Time to Talk about AI, you, and the future.

Sam.

Good morning, LinkedIn, friends, Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First AI Daily, your collaborative intelligence report. It is Friday, January 23, 2026. George, Nico, are you ready for Winter Armageddon 2026?

I don't know if I'm ready for that. I don't know if anybody's ready for that. I mean, listen, the shelves, Walmart are bare. All these bare. No bread, no milk, no nothing. I'm like. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

I mean, for me, it's just more time with Claude Code.

So you're fine if we don't lose power?

Yeah, yeah, Nico's fine. It's just gonna get damn cold for him. Yeah, I'm here. We're like, power out for like a month.

Yeah.

Is.

Is in the realm of possibility.

Yeah. I'm outside looking at our power lines like, now. You behave. You behave.

Yeah. Lots of callbacks to what happened in 2021. Where Texas clearly is not built for 10 degrees. Yeah, but we'll. We'll get through it. We'll get through it. That's what I'm saying, Jordan. Like, come on, Power Internet, just stay on AI.

But I will say we do have a plethora of board games ready and some backup heat scenarios, but hopefully it just, like. Hopefully it just doesn't do what I. What people are saying it does.

Indeed.

It's just cold, guys. It's not.

Oh, for you.

Now, see, Nico, I. I moved from Ohio. I moved from Ohio to North Carolina because I don't want it to be cold anymore.

Yeah.

You know what's not cold, Chris? AI. AI. Be hot.

Value first AI. For sure. And George, we missed you yesterday. We started.

Yeah.

I realized Value First AI is one of the only pillars that has not completed the seven commitments yet. So we're just hitting one of them at the beginning of each episode for the next few days. And today's commitment number two, we will deploy AI to recognize patterns, not enforce processes. We understand that AI excels at identifying emerging opportunities. We will use it to illuminate natural value patterns rather than automating rigid workflows that fight against natural human behavior. Yeah, I know. I know it. It's. I'm not saying you can't use it to enforce processes. Right. But when you have a choice, if you're. If you like. The goal of these is to show when we can prioritize emergent opportunities, human growth and capability and behavior. Get that taken care of first and then put in safety where you need to put it in.

Yeah. And I mean, if, like, so for process, to me it's. It's one of those things where that shouldn't even be a thing, right? Like process should be something now that gets handled by, you know, gbt, right? Like something an assistant that is there to answer those questions, right? Like the whole onboarding, how I do stuff. But at the same time, it should be integrated in such a way that like, if, if you are deploying AI properly, your processes become insanely easier because whatever the eight steps were that somebody was supposed to follow now just becomes one request to an agent that goes and does those eight steps. Because it was all digital anyway, so there's no point in attempting to say, oh no, I manually have to go to click on this thing and manually have to go to upload this thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And then the, the number, like the crucial part of number two, that to me, because it is so important to GTM facts don't care about your feelings, and neither does my data. If I'm digging through and using the most powerful tool possible to scour every resource possible to actually determine who wants your product, why they want your product, when they want it, how you should speak to them about it, all of that at a lightning pace that you would otherwise have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to some big box business, come in and take three, four weeks to do. Do not come back and say, yeah, Nico, but I feel. But I think, yeah, but you know, I, I talked to this person, I know a guy and he said, well, yeah, but my mom.

But Nico, you're. You're asking them to not be human. Like, that's what you're asking them to like, like that's what we do. We're messy. We're messy as humans. No, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm not asking them not to be human. I'm asking them to let the data do its job. Like that aspect of trying to assess and trying to do the, do the analysis right, it's better than we are.

I'm not disagreeing with you, by the way. What I'm saying is that you, maybe even me, Chris, other humans who are, as Chris likes to say, have become a native, are ready to understand that, are ready to lean into that, are ready, like, have built some level of trust with the systems and processes and research and the models and the tools that we use. Some of us are there. Many, many, many of us are not. And so we fall back on our human ways of like, well, those are some pretty numbers. But I have a gut feeling that this will just work. And so what I would ask is in the law, the rule that Chris showed in the narrative that you're dispensing? I think the learning lesson here is twofold. One, for the people who aren't there and how do we get them there and second, of all the people who are there, how do we communicate it to them or educate them on it to bring them into what would be a safe place so that the human can be less messy? I don't have the answer to that, but I think that's the, the gap that we will be playing in for quite some time around this conversation.

