#551: Becoming the AI Driven Leader, with Geoff Woods

Episode Notes

Transcript

Stephanie Everett (00:12): 

Hi, I’m Stephanie. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:13): 

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 551 of the Lawyerist podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie is talking with Geoff Woods about his book, the AI Driven Leader. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:24): 

Today’s show is brought to you by Tabs3, and you’ll hear Zack’s conversation with them in just a minute. 

  

Zack Glaser (00:30): 

So Stephanie, this is going to come out on March 20th. This week is a special week for you. I think by the time this comes out, you will have celebrated a milestone birthday. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:44): 

Yep. I’m turning 50. Believe it or not, that really shocks people sometimes it still shocks. You know what? It shocks me to say it. Oh my God, I’m like 50. Really? 

  

Zack Glaser (00:53): 

Yeah. 

  

Stephanie Everett (00:53): 

Am I really going to be 50? 

  

Zack Glaser (00:56): 

Yeah, it certainly doesn’t seem like it, but we’re going to celebrate the heck out of it at a tech show coming up in a couple of weeks on the third, the Thursday that we’re a tech show in Chicago, we’ve rented out the rooftop of a venue and we’re inviting anybody that’s around anybody that’s in the Chicago area, whether you have gone to tech show or not, but we want to celebrate with our lawyer’s community. 

  

Stephanie Everett (01:24): 

Yeah, I’m excited. I love a chance to throw a party, and when the team suggested we make it a birthday party, I was like, okay. I mean, let’s not lie. I’m going to be celebrating 50 all year long. This is not just a day. My family was going to throw me a party, but it got postponed for a weird reason. And so I’m like, yeah, the celebration will continue. 

  

Zack Glaser (01:50): 

I mean, it’s a good excuse to get together to get everybody together and celebrate you and celebrate your 50th. It’s going to be great. Going to be fun. So yeah, Chicago, Thursday the third during text show, we’ll drop details in the show notes, and I’m sure if you’re a part of our email list or following us on the socials, you’ll see it. You’ll see a lot more details coming out. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:23): 

So don’t be shy if you’re like, but I don’t know them. I just listened to them. That’s okay. We’re pretty nice people. Come celebrate with us. I think we’re even doing a reverse gift, so when you come, we’re going to give you something. I have no idea if that’s true or really happening, but maybe it was an idea. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:39): 

I’m sure it is, I’m sure. But don’t bring gifts for Stephanie. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:44): 

I mean, unless you really want to. I 

  

Zack Glaser (02:46): 

Mean, do if you want, I guess 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:47): 

I’m just saying. But 

  

Zack Glaser (02:49): 

Do not, 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:49): 

But is not expected. 

  

Zack Glaser (02:50): 

Do not feel obligated. 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:51): 

Yes, for sure. Do 

  

Zack Glaser (02:52): 

Not feel 

  

Stephanie Everett (02:52): 

Obligated. Your gift is your presence. I would just love to see you and hang out with you and have a conversation in real life. So many people come up to me at Tech Show and they’re like, your voice, wait, I know you. And I’m like, yeah, let’s hang out. So if you’re coming to Tech show, we hope you’re coming to tech show, but for sure, if you’re going to come or you’ll be in the Chicago area, please join us. We’d love to see you. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:14): 

Well, and now here is our conversation with our sponsor guest and then we’ll head into Stephanie’s conversation with Geoff. But I’m sure you’re all sitting there getting your tickets for Tech Show. And while you’re waiting on those tickets to come through, head on over to Apple Podcasts and give us a review. 

  

(03:30): 

Hey y’all, Zack, the legal tech advisor here at Lawyerist, and today I’ve got Bruce Policky here with me from tabs three, and we are talking practice management for lawyers. Bruce, thanks for being with me today. 

  

Bruce Policky (03:42): 

Great to be here. Looking forward to it. Always looking forward to spending some time with you. 

  

Zack Glaser (03:48): 

So we’re talking tabs three, and I know Tabs three has been around for a significant amount of time, one of the OGs of practice management software. But for those who are, I guess the uninitiated, what is tabs three? Can we start at the beginning here? 

