Episode 95: Does the profit first methodology work?
8th July, 2024
In this episode, Trudi and Sarah discuss the profit first methodology, a cash flow management system that involves using multiple bank accounts to allocate revenue. They explore the pros and cons of this method, including the benefits of creating discipline and the potential drawbacks of juggling multiple accounts. They emphasize the importance of understanding profit and cash flow, and how they differ. They also highlight the need for proper quoting for profit and effective cash flow planning. While the profit first methodology may work for some businesses, they encourage listeners to question whether it is suitable for their specific needs.
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Just two industry experts (and guests) having a friendly chat and sharing our knowledge. We aim to raise your knowledge base and dis-spell any myths surrounding finance. tax and a range of other financial topics.
This is a safe space to ask questions and hear useful info on financial matters.
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DISCLAIMER- The information and material in this podcast, and supplementary and associated information available, is for general information only. It should not be taken as constituting professional advice from the podcast owners, and we recommend you seek independent suitable advice that is specific to your unique circumstances.
Podcast Transcript Available Here
Sarah Eifermann (00:15.832)
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Financial Fofu. We are very blessed today to have the amazing Courtney Smith from Connection and Firefly and a few other different business names and brands floating around there. Welcome Courtney.
Kynection - Courtney (00:32.431)
Hello, hello Trudy, hello Sarah, lovely to be a guest today, looking forward to it.
Sarah Eifermann (00:37.072)
Yes, fantastic. Now Courtney and I have known each other for a little while. I was actually a mentor when he was part of the Startup Bootcamp incubator program for Firefly, his social impact business. And we have done a lot of connecting over the last probably what, two and a half years, I think. He's been a big contributor to our events when we run events in Melbourne. And Courtney is everything AI and
So for all of you listeners today thinking, I hate AI, this is your man to chat to about why you should maybe look at your perspective and consider changes to that thought process. So do you want to give us a little bit of a rundown quote on your background, where you've gotten to now, because you're a business owner that runs a large business that you've built from scratch as well. So you're fantastic for our
Kynection - Courtney (01:10.477)
Yes.
Kynection - Courtney (01:28.527)
Happy to do that. Yeah, so simple background. I'm what I would call an infinite learner. I love getting out there and pulling information in. And as a result, when I was retrenched from a very big company in the early 2000s, I had to have a look at what that meant to me, being a number and decided that wasn't aligned with my personality type. So I undertook a bit of a journey over a couple of years, tennis player and tennis coach as well, the background.
Sarah Eifermann (01:55.774)
Okay, yes, yep.
Kynection - Courtney (01:56.973)
Not to miss that sporting link because that's important in the Firefly and the community space. But for the most part, that set me on a journey, a journey of exploration to start a business which we started. Back then it was called AutoLink in homage to my brother who I lost whose name was Linker. So that's where the AutoLink and then we rebranded some time to Connection, which is the company where we brought in a couple and merged a couple of entities into one. Connection is a technology company.
that provides services to what we like to call the dangerous and dirty sectors of the market. Traditionally anything with big trucks, big yellow gear and lots of processes and complex regulatory environments. Connection solves the operational layer by delivering mobile products, apps and services to those sectors of the market.
Sarah Eifermann (02:49.106)
Yeah, it's a true project management tool for your business encompassing all different facets.
Kynection - Courtney (02:52.131)
Very much. We like to say we're the right -hand side brain of the left -hand side accounting. Well, right, right side super creative, and I know I've got accounts in the audience, I've got to be careful about what I say here, but right side super creative, come up with the crazy shit that makes stuff work in the field, and left side, plug it into the data, data -centric elements of GLs and things like that to make sure the information flow is there quickly and efficiently and the numbers
Sarah Eifermann (02:58.994)
Cause that's not confusing at all, Cor. Come on now.
Trudi Cowan (02:59.086)
I'm
Sarah Eifermann (03:19.9)
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. So connection has been a big part, obviously, of your AI journey, specifically because you're in the tech space and assuming given that you're delivering technology capabilities physically and functionally to your business owners that you work with, it's been a big learning curve for you in terms of integration automation for yourself, but not only for your customers.