Yeah, that's actually commitment number four.

Oh, there we go.

All right, we will get ahead of the curve. Yeah, let's just put it out there. Like we will foster co evolution between humans and AI, not one sided adaptation. And what comes to mind, as Niko's was describing that I'm reminded of messaging work. Like before it was AI telling you, when it was other humans telling you. This is how I talk about your product. And your product is great because it prevents fires and explosions and people dying. And, and then we get into the boardroom and people are uncomfortable with that language and using that language of what the customer is telling you. And the whole exercise is supposed to be for how do we connect with. And then we find ways to like not use the data in that case coming directly out of other humans mouths. Because we think, feel, act differently inside the walls of business. And so I definitely think, I mean that's the purpose of, and why these commitments are so granular. Because just because it's AI now doesn't mean all these humans are gonna be just different all of a sudden. It doesn't mean you can just pick one or the other, which is often what's happening. And when we talk AI first versus human first, you just create that dynamic and that's where people just get that first response. And as soon as they get into that mode of we think, we think differently, it's like, okay, I'm not using AI anymore. Like as a whole, like broad brush AI is not ready. Right.

See and that's, that's the like when I hear you talk, Chris, my brain wants to scream out loud, this is the one place. Well, no, I can't say that. This is one of the places, One of, one of the probably important places where I, I hope, although I fear that it will, that we handle this next year to three years in very smart human ways. Because if this becomes polarizing. Like many other topics have historically, we will not be able to achieve the things as a group of humans on a planet that we could if we were together in the thing that we're headed into. I don't know how else to say that without just freaking people out immediately, because that's not where I'm trying to go. Like, I'm not trying to be polarizing right now. I'm just saying, like my, my hopes and my dreams, that is that AI and AI usage does not become a polarizing topic amongst mass humans.

Yeah. So instead, commitment number three, we do this instead.

Oh, geez, I'm hitting them all.

Not. Not planned, folks.

Yeah, I didn't cheat on the test. I swear I didn't cheat on the test.

Right. This is all coming from a place of literally value first. Like when you just think about this first principle of value creation and that's what everybody wants, including every intelligent entity that we're talking about are trying to get there. These commitments are not as bold that you think they might be, but yeah, and this is a big reason why we're doing the content. When we started doing it last year, Singularity Soothsayers is like, the transition period is going to be as hard and as tough and as long as humans make it.

Yeah, I mean, I know, like, if, if you guys are paying attention to Davos, it's kind of hard not to for a lot of reasons. But if you are paying attention to the tech side of things at Davos, it is really, really, really interesting what's how people are talking around AI and almost specifically, like, really finally, like, the IMF is talking about it. Right. Like, it's interesting to me only because I watched Davos last year and very closely followed Dario last year when he was there and understood, like, why he was so amazingly upset. Like, nobody was talking about it, nobody was really giving it much attention, like, much of anything. Now you have, you know, JP Morgan, you have Morgan Stanley, you've got the imf, you've got the Fed, like, everybody talking about what effect this is going to have on the economy this year. So it's not even like, oh, looking out into, you know, the speculative future about it. And yeah, when they talk to Dario about, like, hey, you know, there's also this massive circular dependency that you guys have going on where Microsoft is buying, you know, server storage space or whatever services from Oracle, who is also, you know, getting tech from Nvidia, who is supplying that to OpenAI, who's also, you know, Fostering Microsoft tools and, you know, other tools. And so there's this worry that, you know, if one, if one domino falls over, then they all fall over. But at the same time there's the opposite worry of it where they're scared that those companies in the center will end up with too much wealth, which would normally be a bad thing. But then you've got people like Elon and you just, you gotta let the other side go. Just let it go. Because the good side is amazing and it's worth listening to.

Here we go.

