Let's dig into so AI Skills!

Good morning. Happy Friday, May 2, 2025, here for another edition, another episode with Nico and George talking building AI skills. How you fellas doing this morning?

Doing great, feeling pumped. Another week. Another week of exciting stuff.

Well, yeah, I woke up, so that's good.

All right, the alternative is no bueno.

Yeah, enough said there. We'll dive right in because this is going to be an interesting topic. Let me just play this first video.

Introducing Visa intelligent commerce allowing AI to shop and buy. Add smile. Done. It's that simple. You're in control to make the final.

Call.

Or you set the limits and let it do the rest. New way to buy. Same trusted, secure way to pay. Visa Intelligent commerce use AI to buy.

You might be asking, well, how does it work? Let's, let's hear how.

Chris, how does it work?

Station tokenization.

Can you explain exactly what this ultimate technology is doing?

How will my future of commerce look as an individual?

Yeah, so first of all, we're all going to have agents and they're going to be able to go out and scour the world's inventory and find what it is that we're looking for, either for ourselves. Maybe it's tickets to a hard to get concert or as a gift, you know, a hyper relevant gift for my wife for Mother's Day. And what we have announced is a set of tools that give agents the capabilities to go make payments on your behalf. Think of that as AI enabled Visa credentials and also the rules and the capabilities that will provide trust, trust that consumers will have in their agents, trust that merchants are going to have that they're going to get paid and trust that financial institutions will have that you've actually empowered your agent to make those purchases on your behalf. So we announced AI enabled Visa cards that's going to allow you to give your agent, agency giving them your Visa credentials to go buy something on your behalf. But we also announced important capabilities, things that enable you to set parameters and tell your agent how long do you want them to go look for something? Maybe those concert tickets we were talking about. How much are you willing for your agent to spend, even to designate specific merchants that you want your agent to go look at and not go look at other merchants. So it's the, it's the products, it's the capabilities that are going to give you and everyone else trust that your agent is going to go buy exactly what you're looking for on your behalf.

Okay, so that concert.

Can I, can I show something real quick? This is of course just a tag onto that because It's. It's so, you know, it's fortuitous that I made this video earlier this week and without realizing this release was coming out. I should have released it earlier this week, but released it this morning nevertheless. Hey, Chat, I'm looking to buy a new pair of shoes. I normally wear Skechers, but I'm looking for something a little bit more Ohio. Can you help me find them?

Life.

Okay. I love those PF flyers, so I definitely want to get a pair of those. Where's the closest place I can find to get them? In the end, it all goes up in smoke.

You can see it now.

You can see it now. You can see it now. So I thought just a tag on that, like, it's not Visa. Not going to be just one place, everything, everywhere, all at once. Yeah. I don't know. Like, I'll just start off by saying, we told you so. I have no problem doing that. Like, I normally don't do that when it comes to, like, other stuff. But this is the one subject. Yeah, like, this is. This is the one subject where it's like, I've been doing this for two, almost two and a half years, trying to wake people up. I've been trying to, like, get people to realize, like, what's going on. The type of technology. I just had somebody talk to me the other day that literally, I mean, literally woke up to it. I really was like, I normally wouldn't. I'm trying not to use that word anymore, but came to me and was just like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it. But it was like. And just shocking me, like, other people don't know about this and how do you get people to know about this? So welcome to the party, man. Like, that's. That's what we've been doing. We've been trying to educate people. We've been trying to show people. And I hate to say it, but I told you so. If you've been asleep all this time, we told you so. We told you that the game was going to change. We told you that your regular, normal ways of advertising and all that was going to change and that you were going to have to do stuff differently. Sorry to slam it in your face with this one. I hope you were paying attention because now it's on money market, so I know your boss is paying attention. So leadership, you better wake up because the game has changed. We said it was going to be the end of this year. That's how much faster it is, like, than we thought. Okay. So whatever we said was going to happen at the end of this year, just figure it's going to be June, July, Right? Total PC control with voice only. August, September.

Yeah. By inbound.

So first of all, let me just say I'll be a little less aggressive, but I love Nico's passion. I welcome you in with open arms to the world that we are now living in. And I can't wait to see what you can do with the power at your fingertips. My brain went in a couple different directions based on these videos. One, I immediately said, I do not need my wife or daughters to have an easier way to purchase things. Oh God, please help me. But then I immediately went to a use case of where we've all sat in the living room trying to buy those tickets that we knew that. And I was like, okay, so thank God that doesn't have to happen again. And then on the second video, I literally started to google, what does it mean when somebody uses a overuses a word? Because the fact that that gentleman used the word trust 17 bazillion times in a two minute clip, I'm like, bro, can you quit trying to force down my throat as a human what you think I need or what you want me to hear or what you want me to believe? Because if I don't trust the fact of having an agent with my credit card to do the things that you're saying, you saying it 57 times isn't going to make me change. And so like we're talking about something that could be completely helpful to humans, but in the delivery of it, we're actually causing friction where before he used that word 17 trillion times, there was no friction in my brain. So there's a communication tip there for everybody. But there's also like the technique of like, you better embrace how you're gonna be able to use this moving forward. Because listen, your boy does some shoe shopping before inbound every year, it's probably gonna look dramatically different than me driving around to 17 different stores looking for the right color purple to match my hoodie and hat. I. I'm just saying.

