The End of Average: Why Only the Top Will Thrive in the AI Era

Well, thank you, Gerhardt. And, and thank you again for allowing me to be on the stage with, with this audience. Amazing audience. I, I've been part of the conversations. I've been blown away by the, by the quality of content and the speakers and the information. And so I am, I'm grateful to be on here and excited to share some things because you're absolutely right. Since, since we first met and I first stepped on this stage, a lot has changed in, in what we do. And, and I believe for, for every great organization, pivoting and rethinking and pivoting and rethinking and not just assuming that what you had in mind in the beginning was the only way forward, but having the ability to pivot and move forward and make changes and make improvements. And so I'm going to dive into it. Gerhard, and please, you and Perry, feel free to jump in as we, as we dive into this. If you have something that comes up. Let's, let's make this conversational as well. And I am looking at chat as well. So if, if you're in there, I'm going to be asking you all to participate in things. So, so please be active in that chat as well. So I'll be looking for it. All right, I think this slide says it all. And this is where I first want you to start to participate inside the conversation. The world has become more challenging than ever before. Yes or no? Come on, give me, give me some thumbs up, thumbs down. I want to know what you're feeling. Has it become more challenging? Is there more uncertainty? Is there more questions? How many of you before this year were able to predict the next year? And how many of you this year said, I'm throwing all that out the window, like, I can't predict next month? And, and that is the truth. That is, that is what's. It's, it's moving that quickly, and so it's that much more challenging. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I see you all participating in that chat. Thank you. Yes, exactly. It is, it is more challenging indeed. All right, so let's, let's keep this, let's keep this going. There is an unprecedented revolution, okay? And it is just requiring a massive, massive rethinking of how we support the talent on our team, how we help them grow, how we help them evolve, how we help them move forward. And it's, I mean, it's drastically different than what we're doing. As a matter of fact, the things that we're doing, you'll see in just A moment are having the opposite effect of what we want them to do because things have changed so much and things have become that much more different.

Okay.

And the question is, are we going to accept the old Pareto principle, the 80, 20 rule, right, where we're only 20% know what they're doing and effective and 80% aren't, or are we going to strive for performance in every single position? Can we turn that bus to perform like the race car? Think about that. That is the new standard. You'll see this in a second. We don't have. As a matter of fact, if we still. If you're still saying to yourself, 80% of my team is not effective, that's a problem. That's a problem.

Okay?

And we shouldn't be accepting that, by the way. We should not be accepting the fact that 80% of our people aren't performing and only 20% are. And as long as we have that 20%, we're good, business is good. We're going to be all right. Come on, 20%. No.

Okay.

And it's not just in one area, by the way. The focus isn't just sales performance, it's revenue performance, it's the customer success, digital marketing, it's every department and right. It's all of that. All of that. I'm going to show you 43 seconds of a.

Silverstone Great Britain coming down the straight, fifth gear, sixth gear, seventh gear, into eighth, flat out through turn one, flat out through turn two, bringing the car to the left hand side, braking hard at the kerb on the left through turn three, tight corner, pull the car over to the right hand side, throw it into turn four, get a Makar straight for the exit, third gear, coming back through the gears. Fourth, fifth, sixth, all the way up to eighth gear. Drs on down the straight, looking ahead to the BRDC building, looking at a flag on top to see which way it will.

He's pointing, throw the car in, stop for a second. I'm going to pause it right there.

Okay.

I'm going to pause it right there. Did you all hear him say, look up at the flag to see which way the wind is pointing?

Okay.

How many of you would trust this person right here to be able to do their job completely and have a chance to win the race? Every time they enter the that track, how many of you give me a yes or no, give me thumbs up, really participate, get in there. How many of you would trust this person to get their job done every time they stepped on to the track to do Their job. How many of you can say that same thing about every person on your team? This is what fuel is here for.

Okay?

Fuel is the platform, the tool that delivers the skill set that then creates that confidence and ability to improve performance. Retraining is absolutely necessary. We're in a whole new world.