Kynection - Courtney (03:48.995)
Yeah, huge, huge. You know, they always say the plumber has the worst plumbing, right? And there's a truth to that. So we go and solve all of these really hardcore customer problems out in the dangerous and dirty land across many unique locations in Australia, because the really cool thing about our customers are they're colloquial Australian company. Yeah, they've started normally on a machine somewhere in a geographic region to service.
Sarah Eifermann (03:55.674)
you
Kynection - Courtney (04:18.471)
a geographic segmentation or a large tier one client where they've sorted in as a subcontractor for projects. And so we get to deal with people that have been hands on the tools and built businesses and often get to that point in their growth strategy where they're really not sure how to go and where they go next. And traditionally that presents all sorts of challenges. Not even the challenges we face in my business, not even the challenges anyone faces, which is around change management and the program delivery of putting technology.
business. Yeah, so we looked at most of the angles around operational improvement. We're going through a big exercise this year and a big part of that is an AI journey of improvement. So I'm happy to dive into that rabbit hole if that makes sense.
Sarah Eifermann (05:03.154)
Well, maybe can you define what is AI for our listeners? Like, is it really artificial? And is it intelligent?
Kynection - Courtney (05:11.087)
Ah, yeah. Okay. Well, if you had asked me 12 months ago, my stock standard answer would have been that it's not intelligent. It's just a sequencing technology. And what I mean by that is that it is able to understand aspects of information at a point in time and tag in and provide relevant information that's aligned to that initial data set using the world's knowledge.
Yep, so it says, if I start a sentence, a cat with a hat, it'll be able to finish that sentence because it knows in a million variables that it's seen on the internet, a cat in the hat is red and fat. Right? I'm not saying that's it, but you my point. What that's done though, is it's created a mechanism that's allowed for it to layer up. And in order to layer up, organizations are now spending billions of dollars sucking trillions of lines of information in.
and then creating these wonderful sequences. So the cool stuff I get to do at parties is create songs on the fly in two or three minutes because the technology can sequence information, sequence music and sequence pretty much anything. So a picture on a wall is a sequence of pixels. Yeah. It knows how to take a pixel and expand out from that original pixel or design. What A -Hi has done though, which I think is incredible.
And scary is it's actually made English or language the new code.
Sarah Eifermann (06:45.466)
Interesting. So it's converting from numbers effectively into letters or alphabet.
Kynection - Courtney (06:50.767)
Yeah, so eyes and eyes now can be represented by the English language because as a someone with a reasonably capable skill set in English, and I'll say reasonably, I can find out really unique things using language that the AI can now interpret effectively and do something with. So strategic planning, as I said, creating music and songs and themes and as you make images and videos, these are all the cool shit that's happening. It's happening really fast.
Trudi Cowan (07:02.01)
Thank
Sarah Eifermann (07:09.277)
Yeah,
Sarah Eifermann (07:14.726)
I've heard him make songs guys.
Trudi Cowan (07:14.962)
Thank
Kynection - Courtney (07:20.387)
and is accelerating exponentially.
Sarah Eifermann (07:23.102)
So you said 12 months ago that's what you would have said. Trudy, were you going to say something? She's here by the way. She's just...
Trudi Cowan (07:23.23)
You
Trudi Cowan (07:26.79)
I was just going to say, I was actually listening to a podcast this morning and they were talking about there's actually a movie producer who's written a screenplay completely on AI and then gone on to actually make the movie. that's massive.
Kynection - Courtney (07:41.731)
probably using AI. look, we're not there yet, video's a way off, but it'll come. And that's the really interesting thing about where we are in the cycle. You know, there's two things that are appearing to me. Number one is that the current design of AI is almost a race to the bottom. And the reason why it's a race to the bottom is because it will be expected that you and I will be able to use the tools that AI has enhanced in our day -to -day operations.
just as a standard way of doing our business. And if we don't, guess what? We're probably in a risky situation personally, if we can't adapt and play in that space. But what that's meant is that the guys like OpenAI and Google and Perplexity and all these guys that are building these large language models that create this technology are actually racing to a bottom because it's going to be a normal. It's going to be expected. It's going to be like water, right? We're just going to expect
So the reality for me is, don't worry too much about the tech, worry about yourself. Worry about how you approach things and where you're heading in your mindset.
Sarah Eifermann (08:46.962)
get on the bus or get run over and left behind, right?
