AI First Leadership: Why Businesses That Ignore AI Will Be Replaced | Eddie Key & Chris Wiser

Good to see you guys. Welcome to another episode of the AI Profit Leaders Podcast. My name is Chris Weiser, your host for today. I am here with the one, the only, Eddie Key. What's up, my man? How you doing, buddy?

Good. How you doing, Chris?

I'm doing good, sir. Welcome to Austin. It's good to see you.

Enjoyed it.

So I'm really pumped about today's conversation because this is, you know, you and I have known each other for a while. But as both as entrepreneurs, and we've— but also like through this whole AI boom, we've kind of watched this thing kind of start from zero and start to take off. For me as a, as a coach and a leader, but then also you as a business owner and a leader, tell us about like what your business looks like, etc. And actually, feel free to introduce yourself because I didn't do a very good job of that.

So, well, I'm Eddie Key. I own Key Innovations. We're out of Canton, Ohio, Pro Football Hall of Fame town, and been in business actually since late '80s.

Damn, bro.

Damn.

Okay, so related to your background, and I'll kind of like set some groundwork here for our viewers. IT company owner, been in business since the '80s, now, you know, pivoting into AI. What does that look like? Like, where were you and what is it looking like?

AI has become very pivotal in my business to the point that our management endpoint management and stuff is going to go away. We're going to be concentrating 100% on AI as it goes.

So you're going to actually shut down the IT side? Is that your goal, or—

We're going to diminish it out right now. I've got somebody contracted to do a lot of the work for me, but it's also— I see more value and more profit in AI consulting and AI profit product.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Um, where we're going with it, it's AI. We don't know Yeah, it's kind of driven on what the demands are for the marketplace, what the demands are for other businesses, and also just on the demand of where the technology is going. The technology is evolving day to day. Yeah, we don't know where it's going to go. We don't know the safeguards. We don't know the guardrails. We know very little what we can do. And when we put something up, generally you end up having to modify it.

So what's your overall approach? I know, and just so you guys all know, Eddie's in our AI Profit Machine program. So Are you following our viewpoint, which is leading with strategy? Are you following that exclusively? Are you adding other things to it? What does that, what does that look like?

We're leading with strategy. We're leading with, you know, become the business advisement. So I've been a counselor for SCORE business advisement.

Yeah, yeah.

Taking their model, taking your model, and working with it. Their models leaves a lot, not a lot to be desired, but at least you can, once you get in a business and you start evaluating it and introducing them and talking to them, they start getting excited. You know, like I told you before, we've had a doctor that doesn't want to mess with AI because he thinks his practice could be replaced by AI. So instead of embracing it and growing from it, he's going to just ignore it.

Yeah, so let's actually, let's jump on that because I really like that strategy and that mindset. So you talk about the guy that is the business owner in a potentially AI-displaced, or, you know, maybe not now, but in the next— and it's moving fast anyway, so it could be like 6 months to 24 months— he's probably going to potentially be— not probably, he will be in a potentially displaced scenario. But what you're telling me is, by the mindset that leader should have, is be— jump on top of it as soon as possible.

Correct.

Stay as deep in it as, as soon as you can, and then lead with— be an industry leader, because you're going to be the last one to be displaced, and you probably won't even be displaced at all because all that stuff needs to get worked.

Well, and again, I'm going to point out a little bit here, he's a younger man. He's going to be displaced. He doesn't realize it. He's still got 20 years to work. Yeah, he's still got 20 years to run a business or to be an employee. But not looking at it from a— on the business side of it, how can he be a business owner instead of being just totally doing his practice? How can he grow his practice? But also, what tools can he have that he can enhance and give out to a product to his patients? Can he develop a product around his services that the patients could be involved into? Because his core function is eyeglasses, and that can be replaced.

Is this an optometrist or an eye surgeon, or what does it look like?

Optometrist.