Okay?

Retrain. You've heard today. As a matter of fact, Justin, that spoke earlier was really impressive. And he said it's not about just having people. It's the right people. It's the right people doing the right actions. You've heard people say, practice makes perfect. Perfect. Practice makes perfect.

Okay?

And so how do we retrain people? How do we give people a chance? How many of you. Come on, you can say it out loud or you can say it to yourself. How many of you want to be able to say about every person on your team being able to do that every time this. Will they win every race? No. But will they have a chance? Will you trust that they believe that they can win every single race? Yeah, that's 100%. If that person was on your team, we'd be like, yep, I trust that he can. Do you want to be able to say that about every person on your team? Because if you're still saying it's the 8020 principle, which. Thank you. I got lots of thumbs up coming in. If you're still in the 8020 principle and you believe that's okay, this is it. Look at this statement. The battlefield, okay, is about retaining your top talent and recruiting them.

Okay?

That's where it's going to be. And you have to rethink how you get your people to perform. That's it. How to help them do the thing you hired them to do in the first place and do it well. And it starts with leaders. We're going to jump right into that. By the way, bonus points and something special for the person that says. What is that a picture of right there? Put it in chat. Those that already know, do not answer. I know who you are. If you know what that it's a picture of. Thank you very much. That's exactly right. That is blockbuster. Let's not be that. Let's not forget to pivot and pivot as things change and not just be caught off guard. All right, let's start doing it now. The tools are here. You've been seeing some of them. Because here's the thing, everyone. High performing, high performing people. It's not luxury. It has to be a standard. It has to be a standard.

Now.

It is a standard. Right. Now, here's why those anyone jobs, those anyone roles that anyone can do in the past, okay, you had a couple months if you weren't doing your role, if somebody on your team wasn't doing their job, you had a meeting with the managers in the team and you're talking about in your performance reviews and all this good stuff, and you go, okay, these two people need to get replaced. Those two people used to have a couple of months, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But right around that time today, the anyone job could be replaced that afternoon. Think about that for a second. So if the anyone jobs can be replaced in the afternoon, from when you discover that something isn't working, then what we're left with is the someone jobs. The jobs that someone, not anyone, but someone, has to do and has to be capable and capability, ability to apply yourself is what you want. You want capable people who want to contribute. And so if it's the someone roles that we're focusing on right now, how do we make sure that those someone roles are equipped to constantly improve their performance? This is very much based on how sports works. The sports philosophy is constantly improving performance. It never goes backwards. The players that are playing sports in 2025 could outperform the players playing in 1990. All day, every day. Faster, stronger, eat, healthier all, you name it. Some people might be able to compete, but majority couldn't. Why? Because performance is the culture. And you can't just work sometimes and get paid full times in, in sports, okay? You have to show up and, and, and contribute and be part of the team the entire time. Fuel is addressing this challenge. Fuel is addressing the challenge of not being capable enough, not practicing enough, not being confident enough, not having the resources and tools to the best of the best so that you can apply yourself. Now, here's the truth, okay? Emotional intelligence is the new secret sauce. And here is the problem. You're hearing me say this and you're going, I know that. And you're going off writing notes, maybe answering an email, going, I got. I know what you're saying, Alex. Emotional intelligence, very good. But knowing something and knowing how to use that something to help you and your team are two different things. Fuel helps you apply emotional intelligence inside your organization as it's been proven. And I recommend every single person, Thomas, if you want to put it into chat or someone wants to put, go research the Aristotle project and find out what psychological safety did to the performance of. Of. Of teams. Oh, you're on mute. You're on mute. You're on mute.

Sorry about that. Can you quickly explain how emotional intelligence impacts salespeople?

Okay, so emotional intelligence is your ability and psychological safety is a big part of this. But emotional intelligence is your ability to perform at your best because you have the confidence of being your best. You're not afraid of being wrong, you're not afraid of being ridiculed. And the team makes you feel safe that you can be that. So emotional intelligence is your ability to perform at your best in every single area of your life. It's not just in career, it's in communication, it's at home, it's everywhere. So emotional intelligence is your empathy, is your listening, is your communication skills. It's all of those things. And it is the fuel to give you the confidence to apply those things when the time comes.