Kynection - Courtney (08:49.199)
Yeah, it's the truth. It's where it's going to be. mean, if, you know, 12 months ago, was probably 12 months ahead of everyone and probably 12 months later, I'm still 12 months ahead of everyone. That gap will probably diminish over time as the technology sort
Sarah Eifermann (09:01.662)
So earlier when I asked you that question, said 12 months ago you said it was just sequencing. Now has that opinion changed?
Kynection - Courtney (09:08.835)
it's improved to the point where we're starting to see some technology derivations off the back of it, which probably weren't expected. So neural networks, which were traditionally part of the original AI piece, neural being able to, like a brain synapse, coordinate. So NeuralLink with Elon Musk, which by the way, they just launched the other day and there's got a young fellow that's programming and working with computer.
Sarah Eifermann (09:26.066)
This is an Elon Musk brain chip,
Kynection - Courtney (09:37.037)
with literally a chip, they take a piece of your skull out, they plug in a couple of nodes into your brain and the brain controls the computer. No mouse can play complex games and all that sort of stuff. So that's next level. But I'm a pretty big Tesla fanboy, I'll be honest. And I don't have one yet because I'm waiting for one piece of kit to come in. But they've just cracked the code with neural networks in car. And the big ticket there and why I say things have changed.
They've taken something like a trillion kilometres, something like that, maybe not a trillion, it's hundreds of millions, if not hundreds of billions of lines of kilometres on road, and they program that into a massive computer. And now the car makes the decision on using machine intelligence for video. So they've used cameras, and they believe that their risk ratio compared to the human...
is something like 500X less risk because they've programmed all the variables in and the computer doesn't have things like distractions, doesn't look at the phone, doesn't do all that stuff. So that's going to change industries. And in fact, Uber who disrupted our good friends in the taxi cab industry are about to be disrupted by robo taxis, are, you know, not non -human driven cars.
Trudi Cowan (10:58.352)
in. Travelist.
Kynection - Courtney (11:05.551)
Crazy.
Sarah Eifermann (11:05.714)
said for everyone in our audience listening right now freaking out I also saw something yesterday that said they asked AI to show them a picture of salmon in a river and it showed them pictures of cut up pieces of salmon in a river.
Kynection - Courtney (11:18.199)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what I'll say? I'll say your grasp of the English language was poor in that instance because you didn't define out what you wanted to actually have done. Yeah.
Sarah Eifermann (11:25.532)
Correct. And I think that this
Trudi Cowan (11:26.662)
I was just there signing, you didn't give it enough information.
Sarah Eifermann (11:29.862)
You've got to really program it. And so I suppose my question around the intelligence piece and is it artificial? It's programmable based on the bias of the individuals that are programming it at the time. Because you and I could both plug something into ChatGPT or one of the other programs. I think Jasper's another one. Correct me if I'm wrong there. you know, we
Kynection - Courtney (11:49.22)
Yep.
No, just like a smart, intelligent use of AI. It's one of millions of AI products now. So it's a subset of the LLM, the top
Sarah Eifermann (11:58.674)
Yeah. We wouldn't get an identical picture
Right?
Kynection - Courtney (12:05.697)
No, you wouldn't. You then will. And the biggest problem is, and I'm finding, is that if you have a theme that you like after producing an image, your ability to maintain that theme has to be detailed, highly prompted to know how to go further. And even then, when you detail and highly prompt, you will still get variations and they call it hallucinations in AI, where the machine does its own thing against the prompt.
Sarah Eifermann (12:28.882)
interesting.
Sarah Eifermann (12:34.694)
Interesting. Trudy, do you have a question right
Trudi Cowan (12:35.24)
That's a thing.
Trudi Cowan (12:38.842)
What, how are you using AI in your business? What are some of the tools that you're using to, I guess, streamline and improve your business?
Kynection - Courtney (12:47.597)
Yeah, look, I'm a deep diver, so I tend to go over a little bit deeper, I'll go a bit deeper than most people. But for the most part, if I was to list some of the big ticket items that we're getting success from. So transcription, anyone that's been in my world has known that I've been adding a transcriber into my meetings for the best part of about eight months now. I was an early adopter, one of the first adopters of a technology called Fireflies.
