- 3 months ago
Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, co-founders of Forum3, have spent years exploring the intersection of technology and business. Now, with their new book AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand, they share insights on how AI is transforming industries—especially the restaurant world. As thought leaders and entrepreneurs, they’re helping operators adapt to a new tech-driven reality.
Watch now to learn about their book on AI, its future in our world, and its impact on restaurants.
Watch now to learn about their book on AI, its future in our world, and its impact on restaurants.
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00:00Reid Hoffman was next. We sat in his offices waiting for him. We got called in. He was like,
00:05oh, sorry to keep you waiting. I was just on the phone with the Pope.
00:09Talking about AI. No way.
00:17Artificial intelligence live from food on demand in Las Vegas at Bellagio. My name is Sean Walcheff.
00:24This is the Restaurant Influencer Show. In life, in the restaurant business, and in the new creator
00:30economy, we learn through lessons and stories. I can't tell you how excited I am for today's
00:35conversation. Food on demand is something, a conference that I've wanted to go to. So I
00:39have my media team here. We built a media company on top of our restaurant because it's not hard
00:44enough to run a restaurant. We decided to also get into the media business. But more importantly,
00:48I care about technology. We started a show, our deep thesis is the first show that we started,
00:54which is called Digital Hospitality. The idea is that all businesses need to be digital first,
00:59and every business is in the hospitality business, whether they know it or not.
01:03The coolest thing for me is that I have two gentlemen that I just met. Thanks to this show,
01:08they just gave the keynote to this food on demand conference. Adam Brotman, Andy Sack,
01:13two digital transformation leaders that are writing the book called AI First. Harvard reached
01:19out to these two gentlemen, and they have quite a story to share. The book comes out in one month
01:25from this recording, and we are lucky to have these gentlemen on the show. Welcome.
01:29So happy to be here. Thanks, Sean.
01:31So let me get this straight. I just heard the keynote. Harvard didn't ask you to write a book
01:36on artificial intelligence. Not at first. No. They, we were actually talking to them before
01:43Harvard or we had really been paying much attention to ChatGPT. Yes. And I think they
01:48wanted us to write about digital loyalty and something of such sort, and which is our bread
01:54and butter. Yep. And we do consulting on that now, Forum 3. But when we saw ChatGPT, we were like,
02:00no, no, no, no, no. We got to talk about this. This is too interesting. And actually, Andy was
02:06instrumental in sort of twisting their arm and getting them to agree like, no, we'll let you
02:13guys write about AI. And that's what we did. Before we get deep into the book, the people that
02:17you interviewed for the book, I would love for you to talk, give high level the work that you did
02:22prior to Forum 3. Both of you. Okay. I'll go first. I'm Andy Sack. I live in Seattle and I'm
02:30a career technologist. And then I started my first internet company in 1995. I was an internet
02:36entrepreneur, turned venture capitalist. I spent seven years working directly for Satya Nadella
02:42and then co-founding, while I was at Microsoft consulting, I worked on digital transformation.
02:48And then I co-founded Forum 3 with Adam. Adam Brotman, a longtime Seattle guy. It's where
02:55obviously I met Andy. I was chief digital officer at Starbucks for most of my career, the longest
03:02stretch. And then I was the president, co-CEO at J.Crew and now co-CEO, co-founder of Forum 3 with
03:10Andy. And my team, my sort of claim to fame is my team and I put the Starbucks mobile app,
03:16loyalty, mobile ordering system together. Which is now the number one loyalty rewards app
03:21in the world. One of them, for sure. Humble. Top five, for sure. I was telling Adam before this
03:28recording started that the Starbucks app is something that I've been talking about on this
03:32show and all the content that we do. We work with lots of restaurant owners. But when we think of like
03:37true digital hospitality, the intuitiveness of the app, the experience that I get when I go to a
03:44Starbucks, I shared a story. Last time I was in Vegas, I was with my son, my wife, my daughter.
03:48We wanted Starbucks. They wanted some bakery goods. I wanted an espresso. We ordered. We were at the MGM.
03:54We ordered from our room. We walked downstairs and there was a huge line. My son's seven years old.
03:59And he walked with me and he goes, Dad, why are we skipping the line? I don't understand. And I'm like,
04:04well, son, we ordered through this amazing app. This is called digital hospitality, son. And I'm
04:09explaining to him why we're skipping the line and why all the other people that had ordered ahead
04:13were also skipping the line. My son is part of this food on demand generation. My daughter,
04:18she wants me to play songs for her when we're driving in the car because Spotify, she believes
04:23that she can just go ahead and speak what she wants and she gets what she wants. Let's talk a little bit
04:28about AI specifically and the transformation in this two years of writing this book.
