools throughout the year that we wanna do with, with, with the different clients.

[02:31] So, on the business development side, we’ve issued, we’ve, I’ve done that now on the, on the operation side as a project comes into the organization, right? To start to look at how it goes down the path. For us in, in, in order to, you know, one to win the bid. And then two, once we’ve, uh, been the win, the bid and been rewarded, how do we start to go through and understand, you know, not missing a step?

[02:54] Because we understand that if, if we want to be successful out here, turn over a project on time and profitable, we’ve got to get to steps way back here to be pro, to be correct, right? We miss these steps. This out here is in jeopardy, and I think most organizations could see that in their formula. Or in their system, uh, some way.

[03:13] You know, I think most organizations understand that. 

[03:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: True, true. Uh, and I think, um, most project fails because of the clarity in a project. Client is expecting one thing. Companies expecting another one. So there’s always a gap. In fact, not only just project those many jobs that don’t, do not work out because of the, uh, the unclear requirements, unclear expectation.

[03:43] So the most important part is figuring out what needs to be done with ai. A lot of those things are easy. So for example, I’ll give you one example. Even that just happened this morning. I had a client call at noon today. We got. Some requirement from them yesterday using wide code. It, we actually created the whole sketch of what they wanted.

[04:04] This was more in that same, same in industry where there’s a manufacturing, they’re, um, tagging thing along, showing how the output would look like. It’s not about building another software now. These things are really quick. You can create something really quickly. Now, also talking about, earlier, you’re talking about even at the biz dev level.

[04:26] Like we created a process where all I need to do is I just type in the company name. I said. This company, it’ll go to my emails, it will find out all the communication that I had with this company. It will go to the Google Drive, find all the documents that were, um, that we had in that it will generate a projects based on the templates that, or proposal based on the templates that we have.

[04:48] All the stuff that was taking days, now we’re talking about hours, so it will give me a quick jump start. So. So that we could move the needle quickly. How many time you lost a project? Because it took three weeks to even give a bid because customer may be in a hurry. So that, so there’s opportunity cost that you’re missing if you’re not leveraging on AI to build these things.

[05:15] Anthony Amunategui: And we get it all the time, you know, we lose opportunity. You know, getting prepared for the opportunity is one of the biggest frustrations I have. You know, I, I just, I just walked down to the group and, and we, look, we’re a pretty automated group and I just walked down to my estimated team and look, we knew we were getting a project bid.

[05:31] Three months ago, right? We knew it was coming up. They were gonna be in design development. The plans were coming through. The, the client already said, Hey, you’re gonna be the ones, we want you to win this bid. You look, you’re, you’re the key contractor we want on this. And I said, Hey guys, this project, here’s where it’s located.

[05:44] Let’s part putting together the bid team, get our best subs on that. Uh, we wanna put our best foot forward as it’s already been awarded to us. I mean, they, they’re trying to award it to us. And I went down, you know, the plans are coming in today. I got a call from the customer who went down there. Hey, you know, we got a little bit carried away with, with, uh, the holidays.

[05:59] We didn’t get the bid package, uh, assembled yet. We’re, you know, sitting here and now we’re gonna cost ourselves probably a few days of project development that should have been done months ago. Right. Stuff that we could have automated back when we knew the project was happening. Right. It’s one of those steps where, you know, again.

[06:20] Opportunity for us was to be our best foot forward today. We knew that back. We knew that three months ago that hey, we’re gonna have this opportunity. And we didn’t have it automated where at that point we already assembled everything and it was all ready to go. All we do is drop the plans in and go to our great people, and now we’re gonna cost ourselves.

[06:37] Let’s say it’s, let’s say it’s a few days. It’s not that, it’s the end of the world. And, and that’s what’s the problem with, with most of the business industry. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s, it’s certainly costing me. Something. Right? If I wanna be put my best foot forward, every day matters in, in a business challenge, right?

[06:55] Every, everyone was operating every second of a, of a, of a bidding timing and, and picking subs and negotiating bids all for us, all impacts our ability to deliver the best pro, best, best bid for client, uh, at the end of it. So, you know, you get what I’m saying? I think a lot of us, well we blow it off ’cause it wasn’t a huge impact, but it still has some impact.

[07:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: True, true. No to totally agree. And many time the clients are not ready, many time they are going in a standard way of requesting an RFP. Now, how do we help our customers even to build those bids so that rather than waiting three, four months for them to even, many times their delays are because they’re still figuring out what do they want.

[07:42] So yes, the people who are delivering are more experts, but the people who are, who need the work done, they still are figuring it out. They wanna make sure they’re not putting it out. Something that creates scope creep, that creates uncertainty. So that defining that project itself is a bigger project for the so, so we look at it as, can we help our customers even building that requirement so that they.