Optometrist. Okay. So yeah, I mean, a lot of what they do, if they just avoid it, is potentially— so I think, so really a good lesson there. And I think this is a great Eddie Key soundbite is, you know, stay ahead of the game, correct? And don't allow yourself to just be displaced, you know, as opposed to avoiding it, right? You want to give me a little overall thought on that?

No, should— he should totally embrace it. And I look at his business and I look at other businesses, whether they're a product-based business, manufacturer, they're all core down. You have a product, you have a material list, You have a service. They can all be bundled and use AI to make it more efficient. Can he, and you know, so like some of our customers, we have 'em set up with an AI advisory board. Some people are calling board of directors. I just call it an advisory board. That helps them put the experts in the room with them virtually, or they can now talk to it and get a response back. And they would, the ideas that they get that come back to them, that are totally unique to them, totally unique to their business, totally unique to their product, and that can tell them how to grow their business. If they got more employees, they can roll the same advisory board out to their employees and bring them on board, and the ideas and the markets that they're— that they could actually tap into, they're not even looking at it. And it just makes people think about it. If you're going to ignore it and go away, I hate to tell you, you're going to be out of business.

Yeah, it's—

you're not—

and what's funny about that is I want you to challenge me if you think I'm wrong on this. I think the ones that avoid AI the most are gonna be the most likely to be replaced or displaced because they're making that moat between them and success larger and larger and larger.

Correct.

Right?

Well, and that's, let's go to skilled trades. They're saying, "AI, it's not gonna impact us." It most certainly is going to impact us. Take it back to the one step, kind of like I was indicating before. Look at the automotive manufacturers. The skilled trades on the shop floor are being assisted by robots. Now those robots are getting AI and they're getting more and more efficient.

They're actually getting some intelligence around it, right?

Correct. So these people that work with them have to become the intelligence troubleshooters, smarts and all, and have the brains to be able to put things together. But if you look at the skilled trades out there, your plumbers, your HVAC, your electricians, 80% of what they do I can replace with a little bot on wheels Yeah. And send in there.

Yeah.

And that's being developed by some of the local universities.

Yeah. It's funny, I was watching, uh, you ever see that show Landman?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I was watching Landman this weekend. I actually took a little chill time, which is crazy, but I think it was Saturday night I was watching Landman and they were at this convention and they had— and this was like all drill rigging, uh, drilling rigs kind of scenario. And these guys were at this convention and they're like, oh, there's our— there's the future, boys. And it was literally a, uh, a roughneck like an oil roughneck, but it was a robot roughneck. And then it was like— so it was definitely put in that show specifically to hit some type of topic around that. So it's pretty, pretty interesting.

As I were driving down, we drove down here from Ohio, and as I'm driving down here, I think a lot when I drive. And I was saying, well, I could just take a Pivotal robot arm, get it mounted on a set of Caterpillar treads, and send it out onto a construction site to do whatever I needed to.

For the most part, I agree with that.

Maybe I should patent that, and it's son of a gun, somebody's already beat me to it. There's patents out there for that.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting because there's not, there's not a whole lot of original ideas. And I think, you know, you've been around me for long enough now that you know that I talk about execution and, and speed. And, you know, you've done really well in the last— when did you open your agency, your AI agency side? 6 months?

No, about, probably about 6 months before you came out and started. So we started doing AI stuff a little bit earlier before, okay, the 7 Figure Program started talking about it.

Sure.

But I just started talking, there's something here. I don't know what's here, but there's here.

You just feel it, right?

Right. There's same thing I'm still saying, there's something here. I don't necessarily know what it is. Selling tools is fine because I can monetize it on a monthly basis, but that's maybe not even where we're going to go in the long term.

Yeah. Yeah, so let's, let's kind of talk about what your agency does and what makes you guys unique.

