EP25: Will AI Eliminate Jobs Or Enhance Them? A Review Of A Michael Stelzner Interview

0:06Okay. Hey everybody. Welcome to another edition of, um, Shop Soup, Shop Soup Podcast. I'm Greg and, uh, wanna say thanks for joining us here on this episode. And it's a pretty unique episode. It's got a combination of a lot of things. First off, uh, talk about, uh, Tectonic, the premier event that happened, uh, about a few weeks ago in Houston, Texas. Courtesy of the great folks at TechMetric, Sunil and the gang put on a show of shows, raised the bar so high for most of us that it's gonna be, well, I can't imagine what it's gonna take to top it, but I'm sure that they will in 2027 with when they take over the convention

0:49center that was, you know, a much, much larger venue than the Marriott Marquis, which was an incredible facility., and it was, uh, cavernous on its own with a lot of halls, a lot of, uh, spaces to, uh, network with. And, uh, you know, it was just, it was pretty incredible. Uh, so what we're, so next year when it is, um, across the street, I guess, you know, Texas being what it is so big.

1:21Anyway, uh, congratulations to the team at TechMetric for putting on such a Fine show. Uh, there was the theme that dominated everything. Uh, it was definitely technology. What's coming up next? Training. So many things, but it focused on what shops are going to be doing in the future and what to look forward to. The vendors that were there were providing their solutions all built around, in and through, uh, TechMetric itself.

1:50So it was exciting to see everybody, network out, talk to those that, that, that attended, good friends. You know, we see everybody online, we talk online, but there's really nothing like meeting a person in, in person, uh, shaking hands, doing all of that, you know, and having fun breaking bread. And certainly there were some nice places to go to. The dinner, the VIP dinner was exceptional.

2:18The speakers were fantastic. Some I, I didn't, I didn't know. I mean, Mike McCallowith, sure. Uh, the general I wasn't aware of, but, uh, he was fantastic. Loved, loved his stories and his flat out, just, uh, plain speak, you know, it was right there. Sunil, the same way, came up on stage, introduced, uh, everything. And the team, the team at TechMetric. Geez, man, there's so many of you.

2:46I try to remember them all. Claire, Amber, that I met. And I feel so dumb. I shouldn't, I should know them all. But anyway, guys, you did, you did one great, one great job. And, uh, so glad to get to meet you in person and, and, you know, enjoy your company and your energy and everything was there. And, and I made comments on Soup Radio the other day that it's probably the first event that I've ever been to as a professional where the, the alcohol, and I'll say it clearly, I don't care if you drink or don't drink, but the alcohol was completely free.

3:28Not a penny, not a penny was taken outta your pocket. No tips were allowed, or tips were voluntary, but there was no tip jars, nothing like that. So if you slipped somebody something, hey, that's on you. Great job. but no tips were required. Top shelf products, especially drinks. And the way the rooms were done were fantastic. The, the party at night in the main hall when it turned into a club, you know, an '80s club with big leather chairs and, you know, the lighting and the floor, the dance floor and the Spasmatics, which were the band, the, this cover band, but they were great.

4:09They came out in full costume. Costume, full '80s type themed costumes. A little bit of Devo, a little bit of, uh, Björn Jörn— Björn— oh God, what the hell's the tennis player's name? Björn Borg. That's right. He was a lead guitarist. Nerdy, nerdy lead singer. The drummer was kind of like a hair band type thing. Very, very good. Very, very fun. A lot of fun, I should say.

4:38Again, and the food was just so on point. It's not even funny. So I don't want to make this all about TechMetric, but it's probably because of TechMetric that I wanted to just make this, uh, make this video. So what I experienced was some great hospitality. Got to sit on a couple of shows, one with Mike Allen and Confessions of a Shop Owner.

5:00And I was really thrilled to be able to sit down and talk to Tanika Haynes. On the downshift, uh, very— Tanique is just one of those spirits that you just want to, you know, you know, talk to. And we have some good conversations about a lot of things. Overall, uh, A+, A+ event. So let's get into the meat of the things here.