[08:07] Know exactly what, so most of the time clients do need guide us on that part. ’cause they’re, they’re, they’re not. Or you, you will get a project where you are bidding on a project with uncertain scope and then he says, okay, now we are gonna learn along the way. That means there will be a scope creep.

[08:26] Anthony Amunategui: Yeah. And all of the inefficiencies. And, and that’s where you look at a client and go. Look, this is where you are causing your own. You’re on your own air hose. You’re standing on your air hose. You’re all, you’re frustrated because your costs are higher.

[08:39] Your your, your change orders are up. Your timing’s inefficient. It’s because you have all that scope creep during the project. Now, how do you automate the start of a project to ask enough questions and get enough systems in place? So all of that gets solved in the beginning, or is that just part of a natural.

[08:57] Part of business development that projects and programs are gonna naturally evolve as you get into them and start to create what you want out of it. 

[09:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I would go with, um, putting together all the knowledge base that you have in your previous bid, so all the hundreds of projects that you bid. The questions and answers you went through, what went wrong?

[09:21] What, yes, you may not have all of that data. Maybe you wanna put together and then use AI to give you recommendation. Hey, this is how we proposed in the past. Can you come up with something based on this? Because you, this is not the first time you are doing these projects. These are projects are done hundreds of times now.

[09:39] Why not tap on the same knowledge rather than re uh, uh. I would say rebuilding everything. So most of the time the new people comes in, they’re not aware of that existing knowledge. And again, that’s where the opportunity, um, you can tap on this new opportunity to tap on the existing knowledge. And that’s where AI is your friend.

[10:02] Well, 

[10:03] Anthony Amunategui: I, I, I think there’s where the transfer of knowledge, the update of information and the data control becomes, you know, it, it’s all held in ai. It’s, it’s already there. We’re not, you know, the problem with humans are those little pockets of information, uh, little pockets of data that you hold onto that the rest of the team doesn’t have.

[10:22] You know, if I have to come back to you to get the data for something, it’s very inefficient model, you know? You know, one of the problems we had here is that our, one of our VPs was holding. He had to be the one that had to approve every project before it went out. Well, you know, he’s a busy guy. He is getting on there, you know, getting the business, uh, you know, getting them lined up with the estimating team and the, and the operations team to do a project handover and sign off, right?

[10:46] Became a very inefficient model, looking for three hours of his time, you know, two or three days a week, and all of a sudden you got projects that are, that are getting pushed because of that. And then ultimately here, what does that cost? It’s an opportunity loss, right? Because you need his, you needed his clarity.

[11:03] Now how do we circumvent that and mitigate, you know, making that meeting happen much faster? How do we make it so there’s multiple people that can hold that same meeting? Right? And as we’ve done that, um, you know, we’ve just noticed that, you know, there’s where automating. Your organization, if there’s a bottleneck somewhere, if it’s the owner, a vice president, a, a director, somebody in the organization has to be the, the, the sign off or the the keeper or the key holder to the success of it moving forward.

[11:33] Somewhere in that, that needs to get automated and changed out. You just, any of those bottlenecks become, um, and, and I, I get why we do it. We do it for control. Just make sure that, you know, look, we don’t wanna make sure the team misses something. I need someone with some great knowledge to be able to go through and question and, and, you know, make sure that we don’t have scope, gap or scope, you know, some, something we’ve missed.

[11:51] And having someone who’s been through it multiple times, you know, gives me some level of protection. But how do we get us so the team can do that? 

[11:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. And that’s a big bottleneck. I mean, uh, and this is not a new problem. I think even this could, this should be solved even without the AI as well, because what if that person.

[12:10] Is no longer available that we be quit. The person got hit by the bus. Now you have all those hundreds of people in a company, but being impacted by, uh, those bottlenecks. So I think that’s part of the regular growth strategy discussion of how do we. Uh, work on these processes to get rid of those dependencies because the least dependency, that’s where least dependencies will have.

[12:37] I mean, you’ll have a better growth. Now, let’s say you talk about, uh, dependency on certain people in, in terms of knowledge base, that there are many ways to do it, but obviously maybe starting with recording all of those meetings and that could only be enforced through. Uh, through the company rules and processes that, yeah, every need meeting need to be recorded.

[13:00] That’s the only way then you’ll, you could use AI to train and this is becoming norm. And most of the companies have started doing that, where every single conversation is being recorded and that’s becoming your knowledge base that will help you build those. So coming back to the original point that I mentioned, like, um, uh, identifying those bottleneck, this is part of the initial.

[13:22] Uh, strategy that we do, we have to look at every single workflow. Where are the ball? Like, where are things slow? Sometime it’s a human, sometime it’s just the complications. People don’t know how to figure those out, so whatever are those, we have to look at those borrowing legacy. What, what things that we are doing that if improved.

