On this episode of the B2B Creator Spotlight, hosted by Michael Bernzweig and presented by Software Oasis, tech founders and enterprise executives gain exclusive insights from Jeffrey A. Barnes, founder of The Wisdom of Walt. Discover how the visionary leadership that built Disney’s legacy offers powerful lessons for today’s digital-first business challenges. Jeffrey shares real-world strategies for unleashing creativity, driving innovation, and building resilient, future-ready brands in an era of rapid technological change. If you’re looking for actionable advice to inspire your team, fuel transformation, and maintain a competitive edge, this episode delivers essential guidance for the modern B2B leader.
On this episode of the B2B Creator Spotlight, hosted by Michael Bernzweig and presented by Software Oasis, tech founders and enterprise executives gain exclusive insights from Jeffrey A. Barnes, founder of The Wisdom of Walt. Discover how the visionary leadership that built Disney’s legacy offers powerful lessons for today’s digital-first business challenges. Jeffrey shares real-world strategies for unleashing creativity, driving innovation, and building resilient, future-ready brands in an era of rapid technological change. If you’re looking for actionable advice to inspire your team, fuel transformation, and maintain a competitive edge, this episode delivers essential guidance for the modern B2B leader.
Takeaways
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Michael Bernzweig (00:00.141)
Step beyond the ordinary and discover the leadership mindset behind Disney's boldest innovations. I'm Michael Bernzweig and this is the B2B Creator Spotlight. Today we're joined by Jeffrey Barnes, founder of the Wisdom of Walt. He'll reveal how vision, creativity and technology come together to shape tomorrow's most successful brands. If you're ready to inspire breakthroughs and future-proof your company's story, you won't want to miss
this conversation. with us, have Jeff Barnes. applies his Disney innovation leadership to the wisdom of Walt's goal of solving tech transformation challenges. His experience empowers organizations like Microsoft, Cisco, and Dell to fuel creativity and retention. He's a bestselling Disney leadership author and keynote speaker. with that, Jeff, welcome.
Thank you. So thrilled to be here. I was really hoping to share your personal journey getting to where you are and everything that you're doing and in the whole ecosystem of Disney and how did this come about? if you could share that with us. I'd be happy to share. So
I was in higher education as both an administrator and a full-time faculty member for 22 years. And my favorite anything was to work with struggling students. And, you know, it's, so interesting because, you know, the entrepreneur, entrepreneurial journey, regardless of the individual, you know, has very similar narratives. Well, same with what it takes to be successful, same with what it takes to achieve your goals. And I recognize, especially working here in Southern California, that if I just walked in and
started telling those stories or giving tried and true narrative or what it takes to achieve your goals or what it takes to be successful. College kids were gonna, you know, tune me out in 30 seconds or less. But what we all love here in Southern California is Disney. And we especially love going to Disneyland. And I realized I could leverage Walt Disney's story. I could leverage the student experience in the park to teach what I really cared about.
Michael Bernzweig (02:11.318)
which is this is what it takes to be successful. This is what it takes to achieve your goals. This is what it takes to have a successful semester and ultimately end up at commencement and graduation. And so I started dreaming of creating a college course on the history of Disneyland. Crazy idea, right? And it was something incredibly new and innovative and different. And I was scared because I was teaching US history. I was teaching American government. I was teaching...
Courses we all took, right? Who's ever taken a college course on the history of an amusement park? But again, I wanted to think a little bit outside the box. I really wanted to have a difference and make an impact on the lives of my students. And so I pitched what I called my Mickey Mouse idea and it got approved. I was pretty shocked. And I worked on it for an entire year, gave the first lecture. Students loved it. And I think that's something important for us to remember is our ideas or what changed and have an impact on the world. We have to have
the courage to pursue them. And our ideas, no matter how crazy they might be, matter not just to us, but to other people. You know, Walt built Disneyland because it was the toy he wanted and never had as a kid. And yet here we are 70 years later and we keep going back over and over and over again, because it mattered to us as well. I gave the first lecture, students loved it. And then I was diagnosed with a life threatening brain tumor and they wanted to operate immediately and told me I had the weekend to get my affairs in order. And if the surgery was successful,
Regardless, I would be out of work for two months and I refused because I was teaching my dream course. I was having an opportunity to really leverage these lessons and have the impact that I'd always wanted to have on these struggling students. Now people thought I was absolutely crazy, but from my perspective, I was doing what Walt Disney did when he went bankrupt in 1923. I was going all in. was boarding the proverbial train just like Walt did when he came to California with $40.
a single suitcase and a one-way ticket. I taught the course, spoiler alert, I had the surgery, it was successful. And then I ended up writing one of what would become two bestselling books, sharing Walt's story, my story, and these life and leadership lessons and how we can take our love of Disney and leverage it for our own success and help us live our own great story.