We start with an assessment very similar to your assessment. We had started something a little bit before, and then I took what you have and threw it— yeah. So we'll do a business assessment, and what I would do is I want to get the business owner thinking about their business. Just think about your business, think about how you're marketing, think about how your sales, think about how you're manufacturing, think how you're servicing customer? Are you doing it efficiently? Could this be cleaned up? Could you give a better experience to the customer? Let's put— let's figure out how to bring AI into your business to be a supportive role, not a replacement role, a supportive role. And I think that's a little bit different than what everybody's going out there saying, well, you can replace 10 employees with it. I don't necessarily agree with replacing employees because I think you need the intelligence of that employee to be augmented with the AI.

So you just, you just brought up a really, really important point because I had— this is my, I think, my third recording today, and all three guests so far have talked about the buzz is all around AI displacement and AI replacement. But in reality, all three of you had very similar sentiments that AI should superpower or augment, like you just said, the talent.

Mm-hmm.

So I think, you know, kind of the overall mindset— and disagree with me if I'm wrong on this— AI-first leadership, leader or team, empowering AI down to their team, teaching their team how to be more efficient, how to be better, doing all these different things, giving— and then giving them the tools, embracing the tools through guys like you and the strategy to help empower that AI-first leadership team. To actually be AI first and then supercharging all of the staff, correct, top to bottom, right? So I, I think that should be the, the mindset and the goal.

To me, that is, but I don't think everybody's necessarily embracing it that way.

I wonder how much of that has to do with excess employee bloat, because one of, one of the things that, you know, you and I have known this for a long time, we've seen this, what has leaders been told to do for years. It's master the strategy, delegate the execution. Delegate, delegate, delegate, delegate. And the challenge with delegation is you can only delegate so much without burning individual people out. So what a lot of times they do is they hire— people are— will hire VAs from overseas, offshore, and then they'll give them a single task. Well, that becomes a displacement scenario that probably should be done, but you're not superpowering that, you know, that per— you wouldn't superpower that person in real life either.

Correct. I, I see a very similarity on a lot of this happening. You, you were in the IT business back when the desktop computers and everything showed up. Oh yeah, everybody got a word processor on their desk.

Yep.

Every cube, every cubicle person got, you know, one. So what did they get rid of? They got rid of the secretarial typewriter staff and all that. So then they made the engineer and the technician and the salesperson all do their own memos.

Yep, yep.

Did that improve their efficiency? I still vote that if they all had one VA for every 6 of them, they would be more efficient.

I would agree with that.

Yeah, but they don't give them that. But this is where we're at right now, is we're giving Eddie to do the same tools and the same changes that happened in the mid-'90s to happen now.

Yeah.

And with those changes, we're going to be able to, you know, make your staff more efficient.

When you start, you start to think about what you just said there it empowers that AI-first leader to say, okay, I maybe didn't have the revenue to give you a VA per human, right? Or maybe even per 3 or 4 or 5 or 6, like you mentioned. But I can surely, for the cost-to-benefit analysis type scenario, I can give every one of you an agent, right? An assistant, an assistant agent. So now you've actually empowered that person along with training, along with the systems, along with the AI-first leadership and the right way to do it. You've actually made that person now 10 times more important. More efficient, right?

Correct. But you have to adopt a mindset in the ownership and in management and also to the employee, kind of like the security-first mindset we had to get.

Yep.

We had to get adopted from the top down, otherwise it just doesn't take.

Yeah, it's the same exact—

it's the same exact thing. So as you improve with the customers and the customers start to understand, they will adapt this. It's, it's an education process with them.

Now I want to ask you this, so you think about that AI-first leadership piece and let's say we got it all in place from top down. How important is strategy and having a game plan? Because they could just roll in and, and say, okay, I'm going to be AI first. I'm going to do all this stuff. But then you got a guy, especially a, let's just take Chris, for example, me. I like to tinker. I definitely like to play with the AI tools. What does that look like? How important is strategy?

That's probably your most important asset.

Top-down strategy. So actually, like, saying we are going to have a plan. You mentioned guardrails earlier.