  

Bruce Policky (04:08): 

Sure. I just want to make sure everybody’s aware. We are part of a bigger organization, profit Solve and Profit Solve basically is a company that has a suite of billing payments and software solutions for the legal industry as well as accounting and other professional services, including some consulting, architecture, engineering. But at tab three specifically, we specialize in billing, accounting, and flexible practice management all in one solution. And really our goal is to provide law firms with reliable and effective tools for managing their legal practice 

  

Zack Glaser (04:51): 

All well. Okay. So tabs three is a on-prem system that has cloud connection, right? We’ve got tabs three cloud that can connect to the data from anywhere, right? 

  

Bruce Policky (05:06): 

Correct. And that’s one of those things that we’ve recently moved into, but we have the ability for people when they’re deploying our product to choose whether they put it in their environment, the on-premises, or whether they put it in ours, the cloud hosted solution. 

  

Zack Glaser (05:24): 

Okay, awesome. Well, okay, so why for, again, let’s kind of talk, let’s think uninitiated here. Why should people be using a practice management system or a system that tracks their time, all of that. What’s in it for people here? Wasn’t it for firms 

  

Bruce Policky (05:43): 

Really about being more organized and more productive? You can get those tasks done, but how can you do it better and how can you do it faster? And that’s what Practice Management provides, is the ability to do that efficiently and also to grow with you. And one of the things about our practice management system is it is fully customizable. So basically you can change anything in the software as far as the layouts of the fields, the files to match and mimic your system. So we don’t expect when our system comes into your office that you change to match what our system is doing. We hope to change our system to match what your workflow is. 

  

Zack Glaser (06:32): 

Yeah, I think that’s an important thing to kind of hang on here with tabs three is that it’s not something that is put on top of your practice like you’re saying, and then you have to change, you have to adjust your practice management yourself. And that’s a lot of, but not the only thing that sets Tabs three apart as a practice management system. It’s been around a long time, and so it has a lot of hard to find values in there, right? 

  

Bruce Policky (07:03): 

Yeah, it’s a deep feature set, but so it’s a matter of if you need it, we’ll show you where to find it. It has a very extensive list of financial reporting. We have fantastic support, and that’s something that kind of sets us apart as well. If you have any questions, call into our office and somebody’s going to pick up that phone and walk you through it and show you exactly what you need to do, where it is, and if they have to teach you how to utilize that feature and educate you on maybe what else you’re not utilizing in the software. 

  

Zack Glaser (07:42): 

Well, I think that’s another important aspect here is that because Tabs three has been doing this for so long, the support staff has been doing this for a while as well. The people that support Tabs three really understand the software, at least that has been my experience, is that they really understand the software and are able to really get into the specifics of it as opposed to, okay, well we’ve made 15 changes in the last three days and I don’t know where this button is anymore. That’s not the case with tabs three and their support. 

  

Bruce Policky (08:19): 

That’s correct. And the other thing that we pride ourselves in is that nine out of 10 clients recommend us, and we have more than 98% satisfaction rating from those clients on our support. So if you finish the call with our support team, you’re provided the opportunity to provide feedback. And like I said, we’re sitting over a 98% satisfaction rating 

  

Zack Glaser (08:43): 

Demand. That’s great. Okay. Well, so if people want to learn more about tabs three, we have a page on our site about tabs three, but if you want to know more specifically, they can go to tabs three.com/demo. And what are some of the next steps that they can take, Bruce? 

  

Bruce Policky (09:02): 

Well, at that point we’ll provide you with an opportunity to schedule a time with one of our experts on staff. They’re going to meet with you, find out what it is that, what you need, how you work, and then show you how tab three can fit into that and be the solution that hopefully you stay with us for a while. Because the other thing, like you said, we’ve been around since 1979, which is kind of hard to believe, but on average, our firm tenure is around 17 years. So people that use the software stick with the software, and that’s something that we pride ourselves in, and that’s because of that consistent product, consistent support, consistent ongoing updating and features. 

  

Zack Glaser (09:49): 

Well, and I think one of those features that has really changed the game in my mind for tabs three has been this tabs three cloud and being able to access it from anywhere instead of just having it on our on-premise system. Bruce, 

  

Bruce Policky (10:04): 

This is a difference maker. Yeah. 

  

Zack Glaser (10:05): 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Bruce, I appreciate you being with me again and sharing your knowledge about Tabs three. Thank you. 

  

Geoff Woods (10:11): 

Thanks, Zack. I’m Geoff Woods. I’m the author of the AI Driven Leader and the founder of AI Leadership and the AI Driven Leadership Collective. 