[13:44] Could result in a growth because at the end you wanna move from people power growth to system power growth. Because whenever you have a people power growth, that’s a slow growth. You’ll always be dependent on people. There’ll be delays, there’ll be additional costs. So anything that you can build, you can automate.

[14:05] And that doesn’t mean you automate everything. You still will have a human, um. Uh, human involvement in those processes, there’ll be a review process, but if, as I was giving example, that proposal, if 80% of my proposal could be done. By the ai and then we review the remaining, we look at the specific, okay, what do we have to propose?

[14:27] Like in our case, we have to still tell like, okay, there are probably 10 different architectural that we, we could propose when we said, okay, for this company, we think based on our conversation we should be, hmm. Uh, proposing number five for pricing. This is a TNM. This is a fixed price. Here’s the production support.

[14:45] Like each of those have different variables. So we don’t have a fixed pricing for every single thing, right? So at least it gave me the first sketch. Now the team can go deeper and refine those. So that’s the last 20%. That’s a human involvement. Same is the case in any other processes, you will have a human involvement that would review.

[15:07] So that approval is fine, but whatever you can automate, maybe there’s a backup approval process. So, but I think as you start looking deeper into those processes and identifying those bottlenecks, ’cause there’s a unity cost that, and there’s a cost of, many times they’re the cost of people just waiting and they’re not doing anything.

[15:31] They’re not billable people. So now you lost somebody. Really what was available to do anything but didn’t have anything. 

[15:40] Anthony Amunategui: You know, let’s talk about radical, um, impeccability or integrity to a project. And I, I’m gonna kinda back up and talk a little bit about a story here. I, you know, early days, early two thousands, I was putting job site cameras on, on projects, right?

[15:56] I remember I was doing one in Manhattan and Big Union project and, you know, first cameras that were out there, here, imagine this, it was a little box that was a dial up. Uh, uh, it, it would literally dial up. Remember like a OL, right? It was a, it was a dial up camera, right? So we’d dial the, dial the internet, right?

[16:14] We would dial up a, I think, dial a server, and then every sec, after seven minutes, he would send me a picture of a job site and it was on a union job site. And every single day, the union guys would cut the phone cord. Every day. I mean, like it literally it is every day. And I, it was part of the contract with the superintendent that he had to get the, you know, had to be up running every day.

[16:33] So, you know, if we look at this phone cord, there were probably 40 or 50 splices by the end of a project in this thing where he had to splice the thing back together. ’cause somebody would magically cut the line every. And the problem was at the time, everybody felt like Big Brother was watching them and everybody felt like, oh my God.

[16:52] Now today, every one of our job sites might have five or six cameras on ’em. Right? And the idea is that we can impeccably see everything about the job site. And the same thing happened with meetings, right? Our first meetings, we would have a camera in there and the idea was that, hey, we could. We could, we knew everything that we was said and we could communicate that to everybody afterwards.

[17:11] But people felt like those first meetings that were like those first meetings, we had cameras in there. People were like, what? You have cameras in a meeting? What, what? What? You don’t trust us? And I’m like, no, no, no, no. But the idea was that we wanna have impeccable communication in what we’re doing today.

[17:24] Every one of our teams meetings, you might have three or four different ais that come on to do a meeting summary on every single project that we do. And the idea behind it is we have impeccability to the conversation now. As we keep pushing these boundaries as an organization and looking at where we don’t have impeccable, uh, communication, and we start to add in some boundaries.

[17:46] So some, some systems, you’re gonna notice that same little, that same, I, I dunno what you would call that, that little, that little, that little thing of the back of your spine that’s like uncomfortable, right? With the next level of growth, right? The next level of an idea that’s watching you or feels like it’s, you know, tracking you, or, or, or, or you know, the person that’s.

[18:04] Holding the meeting now, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re watching all the meetings to get the data out of the person so that the AI can solve that same problem later on, right? Some of those new ideas are gonna push the boundaries of the human as we go through those, right? And I think that’s a little bit about what you’re talking about is some of these systems that we’re gonna start to audit.

[18:25] In order to create the automation, we’re gonna push some of your buttons as a human in, in, into places where you’re gonna be uncomfortable again. 

[18:34] Ghazenfer Mansoor: True. True. Very true. I mean, now you see every other Zoom meeting have read AI or all those AI transcriptions. It’s very hard to even have any of those meetings without, even for in-person people are using plot and those other devices.

[18:48] So it’s becoming a norm. So people are so used to like, and even I think you get is a good point about the cameras. In the past, you are not allowed to have cameras on many of the, let’s say, even interview calls now people are doing all the time because. Mm. I mean, in our company that’s a requirement, and we put it as part of the contract that you have to have cameras on for all of our, if you’re not comfortable, this is not the place for you.

