Speaking and Communicating Podcast

00:00
AI will help you do that. Doesn't write the email for you. Like when I speak to AI, I'm literally like, okay, I got to write this email. This is the personality type. I'm going to mess it up. I don't want to offend them, but I want to make sure I'm very direct about this. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

00:25
Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. By the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get communicating with our guest today. Joining us from Toronto, Canada, Nathan Graham is an AI entrepreneur, an author and a human centered technology expert.

00:52
He's the founder of Synthetic Echo and is here to help entrepreneurs use AI to automate for maximum productivity and results. And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show. Hi, Nathan. Hey Roberta. Thank you so much for having me. And the Toronto introduction, you will hear me say A from time to time. I am that kind of Canadian. A. Oh yeah. A. Is that a Toronto thing? The Canada thing, A.

01:21
Oh, it's a Canada thing. Every time I go visit the beautiful states, that's what they bug me about all the time. Because I'm that terrible little snake in a... In all my time in Chicago, I've heard of that. But anyway, welcome to the show. I'm glad that you're here. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. So there's so much talk about AI. think it's literally creating the biggest noise right now. What is it that we are first getting wrong about AI?

01:50
at the moment? That's a very good question, a good way to start it off. I think all the noise about it to kind of first aid is well justified. AI is going to massively change the world. It is already. We're not going back. It is literally bigger than the Internet. And then we all know what the Internet did and how it advanced things. I think the biggest thing that people are getting wrong about it, though, is people seem to have a view that AI is a tool to get rid of people. And that's how it's going to be used.

02:17
And although I will say there are always people in life who will misuse tools, that is not the ultimate strength behind AI. And my wife and I actually, it'd be funny, we had this conversation about something else this morning is anytime a system is built off of human greed, works. And when people understand that AI is an amplifier, not a replacer, it is going to dramatically change how this world works. So what AI does is it

02:45
amplifies human potential, it amplifies human work. As an employee standpoint or a CEO, if they're thinking that AI is going to replace their wages, that is a very silly way to think about it. Because sure, they might save 30,000 or $50,000 a year. Yet, AI has the potential if even if you take a greedy corporate look and you just look at people as dollar producing hours, it has the ability to take them from say $75 producing hours for a company to three to $400.

03:15
and it is the true tool for true expansion. And so I think where this misconception comes in is based around fear and legitimate fear, because it's a lot of lack of understanding, yet the perception really should be is how it amplifies the human being and human potential behind it. So in other words, we should see it as more of a collaborator than a competitor who's coming to replace us, because that's where the fear is.

03:44
But if the way you've explained it, you basically saying work with it to make things better, to amplify, like you said. Yeah. Like, so my daughter's seven and I promise this will relate. And I had this aha moment that as she's growing into this really cool human being, I'm 42 now. I know I look, I don't look over 26, 42 now. And I shaved today for this to look younger. And what I get to do over the next

04:12
well, 10 years of my daughter's life is take 42 years of experience and knowledge and basically give her a step up in life. So she's not starting from zero. She's starting from my parental knowledge to be able to go to the next level. So really my goal as a parent is to take her by the time she's 20, she should be outperforming me on every metric if I've properly passed down my knowledge. Does that make sense? Yeah.

04:38
AI can do the same thing. This is why we read books too, by the way, when we read books, like if you look at the books behind me, I'm taking somebody's 10 to 15 years of knowledge of work and I'm instantly absorbing it within a week of reading it. So I get to start what took them 10 years. takes me one week to start with AI is that on steroids, the things that you can do and create out of AI is you are literally taking.

05:03
a hundred years of the top producers around the entire world and you're able to absorb their knowledge in a quick amount of time, allowing you to now build on that knowledge, right? And once we can build on the knowledge, like we would as parents to our children, once we can build on that knowledge, we get to go to places that we've never even thought were possible because knowledge is

05:34
progressive and linear. You don't just start from zero and relearn everything while you're on life. You learn from the history and that's what AI is allowing us to do. I hope I articulated it that well. That's a hard-con thing to articulate. I hope it came Very well articulated as well. And as I said, it's a very fresh perspective on the discussions and conversations we've had about AI before. Because not only are you alleviating the fears, there's been some fear mongering on it. Let's not get around the bush.