  

Stephanie Everett (10:21): 

Hey, Geoff, welcome back to the show. It’s exciting to have you here to talk about your new book. I’ve got it right here as everyone knows Sticky Noted Up. And I’m excited because we talk a lot about AI on the show, but I think today we’re really going to flip the script and explore how lawyers and business owners can use AI as their thought partner. And maybe to get us started, actually before we go to Thought partner, I want to back up, which is that in your new book, you argue that leadership skills that got us here aren’t going to be enough to get us where we need to go. And I was hoping you could maybe kick it off by breaking that down and giving us some more background there. Sure. 

  

Geoff Woods (11:01): 

So chapter two of the AI Driven Leader, I found myself thinking when I was writing the book, we’ve been here before, this is not the first technological disruption in mankind. We’ve gone through this. And so I wanted to go backwards and look at history from the printing, press, steam engine, assembly line, electricity, internet, and figure out what were those patterns that were universal throughout all past technological disruptions that can actually guide us as leaders to move forward today. And what I found was that a job is nothing more than skills you apply and processes you follow. So if you think about in an algebraic formula, job equal skills, applied times, processes followed, there’s so many people who have fear that AI is going to take their job. I’m just going to quickly say, I don’t think AI will take your job. I think someone who’s AI driven will. I don’t believe AI replaces you. I think it enhances you with that. You got to look in every technological disruption in history, technology changed the skills that we applied and the processes that we followed. At one time there was a group of people who were paid money to walk through the streets with fire and light lanterns of oil on fire to give light. Well, then the light bulb and electricity came along. That skill became irrelevant. 

  

(12:38): 

What happened to the person? They acquired new skills, they got different jobs. And my realization when I look forward is you may be with the same company in five years. You may still be a lawyer or an attorney in five years with the same firm. I promise you the skills you apply and the processes you follow, that will change. And so this is where we have to be in the driver’s seat as AI driven leaders and say, okay, how do I acquire skills that are so valuable? They’ll serve me no matter where I go. 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:13): 

Yeah, I love it. And when you think about what those skills might look like, especially for our business owners, what kind of comes to the top of the list there that they may not be thinking about today? 

  

Geoff Woods (13:24): 

Well, at a high level, you have to realize that there are the things that are strengths of us as humans, and then there are the things that are strengths of machines. Who’s better at being a machine, a human or a machine? 

  

Stephanie Everett (13:39): 

Machine 

  

Geoff Woods (13:40): 

A machine? The problem is most people today are acting like machines, 

  

(13:44): 

And this started in the industrial revolution when we were taught in school to show up to school on time, take direction from a teacher, memorize a series of steps and do ’em as efficiently and as effectively as possible so you could get a good job so you could show it up to work on time, take direction from a boss and do something repetitively as efficiently and as effective as possible. We are still acting like industrial workers, which we had to set aside our humanity in the industrial revolution to meet the needs of the machine. I think AI is not the great disruptor. I think it’s the great liberator. It’s going to liberate and return us to what makes us us. I see five core skills that humans have that we need to double down on and harness the ability to think strategically, the ability to solve problems, the ability to communicate, to collaborate, and to create. These are all strengths we have as humans. Some of us harness more than others. 

  

Stephanie Everett (14:53): 

Yeah, fair. And so then when we kind of think about bringing AI into the conversation, I think for most of us, probably many people I know that I talk to probably still think of AI as a tech tool, and I think you’re trying to reframe that thought that, I mean, it’s not about just creating blog ideas. Obviously it can do that. It’s not just about spell checking and editing your work. It really can transform you and be a thought leader for you, and I would love for you to explain that. 

  

Geoff Woods (15:27): 

Sure. So most people are using, and when we’re talking about AI in this conversation, we’re talking about generative AI like chat, GBT copilot, Claude Gemini perplexity. Most people are using AI one of two ways. They’re either using it like a Google, that they ask questions and get answers, 

  

(15:47): 

Or they’re treating it like an assistant that they can delegate tasks to help me write a better email. Do those ring value Stephanie? Sure they do, but I would say people are focusing on the 80% tasks that only drive 20% of the value. I have built a career on getting executives to move from tactical to strategic instead of focusing on the 80%, focusing on the 20% priorities that drive 80% of a results. So you can use AI to write a better email. You can use it to help you come up with social media copy. You can also use it to evaluate your strategic plan and interview you as an aggressive growth-minded board member and have it highlight the top three areas of insufficiency in your plan and how to plug the gap in the next 30 days. Now here’s something interesting. Do you have a business plan for your business this year? 