[19:13] So we do require that because it builds more confidence. So as you’re working with a client, it’s not like, oh, there is some voice, but once you connect, uh, the face to the name, then you know who you are working with. So there’s more trust that comes in with with that. So yeah, so all these tools, different tools are coming in.

[19:36] Uh, people are becoming a lot more comfortable. I mean, now people are uploading all the data. I would say a lot more bravely. And the ai, which is even more scary because anything you add in ai, uh, in your Chad GPT is being trained. I think what I noticed, even the Gen Z and the millennials are a lot more, uh, I would say, hmm.

[20:01] I shouldn’t use the word careless, but more brave I would say they just share some of that information way more that like our generation. Sure. Where we’re a lot more cautious in terms of sharing anything. Uh, I have seen that it’s not as much as like, like at our time there was no picture on a resume.

[20:20] Now, oh, it’s all pretty open. So people are becoming more. Used to. So I think it’s easier adaption from that perspective. 

[20:32] Anthony Amunategui: Let’s, let’s jump into, um, look to AI automation as a tool for future proofing, you know, the services that you’re doing as a business, right? So let, let’s, let’s talk about like, look, you, you wanna really create future, uh, the future of your business, right?

[20:47] How does the AI automation, this, this is what we’re talking about, right? Starting to capture meeting notes, starting to, uh, take the human data that we learned all this stuff, and getting the human out of the bottleneck. How do we start to future proof an organization that we’re growing? 

[21:02] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, uh, and, and this is bigger part of, as you talk about any organization growth, when you talk about whether selling a company or growing to the next level, the first part is obviously getting out of the, uh, the human dependencies.

[21:16] Uh, whether it’s a, the founder dependency or any other people dependency. So like you will see even in a traditional way as you start talking to these, um, the venture capitalists or. Uh, the PE firms that’s acquiring a lot of those things are like meeting notes that that was also required even then. Yes, you were creating Manly, but a lot of those things were required.

[21:41] So more automation, you are doing more. Automate, um, the limited dependency you have on human, that more chances of growth. So businesses do look for those kind of automation for, uh, for growth. So this is important for any business growth because now that’s also becoming your differentiator. How are you compared to your competitor?

[22:05] It’s about when you have those meeting, it could be, it could help you. Resolve the customer problem. It could help you any of the conflict because now you have a recording. It could also, like, we build an app few years ago where, let’s say it would, it would look at the, this was even before Chad g pt. Like it would look at the calls and it would, uh, let’s say it will identify a tones.

[22:32] There is anger and think somebody could, it will get a notification to the supervisor if there’s a pricing discussion or sensitive discussion or dis discussion about your competitor. Some of those like where you can add some of those trigger points. If any of those discussion happen, I want to know and that will help you improve your services, um, improve your customer service, your delivery, and everything.

[22:54] So that means you have a better customer. Uh, better projects. So, so all these tools, I mean, again, this is one we are talking about, just one tool. Uh, but then there are so many other things that, that could be, uh, that could be done. Uh, but coming back to looking at your workflows, automating those, as you are doing it now, you are creating a differentiator.

[23:16] Let’s say whoever are your competitor, they may have the standard tools available, uh, at the, like same CRM. Uh, same industry specific tool now. Your differentiator is not. I mean, as you are talking to your customer, customer service is not your only differentiator. Getting better team is not your differentiator.

[23:38] That’s could be one, but that’s your competitor. Also have your differentiators are how you are moving the needle. Quickly how your processes are automated. That’s what your competitors are not copying. That’s a very sp I’m not talking about a generic flow, that you can get the commoditized, uh, let’s say agents anywhere.

[23:56] Yes, there are certain, like for scheduling, whether it’s for doctors, for any industry, um, scheduling, and many of those. That are available, but there are very specific flow that you may need for your specific business and those are the ones that will create a differentiator for your business. And once you have that, that’s becoming an efficiency Neil for you.

[24:16] And that would increase your valuation. That means your growth is 10 x and when you have a 10 x growth, you are more towards a system powered growth, not people powered growth. And that’s will help you, uh, be more efficient, more profitability, more revenue. 

[24:33] Anthony Amunategui: I, I, I think you’re right on you. You know, um, even with the, let’s, let’s talk a little bit.

[24:37] I’m, I’m gonna apply this to, uh, my world in the podcast world. You know, I have guests on every single day who talk about automation, uh, AI automation, and we talk about how AI does it, and yet I still find myself in a manual production value, uh, in, in the podcast, right? Where I’m, I’m, I’m sending out emails and follow up, and we’re even, I don’t take our own advice on some of this stuff.