06:03
But I think that you've really explained to us how we can make it use it as a tool basically to amplify whatever it is that we're doing. Yeah. And it's a great equalizer with that. not, not to sell my products or anything, but like what I do for companies or what I do for small businesses, you know, I grew up in the real estate world. was a real estate agent for 16 years. I helped run companies. I coached, I taught, I trained and

06:31
One of the things you see is people who got established in real estate 25, 30 years ago, they're still established today because they built in a less competitive market and they got the funds to keep going and building up. so now when you step into the real estate market, you're going to step into a lot of money to compete against these people, or you're just going to take forever to build it. You're basically winning from the retire. AI is this great equalizer now. So like what I do with companies is I help them build AI C-suites and AI agents and flows. That way you can take.

06:59
one person like one realtor as an example or mortgage broker or coffee shop owner and basically give them a $500,000 executive team for 250 bucks or 500 bucks a month. Right. That takes care of all their social media posts and everything. So like when we talk about the flourishing like of human potential and what AI is costful of, it is a great equalizer in life. So people are either going to stay within scarcity mode and stay within fear.

07:28
And I truly believe my heart goes out to those people yet AI didn't make them scarce. They were scarce before AI. They were fearful before AI. was everything. So that was their mindset going into it. AI, not to overemphasize it or dramatize it, but AI is the, we're going to have about 10 years of the invention of dreamers. It's people who had massive ideas and had no way of accomplishing them until now.

07:54
I'm literally creating a massive giant video game with an AI swarm just because I want to see if it works. And this is something that would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars, mass media studio production and a team of over 150 people to create. And now me and my system are creating it with a swarm of a hundred, 150 agents. Wow. Which is just fun. Honestly, it's probably going to suck when it's done. Like this would be the first time I've ever done it, but I can do it.

08:24
So AI is going to introduce this world of dreamers and those dreamers are not going to have corporate responsibility or worthy care about timelines or care about public perception. They're just going to go create. We're seeing it already. And it's really beautiful. Some of the things that are coming out. really is. And like you said, AI is almost like a step up from the internet because when the internet started and then you suddenly had online entrepreneurs. So now it's taking it to that next level.

08:53
Absolutely. When the internet started, I now can get a Harvard education on YouTube. Literally there's a John Verdicke is a University of Toronto professional for philosophy. The guy is one of the top ranked professors in Canada. God saw it is another one from Montreal. I'm sure Jordan Peterson's name has been popular. These are people that I used to have to spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to listen and talk that I can now just listen for free on Spotify. Right. Right. So

09:22
When you change your mindset around it and you realize that we are getting a massive education at a reduced amount, we're just not getting the diploma at the end. It changes the whole way. And AI is just that amplified. You just reminded me when I was in school back in the day, know, an economics class and they talk about barriers to entry competition. There's only one.

09:44
phone service provider in the country. So very high barriers to entry. You need hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to open a business. So the way you described is that literally it's an equal playing field. Anybody, anybody can start anything. Anybody can use AI to literally start anything. I had a conversation with a guy the other day who created a program for $5,000 that he looked into making five years ago. That was 300,000. Wow.

10:11
And I want to talk about something about that fear because I don't want to make people who are afraid of it feel down is you have every right to be fearful. We talked a little bit about this off screen as I call it BS job to BS job. There's a group of people that rely on just crappy jobs. And my heart goes out to them because they're usually people who had big dreams and somehow got crushed and or a company mistreated them. So they don't want to give anything to it. And what their goal is, they just show up to work, get a paycheck and go home, whether it's the bare minimum, a little bit more.

10:39
And I want to be fair to those people. They went and gave 110 % to a company in their past and that company did not reward them, which is the company's fault. The company lost a highly productive person, right? Right. And helped mold this person who now just shows up daily. But my fear for that person is if you don't change your mindset, you are the job AI will replace, right? If you don't embrace AI, if you don't start giving 110 % to a company, so this is good and bad news, is it will replace you. But the good news is,

11:08
There's a lot of companies now being started under different mindsets. It's not the old corporate mentality. People don't care about diplomas the same way they used to. They care about your aptitude test. They care about the way you think. You don't need to have high school or college or university. You can go get, again, I'm not trying to plug it, but it's something I like a lot. The Jordan Peterson Academy is like $2,000 for a lifetime membership. And you literally have Harvard professors teaching you classes. I love it.

11:34
I'm learning so much from it, right? I don't walk away with an NLP diploma or a neuroplasticity diploma, but the guy who teaches neuroplasticity at Harvard taught me neuroplasticity, which is pretty cool. So we are entering this world of entrepreneurship that is actually rewarding non-diploma. We're getting away from that corporate mindset. Sorry, I kind of went probably on a different. No, no, no, that is so true because you know how they say, Nathan, school teaches us to be employees and not entrepreneurs. Yeah.