You have to, you have to have— you might mean the business owners no more than just a manager of your ball team. If he's not directing the outcome, do you, do you get the outcome that you need?

Yeah, whether— I mean, without question, no.

And, uh, and how many, how many don't is really the question.

I think most businesses, they just do what they do, kind of like floating through it because it was just like what was always Well, you know, it's, I've been doing some counseling and business advising and stuff for the last few years.

And what became is very important. And they started out as, we always got to get the businesses to write a business plan. And it's really come out, thing is the businesses don't grow with a business plan. They grow with all the other plans, the sales plan, the marketing plan, the manufacturing plan. Let's start with those and then build the business plan. Then the businesses grow. That same thing's gonna happen here. You're gonna have to have an AI plan. Just like you have a cybersecurity plan, just like you have an IT policy. You're going to have to have it that's unique to your business and to address it. And, you know, that's where I can come in, is guide you, guide you through that. I can't create your business plan or your AI plan for you. Yeah, but I can guide you to do that.

You know, it's one thing— I was, I was talking to somebody this week in the MSP IT space, and he basically said to me that I don't really care and I don't want to do all this stuff. Like, I just want to kind of sit back and collect checks. I'm like, well, your machine above that is broken, man. Like, as much as you want to sit back and collect checks, you have to put all this effort into doing it. And it kind of made me start to think, like, how many people— they, they want it, but you can't— like, you as a consultant— and this is where I'm going with this whole thing— me as a business coach, you as a consultant, you can't want success for their business more than they do.

Correct.

Right. Yeah. I can't— I can't want you to succeed with AI more than you want to succeed. And I think where we're going to run into— and this is actually a point I want to— I want to really make that I think you can even use— there's no easy button in any of this stuff. And they're not going to just magically make it like— you're not going to like, oh, that was easy. And they magically like make it all AI work for their business and double their revenue. And it takes full investment from the top down with a strategy and a plan.

Correct.

Right.

And in a lot of ways, this is no other than putting in any other business system, line of business software. You know, you put your ERP system in there to run your business, but understand, you got to plan it. You got to have the guidance. I know.

But here's the challenge, and I 100% agree with that. Here's the challenge with this versus that. You didn't necessarily have to be an ERP-first business leader. Now, you could have that mindset, but then other consulting firms would come in and roll the thing out for you. And you kind of was like, okay, we are ERP. But in all reality, the leader didn't have to be mindset for versus— that's really pivoting a little bit. Well, right.

And I kind of would disagree with you on that because if the business owner didn't have the mindset for an ERP system or an MRP system, the business— that those systems never succeeded. They never—

so I guess ultimately it's the same.

They never— they never achieved the savings. They never achieved the efficiencies that those systems—

the project was a failure then, probably.

It might, it might just sort of work.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the same thing that's going to happen with AI, is it's going to be like any other IT system. If it's not adopted from the top and really enthusiastically embraced, yeah, it's not going to be—

well, I think we're seeing like right now, we're sitting here in 2026, we're seeing like 85% of AI projects are failing. Why would you see that? Do you think it's the same problem? Do you think it's different stuff, or same problem? Just mindset. So they just don't have mindset.

Well, you've got, you've got to have mindset and strategy. You had to follow through.

Yeah.

So if you put something in there and you know it's going to take 6 months to a year to implement, people, business owners get bored with that.

Yeah. But you can— they want to see ROI like, right, fast, fast, fast.

But again, if you're doing something like that, that's why I write a 12-month contract minimum on this. Is if you don't put, put expectations and expectations on the business owner, here's how it's going to be. Yeah, you're not going to be a success. If you want it, you're going to have to want it.

Now, what do you do in a scenario— one of the challenges that exists in the IT MSP space is MSPs don't have a lot of this, don't have a lot of plan, and they don't have things rolling out. As they acquire clients and all this stuff. And they often take clients that they shouldn't be taking because the clients are not bought into security. They're just doing it because they do it. So how do we approach that with the AI stuff? Because are you saying no to clients? Are you saying it has to be this way? Or how are you potentially alleviating or eliminating that problem right now?