Right.

How do you regulate how many of us go into big meetings and all of a sudden that excitement, that fear kicks in and all the things we knew five minutes before is gone? Well, that's because your reptilian brain is kicked in. Right. They don't even know it. Doesn't even understand language. How an emotionally intelligent person understands that, that's knows how to calm themselves down, knows the situation they're going into, knows how to work inside an environment of people, which is what the future of all successful organizations and relationships is. High IEQ people. IQ of course too, but high EQ people. Does that help Gerhardt? That answer it.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Whoops. Okay, so emotional intelligence and psychological safety is key. And like I said, it's knowing how to use it. Here is the problem we're seeing today. I'm going to show you one more video. I might even speed it up a little bit.

I just want to see.

This is the challenge. And there's the answer to the challenge in the exact same video.

It's really cool how many paces it is from. Let's go right here to like the beginning of that curtain.

Okay, here we go. Ready? Let's go.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Half a seven is three and a half. Let's find the middle here. Okay, ready? One, two, three. About a half. Okay, now we don't have a lot of room.

Yeah. Stand over here, face me.

Okay.

All right.

We don't have a lot of room, but put your hand up. You're stronger than my thigh. Hold on. Stay right there. What am I supposed to do here? Come on, hands up, hand up. Okay, let's get. First of all, let's give Michael a little bit appreciate. Did I Ever. Stay right.

There you go.

Did I ever explain the rules?

No.

This is interesting. When Mike was walking with me, did he ever resist? Not one time. He counted seven pages, then he counted three and a half. And he might have been thinking in his head, what am I doing? Why are we doing this? That's true. But he never resisted immediately. When I started pushing, what did he do? Did I tell him to.

No.

That there's something magical when people feel like.

Did you all lose the sound? I lost sound.

No, I got. Was good.

And I lost sound for you too.

No.

I can't hear you. Gear, can you hear me?

I can hear you. Yes. You're good.

I can't hear anything.

We can hear you just fine.

Sorry, I. I lost. I lost sound completely. But you're back now. I just took my airpod out. I apologize. I needed to. Let me get that to the. To the point. Well, I don't want to restart it because I don't want to redo the whole video. But let me just explain. Let me just explain, okay? When the instructor was walking down the path with the person and just walking with that person, the person that was walking next to him didn't question anything, went along with it. Seven steps, three and a half steps, all of it. Even stood and was ready to do whatever was. Was being asked. But the moment. No instructions, by the way, the moment the instructor started to push, the person pushed back with no instructions. The instructor didn't say push back. The instructor didn't say, hey, I want you to fight this. All he did was put his hands up and start pushing, and the person pushed back. That's what happens right now. Physically or emotionally, when we're telling people we want them to do things that are going to produce a result for the company and not taking into effect what it does for them and how it's going to help them grow. The old way of developing talent is to focus on results. The new way of developing talent is to focus on growth, not the results the growth will follow. Let me. Let me. Let me drive this message home a little further. Watch this amazing study.

This data, I must say, I don't.

Know how many of you know Huberman. This is an amazing study. I'm just going to play this really quickly. Awesome study. Look at how we shift one thing and what can happen instantly. Watch.

These data, I must say, are just so interesting. They took the kids and they gave them all the same problem sets. Then they gave them praise. After they completed those problems, they either got intelligence praise, you're so smart, you're so talented, or they got effort praise, you tried so hard, you really persisted. That's fantastic. Then later they gave them another set of problems and they looked at performance. What they found was absolutely striking. The kids that were in the intelligence praise group, you're so smart, you're so talented, their performance went down significantly. Whereas the kids that were in the effort praise group, their performance increased significantly. Giving intelligence praise reduces performance and giving effort praise improves performance, which is absolutely striking and tells you everything you need to know, which is if you're a parent, you're a teacher, and as we all give ourselves feedback, rewarding yourself for effort is the best way to improve performance.