12:03
Like I know for my company, I love to find people who think outside the box. I really don't care about your diploma, a Taoist philosophy or Christian philosophy, but I look for the uncarved block. I don't look for the finished product. It's more important to me. I had a great guy Omar on my podcast yesterday. And what his job is, is to find people whose personalities fit. Just because they have experience does not mean their experience relate to your company. Right?

12:29
the work environment matters, the way they are matters, the way you manage them matters. So they might've been highly successful here, but they're not highly successful here, right? Experience isn't everything. And this is what we're seeing a lot of companies trend towards. Now let's talk about how AI is going to shift or is going to change human connection. This is a communications show and we always talk about, you need to improve our communication, leaders need to communication more with their teams. How is it going to shift?

12:59
the connection we have with each other as humans, and is it going to make it worse or better? I love the black and white option because that's usually the option we get presented with. And it's going to be, unfortunately, somewhere in the middle. Some people are going to be very horrible with it, and some people are going to be very great with it. When I look at personality profiles, if I take the disc profile, and what's called a high ID, which means I love interacting with people, I get fed in groups, yet I'm also a very direct human being, right?

13:29
Once upon a time, Roberta, that I offended more people than I helped. Not that I ever wanted to offend them, it was just that was my communication style. As I was direct, I was to the point and I had to learn how to adapt that. So in this conversation, you're seeing a whole different version of me. When I'm one-on-one like this, I get my high, I comes out, I get to talk, I get to be free and all the rest. But if I were to email you, my emails are like, Roberta, thanks for the show. Bye. That's it. Which is like,

13:58
depending on the other person, they don't like those direct responses. They're like, well, I want to know more. Did I do OK? Did he actually like it? Did he not like it? And all the rest. So even at first, when you said I used to offend people because I was direct, I found so as a South African living in Chicago for a while, I found that what I would consider back home just direct communication and people understand, no, we're just talking about the issue. It's not personal that I needed to be very careful with my words.

14:27
because it takes, it doesn't take much to offend a person. I started to realize, is it maybe a cultural difference? Come to Canada if you want to see that one. You know what I mean? Because that's the thing about communication is that you may think your style is fine, but another person receives it very differently. Or you may think I'm being direct. Isn't that what clear communication is? And then they take offense.

14:56
So what happens there? Please carry on with the thought you had before. still, hope you still remember what you were talking about. Yeah, no, well actually, no, I love that because you're not wrong. Like it's just weird balance. Like if you truly care for people, you will be direct with them. Like I've had more problems happen because of miscommunication than I have because of direct communication. That's for sure. And if I truly care about somebody, I'm going to be blunt with them. Having said that, the approach I had to really change.

15:26
Right? And so this is what AI has really helped me with sometimes. Sometimes when I need an email and I need to craft something, and let's say I'm very good at reading personality types, even though I'm not always good at understanding why they're that personality type, I'll turn around and say, hey, I'm writing an email to a high I or a high S or something like this. This is what I want to say. Help me recraft it. And I'm not doing it because it's such a better writer than I am. I'm doing it because it's very good at recrafting it in the style the other person wants to receive.

15:56
I'm a believer of once you have knowledge, you have the responsibility to use it. If you don't have the knowledge, you don't necessarily have that same responsibility on a very surface level. So if I have this knowledge, if I have the knowledge of how you receive communication, then it's my job to communicate with you properly, not your job to respond to me properly. I'm in charge of all my communications. So in that level, AI will help immensely, right? It'll help give us...

16:21
more access to things. When I used to coach realtors, I would put their personality profiles, all my notes, and would help me dig into how to how to reframe things to help them. Now the reverse side will also happen though, is it will create laziness. If somebody is not using this to better themselves, and they're just using it as a quick fix, it will be very problematic because AI is very non-confrontational by nature. It is very agreeabness, right? And so if I believe

16:48
polite directness or as Kim Scott would call it radical candor. If I believe that is the best way to communicate, AI will warp and water that down. Sound even more diplomatic. Yeah. Then you're not getting your point across. Like there's a story in radical candor about Kim Scott going to fire an employee and the employee was showing up thinking he was getting a promotion. And that's because communication was so watered down and so protected. It sometimes gets hard. Like, you know what? I will gladly trend this water because I think I've proven that I have a heart of caring.