04:34Well, I mean, what's interesting is when we started writing this book, we knew how fast
04:40the technology was moving. And we thought that by the time our book came out, it might be out
04:45of date if we didn't do some things to prevent that. One is we were, I think Harvard's first
04:50ever serialized book where we published the book chapter by chapter. I had a community because
04:55you're all about content creator, like community. We're like, let's get a community of readers
04:59that can help you a big part of the book. But also that allowed us to sort of release the book
05:03as we were going along. The other thing we did is we really took the time to ask the Sam Altman's
05:10and the Reid Hoffman's and the Bill Gates of the world, you know, where is this technology
05:14going in five years from now? Because it's moving so fast.
05:17Can I interrupt for just one moment?
05:18Yeah, go ahead.
05:18Yeah. I mean, so when the book started, it started with the original working title of the book
05:23was RAI Journey. And it was really Adam and I going on a learning journey. And we thought,
05:29how do we learn about this? I mean, we had had the experience of ChetGPT 3.5 and we were blown
05:34away and we were smart enough to know that we needed to go to school. And the book really
05:38represents that.
05:39Yeah. And that's right. And at the time we wrote it, as we went on this journey, as Andy said,
05:45it felt like science fiction. Like we were talking, our very first conversation with Sam
05:49Altman, he was talking about what artificial general intelligence was going to be, which is this
05:53AGI kind of powerful AI. And he was describing it and we were like speechless. We write about
06:00that in the book. And then we talked to Reid Hoffman about how we're going to be interacting
06:04with agents everywhere. And nine out of 10 decisions you're going to make is going to
06:07be assisted by AI. We couldn't fathom it. Now you flash forward to today and it's starting
06:13to happen.
06:13Well, an agent is the buzzword of the year.
06:15That's right.
06:16I mean, one of the buzzwords.
06:17Yeah.
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07:44relevant facts and policy documents. Bring me back to the beginning with Sam Altman.
07:50How did you set that interview up? What was it like? What was your expectations walking in?
07:55I had a personal contact through my high-level Microsoft connections and got introduced to
08:01him. And I also knew Sam. And he knew it was for the book.
08:03Yeah. I also knew Sam. Sam had previously been the head of Y Combinator. I was very early at Tech
08:10Stars and helped build Tech Stars up. And so I knew Sam while he was at Y Combinator. So we had,
08:16I had Sam Altman in my email, Gmail book, and then had high-level contact, got referred in. He knew it
08:22was, we told him we were writing the book and we wanted to be the interview. And he took the
08:26interview. Amazing. Yeah. And it's worth mentioning that we went into the interview. During the
08:31interview, it was an hour-long interview at, in San Francisco at OpenAI's office. We came out,
08:38we're walking, we literally had to walk around the block to just process what we had just heard.
08:42Because it was really our, it was the beginning of our learning journey, our AI journey. It was also
08:48really our personal, professional, holy shit moment. And that's where the whole idea of calling,
08:54I really wanted to call the book. We went from our AI journey, when we went to Harvard, we were
08:58like, oh, can we call the book, the holy shit moment? And, and they didn't, I mean, they would,
09:03they considered it. They gave it thoughtful consideration. And the book is called AI First,
09:08the playbook for future-proofing your business and brand. It sounds more like something what
09:13Harvard would publish. The reason we called it the holy shit moment is it was sort of a double
09:18meaning. Yeah. Because when anybody tries a powerful AI, like today for the first time,
09:24they have their own holy shit moment. But we also had this moment when Sam Altman was explaining to
09:30us, which in hindsight was kind of obvious, but not to us, which was that they're focused on AGI,
09:36this, this all powerful, totally agentic, capable AI system. And they're, they run a mission.
09:43And so we were talking about like, well, how can restaurants use it to help with their customer
09:48experience and their marketing and their ordering? And he was like, I don't really know about all
09:54that. He's like, but let me explain to you when we have AGI, this is going to happen. That's going
09:57to happen. And we were like, our jaws on the floor. And then, then we said, well, how fast is that going
10:02to be? This was almost two years ago. He said, five years, give or take. And that's when we were like
10:07three to five. Yeah. Yeah. We were like, wow. Like this is the world is going to change fast.