Michael Bernzweig (04:34.222)
And that really is Michael, the narrative thread between Walt Disney and me. Walt Disney only ever wanted to be remembered as a storyteller. He didn't want to be remembered for Mickey Mouse. No, I didn't want to be remembered for Disneyland. He wanted to be remembered as a storyteller. And that's why he built Disneyland. We had 2000 amusement parks in 1955. We didn't have a park that told stories. We didn't have a park that engaged us mentally and sparked our imagination. Well, if you stop and think about what makes for a great story, not the happily ever after ending, stop chasing that.
What makes for a great story is conflict, difficulty, obstacles, overcoming. And so for me, my story included the obstacle of surviving a life threatening brain tumor. For Walt Disney, it was an impoverished childhood. was a difficult relationship with his dad. was bankruptcy at age 21. It was losing his first successful cartoon character. It was no one believing in Snow White, no one believing in Disneyland, but he did it anyway.
And so if you look at the story of your company, the story of your career, I guarantee you, you leveled up every single time you embraced conflict and overcame versus running away. know that there was a time after his initial park launch and there was a time where
And I remember my dad telling me he went to the 1964 world's fair and I know Walt had something to do with that whole event. And how did that shape his life as an entrepreneur? And what were some of the details about that event after launching Disney that kind of brought things full circle for Walt himself as an entrepreneur? Well, that's a great question. And I love that you.
went to the 6465 World's Fair because there is no event more important to the success of the Disney parks than the 6465 World's Fair. Why? Well, first of all, New York is home to the very banks, very corporate sponsors, very networks who didn't believe in Disneyland in 1955. And like everyone else, we're convinced it would be bankrupt, setter and forgotten in six months or less. Walt does it anyway. It's massively successful.
Michael Bernzweig (06:51.689)
And Robert Moses, who led the 1964 World's Fair, comes out to Disneyland and asked Walt to contribute attractions to that two-year endeavor. Walt doesn't just build one, he builds four. Great moments with Mr. Lincoln, Ford Magic Skyway, Carousel of Progress. It's a small world. And the innovation that comes from Walt being at the World's Fair gives us the high capacity audio animatronics filled shows.
that we all know and love today. So for example, they would go from, know, you can get a few hundred people an hour in say Peter Pan's flight. can get thousands an hour through carousel of progress, thousands an hour through it's a small world. Now, how many of us love pirates of the Caribbean? Pirates of the Caribbean was under construction during the 64, 65 world's fair as a rather pedestrian walkthrough wax museum. That's it. But when they,
realized that they could do a boat ride with dolls in New York. He could do a boat ride for pirates in California. And so again, they use that sponsorship. They use those resources to innovate and push the envelope in what they were already.
doing. Here's another fun fact about the 64, 65 World's Fair. Walt was already buying up land in central Florida. Disneyland is only 160 acres. Walt Disney World is 7,440 acres, 150 times bigger. He's not, however, 100 % convinced that the East Coast is going to love a Disney park the way everyone in Southern California does. And at the time, 75 % of the United States lived east of the Mississippi. And so this is like he wants to expand his market.
But it's going to be a risk. It's a big bet. Well, the four attractions he does at the world's fair are the top four attractions at that fair. And that convinces him, okay, this isn't just a California, Los Angeles, La La Land kind of thing. No, there's an appetite on both coasts for the stories that we're telling and the way that we're telling them. so without the 64, 65 world's fair, Disneyland doesn't look anything like it does today.
Michael Bernzweig (09:06.092)
And it's very likely we never even get Walt Disney World. just out of curiosity, what time or what year did the park in Florida open? So they announced it in October, November of 1965. Wright broke ground in May of 67, six months after Walt had passed away of lung cancer in December of 66. And they opened it phase one, which was Magic Kingdom, the monorail, contemporary and Polynesian resorts.
October 1st, 1971. it was Walt's older brother, Roy, who put off retirement to see his brother's final dream and final wish through to fruition. Up until that point, Roy ran the finance end of the company, which Walt desperately needed. The difference between the first studio that went bankrupt in Kansas City after only 18 months in 1923,
And the second studio, the Disney Brothers studio that today is the world's largest entertainment company, the difference is not Walt. The difference is Roy. If it had been up to Walt, Walt would have gone bankrupt over and over and over again. And so that's another lesson for us, right? As entrepreneurs, we tend to be visionary. We're often very creative. We also cannot do it all. Find your Roy. Find that person that is going to ground you, is going to stabilize you.
is going to keep you on track and challenge you. That puts a lot of it in perspective. Jeff, can you share what sparked your fascination with Walt Disney's approach to innovation and why it's still relevant for tech leaders today? Walt Disney, who is a cultural icon from the 20th century, is really an example of how we can move forward in innovation and technology in the 21st century.