[25:02] You know, I think a lot of people suffer with the same thing. I’m gonna automate later. I’m gonna automate later. Let’s talk about how you get a company, or even even us as a podcast company, uh, how do we get automated now and, and, and talk about why, how, how to do that and how to stop being, um. I dunno if it’s scared or, or, uh, you know, it’s, it’s almost like you’re too busy to, you know, uh, do, do you, do you remember the Seven Habits book by Stephen Covey?

[25:32] Did you ever read that book? Right. Remember there was a, you talked about this, uh, a guy, a guy walking in the woods, and he comes upon a guy who was cutting down a, a tree and a guy saw on the tree, saw on the tree he saw on the tree, and the guy’s looking, I’m like, Hey, you might need to take a second and, and, and go sharpen your saw.

[25:47] The guy said, nah, I’m too busy. I gotta cut this tree down. Right? And, and it’s kind of like that. And even in my world, right, or even in the world where I talk about ai. Every single day on the podcast and we’re, we’re apply it in, there’s places where we don’t even follow that. Right. I mean, how many people do you, you know, when you’re out there consulting for them, you know, when, when you, when you guys over at, uh, over, over at, uh, technology Rivers, when you’re consulting with them, how many people do you experience that same thing?

[26:15] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s a very common, uh, because change is not easy. People don’t like change. Uh, it, there’s a fear. Fear of job, fear of mistakes. People are not, not, not used to, and many AI projects are at a state where they are not going beyond experimentation. They even have failed something or tried, but they’re not executing it.

[26:41] And it’s same everywhere, even including in our company. There are certain areas where we are not able to and certain areas we are able to. So it really depends on the specific. Now that’s I, I think one of the ways we recommend doing is start simple because people are scared. So you want to start with very simple, maybe even the commoditized.

[27:05] Agent, just start doing a basic thing. Once people are comfortable, they’ll start adding another one. Start another one. One thing at a time. Anything. When you make a big project, let’s say your company says, we’re gonna automate everything in the next six months. Now you are scaring people. People will start looking at Job the next day because now they know, oh, I may be out.

[27:24] Right? So, but you may not even do that automation, but that announcement itself did. But instead of that, what you’re doing is you are just picking one thing and says. Uh, I’m gonna automate. So, uh, most of us, and, uh, I’m sure you agree with me, that most of us has way more work in our plate that we can deliver.

[27:44] So now AI is helping because as these things are automated, I can achieve 10 times more than I used to. So if I was able to do 10 things in a, in a week, now I can do 12 or 15. So once you start showing people that, oh, these tools are helping you do more, they started looking at it as a. It’s something that’s empowering them that’s not taking away their job.

[28:07] So because we all still need a lot of that work, there’s still a human involvement needed, so they start getting more excited because now that work is empowering them. As you get more and more excited, more. You will start doing more of those now. You start coming up with these new ideas. Okay. Uh, can you help me?

[28:26] This one, can you help me? This one. So in one of our customers, we built something, uh, they, they had multiple bad experience with another company. We built something for them in six weeks timeframe. And we said, whatever. We said, we will build you this thing. Once we gave them a demo, they got so much excited.

[28:45] They ’cause now they say, okay, this is a company who can help us build from that point onward every single day for two years. Their whole. Team. Team was on the call once a week and says they will look at what we built at, okay, can we do this thing? Can we do this thing? They start adding, so in two years timeframe, the company got more than double.

[29:07] They added more people as well, but not as much when it comes, because now a lot of that process was automated. As you started automating, your mistakes are less. So you were not losing money as you were before. So now obviously that bring more efficiency, more profitability because now you have less mistakes.

[29:24] But then as you’re adding, yes, you are adding, but let’s say in two years time, rather than adding 10 people, you may be adding only four people because now a lot of other automation, it’s helping. So I think it’s the slow process where you are also giving your team a confidence that this is the direction.

[29:43] We’re going, going. And in fact, many time you don’t even let them feel that we’re doing automation. You are just doing small thing at a time. Giving one, one tool to them that would automate something and not only automate, but also do it better. 

[30:00] Anthony Amunategui: Well, you know, I use the example with my children, you know, you know, um, my parents.

[30:06] Came from a survival, uh, generation. Their parents were literally depression era parents. Right. And all they could literally think about was surviving. Right? Just, Hey, how do I get food on the table? You know, my parents come from a generation where that that gap. Between, you know, surviving and surviving well, started getting better.

[30:25] And certainly I am today surviving way better than my parents ever did. Right? The, the amount of opportunities that my children have compared to what I had and even what my parents had, right, are just so much greater because of just the, the amount of wealth and systems that we have in place to generate income, uh, as humans.