10:13Yeah. So let's get on top of this and help. We needed to figure it out, but then we want to help
10:17our clients figure it out too. Can you share a little bit about the quote that has gotten picked
10:21up by so many people about marketing in specific, what Sam told you? Yeah. So in that, in that meeting,
10:27that fateful San Francisco meeting at their office, Sam says, you know, we, we said, we said,
10:35how do you do this translate to consumer brands and creative and marketing? He's like, I don't know
10:39much about that, but I can 95% of marketing as we know it today will be done by AGI within five years.
10:47And when we said we had our holy shit moment after the meeting, that quote, which got picked up and went
10:52viral from another podcast interview from a Paul Reuter interview that we had that took off in the
10:59Twitter share. Yeah. Because what was interesting is when he described it in that quote that Andy's
11:04talking about, he was, he would talk about the AI as an agent. He said, Oh, you're going to go to the
11:09AI and AI is just going to like this, not all this made it into the book. So we'll give you a little
11:13bonus content here. Like he was basically saying, look, you're going to go to the AI and the AI is going to
11:17go, what are you trying to figure out? You're trying to figure out like which email to send to which
11:22segment? Well, why don't I spin up thousands of synthetic audiences for you? I'll test them
11:26against the synthetic audiences that are all based on real life persona of your, of your customers.
11:31And then I'll come back to you and let you know which one performed the best. And we were like,
11:36we had never thought of AI as being agentic like that. So it's pretty amazing to like now,
11:42that's why when we were just at the keynote saying, we wanted to bring up the topic of agents a little
11:46bit to get people thinking about, it's not just powerful for you to use it, but it's going to be
11:50powerful for you to sort of work with the AI, almost like another employee or as a coworker.
11:56Tell me about Bill Gates. How did you set up Bill Gates interview? Bring us into what happened,
12:02the lessons, the takeaways. I mean, so, um, was this after what, how do, what was the next,
12:08the next interview after the second interview was Reed Hoffman. Oh, Reed. Oh, let's go to Reed.
12:13Go to Reed. So, I mean, basically I, at the end of the same meeting, trying to think how we got to
12:19Reed. I think all the, the, the first few interviews, Reed, Bill Gates, they all came from
12:25high level executive support and network. Um, and I think at the end, at the end of the same moment,
12:33meeting, I said, who else should we talk to? Can you name two or three people? We're on our AI
12:37journey. And I think Reed was an obvious, I mean, Reed not only was a co-founder of open AI, but he
12:42was also at the lead investor in anthropic, um, inflection. I'm sorry, inflection, not anthropic
12:49inflection and, um, and also co-founder of LinkedIn. So Reed Hoffman was next. We sat in, um, uh, his
12:58offices waiting for him. We, we get called in. He was like, Oh, sorry to keep you waiting. We were just
13:03on the phone. I was just on the phone with the Pope. So, um, um, talking about AI topping,
13:08talking about it. Yeah. And the Pope, yeah, it's super interesting. The, the Pope was like, he's
13:12like, yeah, I know that people are really afraid of AI and there's a lot of fear in the street,
13:16but what I've managed, I read to explain that he had been in a three to four year relationship
13:24building, um, with the office of the Pope and was trying to communicate them what technology
13:30meant to the worldwide population. And he said, the Pope got really interested in when you
13:35can take this device and it can provide basic healthcare. That's on par with, uh, your primary,
13:42primary care physician. And that's enabled by AI. Um, that's to 8 billion people. That's
13:49really, that's meaningful to the Pope. And we were like, yeah, okay. It's okay. You were
13:54five or 10 minutes late for our meeting. I mean, but if you think about that, that example,
13:58that example that's happening, I mean, people, it's not recommended chit chat, uh, the chat
14:03GBT warns you that it's not a physician that's not meant to replace, but you know, if you have
14:09symptoms and you go to chat GBT and ask, I've done it. Uh, it's incredible. The answer you get
14:14and, um, you know, you can take pictures of warts and skin rashes and it will analyze the pictures.