Now there are other ones out there that work well, SANA, AI, I can list them and I can send a little list afterwards if people are interested with other things I use. So the good thing about that tech is it takes this meaning, transcribes it into a textual output and then runs an AI over the top using that sequencing to determine the methods or conversation themes that are relevant to the prompt. So if you create a meeting minutes prompt, it'll create a nice beautiful outlay set of meeting minutes.
Sarah Eifermann (13:22.588)
Yeah, absolutely. We'll pop them up on our
Kynection - Courtney (13:44.599)
If you want to create a strategic review and assessment and ask for an opinion, it'll do that too. So you can do all sorts of cool things. The example I can give to that is I now walk into every meeting, doesn't matter whether it's physical or whether it's online. I pull out a speaker and say, do you mind if I record the meeting today? I'll have the minutes to you within probably an hour.
Sarah Eifermann (14:06.682)
Is that with Fireflies as well off your mobile phone? Yeah. Yeah.
Kynection - Courtney (14:09.603)
Yeah, yeah, correct. there's lots of Google. Google will go there. Copilot's doing it now. So that's what I'm saying. It's a race to the bottom. So all these really smart technologies, just all they do is pave a go -to -market strategy for Google and Microsoft on the ones they can pick off the shelf and drop into their stack. So transcription's a really big one. And I find it to be really valuable from an information gathering point of view.
Trudi Cowan (14:12.478)
That's your way.
Kynection - Courtney (14:38.541)
GPT I use super regularly to categorise and think through my thought process, which is constant. So I'm just asking and probing and trying to find information. How do I do that? Well, I do that in a pretty unique way. I'll do a voice transcript, so I'll talk to it first and that'll start my chat. So I get this nice dialogue going around thinking and then I'll start to programme and feed that information. So I might feed it
or I might feed it business plans, or I might feed it strategic documents I've put together previously. I may even feed it, because I'm a visual learner and a visual communicator, I like to write a lot, so I'll write up my notes and draw my pretty diagrams and all those intersections. So I'll feed all of those in after that fact, and then I'll start to refine the conversation down to where I want it to get to. And if I keep doing that, I get to a very, very capable...
piece of information that's distributable to other team members can be be capably given to other people because it's been refined. Process time, maybe an hour. If I was to do that in a past life, that's days of work. It's days of work.
Sarah Eifermann (15:54.834)
Yeah, yeah, completely is. mean, so people listening know I use AI specifically for this podcast when we record these podcasts now the AI tools that are built in here have probably saved me per episode. It's a half hour episode. They saved me about five hours of editing time. So it'll split the transcript out in our first series Trudy was sending.
the voice recording off to a transcriptor, we were paying for a transcriptor at, was it $15 or $20 an episode? Something. Right, and then I was manually going through and editing out the voice controls, adjusting the audio, start and finish points, and then I was having to split out our clips for social media. So now I click two buttons, one that says magic.
Kynection - Courtney (16:21.497)
Yeah.
Trudi Cowan (16:28.402)
Something like that, something pervasive, yeah.
Sarah Eifermann (16:46.27)
Magic episode and it spits out my episode and then the other one spits out five to eight clips that it thinks are most relevant For an audience now I can't program those clips and they're not always right and you've got to give them a little bit of a pivot but they are usually under a minute which then makes the requirement for an Instagram real a tick -tock video or a YouTube short because YouTube shorts are the new ones so it makes those parameters
Kynection - Courtney (17:10.327)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Eifermann (17:14.078)
And then it also spits me out the show notes. So it's kind of similar to your meeting minute transcribed. So it'll tell us the key themes that we discuss. And then it will do the full transcribe and it'll spit out the full transcript of the, and it doesn't always get it right. And you have to edit it from time to time. It can never spell Trudy's name right, even after like 40 episodes.
Kynection - Courtney (17:34.635)
I guarantee it says Courtney's a girl. I mean, that's a guarantee. There's one for real.
Sarah Eifermann (17:38.755)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there are things that need work but in terms of using it for value proposition Trudy knows full well we joke about this all the time I'm not an early adopter of these type of things mainly because I'm suspicious naturally but also Trudy was doing it for me so I didn't need to whereas now whatever
Trudi Cowan (17:58.388)
And now Sarah uses ChatGPD more than I do these days.