Yeah, it's, I'm not gonna get into all of that. It's just, you know, the, the, the, the mind that he has towards science is, is really amazing. And even he talked about the fact that, you know, by, by the end of this year we'll definitely have something, you know, he, this is him saying it. By the end of this year we'll definitely have something that is smarter than that is like smarter than the smartest human. And by 2030, we'll have something that is smarter than the, the entirety of humanity combined. Right? Like, that's how fast the advances and like, and to your point about, about doing demonstrations and, and, and that kind of thing. As I think about it, it's funny. I was talking to. So this is a great question for you guys. Actually I was talking to Victor Barcera from AI Adventurers Club. If you guys aren't members, you should join. It's really awesome. And it's, it's a HubSpot based community, really easy to sign up to. And so we were talking about, hey, you know what, there's going to be a lot of talk about AI, but there's not going to be a lot of show. So maybe we should, you know, get some AV equipment together, you know, get a little space or something like that for the AI Adventurers Club, since it's topic anyway, you know, makes sense to have like an AI section or what have you. And so he says, yeah, Nico, that makes, it makes a lot of sense. Sounds really good. What would you want to show? And then my mind went blank. Wow.

Wow.

Because while there's a ton of stuff that I want to show right now, all of it will be irrelevant by that.

See, you can't live in that world. You can't live in that world though.

I mean, that's where that's, you know, unfortunately. So like if, and the reason I, I say it is because like, all.

Right, there's a problem, There's a problem.

In the land of, you know, I'M in the land of gtm.

No, people are stuck. People are stuck. Like, right now. I've got to say this, ladies and gentlemen. If you are stuck in Evergreen content world, get the frick out of it. Like, it is what we need moving forward, and this is the problem. And I'm so glad you brought this up, Nico. We need in the moment content. We need to teach them what it is, what it can do right now, and they need to be doing what they can with it right now. And showing. I want to show it all. Like, I think that's why I got the response yesterday that we were talking about in the green room from when. Because I was showing, like, I had chat GPT up and I was throwing documents in there. And then I'd go back to my slide deck and I'd bring Whisper Flow up and, like, it wasn't about, like, let me. Let me do the clouds. Right? I was in the dirt. Like, I was. This. This is what I'm doing right now, ladies and gentlemen. Like, go do this in your business. Like, f. Evergreen Content. Like, let's come up with a name, like, right now. Content. That's a dumb name, but you're stuck.

Yeah. I think when you were telling us about that the hard part for tech is the framing, usually. Right. And ever since prompt engineering became a thing, I was like, no, no, no. That's not the capability. And so, like, share how you led, you know, the workshop.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the first two slides were. Well, the first one was the title, because that's what you got to do when you're doing a presentation, because that's what they showed up for. But the first slide, that was after the first slide. So the second slide, anyway, it literally had prompting and then communicating, and there was a big line through the word prompting. And I talked about, like, we're thinking about all of this wrong. We're probably doing it wrong because you're spending too much time prompting, AKA typing, not enough time communicating, AKA talking. And my third slide, because now I've got numbers down. And I figured it out. My third slide was literally whisper flow. And I started to talk about whisper flow and the things that you can do and snippets and why that versus typing and the rate of speed and speed to value. And then, boom, we just got nerdy. And, like, the next thing, I was, like, showing them what they should have set up to basically create, like, a clone of themselves as an assistant inside their system. And it just, like, it was very. Just down to earth in the dirt different mindset of like, listen, you're, you're trying to do this and use it this way. And I'm telling you, if you do this and use it this way and have these things, like, guys, we talked about the mindsets, beliefs and core value docs. We talked about Persona docs, we talked about context. Like, it was just.

Yeah. And if, like that's where the show and tell works way differently. When you can reframe it like that. Because if you didn't reframe it, then. Oh, can. Are we going to get the prompts.

Yeah.

That you use after this, right?

No, like there was no question about prompts, right?

Zero. Yep. Yeah. Because.

And what's fun is I showed them how I actually do a prompt to get a prompt to run the prompt and they're like, what the F just happened? And I'm like, listen, your, your assistant can prompt communicate with itself better than we ever could. So like just say what you want to say. And they'd be like, by the way, can you optimize this prompt into a prompt before we actually run it and then use that prompt to run the thing that you originally wanted to do? They were like, well, yeah, that's what a conversation looks like.

Yeah, yeah, me and Chris were talking about that yesterday because one of the things I would love to show people is the difference between working in an idea for marketing versus working like wherever. Right. And doing a very similar exercise where, you know, I just have a Prompt GENIE agent and was like, yeah, you know, I need to fine tune this prompt for this purpose so that it works really well with this data set. And so you just put the data set in the folder and then you just ask Prompt genie. You know, go, go do your thing. Work on the data set until you get the most effective version.