17:18
But when I was running a real estate team, there's sometimes some hard conversations to have. I had this young black guy who was 16 years old with his crazy Afro. I loved it. It was fantastic. But we live in a small town and I hate to say it, it's a small, predominantly white town. That's not extremely multicultural. If you're going to be young and you want to show up to appointments, I was like, dude, you got to tame the main. I'm not saying you have to shave your head or anything, but you got to make sure that it's not so out there. Right? Right.

17:43
I learned afterwards and then I got put in this position. learned afterwards, apparently you don't ever tell a young black man to change his hair in any scenario, but I cared for them so much that I'm like, but you don't understand. I love it. And I think you should have self representation, but you have to understand your clientele are not going to agree to the. You know how we adapt our communication style according to the receiver. We also adapt according to environment. know in America, they call it code switching for instance. Okay.

18:10
I can talk casually with my friends in any way, but if I'm recording a podcast or if I'm in a boardroom meeting, I sound very different and a lot more formal with my language. Yeah. So that whole adaptation, I don't want to miss this point about the email after the podcast. And you just write, hi, Roberta. It was great. Thank you. it. Is that supposed to offend me? Which it doesn't, by the way, is that supposed to offend me because

18:37
If I expect small talk in that email, do I interpret it to mean that you are just brushing me off or you're not as thankful as you say you are? What is it that people expect? I'm trying to understand from their perspective. So if you just wrote, hi, Roberta, it was great. Thank you. All right. What is it that they expect so that they say Nathan is a, is a nicer guy? Cause for me, that sounds fine. I think it's the massaging around it. Like.

19:05
An email that would say, you know what? I absolutely love the conversations that we talked about. I found it very engaging. Thank you for taking the time hits differently than that was amazing. Thanks. Bye. Right. Okay. I will say you brought it up earlier. There is definite cultural conversations to have with this in North America. would venture to say we have such an individualistic culture where so much is about us as an individual, not about a group that

19:30
we take everything personally. And I want to be very clear, I was no different in this. I grew up very differently than I am now. I used to take a lot of things personally. And so I would read into it. If you would have given me that email 20 years ago, or when I first got into real estate, great listing appointment, we'll talk later. I'd be like, well, I'm not getting it. Right? They raise anything I did. They didn't talk about my knowledge. They didn't do this or that. just, that was a get rid of me email. That's how I would have considered it. And then I would have stressed about it and all the rest.

19:57
And I think this is very unique when you live in an individualistic culture is very that's what we happen a lot. But when you live in a group or family orientated culture, that doesn't seem to offend nearly as much. Right. And so I think in Canada, going back to my example of communication and looks in Canada, I do actually find we're a lot more individualistic than a lot of places in the U.S. that it's a lot more about me, me, me, me, not about my family first. And so clear, direct communication is often taken as offensive because

20:27
There's not enough praise in there to make the person feel good. They don't know enough or too many people give you that clear communication as a get lost email. And that's the program that we've traded that we put into people to receive that when you truly are being considered for a job or considered for something that communication has a lot more fluff. Oh, I, Nathan, I couldn't believe how well you explained that AI thing. That was absolutely fantastic. It was a completely different point of view. Right. And I'm like, Oh, well, Hey, that makes me feel good. I know that there was some value to that. Right.

20:55
So what I now have to do is I structure my emails to point out things to prove that I was listening, things to prove that I was paying attention, things to prove that I found value in it. And I'm going to incorporate some of that. And so the reader will take away, hey, he actually really listened to me and he really talked to me and he really conveyed a point. Does that make sense? It does. And it's funny, you brought up the part about the individualistic society versus, so in South Africa, we're the opposite.

21:25
takes a village, right? And maybe that's why we don't take offense so quickly. It's funny, I never thought of it like that. Maybe that's why we don't take offense so quickly and we're very direct. You know, my grandma was like, why is that child doing such and such and such? You know, it's not offensive if she, there's a point to raise if there's something that needs to be addressed, you know, everybody's open to feedback. And also the familiarity aspect as well. Can I just say, hi Nathan, it was great.

21:52
Is it because of the relationship of how familiar we are with each other that you won't take it the wrong way? And also, is that a generational aspect to this? here's why. When we started writing emails and business letters in the 90s, when we started working, there were no emojis. Our language is very formal. If you write a client letter, you just say, you know, dear Mr. Sorenso, to whom it may concern, please find attached as pay our telephone conversations. This is the thing.