14:21So it's, it's knowledge base. Uh, again, I mean, where we are today from when we started
14:26with today, that interview also took place 18 to 20 months ago where we are today. Uh,
14:33you know, it's PhD level and 35 levels of PhD. So, you know, you can choose whatever specialty
14:39you want in medicine and there's at least a PhD level intelligence and underneath the hood
14:44that, uh, chair GPT. So, yeah, so that, and I mean, we covered reads and I mean, the bill
14:51conversation, um, was pretty cool because, um, Andy and I have had a chance to talk to him in the
14:59past, in our past lives. And so he's just a treat to listen to on these topics because he has this
15:06perspective, right? Yeah. Like he is the godfather in so many ways of modern technology, computer
15:12technology. And so we specifically asked him about to put this into perspective. And he taught,
15:19he, the two biggest takeaways that I remember from the Bill Gates interview, one is we went there,
15:23we said, put this in perspective. And he said, I think this is more significant than the computer
15:29and then windows. And he talked about his holy shit moment when he saw, you know, graphical user
15:35interfaces for the first time at, you know, Xerox park center. And that became the foundation for
15:40windows. And he's like, and I'm saying, and this is him telling us, I'm telling you, this is more
15:44significant because now he was talking about how the computer understands the human language. It's
15:50not that the human has to learn coding now that because of that, the, the, the sheer sort of
15:56democratization of, uh, creativity, innovation, productivity that can come from this technology.
16:01He was just saying it's, it's a step change, right? The other thing he said, and I think this was
16:06the thrust of our chapter with Bill was he talked about productivity and he gave us a completely
16:11different way to think about productivity. Most people think about productivity is, can I do more
16:16with less? Can I do more faster? How do I get more widgets out the door? Right? How do I get more
16:21throughput? He was reminding us that when you can be more productive and faster than the Ironman suit
16:27that we just talked about in our keynote, your quality goes up because you can focus on the things
16:33that are, that matter. And so you can concentrate more on your customer. You can concentrate on
16:37other problems as opposed to spending too much time. And he, and so it's not a, it's not a,
16:42the example that he used is there are certain industries and he used the newspaper industry as
16:47an example where uplift in, in productivity doesn't mean you issue more papers. The paper comes out
16:55every day. So what does productivity uplift mean in the context of certain industries when you only
17:00deliver something once a day, it suddenly means free time. So you can do better research. You can do
17:04this. Hire more journalists. Like he was like saying, it's going to contribute. You're not going to put
17:08out more than one paper in a day, but you can make the quality go up. Do not skip this ad. This is
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17:52I'd love to talk about what does an AI first media company look like and what does an AI first
17:58restaurant look like? Obviously, selfishly for me, but we put this show on. We build in public.
18:03Part of what we do is hopefully helping other restauranteurs understand how difficult it is,
18:07how tight those margins are. But if we are having conversations that matter at the speed that they
18:12matter with this technology, how can we actually utilize them, harness them and build better
18:16restaurants and better content companies? Which one do you want to start? Let's start with media.
18:21So I'll take media. You can take the restaurant as a start.
18:24The storytelling. Yeah. So on the media side, I mean, it's interesting. We have a podcast called
18:29AI First. We're going to need to get you on as a guest. And AI First, we talk to business executives
18:37and CEOs who are undergoing using the tool of AI to transform their business and the pitfalls in that
18:44digital transformation and their own holy shit moments or aha moments. And I use AI. I'm the person
18:52who's largely responsible for our media and content. Everything from ideation, show agenda,
18:59structure to the actual production process. I mean, AI should be at every step of that process. And
19:06you know, pretty much makes what used to be really hard to do much faster, much easier. You get the
19:13Bill Gates productivity lift. So, you know, what used to you needed multiple people for, you needed
19:19a thought partner. I'm actually iterating. We're now working on what season two looks like. And we
19:25learned a lot from season one. It was some of our content we thought was too long. Audiences wanting
19:30more short form content. How do we deal with that audience demand? What's going to attract attention
19:37and demand with the message that we're trying to do and packaging that up into the right show
19:42and get ideas for guests? All of that is done in collaboration with AI. So that's what an AI first
19:48media company looks like. AI first restaurant. AI first restaurant. The first thing I would say is
19:56you're, you are no longer using any excuses around, I don't have a tech team. I don't have a business
20:05intelligence team. You, you do. It's called AI. And, and I know that restaurants, I've been in the
20:12restaurant industry for most of my career, the food service industry. Restaurants have to put so much
20:17effort into the customer, into the food, into the PLS system, into the, into the infrastructure. And
20:24they're not, and there's, these are razor thin margin businesses. They're tough businesses. They don't
20:29normally have the kind of analytical skills and tech resources that maybe a retailer might have,
20:34or maybe a B2B company might have. So it used to be as a restaurant tour, you would just sort of
20:39let that go by the wayside. No longer should you do that. So for example, I would making sure that
20:44all of your conversations with your team, you're recording an AI first business, particularly a
20:49restaurant company. You're not letting your team conversations, your weekly huddles, you're
20:54recording them so you can have the transcripts of them, feed them in. Right? Absolutely. We do that.