Sarah Eifermann (18:01.618)
Yeah, yeah, mainly because she's like, why? I'm like, because I've become lazy. If I don't have to think it through, and it spits out my themes for me perfectly. Like the other day, I asked it to ask me to write a blog on something. And it was as if I wrote it. And I was like, because but to be fair, I gave it a detailed description of what I wanted to talk about, and the key themes that I was looking to address in that so.
Kynection - Courtney (18:22.275)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Sarah Eifermann (18:29.266)
There's some really good benefits of adoption, but I know a lot of people are really fearful of AI. I recently mentioned automation in a face -to -face presentation I was doing with the Chamber of Commerce in Coffs Harbour Council. And people's face, were all engaged in the presentation until I mentioned automation. And then they all went, and I had to say to them, I'm not talking
Kynection - Courtney (18:48.111)
Yeah.
Sarah Eifermann (18:57.648)
about AI, I'm talking about systemization of your processes so that they become automatic and they all went, huh.
Trudi Cowan (19:06.964)
It does make people nervous.
Kynection - Courtney (19:07.671)
Well, that was nice to alleviate their concerns, Sarah, because automation is coming. Like that's fact too. So there's a big race going on for humanoid robots at the moment. And for the listeners, what's the positive out of that is that there's something like a hundred million jobs that need to be fulfilled that aren't able to be filled today by humans because of safety concerns.
or repetitive work types and things where people don't want to work in those industries anymore. That's where this technology will go first. But even so, I think the point is, and to use the description that a good friend of mine, Finbar Hanlon, who's a very good watch
LinkedIn and like if you jump on and follow him. He talks about operating system 2 .0. And that's the bit where we've got to recognise that we need to allow for this technology to be an augmentation of who we are and that we've got to not fear it, but understand the value. So where you said you were lazy, I actually like that connotation because I take the reverse of that connotation, which is I've become super powered. And so I've got a red cape on all the time. I just know it sees my red cape.
Sarah Eifermann (20:18.578)
you
Kynection - Courtney (20:24.335)
And for me, what it's done is it's taken away my biggest weakness, which is procrastination, right? The procrastination to do. If you're an ideas person, the ideas can sometimes mount up to think I could never get to the end result because I can't bring the troops together. I say, true, true, true, true, true, get set, 100%. But now I
Sarah Eifermann (20:25.518)
things with Superman that explains so much.
Sarah Eifermann (20:39.58)
He's a Pisces for anyone listening as well, so dreamer.
Kynection - Courtney (20:50.635)
necessarily need to think like that anymore because I can take my thought, categorize it, bring to something of value that can be distributed to others. I can create a communication plan, a project plan or whatever it is I need to do so that others can consume my massive thought into their specific requirement. So I think even that alone, that's huge for small business operators. If I could add just a fraction more, we will be doing an exercise. So we're looking
Sarah Eifermann (20:55.74)
Okay.
Sarah Eifermann (21:09.374)
bite flies.
Kynection - Courtney (21:20.683)
I've actually hired a number of offshore resources. I was very sovereign, Sarah and Trudy, extremely sovereign. And so much so that actually limited, I think it limited our business. And I know that sounds funny. And you can put the Australian sovereign hat on or wherever you live, but we're a global world now. We live in a global economy. And I've had the great opportunity to add technological value to people in other countries.
who aren't seeing it like I'm seeing it. And I've made resources that would be as capable in skill set as local. And often we can't find them in Australia, I'm talking technical resources. And as capable, and then I've accelerated their capability by putting in tools and processes around their skills. So that in its own right, I think I'm gonna do it like a day in the life of around that, to talk around the sorts of tools that I've added on. One I
Trudi Cowan (21:59.678)
What?
Sarah Eifermann (21:59.879)
Yep.
Sarah Eifermann (22:17.171)
But you're talking about taking strategic thinkers within the tech and development space and enhancing their ability to make key performance metrics and get their ideas to what once was paper, which is no longer paper, but it's being able to convert the data much faster than the traditional brain has been able to process it and get it out.
Trudi Cowan (22:32.66)
when.
Sarah Eifermann (22:41.156)
Also, to be fair to ourselves as humans, that we have a lot of other distractions in our daily lives, naturally, and an AI device does not. It is literally working on what you program it, and that's
Kynection - Courtney (22:46.595)
I'll see
Kynection - Courtney (22:53.101)
And that's it. And you you look at the dystopian future and wonder what it looks like. And so I don't know how many of your viewers have watched WALL -E, but it's a famous, famous movie which talks about the automation of humankind and the waste that's left as a result of robots taking over and not. But anyway, long story short, the last snapshot was a shot of people sunbaking with the sunbeds out on the spaceship and having robots looking after them. They're all overweight, these are being fed perfectly and everything.