How do you think business leaders today can identify what counts as meaningful innovation versus just chasing every new trend? for example, Walt Disney was born Chicago, Illinois, December 1901, passed away in December 1966. And in between, he manages to give us the first synchronized sound cartoon. He manages to give us the first full length animated feature film. He manages to give us.
Michael Bernzweig (11:27.947)
the first theme park. What was the mindset behind all of that? Well, Walt was convinced that you can never stay stuck in the past, but instead you have to keep moving forward. In fact, he would ultimately refer to this as his quote unquote great, big, beautiful tomorrow. So what exactly did that look like? Well, when it came to Mickey Mouse, he insisted on bringing personality to the character and synchronizing it with sound.
The innovation of Steamboat Willie isn't just the premiere of Mickey Mouse. It's Walt's willingness to take a leap on the technology and synchronizing the sound with the animation, which had never been seen before. And here's a crazy fun fact. Mickey was so successful following his premiere in November of 1928 that Walt is able to take some of the money from the proceeds of Mickey Mouse. And in the middle of the great depression.
build his storybook mansion, a 12 room house, 6,300 square feet in the Hills of Hollywood, 1932. He's able to buy the labor of every worker unemployed in downtown Los Angeles. He builds this mansion in two and a half months. And it was so innovative that the phone company put an ad in the Los Angeles newspapers promoting the idea.
that Walt Disney, the maker of Mickey Mouse, had this brand new home and get this, it had six telephones. Can you imagine bragging and taking out a full page ad? You just had built a house that had six telephones, but that's the beauty of innovation. As companies face the rise of AI, what lessons from Walt's embrace of television can business leaders apply to avoid getting left behind? That's the beauty of technology.
I often get asked what is technology? And here's a fun definition. Technology is anything invented or created after you were born. And so I don't think having sound in a cartoon is necessarily revolutionary, nor do I think having six telephones is incredibly revolutionary. But Walt Saul, the status of the day, envisioned a better future and was willing to push that envelope.
Michael Bernzweig (13:49.76)
He did it again in the 90s, the emerging technology in the United States in the 90s of course was television. And interestingly enough, studios in Hollywood were terrified of television. They were convinced that that technology was going to destroy their business model. Walt had a different mindset. Walt had a different vision. He recognized the power of television and the ability for him to reach in to the living room of
every American family and do what he did best share stories. And so rather than running away from the technology, rather than banning the technology, which is what a lot of the other studios in Hollywood did, Walt embraced the technology. made a partnership with ABC television, giving him the financing he needed for Disneyland and giving ABC Disney programming to include the
Disneyland infomercial on Wednesday nights and of course the Mickey Mouse Club that premiered in fall of 1955. So you have to stop and ask yourself, well, it's great that we are where we are today, but more importantly, where are we going to be tomorrow? I work with a lot of leaders who are terrified of the emerging technology of of course AI. And what I share with them is you can't be a dinosaur. You can't be Kodak.
You can't be serious. You have to figure out a way to partner with what is on the horizon and keep moving forward and figure out a way to share your story by leveraging that technology. Now, when it comes to Disneyland, Walt used television as the model for how he wanted to share the stories in the park. So for example, Main Street USA is a single entrance in, single exit out. Walt understood the importance.
of a great introduction and we remember the closing scene. When you get to the central hub, there's four lands, Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland. That represents the average number of channels on a television set in downtown Los Angeles. And then of course you have Tomorrowland and Tomorrowland was so innovative. Tomorrowland was so out there that when he premiered that section of the Disneyland television program,
Michael Bernzweig (16:11.263)
Because what was happening in the park was reflected in what was happening on the Disney television program. It was the Tomorrowland episodes that inspired the American people to go all in on the space race. And that was so transformative that when NASA landed on the moon, July of 1969, almost three years after Walt Disney had passed away, NASA gives credit to Walt Disney for helping make the moon landing.