20:57Number two, you're absolutely thinking about, um, all of your customer reviews, all your Google reviews,
21:04your Yelp reviews, your app. Every customer touch point. Every, but in your, there's all this data
21:09that's just coming at you. That's that you can basically sort through, including that kind of
21:15unstructured data, like from your reviews. And you should be like matching that up with, um,
21:20their conversations that you're having with your team about problem solving to get insights on what's
21:24working, what's not working, how to prioritize. And then thirdly, the structured data, the structure
21:28data that we all think we need to get after with like, Oh my God, I need a data warehouse and I need to
21:33connect this and you got to schlep the data all around. And the reality is like, no, that's not
21:37true. You can take a great snapshot of your data, feed it into the AI and you could do it once a week.
21:42You don't have to do it every day to create a real, a real look at who your customers are,
21:48what they're buying, um, what trends, uh, their, that their sort of behaviors show you that you can
21:54then translate into menu innovation, marketing innovation, and customer experience innovation.
21:59Can I add, can I add to that? Please. Absolutely. I think also for the AI first
22:04restaurant, it's really about becoming an AI first leader and an AI first executive. And so what does
22:09that mean in, in our book, AI first that one of the chat, we interviewed, uh, Matt Britton and from
22:16Susie and what he shared with us resonated very much with both of us, which is start with a business
22:23problem or opportunity that you have in your head from that, what data sources you have,
22:29upload those data sources and starting with the business problem, not with the technology,
22:34start with the, the, and basically the technology, the AI technology is an unlock with the, the variety
22:40of different data sources to see, to pointing the way to the AI first deck to go, oh, that's an insight
22:46I didn't have. You collaborate with it. You get the insight and you also get reactions.
22:50And don't be afraid. I mean, to Andy's point that when an AI first leader does is have a lot
22:57of humility, you don't need to be an AI expert, a prompt engineer, like ask the AI what you should
23:05do. So Andy mentioned in the keynote, he had a great line where Andy said, just talk to the AI.
23:08Like people think you need to be a prompt engineer. You got to figure out this stuff
23:11out. You got to be an expert and you don't. No, you literally just talk to it and say, well,
23:14you know, AI, you don't call it AI, but Hey, Mr. and Mrs. AI, like, you know,
23:18you give it a name, you know, Hey, you know, Sean, uh, it's like, you know, just ask it. Hey,
23:25I want you to play the role of an advisor. I want you to play the role of a marketing expert. I want
23:29you to play, like, give it a role, give it a goal, but just say, listen, I'm struggling with,
23:33you know, this issue or that issue as a restaurant leader. And I don't even know,
23:38like, I want to use AI to help me. How can AI help me? And what the AI will do is it'll guide you.
23:43It'll give you a paint by numbers idea of like what Andy just said of like, oh, well,
23:47you've got data on that. You just don't think about it. It's hidden over here or there. So like,
23:52again, you don't have to be the expert anymore because you've got the, you've got this, like the
23:56world's smartest thing that's just sitting there to help you. You can spin up at a moment's notice.
24:01I'd love for you to talk about deep research. I recently, my son, seven years old, second grade,
24:07he had to do a report on a hero. He picked Kobe Bryant as one of his heroes. Instead of going
24:13traditional search function, we used deep research and told deep research to go through Kobe Bryant's
24:19life, give us some facts, make it applicable for a second grade audience. And it was unbelievable
24:26watching my son and myself interact with artificial intelligence and get back something that I would
24:31have had to comb through pages of search results. Some of them SEO paid for, you know,
24:36just a mess of data. And I got something clean and easy that we could actually spend time on
24:41to build a better report. So I think that that's, um, I mean, so Sean, let me just ask you,
24:46let me turn the interview on you. When you looked at the report, could you have done a report as good
24:52as that? Endless amount of time. Let's say I gave you six months. Probably not. Honestly,
24:57probably not. Probably not. Okay. Like rate yourself in terms of the report that you got in what,
25:0110, 15 minutes? I got it. I think I got it in five minutes. Five minutes.
25:04It was surprisingly quick. We'll give it 15. Sure. 15.