Trudi Cowan (23:04.201)
Thank
Kynection - Courtney (23:23.521)
I don't know if that's the describing future that we want, but a lot of people are saying that productivity, opportunity and the productivity gains here will be the new way that GDP is recalibrated. And the reason why is because we will all be enhanced exponentially. So there's all of these interesting things that are coming. I don't think we need to be scared of them, but we need to be aware and we need to be able to think about how we can add value in our day to day as we move into this new world.
We're at the fastest exponential shift in mankind. No question. I thought it was 10 years ago when mobile was starting to pump, you know, like now to think of creative as being disrupted, creative technology has been disrupted. Like that to me was the pinnacle moment in my brain was like, if you can disrupt the creative, which I didn't think would be disrupted, like I honestly thought that would be the last of the last. I thought programmatic roles, know, clerks, solicitor clerks.
accountant clerks and people like that. A lot of these would be heavily disrupted numbers and words. Yeah, but when you start to think about images and music and creative thought, it's changed the dynamic.
Sarah Eifermann (24:32.222)
The access points on the graph, the access points on the graph, and if you were tracking this over thousands of years, you'll see exponential growth. And so if you plot that forward, what does that mean in terms of vertical growth axis? You're pretty much going straight up from now
Kynection - Courtney (24:47.213)
Yeah, we're going straight. We're hockey stick. And the reason why we'll continue the hockey stick is because the tools will start to be used to program the next next elements of change, because that's where we're at now. And so now you've got this exponential shift where tools are programmed and tools to program tools and thinking, you know, we'll see massive shifts in the way in which medicine is shaped, massive shifts in the way education is shaped. You'll be able to do micro credentials education anywhere, anytime, anywhere, anyhow.
and go through the same level of knowledge and knowledge transfer that any university in the planet can deliver in a personally biased education piece, which means that I can go down the rabbit hole that I choose. I don't have to follow a rubric. Like that's next level shit. Like that's the change. And when you think about that augmentation, if you put an EA out of the Philippines into a role and you augment them like that, that's exponential shifting in productivity now.
So these are the collides that I love to watch occur and they're all colliding really fast and furiously.
Trudi Cowan (25:50.279)
Thank you.
Sarah Eifermann (25:52.476)
What does this mean for old school thinkers within business? We have a lot of people that listen that we work with that Trady might still be writing his notes in a diary, paper diary.
Kynection - Courtney (26:05.539)
Yeah.
Trudi Cowan (26:07.289)
That's the kind of client that has paper invoices.
Sarah Eifermann (26:10.086)
Yeah, right. Invoice book. What does it mean for those type of businesses? Because there is an argument you can say that people these days in the most connected we've ever been, we're also the least connected we've ever been human connection emotionally. So there is actually a value proposition in the old school way of doing things because it provides that face to face connection that we're losing. So what does this AI piece mean for those types of businesses?
Kynection - Courtney (26:23.341)
I'm sad. I'm
Kynection - Courtney (26:38.275)
Look, you know the rule of marketing. If you know your niche and you play to your niche, you can win, right? So if your niche is old school people that like to play in old school, then you can carve a market out. You carve a very good market out. We've created Firefly, which is, as you mentioned, a for -purpose business model around the area of volunteerism, because volunteerism is the ultimate face -to -face endeavor in community.
And we were seeing a slide on that on it both in Australia wide level but a global level and a slide that's not a small slide We're talking falling off the edge of a cliff slide. We lost a million volunteers in the last decade of five five point five million So we're that's in Australia alone, right? It's just right like globally nine hundred eighty seven million volunteers Doing something like 1 .5 trillion hours the single biggest
Sarah Eifermann (27:22.972)
Yeah, that's Australia.