Performance, rewarding yourself for effort. These data, the best way to improve performance. Everybody write that down. Rewarding effort improves performance. Not rewarding results. Rewarding the effort. What it took. How many of us know what it took for people to accomplish the sales they're they're going for? How do you know what's the effort? You know, we, we, we celebrate, we celebrate the fact that they scheduled some appointment and had the conversation, but we have no clue what it took to actually schedule that. How they practiced, what they read, what they've done to prepare themselves. And so this is very important. This is a great. I don't know how many of you know Simon Sinek and know this quote from him, but when people are financially invested, they want to return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. Let me tell you something. You can write this down too and take it to the bank if you want. We are living in the age of contribution. If you can't be a contributor, if you can't help, if you can't be part of the team that's helping win, you are not going to be on the team. We're sorry. It's okay. But it's just not a time for just sitting back. This is a time for contribution. And this is an age of contribution. Here's the other piece of it. We also have to be able to focus on each individual. We always want to treat our employees exactly as we want them to treat our best customers. Okay, well, let's talk about that. We right now treat our employees by telling them we want to train them, we want to give them things, but we still put them into a specific time frame and say we need this by this time and we need to all meet in this place. You would never say that to a customer. You would accommodate the customer and make sure that they feel good and comfortable and with moving Forward with whatever that is. You wouldn't make them fit into your box. You would work with the customer. That's how we need to be treating our employees. Tailored opportunities, right? Special focused opportunities, not generic. Each individual person. Remember that guy that we saw, the race car driver that we saw?

Okay.

He is practicing the thing that he wants to be great at. Is he doing it when the coach wants him to do it or is he doing it when he feels like he needs to do it when he's most prepared? Maybe for him, it's right after he wakes up, right after he gets a big tall glass of water. He goes, this is when I'm most prepared to practice. So this sinks in. And so he does it. And we have to give people an opportunity to do that. So how do we do that? We make it hyper focused, hyper personalized. I'm going to show you an example of this in just a minute. We believe that that instructions should still be human based. And then AI supported the human environment, the human condition of us being working together and that empathy and that emotional intelligence has to come from the ability to be in touch with other humans. Okay, so at Fuel, it's not just on demand. Watch some videos. It's not just AI, which you'll just see an example. It's not just live virtual events. It's also physical live keynotes, workshops, retreats to support people at every single level. It requires all of those things. Again, treat your people like you want them to treat your best customers. Which means you make all of this available. All right, real quick. So training, we said it needs to change. Radically change. Not a little change. Radically change. Majority of all training is still this way. And we're shocked. And we are shocked why more people aren't doing better in their roles. Because we want people. And Justin talked about this too. And the guy before him that spoke, Gerhardt, I can't remember his name, he spoke about this too. Retention of information, being able to use the information you have. Well, when we give people a 5% chance to retain, we're going to get that result, aren't we? Okay, Some of us have moved to videos and said, hey, you know what, let's just use videos and that 20%.

No.

At Fuel, we focus on the bottom two right here. We are absolutely the best in the world at teaching someone how to teach something back using a teach back method, which 90% of what your team, you, yourself and your team can teach back what your kids can teach back. It's beautiful.

Okay.

They can use right away. They can use tomorrow and they can use a year from now. And then 75% of what you practice, you retain. Watch this. Let me just show you an example of this in action. Let's clear all this off the screen. Let's do this. Gerhard, before I do an example, did you have anything you wanted me to mention? I saw you kind of lean in. Oh, you're on mute. Go ahead.

Sorry about that. I love your examples and I love that most companies focus on the. On the top third of the pyramid. You are focusing on the bottom of the pyramid. And I think your secret sauce is really driving up retention in doubling engagement.

Yes. I'm going to give a quick example and I'm going to jump right to that point. Gerhard, what you just said. Just so just a quick. I'll give two quick examples and then we'll move on. So a teachback method. Here's a teach back method.