[30:44] You know, the way I look at it today is. You know that idea that technology is gonna take my job is archaic. And whoever’s saying that today is, has just, they’re using something to slow themselves down because somehow or another, that as an idea that I’m gonna lose my job to Automation is silly. ’cause if automation could do your job.

[31:05] You have a silly job, right? And the job should be, you should go do what humans do best is, you know what, like what I want for my children is they’re not worried about survival. Today. They have food, shelter, home, you know, they’ve got self-actualization they’re doing. Now, my expectation is for them to be bigger and bolder and more badass, right?

[31:25] I, I look at my kids and I tell ’em every day, swing for the fucking fences. I, I cuss at ’em. I go swing for the f-ing fences. Go for it right now. Why? ’cause I’ve taken care of all these basic items that you need to survive. You’ve got plenty of food and plenty of shelter, and plenty of clothes, and, and look, you have income.

[31:42] I take care of your bills. Now I’m asking you to go big, bi bigger and bolder. Well, I think the same thing happens with employees. If we can get rid of this BS jobs that you’re doing, as, as, as a individual, right? If you get rid of these things, that should be automated. How could you be bigger, bolder, and more badass?

[31:57] Right. And that’s what I’m trying to, if we could show the world, stop thinking like a little brain, right? The little brains that say, oh, you’re taking my job. It’s, it’s like the guy who used to run a Thrasher. You remember on the field they say those guys with the thrashing machines, right? Today a combine does, you know what a hundred men could do and we can feed the populations much more smarter.

[32:16] So. I think the same way with, with us in the business world, how do we stop thinking that way and really inspire people to find those big, bold, badass ideas that they can be doing if they’re not doing the stuff that, uh, we can automate. 

[32:29] Ghazenfer Mansoor: True, true. I, I think it, yeah, goes back to the change part. People are afraid, people are not willing to make a change, uh, with time people.

[32:39] Like, like there are people who are hungry and obviously that’s what we have to, I mean, I think the same about my kid, uh, giving because they have everything. So how can they be more hungry and more motivated to go look for a better opportunities? So, uh, yeah, I agree. AI is. People, it depends on how you look at it.

[33:02] If, are you listening to somebody who says, oh, majority of the jobs are taken by ai, so your job will go away, or are you gonna be listening to Sam Altman who’s saying, well, this is the best time to start a company? So you have all those examples. This is the best time after, um, the, the web came in late eighties, uh, late nineties.

[33:22] So, so, uh, this is even a bigger shade, lot more opportunities. So. It depends on how you look at it. Are you one of those who’s gonna be sitting back watching for these things to happen and you are lost? Versus are you the one who’s gonna avail those opportunity to compete in that space? And since I want, I will avail this opportunity.

[33:47] I will take, I’ll make my bets and I will be better in ai. Yes, the change would be that you have to be willing to make a change. Like if you are doing something traditional, it’s no longer gonna be the same. So some people get into early, they learn certain. Technologies or whatever their path is, they wanna change.

[34:09] They say, well, this is how I’m gonna be retiring now. That thing has changed. So AI is changing how you do the work in our world in a software development, the way developers were doing coding before, now it’s changed. The way QA was being done is different. The content manage, like everything, you look at it, even, um, you mentioned podcasting, right?

[34:28] It’s, it’s different with time. It’s becoming changing. The tools available and how you are doing certain things, all those things are changing, so it’s the time to look at those new opportunities and how we can leverage the power of AI to be the best. So 

[34:49] Anthony Amunategui: Well, I I’m all for it. I take it Right on. I think it right on with that.

[34:52] But, you know, is, is the problem for our kids, this whole thing that, well, we don’t know how jobs are gonna, you know, AI is gonna take over your jobs. Part of me says that’s our fault. Right? I, I don’t think that my kids are really actually even worried about AI taking over the jobs that AI is gonna take over.

[35:07] I think that what we, what I have a problem with doing is I don’t know what to tell ’em. Look, I, my, my parents knew what to tell me. Go to school, get an education, work hard at a company, and you’d, you’ll have a, you’ll have a career. And at least that’s what they believed when they were raising me. You know, today.

[35:23] I don’t believe that I, I, look, I’m not even sure how valuable a college education is anymore for my children. I, I don’t know if, other than learning how to drink and socialize with their friends, if they’re gonna have any value into the learning that they’re getting, I look, I, I just, I don’t know that had I not just sent ’em to the business world a little, you know, four years earlier, skip all the, uh, cost of education and go into the business world faster and the education they’ll get.

[35:45] Along the way that they’re getting it through social media. I mean, the amount of pounding my kids get for data coming at them compared to what you and I got, uh, you know, they’re, they’re getting a thousand XA week compared to what you and I got as, as human beings. I mean, the amount of, you know, shorts and films and stuff that’s coming at them is just so much different.