  

Stephanie Everett (16:52): 

Yes. 

  

Geoff Woods (16:53): 

Do you currently have a process to review your business plan and make sure it is bulletproof and that it has absolute sufficiency to deliver the results? 

  

Stephanie Everett (17:04): 

I mean, I’m not going to give us a plus on that, but I’m also not going to give us an F and because I mean to be fair, because everyone on our leadership team has read this book and we’re adopting it, I can give you examples, but we now have our AI for the leadership teams named Finn. We named him Are it? We gave it Finn Carter, and it now participates in our meetings like never before. So it’s review, so it’s doing that. 

  

Geoff Woods (17:30): 

You’re down the strategic rabbit hole. We are most people, which by the way, massive high five for you, Stephanie. That’s super cool. Most people would not have an answer to that 

  

Stephanie Everett (17:39): 

Question, 

  

Geoff Woods (17:40): 

And if I said, how many of you have an AI tool that can do that for you? Most people would say they don’t, but it’s a trick question every single one of them does because if you’re using chat GBT, so am I. 

  

Stephanie Everett (17:55): 

Yeah, 

  

Geoff Woods (17:55): 

The difference that makes the difference is not the technology, it’s the leader who harnesses it. People just haven’t realized that they can use this on a far more strategic level. 

  

Stephanie Everett (18:05): 

Yeah, I think that’s right, and I think a lot of times people kind go in there. Maybe they did ask it to write an email and said, this sounds like a robot and gave up, and really you’ve got to work with it. I work with Lexi. That’s the name of my chat tool that we named it. It’s a daily conversation that I’m having and I go in there and because of some of what you taught us, I’m having conversations with this tool and I’m asking it to push me and challenge me and have me think differently and build and write and explore. I think that’s what I was so excited to have you on for because this is a whole new way of thinking about using this tool. It’s unlocking so much. 

  

Geoff Woods (18:47): 

Yeah, so I’ll share a real use case from this morning in terms of how I use this, and again, folks, you and I, we have the same tool. We’re using the same thing. The difference is how we use it and it’s kind of like in a marriage, the better quality communication you have, the better quality of the relationship. You have to learn how to communicate effectively with ai. So the core of my business is an executive peer network called the AI driven Leadership Collective. So my vision, I think if you try to figure AI out alone, you’re going to lose, but if you can surround yourself with the right people, ask the right questions and tap into collective knowledge, you always stay ahead of the competition. So I’m assembling this network of execs where we share our knowledge on how we’re using it so that just we’re ahead of the curve. We have an opportunity to go global in the next 12 months. 

  

(19:40): 

This, and I want to do it, but there’s something that’s giving me pause and this is a big strategic decision. Do we stay focused domestically or do we expand? And so I now understand the value of having a thought partner and I’ve turned AI into a world-class one. So I even went as far as assembling my own AI board of advisors. So I gave it my strengths and weaknesses as a founder and CEO and how did identify, I told it my 10 year goals and said, based on that, I want you to tell me the top strengths and skills I would want to recruit to a board if I were to assemble a board so that board could advise me to achieve my tenure vision. I then created personality profiles for those skills. So Steve Jobs is on my board for vision and product design, but he’s specifically not allowed to give me advice on being a husband, a father or a leader. Warren Buffett’s on my board for long-term planning and risk mitigation. Geoff Bezos is on my board for operational scalability. My future self 30 years in the future is on my board so my future self can advise me today. 

  

(20:49): 

So I built this board a while ago. This morning I went to the board and I said, Hey, here’s the situation. I’ve got this opportunity to expand to London to expand to Singapore, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s all my thoughts on why I want to say yes, but here’s my thoughts on the things that I are giving me. Pause. I want you to figure out whoever on the board should ask the questions. It’s fine, but I want you to interview me, ask me one question at a time to really stress test my thinking as to why do I want to expand? What do I stand to gain if I do, but what do I also stand to lose if I do? And based on that, I want you then to outline the pros of expanding and the cons of expanding and then make a recommendation on what you think I should do and why. And then I had a conversation with it, literally actually talking to it back and forth while I walked around my neighborhood. This was a 20 minute long back and forth dialogue and it’s giving me real pause right now on expanding before it was like, 

  

Stephanie Everett (21:56): 

Yeah, 

  

Geoff Woods (21:57): 

That is a strategic use case. 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:01): 

Yeah, I mean that’s exciting because I think there’s a part of me as a business coach that is like everybody else. I’m like, okay, why will people? That’s a lot of what I do, but I still feel, I’m still excited. I get to teach people how to think differently because I think that’s one of the things you stress is that thought process you went through is so hard, and that’s the piece nobody taught us. A lot of business owners struggle because no one actually taught them how to approach a problem in a strategic way or to even think strategically about their business. 