Hi Alex, how can I help you today?

Hey Chris, I just took your course and I want to make sure I understand your concepts and how to use them. Teach you back lesson number one about how to start a conversation with a stranger so they can build trust quickly. Can I teach that back to you and you tell me how well I understand it?

Absolutely. Alex, I'd love to hear your take on lesson one. Go ahead and teach it back to me and I'll give you honest feedback on how well you've grasped the concepts and how you can sharpen it even more whenever you're ready.

So Chris, the purpose of lesson number one and those five words, I know I'm an interruption is, is basically we use those words because when you're calling someone that's never heard of you, never heard from you before, you're the invisible stranger. You're the scariest thing that's happening to them at that moment. And when you acknowledge you're the problem, you start to build trust.

You've got the core idea right, Alex. Saying I know I'm an interruption is powerful because it shows you see the world through their eyes and you own.

So there is an example and you heard me say the prompt. But those prompts can be pre built and you can just start to teach back any single thing that you want. I'm going to give you all more example with our very special guest, Jeffrey Gmer. Yes. And I'm going to ask him a very special question. So.

Hi Alex, how can I help you today?

Hey Jeffrey, I'm a sales leader and I have a question for you. How do we make sure that we Put people first in our sales calls and that we show empathy.

Alex, you nailed it. People first, always. Here's the deal. Empathy isn't just a soft skill. It's your secret weapon. Start every call by asking a real question about their world, not your product. Listen more than you talk. When they share a challenge, acknowledge it. Don't just jump to solutions. Show you get it by reflecting.

So every single AI instructor inside this library, which is the largest library of AI proprietary content on the planet at the moment, can practice in any single lang language. And you can practice what you've learned. You can teach it back. You can role play. You can give every single person on your team a process of escalating complexities to practice. If you're in, if you're using sales role play, it's like, hey, I want to practice this 10 times, and I want the complexity of the objections to go up every single time. And I need to get a 9 out of 10 or better on the score before I move on. And once I've completed all 10, I'm ready to talk to somebody.

Okay?

And that's. And that's what this does. Look, Gerhard, I'm going to jump right into sort of the, the value pieces of it right now.

I want to reflect on that for one second. Me a chance to give you an analogy that came to my mind as I was listening to you. The old way of training is like going into a movie theater or watching a screen on tv. Fuel is like going to the gym. It is a mental gym where you improve performance by engaging with the instructor with the AI. And what we heard all day long is on several occasions that AI roleplay rehearsal improves performance by 30, 40, or 44%. And what you are doing here is very similar where you allow the student to engage with the instructor in a meaningful dialogue, either teaching it back to the instructor or asking questions of the expert.

Yes, right. I mean, what you're saying, Gerhardt, is do we want this? Do we want our team to be able to do this and just trust wholeheartedly every phone call, every meeting, every engagement, every time they step on the track, on the field, on whatever place that they practice in their career that we know we're not guessing, we're not hoping they're ready. We know they're ready. And that takes this. It takes this. It takes being able to drive past a flag and see the wind direction and know how you're going to take the next turn.

Okay, talk about those numbers.

I'm going to talk about these numbers. How is this possible? How are we having world class ROI like this? Let me give you an example. You keep hearing me talk about that the battlefield will be on talent and that's because that's where it will be. Humans who can perform and want to contribute is what we're all going to fight for more than ever. And we're going to want that and we're going to. These teams are going to be long lasting teams because it's going to be built on the right foundation. So how do we make sure we keep these people? How do we produce this type of roi? Number one, we are just priced to be to democratize performance. And you'll see that. Okay, we'll see that before the end of this and you'll see that a little bit here in this example. So let's take an organization, we deal with large enterprises, usually a thousand people and up. And let's take an example of 2,000 people. A 2,000 person organization would cost them $40,000. Work with with fuel. Now most enterprises will have a turnover of employees of 10 to 25% every year. Now I know you're listening to this and if you're one of those with 2%, I applaud you. It's amazing. But still pay attention because this is still going to have a significant ROI for you. And if you're one of the ones going haha, 25, we're more like 55, pay very close attention because this is definitely going to be impactful for you. What is the cost of replacing people? Organization that had 2,000 people is going to have to replace 200 to 450 people. It costs 75% to 150% of somebody's salary if they're in a professional technical role, over 200% if they're in a leadership manager role. We've made it simple. Let's take the bottom end 200, not the 450. Let's take the bottom end 200 and let's take a small number, 50,000. We know that it probably is higher but let's just keep it low. Let's just keep it simple so the math is clear. If you're an organization with 2000 people it's going to cost you real physical, tangible dollars about $10 million in this year to replace those people. Now before I show those numbers, Gerhard made a great point when we were talking about this. He's like Alex, you're talking to a bunch of sales leaders.