5:24It's, it's, it's about AI. Um, you know, this week for me, you know, every so often you get into like a pattern, you go down a rabbit hole. Maybe, I don't know if it's weekly you do it, or daily, or monthly, or whenever it might strike you, but when your curiosity gets into what's happening around you and you say, well, let me find out all about that stuff.

5:46I really just came across a lot about AI stuff because at the shop we're doing a lot with AI. I have to say that I'm, I'm proud of my son who is taking, I mean, this is his forte, and so he's kind of like really moving down into the AI space. So it's starting to be clear to me that AI will be a very prominent part of our shop operations soon.

6:18And of course, into the future. Now, what does that mean for Buckley's? What does that mean for my crew and team? And, you know, what am I looking at? Well, Personally speaking, uh, and, and I had to address the team. I did address the team Friday because I am excited about the efficiencies that will be brought into the operations with the help of AI.

6:48Just not reducing costs, but being more efficient, which of course makes things more profitable. So I had to go in and I wanted to talk to the team and I'm not done yet. I'm not done speaking and I'm going to have to kind of like, I don't know if I should say reduce their fears because there was a level of anxiety when I was talking about these new tools that are coming from, you know, coming around us, not only what we develop in-house, but what our partners will be delivering.

7:23And a lot of fear is, well, you're trying to eliminate my job. And I know that on the Change the Industry podcast, Lucas and David, they were discussing where AI is going to take away jobs and what's going to be replaced. I will argue that there will be a certain amount of, you know, things that will go away. Like with every evolution of technology and, and us in the car business, you know, repair business, every so often, or like almost every 5 years, we're dealing with new technology or new ways, new paths that we gotta figure it out.

8:05Our thing is, is that I don't believe we have fear with that. We are, we deal with technology every day. We, we run for, we, I don't say we run to it, but we let it wash over us and we're going like, okay, big deal, right? This will have us face a point where maybe we don't need a person and that person may, may go.

8:35I, I don't, I don't think it's gonna be that critical. I know that from a service advisor position, they were worried, or at least I have two people that are worried about, well, what's it going to do to me? And you have to tell them that, you know, from my stance, that anything with automation will help you be more efficient. And with that comes the opportunity to not worry so much about the transaction, but to focus on the relationship.

9:11And that's exactly what I am looking forward to. That's exactly what I will be positioning my company for, is to eliminate the minutia, eliminate the menial stuff, and focus on the relationship with the client. You know, if it gives you the opportunity to take that client home while everything else is running underneath of you, properly, estimates being done, DVIs being delivered, messages being delivered, all of this automated, and you have time to shake a hand, have a conversation, have a cup of coffee, and everything is running underneath of it.

9:50That's, that's great. I mean, we are in the relationship business. I mean, we have to have them in order to be successful. Uh, That's what I take on AI. And over the course of the week, I, uh, I had put online on a few groups about an AI summit, one of the, you know, a virtual class filled with people that experts. And one of them came across that catches, caught my eye and it was filled with individuals that I have followed for most of my adult marketing career, you want to call it, at least 20+ years of following these individuals through their iterations of learning and growing and selling services, selling information, info marketers as

10:40I call them, but they're very good people and, and I find them to be highly qualified to learn from and to be mentored by, which I have done. I've hired a few of them. In order for me to learn more about what it takes to message properly, how to use marketing, and the whole, whole thing. So one of them is Michael Stelzner.

11:08Now Michael has Social Media Society, Social Media Examiner Society, a very big, large group that you— it's a private group you pay to get into. It's a subscription, a yearly subscription, but it's full of people who are— take it like a, uh, geez, like a diag.net, uh, where questioning everything. They are, you know, learning on their own. They're learning with one another.