  

Geoff Woods (22:37): 

You ever read the book 10 x is easier than two x? 

  

Stephanie Everett (22:39): 

Yeah. 

  

Geoff Woods (22:39): 

Okay, so I’ll summarize for people who haven’t. Dan Sullivan, here’s the high level. If you want to double your growth or double your income, you can keep doing 80% of what you currently do. You only have to change 20%. You can double you if you want to 10 x your growth or 10 x your income, you have to stop doing 80% of what you currently do, hold onto the core 20% that brings the most value and move that balance 80% to a completely higher level of capability. Stephanie, the last 10 years of my life, I’ve been a coach or an advisor. I had clients, I asked the questions that was 80% of what I did, and when I figured out how to use AI as a thought partner, I realized I could train AI to ask every question that I have asked as a coach, if not better ones. At first, that scared me a little because I was like, it’s going to take my job, right? That’s our thought. But this is when I realized the most powerful thing in the world is your mindset. 

  

(23:46): 

You can choose to view this as a threat or you can choose to view it as an opportunity. Why is this happening to me versus why might this be happening for me? I chose to ask the second question and I realized here was an opportunity for me to 10 x, I could now release myself from 80% of what I’ve done historically, hold onto my core 20%, which are different skills, and then move that 80% to a higher level of capability. I’m going to tell you the version of me that you’re talking to versus the version of me even just a year ago, not even in the same universe. 

  

Stephanie Everett (24:28): 

Yeah, no, same. And I appreciate you reminding us that because I feel like lawyers especially are feeling that threat right now of wait, these generative AI tools can give people advice or give people strategy or tell them the law, and that feels scary at first. I think that’s a natural reaction, but at the same time it’s that flip and how do we get excited about now what it’s going to unlock and how you can use this to really drive your business in a whole new direction. 

  

Geoff Woods (24:59): 

Sure. Well, once upon a time people were afraid of the internet and they really resisted it and now you’re like, you’d be crazy if you didn’t use the internet. That’s how AI is going to be as well. I have found most lawyers to be a little bit skeptical. 

  

Stephanie Everett (25:15): 

Fair. 

  

Geoff Woods (25:15): 

I think that’s a good thing and being skeptical about this is great, and it’s not a justification to not start using the technology to actually gain some understanding of what this can and cannot do. It cannot do everything, but I think a lot of people are saying, well, a lawyer, AI can’t do it. A lawyer can do maybe, how do you know? Have you tried? Have you figured out where you can use this to enhance what you do? Have you figured out what you can do to and what it can’t do? I’ll give you an example. We got a mutual NDA sent over from a client and my assistant messaged me. I was playing golf with a customer and she said, Hey, you need to review the MNDA and I said, no. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to pull it into ai and then my framework for 99% of the prompts is crit context, role interview task, CRIT. 

  

(26:20): 

You give it lots of context. You assign it a role or an expertise you want it to have. Then you ask it to interview you by asking you one question at a time to gain deeper context so it can then accomplish a task. And I said, use crit for context. I want you to tell it the relationship with this client, feed it all the stuff about our business and tell it why they’re asking us to assign this thing role. Ask it to act as our general counsel with deep expertise in NDAs. Ask it to interview us by asking one question at a time up to three questions to gain deeper context, and then the task is to tell us the top areas that it would want us to double click on the language and specifically in terms of where it’s heavily slanted and if it doesn’t like the language to actually make suggested alternative language. 