possible because again, what was a visionary? What was an individual who was always moving forward? What was an individual who embraced innovation and embraced technology? So think about where you are today, but more importantly, think about where you want to be tomorrow and understand as long as you keep moving forward, as long as you leverage the technology to share great stories to empower a
better vision and improve people's lives, then yeah, the future is going to keep getting better. Your company is going to keep getting better. Your team's going to keep getting better. And at the end of the day, you, like Walt Disney, you're going to find yourself at your own great, big, beautiful tomorrow. Walt also understood the importance of partnerships. you describe a time Walt Disney's collaborative approach unlocked an opportunity others thought impossible?
and how today's companies could replicate that. was no event that was more important to the Disney parks than what happened at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. Interestingly enough, when Walt was building Disneyland, it's been said he didn't have a friend in the world. Nobody believed in it to include his own wife and his own brother. This thing's going to be bankrupt, shuttered, and forgotten in six months or less. It was a challenge for Walt to get that partnership with network television.
It was a challenge for Walt to find sponsors to help him build the park. It was a challenge for Walt to get banks to loan him the money to see that dream come true. Well, after the park opens in 1955, it's an instant and immediate success. Fast forward nine years, New York City is hosting the World's Fair. New York City is home to the very networks and very banks and corporate sponsors who had turned Walt down almost a decade earlier.
Michael Bernzweig (18:30.33)
Now they're coming to Southern California. Now they want to meet with Walt Disney, the innovator, Walt Disney, the visionary. And they're like, what can you do to help make our fair better? And Robert Moses, who was responsible for making sure that fair was at a completely different level, sat down with Walt and over time they put together four different shows, four different attractions.
four different pavilions that became the most popular shows and most popular attractions at that two year fair. One of those attractions was Walt Disney's all time favorite attractions. Maybe you've experienced it at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. It's in Tomorrowland, of course, and that is the carousel of progress. And it shows innovation from the start of the 20th century all the way through the next 10 decades and at the end of the 2000s. Because Walt
Walt understood the power of technology. Walt understood that we want to honor the past. We want to walk down main street USA. We want to remember where we've been, but it's always most important to know where you are going. And that's what carousel of progress is all about. That's what tomorrow land is all about. And Walt Disney's final dream, Walt Disney world in Orlando, Florida was never about the magic kingdom. Magic kingdom is Disneyland 2.0.
Walt didn't want to do sequels. He didn't want to repeat himself. He wanted to keep moving forward and challenging himself with new and different kinds of innovations. And so what was Florida, what was Walt Disney World really all about? was about Epcot and not Epcot theme park that Disney opened after Walt's death in October of 1982. But Walt's vision for Epcot, which stands for the experimental prototype community of tomorrow. It was going to be an actual city.
You see my friends, Walt Disney started out as an ambulance driver and then became an animator and then became a full feature film producer, then got into live action, then got into the amusement parks and he ended his life wanting to get into urban planning and giving us that innovative city of tomorrow. It was going to be a domed place where 20,000 people work, 20,000 people live, 20,000 people played.
Michael Bernzweig (20:49.194)
If Walt Disney were leading a tech company now, what kind of Epcot project might he pursue in the digital age? Unfortunately, Walt Disney died six months before they broke ground in Florida. And if it's not for Epcot, Walt Disney World never comes to fruition. But without Walt Disney, the company didn't know how to build the city. They didn't know how to run the city. And so they did what they already knew. And that was build a theme park. So I want to challenge you to think about what's your Epcot.
How are you leading your team? How are you challenging your company to come up with the technologies to come up with the innovations that good is going to give not just the country, but literally the world, its version of Epcot in the 21st century, because time is always moving tomorrow. Land as great as a space as that might be. When we go to the Disney park tomorrow, land is not our friend because the world needs our technologies.
and the world needs our innovations today. It's sort of sad that Walt passed away at age 66 in, or rather age 65 in 1966. How much more could he have gotten done if he had lived another 15 years? And so again, think about where you want to go. Start taking massive action towards that great, big, beautiful tomorrow. Don't assume that you have today. Don't assume that you have tomorrow. Take nothing for granted.
and see how quickly you can jump on your own carousel of progress. advice would you give founders struggling to balance protecting their brand with embracing the energy of user generated content and digital creators? That's a great question. And I think it probably would have been evolutionary for Walt. And what I mean by that is the Disney company historically has been very protective.
Of their characters because Walt lost his first successful cartoon character. He once said it all started with a mouse, but it didn't. It started with a fellow that most people have never heard of Oswald the lucky rabbit. And he loses Oswald in a distribution deal when he signed away the rights to the character to universal. And, that was a painful loss for Walt Disney. It was a loss that he leveraged because it forced him to come up with Mickey Mouse.