Kynection - Courtney (27:34.425)
When I looked at that and looked over the horizon, my biggest concern was the next generation because of what you said, the digital divide. The digital divide being that we're going to be programmed into scrolling our phones as opposed to action doing something because we are being controlled by the machine. Our single biggest risk in society, in my opinion, and something we need to fight against is the proliferation of brainwashing that has been taking place around using AI and tools to programmatically determine
Sarah likes and what Trudy likes and what your viewers like and put you into a perpetual loop you can't escape. Yeah and I get caught there and I'm fairly discerning around this shit and I know I get caught. So I think about the people that are less discerning and I go wow this is the non -productive risk of AI. You can chew tens of hours if not, well geez, tens and tens of hours per week. I watched an episode on a YouTube video
180 IQ do, hacker of Google, smart, smart, smart man. He said, I believe that I can get into your psyche where I can control you for eight hours and you choose not to eat, I watch
Trudi Cowan (28:50.631)
I could believe
Kynection - Courtney (28:50.809)
So we've got to be very, very smart as middle -aged people that have lived a very luxurious life of physical connection and all those things, knowing that the digital divide is taking place for the next generation. And we need to be the characters that stand up and fight, staking ground for humans. And on
Sarah Eifermann (29:12.54)
Well, they've got to get better at it because Trudy and I are bored of the algorithm at the moment that's ruining our meme sharing game because it's sending us the same shit now and we've got nothing to share with each other. Like, if it's going to be that price, I'm going to be bored pretty quick and opt out very quickly as well and go back to picking up the telephone, which by the way is what's happened the last three weeks because we're bored with the algorithm.
Kynection - Courtney (29:23.532)
Yeah.
Trudi Cowan (29:33.682)
It has, hasn't it?
Kynection - Courtney (29:34.243)
Yeah, well, I don't know, there's a fight back right there. Viva!
Trudi Cowan (29:37.62)
Hahaha!
Sarah Eifermann (29:40.426)
So I agree with you. think it's discernment is really important, but also understanding what you like. Time is the biggest commodity. We hear it all the time. People say we talked about it in the South poverty consciousness episode. People say it's not always money. I don't have time for that. don't have time for that. It's having a really good look at what you spend and invest your time on and where the value and the important pieces. And I do have concerns for the younger generation coming through with their addiction to screens and their inability to put
the phone or the computer and have a conversation. How often do you go out for dinner these days and you can't write.
Kynection - Courtney (30:13.571)
Nice, yeah. Everyone's sitting there on their phones at dinner, like it's nuts, right? So we got that concern, but this is the balance bit and this is why I think we need to be leaders as well, as people who run businesses are involved and talking to our young people and making sure that we provide the guardrails in conversations.
Trudi Cowan (30:15.944)
Yeah, that was our last time.
Sarah Eifermann (30:18.802)
Yeah, no, it's not ideal.
Kynection - Courtney (30:39.811)
Look, how much influence? don't know because the next generation is going to tell the whole generation what to do. lots of things changing around that that I think we also need to lean into so we can have relevant conversations as well. Not just talk from a position of you shouldn't do that. Talk from a position of knowledge and awareness and understanding.
Sarah Eifermann (30:53.352)
So,
Sarah Eifermann (30:58.14)
Yeah. So if there was one thing to take away from today's episode, we'd be talking around what specifically, if there was one or two main things that you could tell people about today to consider, is it to think about AI and how it can benefit you rather than be fearful of it? Is it, what is
Kynection - Courtney (31:17.423)
Yeah, look, mine will be that as a small business owner with, you know, 40 people in technology, it's really important if you're in the delivery of information, information. So a plumber who's physically doing something every day can save a proportion of his time probably at the end of day. If you're living in knowledge work, as in you're providing professional services or information,
It's critical, not maybe, it's critical you lean into the tools that are becoming available. For example, marketing industry is going to be disrupted like we've never seen before as an industry. I would suggest that the kids that I speak to in the universities are all quite nervous about coming out the back of a three -year university degree and $50 ,000 worth of debt.
Sarah Eifermann (32:14.354)
Yeah. Nope.
Kynection - Courtney (32:14.381)
Not to knock universities, right, but three years, no real understanding of real world connotations and not traveling fast enough with the world to world change. That puts them in a precipice at the end. And so I would question, they're out there before they graduate, right? And that's coding as well. Don't think for a moment that coding won't be also disrupted in this place.
Sarah Eifermann (32:30.856)
Yeah, they're outdated before they graduate.
Sarah Eifermann (32:39.708)
Yeah.