  

(27:11): 

This is my virtual assistant in Argentina. I sent this to while I’m playing golf, she does this and she comes back and it said, here’s the top three areas that it called out and it called out the sections. It said why it didn’t like the language and it made suggested language with the context of my business with that expertise. I then went in and reviewed that and found that it was actually correct. I then said, great, now have it turn that into an email that we will ascend to my actual attorney, but we want the attorney just to look specifically at those three areas, review the suggested language and see if they can make it any better and based on that draft the response, we collapsed the billable hours by 90%, folks, so this is where you can say what you want about this, but I’m telling you, the billable hour is dead because as a client, my tolerance to pay you to be to not use the tools at your disposal, that patience is officially gone. So that statement could have either triggered you and turned you off or it could have just ignited a fire in you and motivated you actually has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with you. That tells you right there where you stand on the mindset curve and there’s no judgment in this statement. I want to raise your awareness to where do you naturally fall? You get to choose when you get on the horse and the bandwagon, but trust me, you will get on it. 

  

Stephanie Everett (28:51): 

Yeah. Hopefully the people listening have heard me beat this horse for quite a while, years, so this shouldn’t be new to them and it’s just more apparent now than ever that we’ve got to change our business model. So yeah, I agree. 

  

Geoff Woods (29:07): 

Can I give you another one? Can I give you another one? I’m in the process of putting together some partnership agreements and the business has value and I don’t want the people who are going to be coming in to get a tax liability, and so I wanted to figure out what the valuation of the business was, so context, role interview, task context. I’ve had a ton of context about the business, the current performance, revenue, profit scale, assets role. I told it to act as an attorney who specializes in conducting valuations of businesses, had to interview me, ask one question at a time, up to five questions to gain deeper context about the business and then its task was to tell me what it thought the low end of the valuation was, what the high end of the valuation was and what it would settle on and why I did that while I was chopping onions, making dinner for my family. Once it gave me the valuation, I then said, great, now I want you to act as opposing counsel that my partner would hire, and they are so hard-nosed, they’re going to bulletproof everything and they are going to nickel and dime everything and make this valuation as low as possible as that person interview me and stress test every assumption and try to rip our argument to pieces and based on that, tell me what you think the valuation is. 

  

Stephanie Everett (30:41): 

I 

  

Geoff Woods (30:41): 

Did that while I had moved on to chopping carrots. Then I had to act as a third person and say, now I want you just got the arguments of the person on my side, the person on their side. Based on this, your job is to find what you think is fair and balanced between the two. What would you come back at? Later that day I sat down with a friend of mine who owns a private equity company and I asked him for his help on how he would value my business. He literally said the number that the third person said, same logic. 

  

Stephanie Everett (31:16): 

Yeah, and I love that example too of the audience knows, I do think there are certain tools trained in legal models that are a little bit more reliable than using chat GPT, so that’s my disclaimer for everyone, but the idea of stress testing your arguments and your analysis, how would this play to a jury? There’s so many different ways we can use these AI tools that we’re just scratching the surface on and people are thinking about, 

  

Geoff Woods (31:45): 

So let’s go there. I have done this for role playing a sales pitch, which is all closing arguments are you could totally context, role, interview tasks, context, I need to practice my closing argument for this case. Your role is to act as a member of the jury. In hearing this, I’m going to give you the full pitch and when I say all done, know that I’ve my concluded my closing arguments and then as the jury, I want you to give me feedback on what I did well, what I did not do well and the top changes I could make so that I could be even more influential and make sure that I win the case and then you could flip it to voice mode and literally give the closing argument. This could be a 10 minute long monologue and then you say all done. It will literally summarize and give you feedback. 

  

Stephanie Everett (32:42): 

Yeah, here’s the beauty of this thing for everyone listening, you keep going with it right? Then from there, my head flips to now I want to say, okay, based on this, what quality should I be looking for when I’m picking a jury? Who do I want not to be on my jury? It’s not that you just ask it a question and get a response. You have this ongoing conversation where you just kind of keep building and to me that’s what’s so 

  

Geoff Woods (33:09): 

Fun and here’s the thing. We’ve all experienced in real life having a thought partner. Maybe you were standing in front of a whiteboard where you’re like, Hey, I got this idea, and the other person was like, yeah, what if you did this? And you were like, oh my gosh, that’s a great idea. What if I did this and all of a sudden one plus one equal to 11. We all understand that when you surround yourself with the right people, you can expand what’s possible. It’s the same thing with ai. Now you just have it at your fingertips or voice where you now have a thought partner that if you know how to communicate with it, if you know how to set up the prompt correctly, you can unlock a new level of possibility and I’ve literally given you the framework for it. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:49): 

Context 

  

Geoff Woods (33:50): 

Role, interview task. You do that, you’re going to blast past 99% of the people in the world using this technology. 