Michael Bernzweig (23:09.309)
But he never forgot the pain of that loss. so, you know, Disney today has sort of lightened up a little bit because they recognize the power of social media and the way in which influencers and creators can do a better job marketing Disney than even Disney can itself. So I think initially his reaction would have been very much like Nintendo's, if not worse, quite frankly, because he had some real personal history there. And again, over time.
He would have seen the power of social media, just like he saw the power of television and recognize that it's moving the brand forward. And, know, sometimes you have to embrace what is and preconceived notions go. If you enjoyed that conversation, this next Q and a session from our live event includes more from Jeffrey Barnes, other.
Software Oasis community experts, including AJ Crawford from SourceForge, Eric Garrison over at WTE, Greg Lind from Buildly. So let's dive into the conversation right now.
Okay. I hope everyone's having a great time at the event today. We've heard quite a few amazing speakers and now we actually are having our third panel of the, actually, this is our third panel of the day and we have several of the speakers that you've heard on the event so far. see we've had all kinds of questions coming in up until now. So we're going to get to as many questions as we can, both Jonathan.
and myself are here to get things started. So why don't we dive right in, Jonathan, if you want to run through the first handful of questions, and then I'll jump in as well. Here's the first question, Kamen. It looks like this one's for AJ. And it says, what's the biggest mistake SaaS brands are making right now when it comes to lead generation in the AI era? My goodness, that's a broad question. Honestly, at least
Michael Bernzweig (25:15.123)
pertaining to the topic, I would say there's a lot of big mistakes, but the biggest one that I see is not putting enough oxygen into geo and into AI ranking and just kind of hoping that it's going to come together. We're thinking we can just continue with our typical SEO strategy and that's going to solve problems and not having a strategy and monitoring, especially of your prompt history and how people are searching for your product and making a strategy around that. Because I think that's going to become a much larger portion.
of inbound in the next, you know, six months to a year. So right now it's, I think, what, 20 % to 25 % I've seen with a lot of clients, but in the future that could be 50, 60, 70. know, getting ahead of the curve right now when it's a lot easier to rank than it will be in six months to a year, I think is not a, you know, not a nice to have. It's a need to have. Thanks for that amazing answer. I've been thinking about it a lot recently. Here's one for you, Greg. says, what did your early startup failures teach you about
what it takes to scale a tech business? a good question. think I've learned more from failures than anything else. And I think in that process early on, I think what it taught me was just to not give up, right? Keep trying, adjust, be agile as the sort of anti-agile person in the room. I think it's, to me, like learning from mistakes, part of it is just not getting
disheartened by them. There were times where I can think of two or three cascading mistakes that would happen and then take you off into a completely different direction you didn't even think about. And all of sudden you've got a new product or at least a new feature. So learning from mistakes, it's not always a bug. Sometimes it is a feature. And so you go through that and learn from that process. think those are the things that I learned the most for sure.
And then a lot of times, yeah, a lot of times, you know, all of that customer feedback and, know, handling a lot of, and taking a lot of those, those frontline questions that come in from your community, from your users, that that's really how you get to the point where you get your product mature, as they say. And so I think a lot of founders and a lot of executives that are on this event today have been there and done that and have.
Michael Bernzweig (27:36.839)
you know, really endured a lot of organizations like yours, but Greg, obviously many, many years under your belt. And I think everybody on this call has many, years under their belts. The next question is for you. It's for Eric. Why do so many digital transformation products fail or stall or get stuck because of like siloed data? Another person asked a similar question, is
It's really hard to get departments to want to share their data because it's like their fiefdom. How do we break through? Cause it's gotta be more than tools. Yeah. A couple aspects of that. mean, first of all, so many of the systems, they're not communicating with each other. Not just in the digital standpoint, in the data structure standpoint to make sure that you're using common identifiers and even nomenclature of how you're going to refer to.
You know, these, these objects and rows of data across the multiple departments. What I like to do is find who are the keepers of the data and work with them and make them part of the collaboration effort so that we are able to take and clean up some of the problems that they have to do. Cause most of the time they don't realize what their shorthand and some of the abbreviations that they use or how their data is causing another department to have to manually
to additional lookups or data transformations. But it's definitely one of those things that we tackle all the time. So what we were tackling this morning was looking at different systems that have got, for a healthcare provider and how the credentials and everything were different in two different systems, which doesn't help out because they were two different departments and how they want to use them, how they want to track. And that's not something you want to have in an organization is that misalignment of the data for sure.