25:06In 15 minutes, you got a, how long was the report? How many pages?
25:09Uh, it was a five page report, but it was all broken down based to my permit parameters because
25:14it had to fit on a cereal box. Yeah. So I told it it's fitting on a cereal box.
25:17Great. That's perfect. So you got a five page report fit that could fit on a cereal box in 15
25:22minutes at a quality level that you would not even with six months. Correct. What quality do you think
25:27you would have come in? If I gave you six months, how long, what quality level could you come up with?
25:31Eight or nine. Honestly, if I'm honest. Yeah. So look, he mentioned it's the,
25:36it's a total unlock in business. It's a phenomenal technology. I get reports. Both Adam and I have
25:43been using it a lot. In fact, I think Adam reached his capacity with ChatGPT and fortunately we have
25:49another license. It's a total unlock in business. It's an unlock for whatever business you're in
25:54in and it will produce reports of whatever description at whatever level on whatever topic
26:01you want it to. So we've used it. Um, I used it to do an analysis of the venture capital and private
26:08equity markets. Um, and specifically as it related to consumer brands, because that's our area of focus.
26:16We wanted to know PE firms that focused on that, wanted to know the strategic issues facing them.
26:22And they've produced a 15 page report on that. Adam, you want to talk about some of your uses?
26:27Yeah. I mean, honestly, deep research, the it's a misnomer.
26:32I'm happy you brought that up. Thank you for sharing that.
26:34Everyone that's listening to this, it's never used a deep research from open AI or whatever.
26:38They're thinking like research. Well, the truth is it's a incredibly powerful reasoning model that
26:45can go off and think to itself for minutes at a time, sometimes up to an hour. It has the ability
26:51to do research, but it also has the ability to do data analysis that you can attach documents.
26:57And so it's got all these tools. It can write code. It can do research. It can. Um, and so it's really
27:04more of an agent and it's a total cheat code in business. Like it, you know, we're giving away
27:08a secret here, but like the truth is the reason we use it so often is it's probably the best model
27:14with the best set of tools combined with the reasoning model. And, um, and I think it's the,
27:19it's the tip of the iceberg of what the next year and a half is going to look like as these agents
27:25come in and people start to realize, Oh wow. Like it's not just chat bots. It's actually an
27:30intelligent system with tools that can really become a colleague of mine and help me get stuff
27:36done and help me figure stuff out. I love that you brought that up. I mean,
27:38one of the biggest complications that I have working with so many restaurant technology
27:43companies is that if you confuse, you lose. I mean, we are living through, you know,
27:47the smartphone era where most people don't realize we have a modern media machine in our pocket.
27:52Totally. That we literally for free can start a YouTube channel, can post on LinkedIn. I mean,
27:56it's unbelievable what we have the ability to do and now artificial intelligence on top of that. So
28:03part of the goal of this show is always to bring it back to lessons and stories. You gentlemen were
28:08on a podcast and you talked about from a parenting example, using artificial intelligence to play a
28:14game with your kids, to play a quiz game of like, okay, instead of, you know, you're my, my daughter
28:19in the back seat, you know, watching a YouTube kids video, how about do something educational where
28:24she's art, she is going to be using AI and playing a game tailored to her that she can interact with.
28:31You guys talked about that on a separate podcast. My wife was actually listening as we were driving
28:35up here and she goes, wow, that's a really cool use of AI. And I think that gets lost to be honest
28:40with you. Like when AI gets thrown around at conferences, a lot of industry leaders, I didn't
28:45get to see all the faces, but I'm sure there was a, there was a percentage that were really engaged
28:50in what you were saying. And then there was other ones that are like, I have no idea what they're
28:54talking about. Yeah. So how do you bring it? You brought up the refrigerator, which was a great
28:57example. Yeah. Can you share the refrigerator example? I will. And I will just say, you know,
29:02I'll let Adam share the story that he's the one with the eight year old, eight year old. Yeah.
29:08Um, the, uh, the thing, I mean, it is those personal use cases that, that, and stories.
29:13That's the oh shit moment. Yeah. That, well, and it allows AI to both shine and allows people
29:20who are maybe intimidated by AI to start to use it. So the story that we, that I shared on stage
29:26just now, uh, was for those of you that are beginners, I said, go to your app store, download
29:32ChatGPT on your mobile phone, open it up. And there's a button on there that allows you to talk
29:39to it. You just push the button and rather than type, just talk to the, to the ChatGPT mobile app.