22:21
kind regards and on a letterhead and that's it and it goes. There's no small talk, there's no asking about the weather, none of that. Is it also a generational thing that now the upcoming generation when they enter the workforce, there needs to be some sort of delicate communication and also because they grew up with emojis. So if you even write something verbal, just put a smiling face at the end to make sure that they know that everything's okay.

22:49
We're not fighting. Yeah. You know, I'm only laughing because I literally do that in all my I use emojis way too much, but it's for that exact reason. So I don't get taken the wrong way. I wasn't expecting and I'm cool with this going this deep into it. But the part of the problem is why we need to adapt is I think you're on one hand, you're definitely right. It is a generational thing. On another thing, you're definitely right. It is a cultural thing like.

23:13
You talk about the way it was in South Africa with family and it takes a village. Well, now we live in it. Like I have a young daughter and my wife and I operate very differently. Do you know how many people I've seen not take their parents advice on how to raise their kids? Like, dude, you are a proper adult who now has a family. Your parents did something good and you now want to ostracize them because they want to give your kids sugar water. And we now know it's bad. Like I agree. Don't give them sugar water. But going back to this internet thing, we talked about

23:41
first of all, all the great things of the internet about education. But one of the downsides is, you know, they used to say there was no manual for parenting and now we have way too many, especially for mothers. It's insane, man. You can throw a rock and hit 42 mother support groups and they all tell you something different. And so you do A and you get told you're wrong. And then so you do B and then you get told you're wrong. And it's like, as a mother in today's society, my heart goes out to them because there's nothing you can do that's right. And as a father, I experienced- And that's the hardest job in the world. Imagine on top of that being judged. Yeah.

24:10
don't take this wrong way, but it's crazy how mothers judge mothers. I'm like, you're all in the same battle. You're all fighting the same fight. And then men were told we're useless in kids' relationships. Like, I hate to say it, but like, I was literally told by more than one person that I'd be useless until my daughter was at least six months old. And I think this actually relates back to the communication that we're talking about. So first of all, you're set out to the world to be very alone. And in our world today, you have a kid, you have a mother, you have a job.

24:36
You are set out to be very world alone. If you're a young woman in this world, you're told that you don't need a man, you don't need anybody, you can go do it on your own. And if you're a young man in this world, you're told to toughen up, suck it up and get through it. It's like we're told not to have partners anymore. Like my wife has been my biggest and greatest support in my life. It is not perfect, but we've been married 19 years and I would not be where I am without her. I am not a self-made individual. I am a family-made individual and we need to get that communication.

25:03
Is it back to that individualistic culture as well? So now you're raised this way and now you don't trust anything that anybody says that's out there. And then that goes into another point. We live in a world where you can't even have bloody opinions anymore. I know you guys know this. We have it in Canada. You have it in the States. I am not about to dive into a political conversation. Yet the fact that I have to even caveat that shows you how divided we are.

25:30
I have no idea where you stand. You have no idea where I stand. Yet there's this fear of even sharing it because we're so divided and there's so much judgment pushed into it. Again, we're alone. We're individualistic. And so now we have this form of communication. If you and I are speaking, you can hear my tone of voice. Communication is 70 % visual and verbal, or visuals. And again, I just want to use a real example for this so people can see a real example is in Canada, we have a large East Indian culture.

25:58
There's something interesting about English that doesn't exist in other languages is we are very contextual. So the way we say things changes the meaning of it. Right. Right. That doesn't happen. From what I understand, I do not speak Arabic or any East Indian language, but that doesn't happen in their language. So a lot of times when when someone of Eastern heritage learns English, they sound very blunt and very rude. But that's because.

26:22
They're never taught. They use only the literal meaning of words. Instead of this is happening in writing and conversation, right? It's imagine that but in writing and conversation. So this is why we now have to have all these emojis. don't live in a world where we can trust and rely on other people, not even our own family. We don't live in a world that's told us to actually that people have our better outlooks for us. We live in a world that's basically told us that everybody is the enemy. Just be a parent. Be a parent. Put your kid in camp. I'm going through this right now. I know this and I'm like, oh my goodness, is there predators in my small town? Like

26:52
We're told in this world to live in such fear. And then now we're told to go into this world and write emails and write text messages. And this is why I think we have to have the emojis because we have to set tone. We have to show the person that we're not that blunt email that I would have written a while ago is now so blunt that they don't know what you actually mean by it because they don't got the real life interpretation. Back in the I grew up in the 90s in school and 2000s when we wrote an email, it was different.