But yeah, the data silos is a huge one. People think that I can buy 12 packages off the shelf and expect them to have the same data output and to exchange data. And that's not the case today. It does take some work to get everything aligned up. this question I think is for you, which is how can Disney's approach still be relevant or still work with how fast tech is changing everything in this kind of post-AI world? Well, I'm not sure we're in a post-AI world. We're certainly in the middle of an AI world.
Michael Bernzweig (29:55.826)
We're all catching up, right? At the end of the day, Bob Iger is re-emphasizing this, fortunately, Disney's core brand is storytelling. And we as human beings are still wired for story. And whoever tells the best story is going to win. And Walt recognized that not just with Mickey Mouse, not just with Snow White, not just-
with Disneyland or Walt Disney World and the company that leverages AI not to replace the story, but to tell the best story is going to be the company that gets ahead of the competition. a ton of sense. And I think the theme of what we're seeing in AI is exactly that. It's really which organizations grab hold of AI, learn about AI, get it implemented because they're the organizations that are going to be the
You know, find competitive advantage to so many organizations that are just, or even individuals that are just so afraid of AI and you know, it's not the AI that's going to replace you. It's really the organizations that grab hold of AI and all of the opportunity that it presents. think that that's important. question that I had, this looks like it's for Greg. so I guess, okay. So this relates to enterprise data and really.
What breakthroughs happen when enterprise data is unified and reporting is automated from one end to the other? Yeah, I think it's difficult question in a couple of different ways. One is I think once you've got enterprise data, it really depends on the quality of the data. And I was actually going to ask Eric and even Jeff the same question about when you start to bring large companies, like certainly one size of the Disney corporation.
They have so many different sets of databases, so many different enterprise data sets, probably even combining enterprise data sets in a lot of different ways as well. The duplication and deduplication process is difficult enough. So I think where AI really fits in with that as well is helping to sort of strategically look through that data and identify those duplications and be able to then adjust for it. But the difficult part in my mind is then now you're looking at, you know,
Michael Bernzweig (32:13.915)
the sort of filtered lens of data and then being able to figure out is the, it has the AI interpreted this correctly. Have I, am I looking at a reporting system that, actually reflects reality or has it been adjusted or, or has it been, you know, all alternate alt, is it an alternative version of reality basically? so I think, I think that those are the hardest things, but then once you get through that process, you've got a great tool that can then go through and do
not to replace a data scientist, but to at least make their jobs a little bit easier in terms of being able to then look at it and start to see what data is interesting, what can I provide actions for and how can I adjust for it? So, but I would pass that to Jeff and Eric, certainly as well to sort of say in those larger organizations where you do get resistance to not just sharing your data, but AI tools. And maybe there's a lot of turnover recently as well. How do you adjust for?
managing that sort of strategy of strategic AI enterprise data schema, essentially, when you get resistance, not just against sharing data, but the tools that you're using as well. Go ahead, Eric. Yeah, so I like to look at the best way to get meaningful data out of AI. I look at as an amplifier. So when you're taking historical data, really what we're doing is we're trying to clean up and get good historical data to allow us to predict the future. That's really what a lot of people want with this is good forecasting models.
But if you're using AI on data that is, you know, there's a phrase on all of our minds, something in, something out. But, you know, when you've got that level of noise in the data, I'll call it in the history, it makes it harder to amplify the good data to get you a good forecast going out. So that's really where having that ability to look back and also discount. that's something we...
You know, we've done this type of analysis for many years using machine learning and just SQL query technology. Now we can use AI to also discount and score the data. Because what happens a lot of times is think about the fact that the software you're getting the data out of, whether it's a Nest Suite or whatever that system is, that you had Nest Suite version one, version two, version three, you may have more data and better tracking. So you want to those milestones in.
Michael Bernzweig (34:34.406)
where you've got more meaningful data and tell the AI that you're going to apply more emphasis in this forecasting model on the data from two years ago going forward and not give the same weight to data that's five years old. But that five-year-old data can tell you a lot of where those customer trends have been or patient trends or whatever the industry is. And that's where I find a lot of, you know, I get excited about using AI in those type of models to be able to look at
big amounts of historical data. And I always tell people data is extremely valuable today. I mean, you can't believe, you know, don't delete rows of data. You don't have to delete, even if they're, even if you know that they are bad in dupe, you tag them as it because you want to figure out why they happened. that dupe, that dupe transaction may have actually been just other interactions with that person. Or in the case of us bringing together healthcare clients, you're talking about a patient that was seen at two different organizations.