[36:04] So I, the, the problem is my little brain isn’t sure what to tell ’em anymore, except for the fact that I’ve known that. We’ve always been successful that human beings have adapted no matter what’s come down our pipeline, you know, wars and tragedies and, and crisises. We’ve always adapted, and I gotta trust that whatever higher power holds the high watch for both of us today.

[36:27] We’ll do the same for us in the future, that our, our higher power will guide us down the next path. And, and, you know, wherever we’re supposed to be, we’ll, we’ll end the proper. So have some trust and faith in that system. Um, you know, even though I don’t know the right answer, and I think the gift is, how do we say to them, Hey.

[36:45] We’ve got this, we’ve got the lower system covered for you. Swing for the fences, right? And support them and, and say that with the organizations and the people in the organizations. Hey, listen, we’re gonna have AI take over some of these silly jobs that you’re doing. We’re gonna automate these today, and we want you to help our organization to swing for the fences.

[37:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And I think the big, the bigger one of the challenges that I see is, uh, you mentioned like a lot of information. They have 10 times or a hundred times more information. The problem is when you have too much information, then it’s also how do we filter, what is the right information, where do we focus? So they’re confused as well.

[37:23] Um, and the second I opportunities for. One of the questions that I’m getting lately from my friend circle, different places where I said, well, oh, a lot of these, um, fresh grads, they’re not getting as much opportunity. There are not many jobs, even though they have, let’s say, a highly demanding carrier, uh, like computer science around all of those, but.

[37:50] I look at it totally different and I tell my own kids as well, Hey, look, if you apply for a job or anybody who talked to me on this one, and then you are saying, oh, there are 300 people, uh, that applied. You can see it from LinkedIn or Indeed, how many people applied. I said, but if I’m on the other side or if you’re on the other side, reviewing those.

[38:11] How would you get picked up? So if you are not one of the few people to be picked up, so that means you need to work on, on it differently. If you still thinking the traditional way that, oh, I’m gonna just build my resume and send it, then good luck with that. So, because the world has changed, uh, the opportunities are, are, are changing or the way people look at it.

[38:34] Also, they’re also gonna be using AI to review your. Resume. So, so 

[38:40] Anthony Amunategui: yeah, 

[38:40] Ghazenfer Mansoor: the jobs are being created with ai. The resumes are being created, the reviews are, but you wanna create, um, something that differentiate you. So I’ll give you a small, just, just to add one thing. Yeah. As we were talking earlier, how, how we.

[38:56] Like creating a proof of concept on the same day? Yes. When we get the leads, I could respond to the same way as everybody else, but if we are creating something now that was not possible before, now we’re telling our customers that we did our homework and this is what you’re gonna get actually before and few hours of work.

[39:16] So that just shows us as a different people versus everybody else. 

[39:23] Anthony Amunategui: Well, it’s just, it’s always, I, I, I don’t think it’s ever changed. I always think that the person who went above and beyond, look you, you didn’t have to do that presentation. You didn’t have to bring that stuff together. But now you go and you go above and beyond.

[39:36] Boom. That’s a differentiating factor, right? I get young people come into the company all the time and they all wanna be millionaires, so no, no one comes here and goes, I don’t wanna be a millionaire. But they, they sit there and wait for something to happen. I’m like, no, no, no, no. Listen, you go create it.

[39:48] Go create it. Now I, I got a guy who just moved from one department over another department, and I just caught him before I walked in this meeting. The kids going way above and beyond. He’s taking what he’s doing. You know, seriously, and he’s jumped in, he is gotten crazy about finding, he, he, he went over to the, from a coordination position over to an estimating position where he is helping us find subs for projects.

[40:06] And he’s only been here for a few days and you can see how much he’s thriving. He’s got twice the number that anybody else in the team has. He’s jumping in there and really grabbing onto it. And I’m saying that has always been the case, right? The kid who, who works at McDonald’s, who, who smiles more than everybody else, has always got a dollar more.

[40:27] The guy who picks up the garbage and drags it outside always got a dollar more. It’s always in. I went above and beyond what you expected me to do. I ended up with a dollar more, and I think that’s, that was a case. 50 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago. And today that’s always gonna be the case, is that if I go someplace and I, and I wanna be successful, I’m gonna have to do more than the other other guys do.

[40:52] And if, if it’s, hey, I think that, you know, I, I got, I got a good friend of mine down in Florida and he’s working for a company, he’s all mad and he’s all like, you know, they don’t pay me enough and blah, blah, blah, blah, and I’m gonna go get a higher education and I’m gonna go get my master’s degree. So he went for the last four years, he’s got a master’s degree, and now he’s got a master’s degree.