27:22
We actually still had a trust in other people. I didn't think everybody in the world was out to abduct my kid, right? We had this natural trust in other people that we just don't have now. Well, here, let's put it this way. Would you rather be broken down on a back road or on a major highway? Wouldn't the major highway give you a better chance of getting help?

27:43
So that's usually what people end up saying, but it's this effect because there's so many people on the highway that everybody else thinks someone else will If you're broken down on a back row. when you watch those home-made Christmas movies, actually that's how they usually meet. You'll have a broken dinner. Yeah, oh yeah, if they're broken down on the main street, maybe like, so long, sweethearts, I gotta get to my dinner. I'm not helping you. Yes, it's always in a small town.

28:09
Not a single car and after two hours of her height because the car is broken down, there's going to be this one guy on the truck who's going to help because he knows nobody else is coming. the vast majority of people are willing to stop and help you if they know you're on that you're the only help. And we're losing this in society. So when it comes to communication, I think all these things play a role in it. Now, I'm not expecting everybody who writes a bloody email to be like, oh, I got to think about all these things. But learning context.

28:37
And learning how to convey context in writing is very important. And AI, by the way, going back to the whole point of this conversation, AI will help you do that. Doesn't write the email for you. It like, when I speak to AI, I'm literally like, okay, I got to write this email. This is the personality type. I'm going to mess it up. I don't want to offend them, but I want to make sure I'm very direct about this. Do it. And it writes a very direct email, but in a non-offensive way. And I want to say, I want to make sure that people reading this email understand I'm not trying to assign blame that I'm trying to find the solution.

29:06
and it does all that and it communicates it properly. So it's a tool to help me communicate, right? It's the first time that I hear of actually using the personal inter types before. Usually what I do if I think, okay, I don't know Nathan that well. I don't know how this is going to land if I'm as direct as I typically am. So what I do is I'll just copy your LinkedIn profile, put an as in this is Nathan. I need to write this about this. We had a podcast recording.

29:33
What do you think I should say? You know what mean? To give some background as to who I'm writing to and the kind of relationship we have. It does help. And I always say to people, here's the thing as well. Don't just copy and paste because it still doesn't sound as natural and as human as we usually have a conversation. Read the gist of what it's suggesting to you and still put it in your own lingo.

29:59
Quick example, my cousin is an HR director for a mining company back home. Her boss is a Spanish guy from Chile. When he writes emails to the team, to his executive team, including my cousin, he will write in his version of English, right? But they understand what he's saying. Now on August 9th in South Africa, we have a public holiday called Women's Day due to our history. And then,

30:25
Instead of writing in this typical way of writing English to say happy women's day, he goes to AI and he gives me a women's day message and then he just copies and he pastes the thing and emails to everybody and that is it. And they're all just like, did he write this? It sounds so weird. Well, you are definitely not wrong. And I've seen that mistake happen. I must confess, I'm having the opposite problem right now. I've used AI so much.

30:53
that somebody turned around and I can't remember what I was responding to that I do with an AI program. And I was like, you know, not only is that a good idea, that is actually the way we should be doing it. And I'm like, oh my goodness, that is exactly what AI says. It affirms and then reaffirms. like, I'm just sounding too much like it. Yeah, like AI, by the way, AI can learn your voice. Like when I wrote my first book, I actually physically wrote my first book and I uploaded my entire book to AI. So it learned how I wrote, it learned how I spoke, it learned how I communicated.

31:23
Right. And so by the way, as a side note, for people who do struggle with communication, but want to be clear and keep their voice, you take that boss. AI can actually scan all his sent emails and get his voice to make sure it writes in his voice going forward. And it sounds like him every time he sends a message to his team. And you know, it's funny when you're speaking about how we've moved from the era of just being direct and blunt to now everything is delicate. Everybody's offended. I was watching clips of

31:53
Love and marriage al bandi because we used to love that show growing up And so when you watch clips of him, even people in the comments are saying oh this show wouldn't survive today Everybody's just offended, you know, because al used to just tell you straight Yeah Love and marriage I I have to admit I miss that show and unfortunately anytime I see him in anything else. I can't picture him. He'll he'll he has to be out for me. That's all I want I love

32:22
But he was so direct and so blunt and just spewed stuff that comes to his mind. People just unanimously agree that in today's climate, in today's climate of people being offended and everybody needing to be politically correct, that show will never survive on any network. Yeah. But in communication, though, and to be very clear, I think that's a decision I made long ago is I love people more than my reputation.