Have a salesperson and you have 200 salespeople that have a million dollar territory. That's how many millions? 200 million.

Yeah. Plus the 10 million. So 210 million to replace. You're going to lose $210 million potentially there. So what fuel, where is the ROI? What we help organizations do is retain their top talent, keep them engaged, keep them wanting to do more, feel great about the reason that they're there and what they're doing. And so in this example, if we help this organization retain 5%, that's $500,000 back in their pocket physically on a $40,000 investment, up to 2.5 million. But as Gerhard mentioned, that's not all the math. We can't even do the math for everything. Because sales are up, customers are happier. Because your customer success team is more engaged, their morale is up. They feel better about themselves. They can apply themselves. They practiced tough conversations over and over again. Leaders have practiced tough conversations over and over again. They're recruiting much better talent because they're prepared to answer questions that they're not caught off guard on anymore. Finance is gelling, Engineering is moving faster. Everything is smoother. And so I go back to the, to this question, everyone, do you want 80% of your team to operate like this person here, or are we going to accept less? We don't have to accept less anymore. We did. We did. But things have changed. Just like we had to take a taxi. There was no Uber, so we had to wait for that terrible experience. Now we don't have to. So we have daily inspiration and practice that's available for people. New content added every single week. Over 800 lessons currently in there, 247 customized micro coaching, and over 30,000 people. Right now we're staring down the barrel of another 100, 250,000 coming on board. And all this, depending on the size of your organization, could be as low as 2 pennies per person per day to have access to this type of information. Let's jump into some questions if there's time. If not, thank you very much.

Awesome. We are. We're two minutes over. However, I want one quick customer success story there. Could you share a customer that you worked with where they were blown away by what you deliver?

Oh, my gosh. My, my favorite one is going to be our, our network marketing group, where if anyone knows the network marketing industry, you know, you have to keep recruiting people, keep getting them engaged, and it, and it just stacks up on each other. And so one of the most challenging thing. What happened?

Your mic. Get closer to the mic.

Okay. Is this better now?

Yeah.

Okay. So we know that in. In those. In those network marketing organizations, it's about getting people actively speaking to more people. That's what you have to do. Well, we built a custom leadership GPT of the leader that runs that organization that spends every single week on webinars teaching people what to say. And we taught this GPT all the things that he typically teaches to every single person in the organization. And remember, 98% of people that come to those calls, which is typically hundreds of people weekly on that call, 98% of people never respond. Never. Just recently, that over 50% of people come back and respond because they give them access to the AI to practice their storytelling and get graded on it. People came back and go, oh, I could do this. I could say that all day long. But just two weeks before that, 98% of people didn't even respond. They're like, I don't know. So, huge success story. Because here's the thing, everyone. It's not about what you know. It's about what you can do with, you know? And then if I add a little bit of fuel to that, it's about your confidence to apply yourself. That's what's important.

AI plus EI equals. There you go.

Bingo. Thank you so much, Gerhard.

Thank you, Alex. That was awesome.

My pleasure. Thanks, everyone. 250,000 coming on board. And all this, depending on the size of your organization, could be as low as 2 pennies per person per day to have access to this type of information. Let's do.