11:40Everybody gets together and, hey, what's working for you? What's working for me? It's like, you know, you're tearing down this engine or you're looking at this circuit. Or you've got this graph to go through. Well, that's what Michael has produced on the marketing side. And now he has expanded into an AI space, same format, same principle, everything like that, that it's subscription-based and you go for it and you become involved with, with that.

12:08So Michael was on a, was one of the instructors or teachers on this AI Accelerator platform. And I had mentioned that if you signed up for it, it was, I don't know, $47 to get the videos, to get the content and all that. And you can go further down to join a group and do all that. It's a typical informational or info marketing funnel.

12:34You know, they draw you in the top, they get you all the way to the bottom. And if it sounds reasonable, you sink your money into it. Great. No problem. I hope if you did, you did. If you didn't, No big deal. So I'm going to try to run some of these clips here. Now this is Michael describing how he came about, what he thought about AI.

12:53Now remember, Michael is 20 years, when did he start? 2009 or 2008. But before that, before he started Social Media Examiner, he was off on his own and he has a conference every year in San Diego. That's one of the largest around. I have not attended, attended it due to my own schedules, but I do want to get out there to, to sit in on some of these things here.

13:20But anyway, here's Michael, and I'm going to try to play this, see if I can get the right mix here, especially on video. Audio isn't a problem, video is where it's at. So let me see what I can do. Podcast was kind of a, it was a thing that I was effectively stalling on. I had made mistakes in the past where I thought that a market was moving.

13:45I got into the Web3 world and that was a disaster. So we all know that on November 30th, 2022, I believe if I'm doing my math right, is that right? No, no, not 2022, 2024. Yeah, 2024. ChatGPT rolled out and the whole world went crazy. And I was just as impressed as everyone else. And I thought, huh, this is, this is nuts.

14:14I've never seen anything quite explode like this. I've seen Clubhouse explode during COVID I've seen other trends come and go. But this one seemed to have staying power because the things that AI could do although imperfect, were extremely impressive. And it looks like child's play now looking back on it, but so many people were so excited about it that they were just all rushing in.

14:43And because I've been in this space for a little while, I started Social Media Examiner back in 2009, I've seen this rodeo before and I wanted to wait. I was not going to rush in because I knew that if you get in too early, Well, then you could basically just kind of fizzle out. And if you get in too late, well, then there's going to be an early mover advantage that's going to be gone.

15:08So I decided to wait and wait and wait. And then finally, in May of 2024, am I doing the math on that right? Yeah, May of 2024, I launched a podcast called AI Explored. Now, that was actually— I feel like that was a full, like, year and a half after the ChatGPT moment. Now I've got to— when did ChatGPT launch? I have to Google that now.

15:35Um, do you know when it launched? Let's see here. When did ChatGPT launch? Uh, it was 2022. Okay, I was right. So it was November of 2022. So I waited until May of 2024, and the reason I waited until May of 2024 You see how he had patience. He took 2 years before he really started to get into AI just to make sure that it was kind of like the real deal, right?

15:59And, and I think that's what most of us were, were looking at, or we may delay our entry into it a little bit longer, but over the week, over the past week at Tectonic, um, a lot of conversation was absolutely there over the fact of, well, how long do I wait before I get into it? What am I looking at? So, uh, Mike continues, or is because I just wanted to look for certain kind of markers.

16:30And the markers that I was looking for was number one, people saying, uh, this is threatening to me. That was one of the markers that I was looking for because I knew that if people saw it as a threat, then they wouldn't just take anything as a threat. They saw disruption as a threat. Secondly, I was looking for people that were putting a flag in the ground saying, I want to be known as an expert in this space.

16:49I started to see a lot of them. But I was waiting for sticking power. And I finally got to the point where I came up with a presupposition in like spring of 2024. I said, I'm going to do experiment. I'm going to try this new podcast. And I'm going to see whether it works. And my objective was to have 1,000 downloads on this podcast for the first 12 episodes.