29:47And oh, prior to doing that, go to your refrigerator, open your refrigerator door and say,
29:51Hey, I just opened my refrigerator door. I've see these seven ingredients. Can you give me three
29:58snacks that include a subset of these ingredients? And it will instantaneously give you three snack
30:06suggestions and be like, Oh, I don't like any of those three. Give me three new ones. And it will
30:10instantly do that. And so that's the story that I told. And I think that's a really good,
30:15simple starting point. If you're a beginner to AI, why? Because you're talking to it. You're not
30:21typing. It's not, not intimidating. You just think you would talk to, uh, a human being. Number two,
30:27it's really good at taking ingredients and taking recipes. I then said the very next step after you've
30:32done that a few times, you could literally, instead of tape talking to it, you could take a picture
30:37using your mobile phone and upload that photo of what's the inside of your refrigerator to ChatGPT.
30:43And it immediately identifies everything that's in your refrigerator and can give you snacks from
30:48that. And that's just a way of getting over the fear element and getting usage up. Cause the key to,
30:54I mean, Adam said, I want to highlight what Adam said in just earlier, just a moments ago,
30:58Adam said, you don't have to be an expert. You just have to be vulnerable enough to go. I'm not an
31:03expert. I'm a beginner. I'm a total beginner. Can you AI explain to me step by step? And you just
31:09have to be honest enough to go. I suck at this and help me and it will help you.
31:16Yeah. I mean, you mentioned the media company AI first example earlier, like
31:22there's the AI now can watch videos, right? It's amazing. So you can put it like in Gemini,
31:28for example, which I think has got the largest context window and is the best at
31:31looking at videos right now. Is that because of YouTube?
31:33What's that? Is that because of YouTube?
31:34You know, it's a good question. They probably, but they also, the reason why is I think that the
31:38videos are so chunky and large in terms of the data file size that they needed the big memory
31:45capabilities that Gemini sort of has been leading the way on. So Gemini, just for those that are
31:50listening is like a ChatGPT, but Google's ChatGPT is called Gemini and Microsoft is called Copilot,
31:57whatever. So the amazing thing about if I was in your shoes, I would be running all of these videos
32:03through AI and I'd be asking to watch the video and say, critique me and also like help me organize
32:09it and think about it. So like it's, um, there's nothing that it can't help with if you're willing
32:15to sort of ask and you know that, that's the thing, the thing that runs the risk of being sort of weird
32:22to say, but the truth is like there comes a point where you and Andy and I are definitely in this, this,
32:28this mode where you're the flip of the, the light switch flips or something flips and all of a sudden
32:36you want to put everything through AI. It goes from like, I wonder what I can use the AI for to like,
32:41I need to put that through AI. It's almost like you need to calm yourself down at times because
32:46it's that it's true because it can be helpful with everything. Yeah. I mean, just to that point,
32:50Adam and I, Adam lives in California. I live in Washington. We talk minimum three times, but
32:56often five and six times a day. And most of those phone calls where we're recording on our iPhone,
33:02there's a little button you can push on your iPhone, record it. It will transcribe it,
33:07take the audio. And we're doing that for the transcript. Exactly. And that transcript,
33:11all those calls, I mean, all those conversations with your really in your life, with your physician,
33:17with, with your boss, with your employee, all that stuff is fodder to actually help you
33:24be a better human and a better executive. So the one case study that I'd love to talk
33:28about before I let you gentlemen, get back to all the demands that you have.
33:32The food on demand. The food on demand. You are both co-CEOs. You are both co-founders,
33:39but you shared one of the most fascinating case studies I've heard for AI, which is that you've
33:44used AI as another co-founder to solve disputes between both of you. Can you share? Because it's
33:52thoughts like that when leaders like yourselves have the courage to share those types of examples,
33:57where my co-founders, my wife, it's me and my wife that started the media company start. But what if
34:02I had another co-founder and what if AI ChatGPT was able to act like that thought leader for me?
34:10Can you share a little bit about how you use ChatGPT to be the moderator or guide?
34:16Yeah, definitely. I mean, that the it was one of the first things we ever did with ChatGPT is we
34:23created a kind of co-CEO, a third co-CEO AI. Yeah. As if two-worded it wasn't. Yeah, exactly.
34:31It was like the moderator. No. But it was like, and it was one of the first things we did is we
34:35started feeding transcripts of our conversations, our team meeting conversations, our strategic
34:41aspirations. We were hip to that insight and that we were inclined to do that very early.