Yeah, there's two, two, two things that jumped out to me from the second part. Obviously what you just said about the delivery of the words is why they made the first video. Right? That's marketing doing their job saying, oh, you know, users are going to love it now. I wouldn't be surprised, like the word trust. Like this video designed like if their target audience is executives who never have attention span, are never paying attention and don't have time for anything. Like maybe they hear one of the word one time that it uses it. But that's definitely the thing that's going to get in the way. But this is also why both of these delivery methods of education and promotion are going to be left up to agents. And so we've got prospecting agents, right? And we've got buyer agents, we've got customer agents.

Put it together, folks.

You mentioned George. And by the way, I'm talking about all these things today. Like, I have the, you know, also an admin agent where we're unboxing with Tango later this morning. Willem, for let's build HubSpot Onboarding. What does HubSpot's role become as a marketing and sales and service platform? And how do you have to change it to serve an AI buying journey? Right, because both of you guys talk about shoe shopping. And that actually gets me to the two points I was going to say from this interview. The first thing, agents can go scour the world for inventory. Right. Understand all the products and specs available without any help from advertising. And the humans can set it up to say, I don't want you to buy from this brand, I want you to buy from this brand.

Yeah.

So with those two things.

You know.

What are ads doing? What are ads doing in this world?

You, you know, what's even better to me is a problem that I've had before. I'm sure other people have had it. Just maybe not in this particular case, but I'm sure other people have had it. You know, I went through Meyer the other day and they just had like palette after pallet after pallet of like, whatever posts, you know, post sales TVs and all this stuff was like crazy marked down. But I haven't bought a TV in like, I don't know, six years or something like that. So I really don't necessarily know what I'm looking for. Right. Like same with like monitors and stuff. Like, I know for monitors because I use one all the time, but for a tv. Tv, not necessarily. And I'm looking at them, trying to decide and, and I call my brother because he's really into TVs and he's bought like, I don't know, four TVs in the last couple years. And I'm like, yeah, what should I get? And he's like, oh, I don't really know. I only know the models I went after. And then I, I pull out chat and I just take a picture of all the TVs sitting there and I asked chat, hey, I want to replace my 65 inch TV. Here's all the options. I don't know jack about TV stuff. Which one should I get? And right away, like any normal salesperson, right, Was like, hey, so what are the use cases? Is it going to be in a room with a lot of light? A little bit of light. Do you watch TV more during the day, more at night? Oh, do you watch more movies? TV shows, action stuff, drama? It took so many things into account that a normal salesperson would never ask you.

Did it go through this questionnaire?

Yes. Yeah, you go through this little questionnaire and it's like, yeah, it's like, do you have a 5.1 setup or do you have a soundbar? And then at the very end it said, do you understand these options or should I go into greater detail? So it's like, even if I didn't know what a 5.1 is, I could ask, well, what's a 5.1 setup versus a 2 speaker setup? Right? The, the way in which you shop. Like, even if you're, even if you're still going online, you're not going to the store.

Yeah.

Why would you go to the store? So you can get her, like the online store so you can get harassed. That's what it feels like nowadays. It feels like harassment, for one thing. Two, almost every one of you has just abandoned hope when it comes to your mobile designs. And I don't know why, but I really hate you for it because everything is supposed to be ever since like 2015 mobile first. And it is sad, man. It is sad, bro. Like I go to your mobile site and it's so like all of a sudden hit with a pop up that I can't close. That's like three quarters of the page, right? So Wall Street Journal, New York Times, all of you guys, that's why I don't go to your site, because I can't even navigate it. I navigate it for five seconds and then it's gone. And I, I'm just like, all right, I'll just go to ap. Because at least there's no ads, buddy.

Like, they need a responsive agent. And so.

Yeah, well, that's. No, that's what this is though, right? Like, this is the world's response to your crap buying experiences. Like we've been trying for so long, even with tools like the HubSpot platform and it's like all the use, all the lack of adoption and usage and you know, making choices. Like, we know we all hate pop ups but the data says we gotta use pop.

They work.

Yeah.

And that's like the fact is, and that's where people have opted out and now they're going to opt out even more by letting technology do more of the work for them. And they're going to, you know, and if you do it right, you will likely be able to make more because all of this stuff starts to reduce costs when done well. And when the experience is great, you get to charge more for it.