[41:07] And he is like, well, yeah, no one’s hiring me. Because the truth is that’s not what gets you the job. You can have all that credentials you want. They wanna see a different person. What’s in it for their organization. Your your master’s degree. Field makes you feel good, but the truth is the organization can’t see why your master’s degree makes them a better company.

[41:27] They’re looking for that guy that comes in and goes, Hey, look, I can, I can, you know, he works for this organization that does a bunch of recovery people. He does a bunch of stuff around human, uh, human beings going through recovery and, um, you know, in the healthcare world and, and just the organizations that work for him aren’t seeing why that’s a benefit.

[41:46] I I’m saying to you, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s in what you are doing. It’s, it’s in, you gotta show them that you can make a difference. 

[41:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Absolutely. No, totally agree. Totally agree with you that you have to be, you have to create that differentiator, but now you can. So the benefit in today’s time, now you have ai.

[42:06] So you AI can give you a lot more information maybe previously. Uh. You were limited to whatever your ideas were. Now you have a friend who could just give you a lot more insights. AI can create the whole plan for you. AI can give you lot more insights based on the data you provide. Hey, this is what I want to do.

[42:26] Like, I mean, you share the company information, you share your profile. You say, well, a recommendation, how do I present myself different? So. You’re right. Like absolutely there are so many, uh, opportunities and you, you, you, you can, you, you can be much better presenting yourself using the power of ai. 

[42:50] Anthony Amunategui: That’s awesome.

[42:51] Alright, well listen, let’s, let’s end this. We’re coming to end here. Let’s kinda get into last, uh, a couple questions. You know, entrepreneurs are listening right now. What’s one practical thing they can do today? To better align their technology decisions or their future, uh, you know, future proof themselves.

[43:10] What, what can they do today to really create that organization that’s gonna be future proofed?

[43:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I think, um, the most important thing would be not looking at it from a technology perspective, but from a process perspective. How can I bring. More efficiency into my business or in my work by looking at the bottlenecks rather than looking at the technology. Technology will continue to change and evolve.

[43:43] So you don’t wanna be stuck on the technology part. 

[43:48] Anthony Amunategui: And if I looked five or 10 years down the road, uh, how do you see AI and machine learning shaping the future of businesses? 

[43:57] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I think they will be everywhere. Um, uh, the, the two areas which I, I personally. See a lot. Um, I don’t know if you agree or others agree, but I think the, the, the predictive part of ai, um, lot more applications are being built even now, including us building a lot of predictive software based on the data.

[44:21] People have all this data. Now you can create prediction on a personal health or, uh, any, uh, any industry you pick up. So, and the second part. Is, uh, the agent ai, where AI is not only, uh, automating your processes, it’s also giving you recommendation. It’ll also making a decision on your behalf by learning your, uh, your processes, learning your way of doing things, and doing things for you.

[44:52] Anthony Amunategui: Stop. Well, G gss, I’m so grateful to have you on the show today. If people wanna get a hold of you and have them come in and have you start working on automating their company, right? Uh, with all the stuff you’ve done, all the companies you worked with, if they wanna have you come in and automate their company, like if they, if they are sitting there failing, I’m confused.

[45:09] I don’t know what to do, GS help me do this. How do they get ahold of you and have you come in and start that process for them? 

[45:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So my company website is technology rivers.com, R-I-V-E-R s.com. Um, my personal website is ghazenfer.com, my first name.com. Uh, but for through the company site, you can contact me for any of the automation project and you can always, always find me on LinkedIn.

[45:38] My full name, easy to find. Good. Um, um, Mansoor is my, um, URL on LinkedIn. Um, um, easily accessible through LinkedIn. 

[45:49] Anthony Amunategui: Alright, so grateful for having you on the show today. A lot of great topic topics that we covered. Uh, really appreciate that. Uh, people power, uh, you know, people power growth system, power growth rather than people power growth.

[46:01] I think that’s a great topic. Uh, we, you know, we’ve covered and, uh, so grateful for having you. I look forward to having you on, on the show again later on. 

[46:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Anthony. 

[46:11] Anthony Amunategui: Hey audience. Hey, last week, another blowout week with all of you guys. I’m just so grateful for each and every one of you on this podcast.

[46:18] Uh, you know, another 140,000 downloads on YouTube alone. We doubled that on Apple and, and Spotify just. Look, I, I can’t tell you guys how grateful I am for each and every one of you on this journey with me and Jonathan and the, and the team in the background that get us these great guests. Look. But we did notice a lot of you guys meets the end of a podcast and you hadn’t subscribed yet.

[46:37] If you could take a second and do that right now or, or give us the five stars on Spotify or if you can give us those, those stars, it makes a difference to getting us a great guest like Ghazenfer and his team to come on here, though it does make a difference. If you could take a second right now and just do that for me, I would be so grateful and as always.

[46:54] Thanks for listening.