34:47Very early. And like we would say, and we do that all the time. So it's funny, like it,
34:52yes, it sort of moderates disputes between us, but the truth is like, that's actually just very
34:58commonplace where we're like, if we, if we're like, well, I wonder if we should, you know,
35:02emphasize this or prioritize that. We don't even think twice. It'd be like, well, let's go ask it.
35:07Who's going to ask AI? Yeah. So we'll go back now. You don't want to just ask AI
35:11without giving it context, right? So that's why having that, like that, that repertoire,
35:18that reservoir of, of knowledge that's relevant so that when you ask the AI, you know, which
35:24direction do you think is better? Or how do you think we should go about this? It, you don't have
35:28to sit there and like reinvent the wheel explaining the last six months of what you've been trying to
35:32accomplish. Yeah. So that's why, you know, creating like a strategic co-CEO AI is something that,
35:38you know, we, we, um, yeah, it was one of our first things we did. What is Forum 3 and why does it exist?
35:44On Forum 3, we are tagline nowadays is digital strategy in the AI era. So it's this combination
35:53of, we exist to help consumer brands, restaurant chains, retailers, consumer brands of all stripes,
35:59to help them with, you know, understanding how, how much the world has changed to connect the dots
36:05between all sorts of technology, digital strategy, including AI, so that they can grow their business
36:10and solve their problems. And it starts with the business first. Like we're, we're enamored with the
36:15technology and we use it and play with it, but it really starts with the market, the consumer, I'm
36:21sorry, the consumer, the market and the business first and the opportunities and challenges that lie in
36:27business meeting that, and then using technology to, to unlock those things.
36:31Yeah. I think, I think in terms of, uh, if I could be so forward is to say, I think in terms of
36:37consulting and helping out consumer brand businesses, we have three distinct advantages.
36:43One is we've been in business doing this for 30 years for like some of the biggest, um, most
36:49difficult, most interesting companies to sort of do digital transformation, digital innovation with.
36:53We've been there. We're operators. We've been on the front lines. We've done it. Number two, we are, um,
36:59um, ourselves, AI, uh, experts now. And I say that with humility in the sense of like, we've been
37:06working really hard on writing this book and learning as much as we can. And we, you know,
37:11nobody's really an AI expert. I mean, and we're all learning so much, but to the extent that someone
37:16can really apply themselves to be an AI expert, we try from an applied perspective, particularly for
37:21consumer brands, we are that. And number three, like we use the technology. Yeah. So we have an AI first
37:27approach. We bring the technology to the table to give that advice. So that combination I think
37:32makes us one of the best at helping consumer brands in the world. It's amazing. If you guys are
37:37watching this, we just launched a restaurant technology, sub stack newsletter. Please go
37:41and check that out. Uh, we are grateful to toast our primary technology partner. I'm on the toast
37:46customer advisory board. I know they're working very high, hard on their AI tools. Um, I can't wait for
37:52them to share. I'm not in position yet to share what they're working on. Um, but toast is up to
37:57some really incredible things for a restaurant operator standpoint. What's the best place for
38:01people to keep in touch with you, the podcast, the book forum, three.com forum, three.com
38:07buy the book from at forum three. Yes, you can. We go, you'll, you'll be able to see a link to go
38:12buy the book. You can watch our podcast. You can join our newsletter as well. And you can also buy it at
38:19Amazon. Amazing. And if you guys want to reach out to me, I'm always available. Sean at Cali
38:23bbq.media, or you can find me on Instagram at Sean P. Walchef. We are grateful as always. Stay
38:30curious, get involved and don't be afraid to ask for help and don't be afraid to use AI. Tell us what
38:35you think. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to restaurant influencers. If you want to
38:42get in touch with me, I am weirdly available at Sean P. Walchef, S H A W N P W A L C H E F.
38:51Cali barbecue media has other shows. You can check out digital hospitality. We've been doing that show
38:57since 2017. We also just launched a show season two family style on YouTube with toast. And if you are a
39:05restaurant brand or a hospitality brand, and you're looking to launch your own show,
39:09Cali barbecue media can help you. Recently, we just launched room for seconds with Greg Majewski.
39:16It is an incredible insight into leadership, into hospitality, into enterprise restaurants and
39:24franchise franchisee relationships. Take a look at room for seconds. And if you're ready to start a show,
39:30reach out to us, be the show dot media. We can't wait to work with you.
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