So I got two things on my mind I want to unpack here. Well, first of all, Chris, I want to rewind back. You said what part does ads play? Here's the fun part. I think we're going to quickly move into a future where ads and marketing educational content is the pre story to me, defining my presets of my agent because I've seen these ads, because I've been educated in a certain way, because I feel something based on those. Now I will set my preferences for my agent to not or to look at certain things or be able to buy from certain things. So they still play a part, but a way larger different part. The other thing that's in my brain with what we're talking about here today is in a world where everything is getting so simple, literally you can be like, go buy this thing for me. I want every business owner who ever watches this to take pause to go look at your website and ask what is the great chasm that is being created of the efficiency and ease to purchase online versus what you have created historically and how that should change in the future? Because we are coming into a world where if you're not paying attention to simplification to get to a conversation, your site will start being non effective.

Yeah, I can, I, I absolutely agree with that. That's, that's like the number two problem I've had even when using desktop to go shop on e commerce sites that you get flooded and misdirected and all this kind of stuff and it takes you. I know what I it, it's like, look, a lot of people, I don't know how online shoppers are, you know, in every direction, but I'm, I'm willing to bet you guys are like myself, where if you know what you want to buy, you go into the store, you buy it, you walk out.

Oh yeah, there is no shopping, bro. I go buy.

It's I go buy. Right?

Yeah.

So when I go to your website and you're hitting me up with this thing and you're trying to slide me this offer and then a slide out comes and then it pop ups there. And then I click to a page, but then you redirect me somewhere else. What are you doing? Why, like, let me. Like, here's a question to George's point. Why are you trying to keep me.

From buying buyer repellent?

I came to your website to purchase something.

Yeah.

Why are you trying to blockade me from purchasing?

Here's, here's the other thing. I was on a call with a client yesterday and I had a little bit of epiphany moment while we were talking. Because again, we've historically done something a certain way. Here's the learning center tab. And under the learning center, there's a dropdown that has blog and podcast and videos and all of these choices versus, like, why, why not just learning center and then let them go search for what they want, everything in one area and get real smart about the way that it's categorized, tag, topic, whatever you call it, so they can find it. But like, quit giving. This is gonna sound counterintuitive. I know it. I'm gonna get hate mail. Oh, well, quit killing them with choices.

Yep.

And love them. And love them with direction.

Yup. I mean, I was dovetails, man. Niche. I can't say it enough. Focus. Laser focus. Right. If. If I'm going to buy a hammer and I'm using GPT and I'm asking what's. What's the best hammer to get? I can almost guarantee you that outside of me asking for the cheapest hammer, it's going to bring me John Henry's Hammer Company. Why? Because John Henry Hammers is all they make. They just make hammers and they're super highly rated. And for the purpose I, you know, it's going to ask me, like, what are you using it for? I'm putting a deck together. Best rated for deck.

I hit a nail.

Right. Okay. So that's the way it is. It's not a matter of. And. And even then, I'm only going to get a. A selection of those specific type of hammer shops. Right. So that's the way it works. Go forward. If you try to solicit everyone with everything, you will hit no one with nothing.

Yeah, yeah.

Because you're too generic and all over the place. Right.

And be able to overcome it the way you have in the past. Which adds interruptive, like creating scarcity. Like the whole idea of sales. Like AI agents are gonna be like, okay, like, okay, like, no rush for me.

You know what I haven't seen shopping at all yet. Like GPT or perplexity yet. And I don't know if you guys have experienced the same thing. I haven't seen Amazon, haven't seen Walmart.

Oh, like inside of.

I saw Best Buy once as an option.

Interesting.

I have a buying option.

Honestly, I had even paid attention to that. But now that you've mentioned, I. I know I will. It'll be like the elusive M Dash that I wasn't paying attention to, but now I. All over my damn copy. What are you doing?

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Yeah. To your point, George. Like, and that's the thing, like, this is not new, folks. Like, everything you do needs to start pointing to human emotion, experience. And that's where. When we talk about what humans have been up to and now how they're going to shift and what they need to be doing now, every single one, every single person in the business has a story to tell. Let them tell it. Enable that. Yeah, because that's what's going to reach people, to start guiding, you know, their. All the, their platforms and tools in front of them to enable their journey. Like, understand their journey is now going to be literally from idea to showing up at the door. Like, that's what we saw in that video. Right. And that's real. Right. And if it's working the way we expect it to, like, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And by the way, showing up at the door could be literal door or digital door.

Yeah.