17:09And that happened after the first few episodes. Multiple thousands of downloads per episode. And I knew that I was onto something. And I said to my team, we're going all in. We're not— this is no longer an experiment. This is something we're going to do. And really my hypothesis when launching this show was that people weren't just interested in shows that were focused on the news.

17:29They were focused in how to actually do this. Let me rephrase. They were interested in learning how to do this. And in order to do that, I had to go out and I had to find experts, right? And that's a bit of work. So I went out and I called the entire world and I tried to find all the leading authorities. In the beginning, many of them were in my circles.

17:47And then eventually they were in circles that were outside of my circles. But I eventually started inviting these people on the show that wanted to be known for all the different categories inside of AI. Everything from ChatGPT to Claude to Google Gemini to N8N automations to images, video, all the things. We've covered all of them. And over the process of, you know, I've done over 100 episodes now as of this point.

18:12And since then, we've also gone on to do a lot more things. We decided to launch a report, an annual report called the AI Marketing Industry Report. We've done 2 of those. We launched the AI Business Society over a year ago, which is our professional membership. We launched AI Business World, which is a subconference of Social Media Marketing World. And we also have an AI-dedicated newsletter that comes out every Thursday.

18:36So, We have slowly evolved our coverage at Social Media Examiner to include this new frontier. And man, it's an exciting ride. What do you say to people who are overwhelmed by the breakneck speed of change? It seems like every week some major development happens at 2 or 3 of— This is a very good question. You should ask it. Well, first of all, you are not alone.

19:02That's the first thing I tell them. Secondly, we have some new research that we're going to be releasing later this year, but 67% of marketers, which is the primary community we market to, are feeling overwhelmed with the rate of change. And it is— I used to joke that the social media industry was the fastest changing industry in the world. Because back when we were just focused on social media, you had YouTube and Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and all these platforms competing against each other and change was just, you couldn't keep up with it, right?

19:35And I said to myself, as long as there is change, we have a business model. Well, guess what? The rate of change of social media makes it look like snail versus like, like tortoise, like, like hare, you know, the tortoise and the hare. Like, turns out social media change was much slower than what's happening in the AI world. I like to tell people that the AI industry has got a 90-day annual cycle, maybe even sometimes 30-day annual cycle, meaning that in 30 to 90 days, the rate of innovation is the equivalent of a year in many other industries.

20:08And it's compounding and it's crazy. So if you are overwhelmed, you are not alone. That's what I have to say. So I liked what he said about rate of change and that as long as there is change, we have a job. And isn't that interesting that how many changes go about our career, our industry. It's almost seems like daily, but it makes you say to yourself, well, I always have a job, right?

20:40Because it's always changing. And true. So again, AI won't physically take our hands away in a sense. It'll just make the tasks that we need to be more efficient. And it will do them for us. As I said, it allows us to focus on the, um, on the job at hand or the administration, you know, and the tasks that are menial where we, for me, it's hard to do all those menial tasks and get, get things done.

21:15Now our advisors can be much more efficient, you know, the ones that handle everything. Which is great. So Mike continues, do you think there's a bubble? I guess it depends. What do you mean by bubble? Well, I hear a lot of talk from different people and they mean different things. Some people mean that eventually the companies like that are providing the chips and the technology are going to have to fess up that they're subsidizing the companies that are offering the models to the public, and eventually that shell game is going to collapse.

21:51That's the bubble there. There's a prediction that it's going to pass, that it's going to be a fad. It's like NFTs. Everybody's going to get all excited about it, and then it's going to go away. Yeah. Okay. Well, here's the deal. The past bubbles that we know were bubbles were the housing market. That was an obvious one, right? Where you were giving loans to people that couldn't pay them off, and that created a housing market bubble.

22:15And before that was the original introduction of the internet. You and I, Ray, are long enough to to have lived through that, okay? The introduction of the internet was an overexuberance that, in hindsight, was actually understated. Said a different way, the internet would become the most valuable thing, right, to all of business in the future. But it was just too much too early, because there was no money being made by all these dot-coms, right?