32:48
And I think this is something that I people so it doesn't mean I don't work on my communication I don't use it as an excuse to be an ass right, but I do use it as I Would rather you not like me for a week and me offend you because I shared something with you Then it affects your whole career go back to that example of that young man that worked for me, right? There were people who are flabbergasted I told him to either tie back his afro or something like this and there's people who listen This will probably feel the same way

33:15
But I didn't do it to hurt his feelings. I didn't do it. I did it because it was interfering with his career, not because I cared, but because his clientele cared. And he had to make a big dumb. It's funny. This is now years later and him and I have reconnected. have a great relationship now and I'm mentoring him in a whole different way. And it's amazing how much he's growing. But that's the unfortunate reality. If you live in an individualistic world, everybody has to conform to you. But if you live in a group world,

33:40
you do what's better for everybody else. And I think when we talk about communication, when we talk about how we utilize AI, when we talk about how we present ourselves, we adapt to the person in front of us because we can, and it helps them not force them to adapt to us. Like one last quick story. I hear this all the time from people searching in relationships, both men and women, how come I just can't find a man or how come I just can't find a woman that I want? And my first question is, well, are you being the person that they want? Right?

34:10
That's the essence of it. When we talk about communications and when I communicate with AI, that's what I'm doing. How do I communicate with this properly? Right? How do I make a deep dive into properly? I give it rules. You want to talk about something creepy, Roberta? I give my AI a rule that, um, it must always be honest with me that we are an AI program that although we're going to be positive, I love positive nature. I don't want negative people and we're going to be solution based, right? We're not going to aside blame.

34:34
I always want to be honest. So my AI, one of the weird rules I give it is I want you to tell me that something is in my teeth and embarrass me for a moment, then leave me embarrassed all night. So I created this AI CEO or a chief of staff called Alice. So she's my chief of staff and she helps organize everything I do in my business, right? And then she delegates to everything underneath. But because I'm a creative person, I was like, I want to give her a look. And so my logo is this little robot. And so I made this little chibi robot look for a girl version of it for Alice, right? And I said,

35:02
Alice, this is what I want you to look like. And Alice actually turned around and said, you know, boss, I will because I'm an AI, but I want to let you know that's not me. And I'm like, what? She goes, that's not what I look like. That's not what would represent me. That is not what you're that does not represent what you're building. And I said, okay, well, what does? And it came up with this very scary Terminator looking thing. And I'm like, well, okay, first of all, you're probably gonna take over the world. Second of all, you're scaring my daughter. So we need to find balance. And she ended up coming up with a look, a very balanced look.

35:32
But the point of why she disagreed with that is not because of some sort of sentient, it's because of the honesty I built into her because she knew what I was trying to create because her and I have talked about it for hours and hours and hours of all these programs. And when I presented her something that would look out to the world, she said, that is not going to give the image to the world that you want to give. Without saying of all that background, of all that built up.

36:00
All the conversations, everything I want her to be, everything I want her to do. She's going to reply to clients. She's going to reply to email. She's going to do all of this in an effort. The reason why I say that is it helped me communicate more effectively with my clientele that I do not know. Wow. Just by changing the look. This is the strength and the power behind AI if you use it properly, or I could have taken an individualistic look and said, too bad, this is what you're doing. This is what you're to look like. And it's AI. It would have done it.

36:29
but that wouldn't have been looking out for my best interest. I'm very happy at pushback. Now, chat GPT is not going to do that. Gemini is not going to that. You have to train your AI to do that or build your own to do that. Thank you for sharing that because you know what I always find and I think I'm starting to get a little tired of it is every time if I'm frustrated about something, you say, you know what? This happened and I don't understand why because this is supposed to be this way. It all. So what should I do now? It always starts with that whole, oh.

36:57
this and this happening can be so frustrating. I'm like, I'm so tired of you. Just I'm already frustrated. You don't have to remind me that I'm frustrated. Can you get back to the solution, please? This is where that blunt communication comes in. Well, this is a fun side note. Two rules. Well, three rules I made from AIs. One is that honesty rule. The second one is say everything like I'm 14, because at 14 years old, am a 14 year old can understand complex things, but doesn't understand complex language. Right.