Trudi Cowan (32:39.816)
That's the same.
Kynection - Courtney (32:42.761)
lean into it, why would you lean into it? Because I think the value you can create, simple as this, we were trying to understand the best way to do our training, L &D, learning development, for our customers and our internal teams. I went on an AI search because I said, we're doing a shit job of it, because it's hard, right? You've got to take screenshots and walkovers and voiceovers and put them in a document and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Lots of work to do that properly. And most people hate doing that
So I went on a global search, found a really interesting cool tool called Guides. You basically open up your screen share, you start your guide off, and you just start clicking on your screen. And as you're clicking, you talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and away you go. And in the chapter, all that pulls that together in a really nice little video walkthrough. Gives you an FAQ to hand to your customers. But it can also be clearly used for SOPs, guidance on how to use tools and systems in your business. So when you're doing your training curricula for onboarding induction.
you've got all of that cool stuff there in a repository. But that's the big work. That's the big work. What's the content you need to share with others? What's the content you need to extract from others to deliver your business? And then map that out on the customer journey from the front end of how do I track my first customer all the way through to making sure they're an advocate for my business. Work out those inputs and I'll guarantee across that cycle, that piece, there's going to be five or six tools that could make monumental change the way you do
Sarah Eifermann (33:40.722)
Yeah, why reinvent the wheel?
Kynection - Courtney (34:07.075)
and therefore is gonna make monumental change to the way you do your business.
Sarah Eifermann (34:10.664)
So resources wise, where do people go to find the resources that are right for their business? A side note, plug it into chatGPT and be specific, it'll tell you.
Kynection - Courtney (34:18.157)
Yeah, that's as easy as it gets, but I need a blah blah blah on what is available. Look, the ones I lean into a fair bit, there's a really good newsletter called Neuron. Neuron, yep. There's another one that's called, there's an AI for that. And there's an AI for that is a collation of all of the AI tools that are available. And you can search by category. And once you find the category you like, you just go through and you play, right? You test.
Trudi Cowan (34:18.501)
Hahaha
Sarah Eifermann (34:29.018)
Neuron, is
Kynection - Courtney (34:47.919)
Now not everyone likes that piece, so then you probably should be searching up the ones you found and maybe looking up a quick five minute YouTube to see what people are saying about that so you get a third party reference. But for the most part, that's the process I follow. I've probably used 200 in the last 18 months. Just test and see and feel. Every time I use one, something comes out the back. One I've looked at recently, which is a really cool one for people who have used Asana or Notion or something like
is a little product called Task Aid, T -A -S -K -A -D -E. Literally, you're right, I'd like a customer workflow journey, please, two prompts, and what? It'll give you all the tasks required, and then you can backfill all those tasks, and you can align those with your team members. Not super pricey, very powerful to deliver. Get rid of the 80 % of the work, right? And then layer cake on top, that's where our human viable capability comes, yeah.
Trudi Cowan (35:39.357)
Yeah.
Sarah Eifermann (35:43.166)
Efficiencies efficiencies, there's so many efficiency
Kynection - Courtney (35:45.743)
efficiency. Yeah, yeah, we're the layer cake on top, we're the icing, right? AI's the cake.
Sarah Eifermann (35:50.67)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a lot of information for people in a very short space of time today, Courtney. We could have you on to come and talk about 10 billion episodes. I think of this stuff is super passionate about it. People can connect with him on LinkedIn. If you type Courtney Smith connection, that's with a K -Y -N -E -C -T -I -O -N. You can type that in. If you have any other questions, send them through to us on our socials and we will ship them across to Courtney
Trudi Cowan (36:00.573)
Hahaha
Kynection - Courtney (36:09.827)
Well done.
Sarah Eifermann (36:17.33)
He might be able to do some vids and we'll post them back out for you all. There's so many things.
Kynection - Courtney (36:21.537)
I'm to help and passionate about this space. Love to help others learn. It's hard. It's hard getting my team to come along on the journey sometimes. So let alone convince a third party I don't have any control over. But if you're a bit of a creative and you like to deep, deep dive, give me a holler, reach out and have it help.
Sarah Eifermann (36:42.344)
Amazing, thanks so much for joining us today, Court.
Kynection - Courtney (36:45.269)
Lovely seeing you both. See you on the roundabout. Bye.