22:40But the difference that we're in right now is there's actual revenue. These companies like ChatGPT, which is owned by OpenAI, and Claude, which is owned by Anthropic, are generating billions of dollars in private revenue, pre-revenue. They're not even public yet. We don't have companies that are doing $30, $50, $100 billion in revenue back in the dot-com era. We just don't. So, I believe that this is not a bubble.

23:11And I believe that people that, I mean, there might be bubbles on the stock market side of it, but there's not a bubble when it comes to creators, marketers, and entrepreneurs. This is only going to be more disruptive as time goes on. It is not going to be a fad. There is no going back. In order for us to, in order for this to fail, there would need to be, first of all, no more chips available, right?

23:36No more government subsidies to make sure that these organizations are actually able to do what they're doing if they, if they need government subsidies. Like literally you have nations behind some of these companies. So I don't think this is a bubble. I think this is a new frontier. That's how I look at it. What's the opportunity for most business people and companies today?

23:58What can they do right now that'll give them an ROI? Um, Well, that's a very complicated question, but I'll tackle this from the perspective of creators and marketers, if you're okay with that. I believe that creators have an incredible opportunity because there is an insatiable demand for content across all the social platforms. And historically, what stops creators from creating is they don't understand how to do it.

24:32So that usually means they either don't know what to say, which can be solved by AI. They don't know how to edit, which can be solved by AI. And those are really the biggest challenges that people face, right? Typically, they have to hire someone to direct them and script them, or they have to hire someone to edit. And now, as you know, Ray, there are AI tools that can do all of these steps, which means a solo individual who wants to be well known And maybe someone listening has developed a deep domain expertise and they've always desired to be perceived by the world as the leading expert in their domain.

25:10Now, all of a sudden, by themselves, they are capable of literally 10x-ing easily all the things that normally would be impossible for them to produce. And you know that, Ray, and I know that. That's the first thing. So like it allows anyone And if you're working in a career and you want to go off on your own, it's a beautiful time to do so because you might end up getting disenfranchised anyways.

25:35And then on the business owner side, the entrepreneur side, this is an incredible opportunity because anyone who's ever run a business, and Ray and I have been in business for ourselves for a very, very long time, the biggest, most complicated part of business is labor, okay? Hiring people to do specific tasks. And the problem with labor is it is very expensive, and it is only as good as the talent that you hire.

26:04And sometimes when that talent goes away, you lose all that stuff. Well, with AI, you can effectively take your existing talent, and you can make them incrementally more valuable to you as a company. So, you can take all your people and you can train them up on AI. And instead of hiring more people, you can effectively ask your people leverage it. Bingo.

26:26Efficiencies. I'm not talking about getting rid of everybody, but just bringing up your team members with the help of AI. And he just said, is labor expensive? Yes. Why? Because in most cases we're inefficient. So if we make them more efficient, you can take those same people and do more with them without having to hire. Not that you have to fire, but you don't have to hire.

26:49That's what's key point is Michael saying here. With the help of AI. So let's continue. AI to be effectively more productive and to retain their value for the company. In addition, you can also do a lot of things with AI that will not require you to go out and hire. So if you're really bootstrapped, you could do a lot of things with AI that are almost impossible to do on your own in the past.

27:13And from a marketer's perspective, which is the last target audience I want to talk about, I believe there's an incredible opportunity for marketers to effectively uplevel their game. So many marketers have unique domain expertise in different categories of domains, right? Yours is copywriting, right? Mine is copywriting. But when you start to expand all the domains that are available in the world of marketing, you've got paid advertising, you've got social media, you've got analytics, you've got conversion rate optimization, and the list goes on and on and on.

27:43There's a bazillion different domains that people have expertise in that we do not have expertise in. So as a marketer, if you know what you're doing, you can effectively create AI assistants, for lack of better words, that can effectively supplement you in areas where you are weak. If you're not good with strategy and you're super creative, you can create some of the world's best strategists to augment your creativity.