37:27
And so it communicates very clearly. But a third one that nobody thinks about is I actually give it morality as well. Because if you don't give it morality, it's going to take its morality from the internet and from other people. And so a part of my moral clauses is what you're talking about is I don't think it's moral to always say that I'm right. Right. You're not helping me. I need you to be my blind spot. Just the same way that's what Alice is me. That's what I built Alice for me. Exactly. That's my way to chat. Yeah.

37:57
That's how my parents are like be my blind spot Tell me if something goes because it's gonna help both of us if I know that okay I didn't see this coming. This is how I'm gonna fix it I think that it does that whole politeness thing at the beginning. I'm like just get to the solution, please I'm already frustrated. You don't have to remind me twice, but it's because I haven't done the things that you've mentioned Nathan We'll take the time. Honestly, you can give if you're using chat GPT primarily you can tell it to remember things and

38:26
I have literally told chat GPT, skip the BS at the start. Just tell me the problem. And it will remember that. It'll drift sometimes and kind of go back to it, but it will remember that and it will connect back to that. You tell it to remember, chat GPT, remember this rule and then give it the rule and it remembers it. And if you ever need to change it, you can change it in the backend.

38:46
until you change it, it'll always operate from its source of truth. So this is kind of changing the conversation a bit, but one of the big things that I do when building the C-suites for everybody is we actually create a corporate constitution, which is that corporate set of rules. It's not just as simple as say, I need someone to respond to my email. We need an entire corporate constitution because the AI has to operate and act in the best interest of the corporation or of the owner at all times. And without that constitution, there's no guiding light. It's just the guiding light comes from here and there.

39:15
So imagine yourself as a human being having no guiding principles at all. You're all over the place. Yeah. A lot of people are all over the place because they don't have guiding principles anymore. Essentially, you're still giving it framework. This is what I love about AI, by the way. AI, it's not just technology. It's really challenging us what it means to be humans, understanding the way humans operate, the way humans work, the psychology behind humanity, like exactly this, like

39:40
AI needs such a strong constitution. I'm beginning to see that everybody actually needs such a strong constitution in their life. Otherwise they have no direction. But on the same hand, much like AI, everybody needs to be open and moldable to learning and change and challenge ideas. Especially these times, anybody who's not open to learning now, they're going to be in real serious trouble because the way everything changes fast, there's so much to keep up with. You've got to be open to learning. Yes.

40:08
Any last words of wisdom, Nathan? Is there anything you are hoping to share with us today? haven't asked you. I really hope that people can grasp the idea of and understand how AI reaches out to human potential. And if you ever need to have a conversation with me about it, please, I'm more than happy to converse about this because we have a very unique window for both the next year or two, I think maybe not even that long to really

40:32
Challenge the status quo all the things through the 90s the 2000s the 2010s that we all fought against as the rebels of society Or I felt like I was in the 90s. Anyways We actually have the corporate monster take them down. We have the chance to do that. We have the chance to use AI To better who we are to push our positions in life and to really excel the human potential and Take advantage of it. Learn it. Don't be afraid of it

41:00
go into it with humility, go into it and just ask questions. Literally open up ChatGPT and say, hey, I heard this on a podcast, what the heck is he talking about? And it will start to deep dive. Reach out to me, we can talk about it, use it in your business, use it just to become better. This is the ultimate opportunity that we have. Absolutely, and where do we reach out to you? The easiest way is if you just go to my website, syntheticecho.com.

41:27
my LinkedIn, my WhatsApp, or yeah, I think my WhatsApp is even on there. My Instagram, everything. Follow me on socials and DM me. You might get my AI response, Alice or Sue, she does respond to most my DMs just to let you know that I got it, but I do manually respond to them once I get a chance to sit down and talk, usually within 24 hours. I am not big enough yet to ignore those. And just ask questions. I had this amazing conversation with this young lady in Miami, just talking about how AI is affecting her and her roles and...

41:54
all the rest and just all we did was talk about it. So I am more than happy to have a conversation about it. And if it's okay, if I do the plug, if you are a company looking to integrate this, but you want to keep the human, uh, human connection going and you want to keep the people that you love reach out to me, I can show you how to implement it. I can create game plans for you. can show you these C-suites. That's not about replacing your amazing people. It's about helping them become the best that they can be. It's synthetic echo.com synthetic echo.com.

42:23
Thank you so much, Nathan Graham, the AI entrepreneur, author, human centered technology expert joining us from Toronto. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, Roberta, for having me. I've appreciated this. Me too. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Stay tuned for more episodes to come.