You don't want to delete them because they're a dupe. You want to be able to handle that and, you know, work your AI model and your, your data model to be able to say that this patient was seen by a clinic A, B and C, and this is the interactions that happened at it. Makes a lot of sense. Now, Jeff, on your end of it, and this was an interesting question that came in related to AI and culture change, which I think is kind of a fun one. Can, can you share, and I know we've heard a lot of stories in your presentation so far, but
a specific Disney principle that tech leaders can adopt to jumpstart cultural change? Great question. Well, first of all, you have to recognize that the only constant in the universe is change. you know, Walt Disney was this incredible leader in the sense that he had one foot in the past, i.e. Main Street USA, a turn of the century model from Marceline, Missouri, and another foot in the future, i.e. Tomorrowland.
And if we are responsible as leaders for leading change, and I think that's one of our tasks as leaders, we have to recognize where we've been while at the same time, pushing our teams into the future and into our own version of Tomorrowland. And so, you know, we recognize the past, we honor the past, we make sure, you know, we have traditions around the past, but we don't stay stuck.
Michael Bernzweig (36:59.11)
in that past, you know, because we're not going backwards. You know, as I shared in my presentation, Walt went bankrupt in 1923 at the ripe old age of 21, and he could have stayed stuck in Kansas City and he could have told that story for the rest of his life, but he didn't. He kept moving forward. He never forgot it, but he kept moving forward into a bigger and brighter future. And so, you know, as leaders,
We are responsible for making sure that we have a vision for what tomorrow is going to be, for what next week is going to be, for what next month, for what next year, for what five years down the road is going to be. And as much as data can serve us, as much as AI can serve us, at the end of the day, we as leaders have to have the heart for rallying our teams to have the courage into
an unknowable future and we have to be able to see what others cannot see. I love the story of the opening of Walt Disney World, which opened five years after Walt Disney passed. Walt died in December of 66. Walt Disney World opened in October of 71. And someone commented, it's a shame Walt Disney did not live to see this. And someone else responded, you don't understand. It's only here because he did see it. And so as leaders, do we have the courage?
to have that vision and see things that others cannot yet see. And when you have the courage of vision, then you have the courage of change. Now, AJ, I have a few questions that came in for you and I want to start with this next one. But for anybody that's listening to the live event or even if you're listening to a replay, these individuals that you see on the event here are examples of the quality of individuals in the software Oasis community. So
If you want to reach out to anybody on this panel or just someone else to bring into your organization to help with change that giant orange button at the top, you can click on that and connect with anybody on this panel or anyone else in the community. With that, AJ, I saw a few questions come in that were somewhat similar, but I'm going to read this next one to you and maybe you can give us your insights. How do you see AI driven pipeline optimization?
Michael Bernzweig (39:21.113)
differ from traditional SEO focused models in terms of buyer discovery? Ooh, see, we're kind of hearing in a couple of different areas. the, on the buyer discovery section, people are oftentimes, we're seeing this a lot in the traffic. They're going into chat GBT and they're using it for all their research and they're using it to figure out the features and products they want. They're going into chat GBT, they're saying, Hey, I have this problem. They're talking to it in conversational language and they're trying to get a solution. And more and more, you know, having, for example.
FAQs, which was a thing with SEO, but it's even more so a geo having like long lists of, you know, here's a specific use case and how to solve it on your site, making sure it's AI friendly. Those are so important now because people are having these conversations with AI about how to solve a problem. And if you can provide very specific conversational framed answers and styles in ways that rank with AI, you can get ahead of the curve and get a lot of kind of free mentions off of AI if you do that right.
So I think the big change is just that conversational style and the fact that people are avoiding search more and more. It's a mixed bag though, because search is still really important, right? Like having YouTube videos ranking on Google is important because oftentimes it's pulling from that Google search in a lot of cases in order to put it in the iEngine. So there's a little bleed through on either end, but I think the big pivot is...
making sure you have content out there that is framed for that prompt style answer response. And then most importantly, because a lot of times it's a wild wild west right now, like I can't give you a formula. This is how to get a prompt injection, you know, in the chat, if it is going to A lot is tracking. So have a tool, there's a million of them out there where you're tracking the prompt mentions, test a bunch of different things. And then when you start seeing things come through, you can figure out what works because one thing I've surprised me, 10 different software vendors.
10 different strategies, depending on the industry and depending on the conversational tools, it's all different. And AI doesn't really have a formula yet, other than making sure you're keeping track of what people are asking in your industry and then responding, you know, in ways that are similar to how they're having those conversations, which you can do with an AI tracking tool. think that's really important. Yeah. And I think that that's a huge insight there, AJ. I think for everyone that's on this event today, you've heard from some brilliant minds. You've heard.