28:06If you're super strategic and you're not very good with creativity, you can use AI as a creative sparring partner. It just allows you to become more well-rounded in your skills and your experience without having to have the decades of experience that typically would be required. And I feel like all these value propositions make it really, really powerful, whether you are a marketer, entrepreneur, or creator.

28:30Okay, Michael Sells, are you going on about what you can do with AI, what to look for as a small business person, whether you're, you know, you're a marketer, whether you're a small business owner? There's avenues for you to take advantage of AI and This is something that we're going to have to look at and look at your business and say, hey, where can these new tools help me out?

28:55And like I'm in the middle of, I'm telling my teams, what are we going to do? I know what I want to do. I know where my vision is. I know where the mission of the company is. Now, how do I get everybody involved to say, listen, I'm not here to, I'm not here to get rid of you. I'm not here to take you away from your job.

29:17I'm here to make sure that you can do your part as best you can. Had to put some examples out, you know, they're pretty basic and maybe not really on point, but technology as it comes along our way, it makes our jobs easier, which is what you have to emphasize because people are afraid when they, they hear all the stories, but You know, when you can come up with tools that take your appointments, that, you know, can answer phones on weekends when you're, when you're closed and, and sound like a human, right?

29:55We all get skitsy with that. I hear you, but, you know, if you are transparent enough to tell the client that, hey, I'm a virtual, your, your voice, your AI voice. Whatever person is, you know, you'd let them know, hey, this is an AI bot, or whatever the case might be. I'm here to help you, blah blah blah. Um, then I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

30:22I mean, if I call somebody on the weekend, you know, to make an appointment, I— what's the difference if I talk to— if I leave a message? I'd rather have a bot take my information properly place it, alert somebody than I would a voice, a voicemail. I, I, you know, the voicemails are pretty much out now. You know, when everybody can have their own virtual assistant, answer the phone, sound like a real human, has enough logic and is a language model that, that, that's appropriate, can see your history, knows who you are, has all of that available to you.

31:07Wouldn't you rather just say, hey, at least this robot, let's call it a robot, whatever, is better than just leaving a voicemail that someone may or may not pick up. I mean, let's face it, if we're going to be more about convenience and, and helping people, this is where we have to go. Really just not, not afraid of anything with, uh, with AI.

31:29That I can see. Again, the thing that worries me is about the bigger picture, you know, where you got the rest of the economy that, uh, you know, that is affected. It's, it's a trickle-down situation. So we do need to be careful with how far AI is going to go. And what it's going to do. And who knows, there, there may need, there may need to be guardrails put on AI at some point, but I don't know how you put this genie back in the bottle myself.

32:13It's got too much going on. And now you've got bots having their own social media type thing where they're talking to one another. That's a scary situation, but it's the world we live in right now. So I don't want to keep going with everything. I just want to bring the attention about what Tectonic was. I want to thank Sunil and PJ and the entire TechMetric team for putting on such a great show, bringing everybody together.

32:43I have, you know, I have concerns with a lot of the partnerships that run through Techmetric, you know, the future, what it holds for everybody on that. But anyway, it's, it's good to see that our industry is taking it in the way that it should be. I don't think we are, we fear it. My feeling is, is, well, let's just get this thing through, right?

33:14Okay. We've heard about it. We see it. We know it. We're running. I don't think we're running away from it. We're more like running towards it, but we're like just a little bit. Okay, come on, let's go, let's go, let's get it over it. Let's fuckin' work it out. Let's see what we gotta do with it. And then before you know it, we're all working AI solutions for ourselves, which is exciting, but that's what we do.

33:39That's the kind of people that we are in this industry. We're not afraid to tackle something of this nature and we kind of look forward to the challenge. You know, we do a lot with technology as it is. What's another piece coming down the pike, right? You know, no big deal. Anyway, thanks. No show, another episode. And we'll talk to you soon about everything.

34:00And, you know, we'll see you around the corner. All right. This is Greg here, ShopSoup, and we appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. See ya.