Like, because trust me, world, where we get way too many packages and on my front porch. Plus this video that you started with. Okay. I need new clients, so hit me up, George. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

I think it's, I think it's hilarious. I think it's the, the first step towards what we've been talking about. So this is for shopping. What? It's crazy because what Chris is going to show you later today, I'm talking to the people at that company and they are not quite aware of, like, how much potential their tool has. But I've been talking to them about, like, what they could possibly do with it and their minds are exploding all over it. So I can guarantee you that tool is going to start picking up a lot of steam really quickly.

We're talking about Tango.

Talking about Tango. And I'm trying not to. I, you know, I know you're doing the unboxing, so I don't want to get too.

It's. It's seeing it tangible, like, seems to be the only way to get through to people on this. And then like, obviously the next step is actually them clicking buttons and doing it themselves. But like the flags here, the green flags that I'm, I'm referring to them as green, I know people see them as red a lot. And it's kind of like bread is not going to give you any value. Like if that's how you're looking at any of this, the green flag to say, yes, this world is happening. There's no reason not to trust that we are moving in this direction. When you have companies like Visa, like making decisions and coming out like this, like when you have all of the enterprise leading companies making AI announcements, like, that's when you start, like there is no behind the scenes market at this point. That's not moving forward with AI.

Can I throw out a wish list item actually for quality of life improvement? I don't know what you call it in your state or what you call it in your country, but here in North Carolina it's called the dmv, the Department of Motor Vehicle. Can we get a DMV agent? Because like that would be dope. Instead of standing in a line for two and a half hours to get my like license or like license plate renewed. Like anybody out there hearing me? Can we get a DMV agent, please? I think, can we get an IRS agent?

You talk to Elon about that tax agent, please, somebody.

Anyway, government man. Government. Like, yeah, come on.

And that's, I mean like. But so, so here's the thing. When, and, and we do realize this, like, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, what happens with call center people, right? Or call center people gonna get fired wholesale. I haven't seen it yet. If they do, it's a really big mistake. Early on. Like I have to admit I was, I, I will admit I was extremely wrong about like where the world of work was going to go. It's only going to be in it. So here's, here's how it works, guys. Even if it were the case that companies here started firing people wholesale, that's not going to happen around the world. And you'll see those companies all of a sudden just start to fall away by the wayside because everybody else that keeps people increases exponentially, right? So for every one person you have, pretty soon you're about to have two. So whatever your overhead is, it's going to double without the cost inside of four months, three months, six to eight months from now, it's probably going to be triple or quadruple, actually way more Than that. Basically, we're going to go from managing another agent or two to managing agent swarms, which is like, if you've never heard of that, it's like 200 to a thousand agents running all at the same time, doing, taking care of tasks. So that's. I mean, like, that's the progression. And you can either keep your overhead and exponentially grow your staff by that number, or you can start cutting people. And you're literally now cutting the exponential power that you have. Right.

Augment the humans with AI assisted technology. Anyway. I'll preach that till the day I die.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, the. The what? You know, the reason I say that and the reason that we say, like, focus on meaning, focus on purpose, focus on value. The reason that we're saying those things is because the manual labor, the tediousness, the clicking around the. The button pressing, all that, it's all going away. If you work remotely, everything that you do on your PC or on your Mac is going to get done by an agent soon. Real soon. So you will just be interfacing directly with your PC, telling it what to do and watching it go do stuff. If you don't believe me, too bad. So sad it's coming. Yeah, Like, I don't care. Like, if you don't believe. Like, so many things are happening right now within the last three months that I thought were going to be like six months from now, that I have no problem now telling you guys this, right? Like a year from now, probably less. You just. You straight up won't even touch a computer. It'll be weird. It'll be super weird if you have to, like, you'll. If it'll be weird to your kids for sure. And it'll be weird to me. Like, I will. I'll know that you don't know what you're doing by watching you touch a keyboard, right? I'll be like, oh, shoot, he's one of those.

It'll be like when we. When we, like, get the Nintendo out, like, to play a video game, that's clearly less, you know, I'll make fun.

Of my Atari less developed, right? Not gonna.

Well, it'll be for nostalgia. Because we want to, like.

Yes.

Not because we're trying to be efficient or productive or whatever. Because it feels good, right? And that's what you need. I mean, that's always what you've needed to talk to. We just created these mechanisms that pretended, in my opinion, to kind of cut through this and. And find quick wins and easy buttons and you know, we don't have to do all the work to understand our customers because we'll just put up a great price and they're gonna buy. And you know that that's gone. Like, it's over.

Yeah.

What happens to a company like Text Expander when you stop typing and you're just talking to the machine all day? Just throwing that out there.

Yeah.

Like, if you're in tech and you're in. And you're in a world of historical tech needs, wake up.

Indeed. And we'll help you wake up on the HubSpot side as we roll into our Wake Up Customer platform show. But until next week, for let's build AI skills, everybody. Have a great weekend.

See ya.