Because I'm doing primarily the, the sales of it. I do have a sales rep handling it, and Sam knows exactly what I expect out of a customer. I say no. If I don't think you're going to adapt it and want to work with me, you're not a good fit.

Yeah, so you're doing what you should be doing in that scenario.

We did that with cyber, we did that with IT consulting. So it's—

look at how much of that has to come from here, meaning you, right? Right. That has to come from inside.

And right, and I mean, that generates— so we'll talk about a salesman. Well, he said all revenue is good, and I said no, all revenue is not good, right? Revenue is good.

Well, profitable revenue with the right mindset. You know, we— for years you've been around, we've been around us here, and we talked about the get out of bed number and all these different things. Like, it's got to be the— not only the get out of bed number, but it's got to be the get out of bed mindset now, I think, is really, really key.

Yeah.

Okay, any— we only got a few minutes left here. Anything else you want to cover today?

What's your—

what's your thoughts?

I just think it's a brave new world that we're embracing in. I mean, we're going to have technology change dramatically over the next Few years, look back in November of, what was it, '23 that ChatGPT was released? And everybody was all, this is the greatest thing in the world and how it evolved. And first they said, well, it's given us bad information. People have adopted and learned that yes, you have to be the filter. You have to be the understanding. You have to be the brains behind the AI. You have to be the brains behind your business. We could be the best business advisors in the world. But if you're not the brain behind your business, it's not going to matter. It doesn't matter.

Yeah. So got to be pro— like CEO-led, AI-first mindset, correct? All the way down to that team, all the way down to the leadership, and then all the way down to the team.

And this— the marketplace is definitely CEO-driven, more so than anything else that we've done. Really? Yes.

Wow. So, so you actually see the CEOs fully saying, I want to be a part of this?

If it's not— the CEO doesn't want to be part of and involved it's not going to succeed. Yeah, CFO thinks, oh, it's a good idea.

CFO would bring you in for cyber, and they'd also bring you in for cost savings in AI, which is— I think that's a red flag, right? Would you agree with that?

Well, you're going to say you will save money with AI. It's common sense.

But my point is, if, if their exclusive reason to use AI is we're going to cut workforce and we're going to cut costs, they're going to cut— they're going to fail, right? I think that's, that's a— if there's anything that came out of this podcast right now, man, That's it.

Yes, it's—

if, if you're leading with a 'we're going to save money by cutting costs' attitude related to AI, it's not going to succeed.

No, long term you'll save money, but again, it's not going to succeed. But you also— I'm just going to say, you may open up markets with AI that you never dreamt of. Yeah, you may come up with suppliers that you never dreamt of.

That's actually— that's absolutely going to happen.

Just, you know, I alluded during my talk on stage back in the fall, drapery manufacturer found out he could buy from the material manufacturer over in Europe that he couldn't buy from anywhere else and his costs reduced. Just with AI questions and coming back with it. We've had, you know, there's been many cases like that that you find out about even from other people. This is a crazy world.

Yeah, well, I'm excited about it. I think it's, uh, it's a hell of a lot of fun. We're doing a lot of great things. Love having you here, man. It's good to see you.

Thank you.

Been on our stages multiple times now, been here first time on this podcast, but we'll have you again, buddy. We got a couple days here in Austin. Welcome, have fun. And everybody, Eddie Key from Key Innovations, based in Canton, Ohio, the NFL Hall of Fame city. I love it, man. I've never actually been to Canton. I've been all over Ohio and out there.

So what do you You one day you'll have to come over to Canton.

Yeah, we'll do that for sure. All right, guys, appreciate you being here with us today. Eddie Key, go kill it, guys. We'll see you later.

Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for having me.

Bye-bye.