Michael Bernzweig (41:31.552)
All kinds of presentations, but the reality of it is AI is evolving very quickly. It's a matter of jumping in with both feet, testing things, trying things, not being afraid to, to, to learn. And, at the end of the day, that's, that's really how you're going to serve your organization, your customers, your stakeholders, the best by experimenting and figuring things out because there's not a single person on this entire event or.
past events or future events that has all the answers. So that's important to always keep in mind. Now, Jonathan, I see your screen filling up there with all kinds of questions. So I'm gonna pass the baton over to you if you wanna jump in with a few other questions as we have a few minutes that are still on the clock. Question about like fragmentation or how like we...
are trying to make decisions with AI, but now it seems like it's slowing us down rather than speeding us up. And it's like, we're seeing that decision making, everyone thinks there should be, it's actually faster, but it seems to be getting slower. I think this is for Eric. What do you think about that? You, yeah, definitely. You need to watch because the models are getting bigger and they're getting more logic to them. So they're able to think more. That is a case where you got to determine whether you should be using a really large model to answer that question.
Or do you want really fast responses and can deal with a smaller token one? But the other thing is you call it a rag is how we talk about taking your data and putting it into it. I'd like to take, and especially now with some of the enterprises we work with, are using massive amounts of data and we're putting a machine learning layer in front of the AI so that we are hitting the database and machine learning first to then take that bundle of data and pass to the
LLM, whether it's an off the shelf or a locally run one or a bespoke, you know, one for a specific purpose, we don't want to hand it a lot of data that it doesn't need. So you want to train it off of information that is important, but you don't want to pollute it. And some people are feeding into it every single ticket that comes into their organization. Well, that can be good, can be bad, because sometimes you're talking about your feeding in tickets from
Michael Bernzweig (43:50.916)
somebody who's misusing your application or I see AJ going, uh-huh, yeah, we've, how many companies have we seen who have polluted their own results by letting somebody who, you you wouldn't let, you know, represent the company publicly put their information into the LLM. So that definitely causes a lot of a slow down there, but there's a couple of ways of doing it, but as these models get more, you know, robust in their ability to answer things,
You got to figure out what data you're allowing into it. And what I definitely don't want to have you have people doing their list of this. Don't go to AI and generate off a chat GPT, your responses that then you're going to now feed into try to train a chat GPT. It probably already knows it. And you're just slowing yourself down with the information. I have seen too many companies try to take a shortcut in the training and think that they're going to use the models there. You can use it to generate prompts.
Do that all day long, but when you're generating content that's unique to your business, don't generate slop with AI and then feed it back into the AI. That's not going to help your speed at all. Can I pop in real quick? Just throw in. Cause I really think you made a super important point. Is that okay? Sure. Cause I see a lot of this too on the sales side of things. And I think this kind of directly ties to that where if you're trying to code a sales agent, you know, with AI and try to program it, people tend to do the kitchen sink method where they throw everything in there.
And oftentimes, like if you're recording, you know, taking all of your sales team recordings and you're sticking them in and trying to train, you know, sales agent. Well, now you're putting it all the people who screwed up their sales appointments and programming it. So being a lot more selective, I found. and when I was, you know, working on AI agents for, for development teams, know, for demand gen quality over quantity made such a huge difference, know, picking like your top sales rep really cherry picking your day. I think he, did he like, yeah, had a great point. He had a great point.
Well, I'll finish up on AJ here. had a client who decided to take a bunch of information from Alex Hormozi, take one of his sales books and feed that into the chat bot to try to make it. But guess what? They're not selling gems. They're not selling that type of product. They were selling construction materials. So you don't need to have an Alex Hormozi conversion lead funnel when you're talking about that type of buyer. So you got to feed the right information, not just, you know, the high pressure sales group.
Michael Bernzweig (46:15.799)
Well, anyways, as I see we're coming up to the last moment here. Anybody, hope everybody has enjoyed this Q and A panel. You can absolutely reach out to any of the guests on the panel by hitting that big orange button. If anybody would like to add to the conversation and expand what's out there in AI by joining us on one of these events, you can hit that same button and inquire about speaking at a future event. Coming up right now, we actually have presentation from
John Russell actually from digital Womble over in England. So it's a great presentation that I think everyone will enjoy. So I hope we've kept everybody on time and everybody has a great afternoon and enjoys the rest of the event. At the end, we'll be recapping right at 4.45 and taking a retrospective look at the day and all the learnings and everything related to lead gen. I really appreciate everybody taking the time out.
on this panel today.