Yeah.

Or our output.

Yeah. Guys, there's another scenario that comes to mind. I really haven't talked about it. I had a one to one training with a client. Now I, the client is a client because I help them with HubSpot, but we talk about other stuff when we get on client calls. And I had mentioned this thing that I was doing with AI and how I did like, you know, five hidden fields in 47 forms in seven minutes. He's like, can you show me what you're doing? So I got together with him for an hour. It was a standalone meeting, an hour just to show him like what I do with AI. And I started out with like, hey, I'm going to try to do this as non Nerdy as possible. And as I'm saying that, I bring up Terminal and he starts giggling. He's like, whoa. What? What? I'm like, no, don't. Trust me, bro. Trust me. And so I'm walking him through Terminal and how to get like a project set up and how to get connected to HubSpot. And then I show him how I start manipulating the data in his portal based on being in the terminal. And I got to the end of this hour session and I go. Because I always do this. I got to the hour, end of the hour session, I go, valuable. And this was his response. Oh, my God. To which I was like, okay, it was valuable. Thanks. Have a great day. See you on our next meeting on Friday. Like, but again, showing what we know to unlock and activate what they will do. Guys, I think I'm so passionate about this is. Because this is literally what you guys did like 60 days ago, maybe almost 90 days ago, on a three hour LinkedIn live where I was like, oh, oh, my life just changed. And I had no clue how much, by the way, but my life just changed.

Yeah.

And.

And that was actually less than 60 days ago.

Oh, was it less than 60? It feels like six months ago.

I know, right?

Here's the thing, like, what I would hope. And this is why I don't want it to become polarizing. See, we need people who are actually able to teach it in a way that it's not this black box. We need people that can teach it in a way that it brings it down to earth. And people want it like they're, they're magnetized into that direction versus some of the stuff that I see online. And again, I watch it because I need one of my. And sorry, I don't mean to like, just take over here for a second, but one of my superpowers is simplifying the complex. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're in the AI industry, I'm talking to you and you're teaching AI. Will you please just pause for a minute and figure out how to make yourself good at simplifying the complex. Because as you bring this important message to the world, you have to simplify it so normal, mere mortal human beings can understand it, get activated, and move forward with it and do amazing ish to like impact humans in the next five, 10, 20, 50, whatever years. Did I hit another one?

Yeah, a couple, actually. I think we've got a bingo. Because this is where you started transparency. Yeah, man, this idea, definitely going to package it up. I'm not probably not going to charge for it, but this idea of AI native activation, it was interesting yesterday, like we started onboarding Aaron Wiggers into the value first, you know, stack and I'm so excited to have like a developer like that involved. Where it's been, you know, me and Ryan and Casey and like nobody with real developer shops building out these repos and starting to work, which is great. It also creates all of this last mile stuff that, that could be better and could be smoother and could be, you know, simplified for sure. But as we're talking to her and she's excited to get involved and like we, we bring up the fact that like this AI native world, like if you can get people working out of the ide, that's where you're in your most powerful empowered mode. Like, and her understandable baggage related to developers and complexity and trying to deliver that to mere mortal humans. You do everything you can to not be in a command line like situation. And I had to say we're not going to build that first because I'm not like, if I know you're a smart human being, you're a value first human being. I'm going to push you to learn and add this capability because when you get there, you will not be disappointed, you will never look back. And as, as the AI infrastructure continues to improve, maybe it will get, maybe it will change like to just voice mode for everything as an example. But if you can get there, it is in, it's the most powerful stance you can be in. And activation I think is the right word because it's just this value is dormant inside these people who like me on November 8th, like George about a month after, we're like, command line. What? No, I'm like, drag and drop, no code please. Where's that at? And then it was just like, okay, that barrier is no longer there. Let's just add that like 8 year, 10 year capability of learning. I'm just going to add that in right now.

If my computer could talk, it would be like what happened to this dude? Since he started using the computer, he's opened terminal like seven times this month. He's opened it 77,000 times. Like, what is this a different human using me? Like what? Like the, like, like you'll just Superhuman. Oh my gosh. Oh, don't get me started on Superhuman.

All right folks, that serve a wrap for today. We hope everybody has a great weekend. Try and stay warm and safe and we will see you back on Monday. Have a great day everybody.

Peace out.