  

Stephanie Everett (33:57): 

I love it. For the folks who are still maybe new to using it, what would you say is the first habit they should build into their routine? If they’re ready, they’re listening, they’re like, okay, this sounds good guys, but where do I start? 

  

Geoff Woods (34:10): 

You have to learn to ask the right questions. Most people are asking themselves, how can I do this? My encouragement is to start asking How can AI help me do this? And the smallest domino I can give you to knock down, I want you to grab a sticky note and a sharpie and literally write, how can AI help me do this? I’m literally holding it up to the camera for Stephanie to see. This sticky note has been on my desk for two years, by the way, and the reason adopting AI is not your goal. Every person listening to this already has way too much to do and not enough time, so I’m not giving you another thing to do. I’m giving you a better way to do what you’re already doing. So for me, I literally practice what I teach. This sticky note is right here on my desk and next to it is one more sticky note that says context, role, interview task, and then I’ll be doing my normal work and I will naturally glance down and see the neon green sticky note that says, how can AI help me do this? 

  

(35:17): 

And in that moment I go, what am I doing? I’m reviewing my financial statements. How can AI help me review my financial statements? I have no clue, but then I see the other sticky note context role interview task. This is a real use case, so I open chat g bt. Now I have a version of chat GBT that does not train on my data, so I feel comfortable doing the use case. I’m about to explain context. Here’s my financial statements, and I dragged and dropped my financial statements into chat GBT role. You’re a strategic CFO, whose world class at telling the CEO, the top five non-obvious insights about their business based on their financials that they probably don’t know about their business that they should know about their business interview. Interview me, ask me one question at a time, up to five questions to gain deeper context task. 

  

(36:15): 

Then your task is to tell me the top five non-obvious insights I should know about my business. And I hit enter in two seconds, Stephanie, it had read my balance sheet, my income statement and my cashflow statement and started asking me questions. And after a few minutes of it asking me questions and me giving it answers, it said, great, here’s your top five non-obvious insights. And it called out some amazing stuff and I went, oh my gosh, I’m doing this every month now. That literally happened because I had a sticky note on my desk. So the simplest thing that somebody can do is put that sticky note on their desk because that will create the habit of you asking a better question. 

  

Stephanie Everett (36:59): 

I love it and I think it’s great advice and like I said, once you kind of open this door and get really curious, I think it just keeps flowing. Now when I have a problem, I mean based on your book and the prompts in your book, if I have a problem, I just go to my chat and open it up and I also have one that doesn’t train all my information and I’m like, here’s the problem I’m having and using that format and it just takes me through a whole process that then helps me figure out how I can next approach that problem. 

  

Geoff Woods (37:31): 

Which are you using? 

  

Stephanie Everett (37:33): 

Which what? 

  

Geoff Woods (37:35): 

AI model. 

  

Stephanie Everett (37:36): 

Oh, primarily chat. GPT is my favorite. I’ve been using it the longest. I sometimes then flip into perplexity. I kind of bounce around and will sometimes just use different tools to do different things. 

  

Geoff Woods (37:47): 

Now are you doing a pro account at 20 a month or are you doing the chat GBT teams? 

  

Stephanie Everett (37:51): 

We have teams. 

  

Geoff Woods (37:53): 

Okay, cool. So I’m speaking over people’s heads chat. GBT is one of these models. If you’re using a free version of chat, GBT, it’s training on your data. If you are meaning anything you put into it hypothetically could go out into the ether. Doesn’t mean it will. If you’re paying 20 bucks a month for a pro account, it is still training on your data, but you can go into the settings and the data controls and turn off, improve the model. You can turn that off. It will no longer train on your data, but if you upgrade to a chat GPT teams account, which is 30 bucks a month or 25 bucks a month annualized it now establishes an instance for your company where its terms of ServiceNow state, it does not trade on your data by default. Now you get to ask the question, is that sufficient enough for you? For some companies, they’re like, I don’t trust that company. That’s not good enough. Fine. Then go an enterprise account where you’re pulling chat GPT into your own Microsoft Azure or AWS instance and you have an IT team that can protect the security around it. Most people listening to this podcast I’m going to assume are not going to do this, so chat GBT teams becomes a good option. 

  

Stephanie Everett (39:04): 

And for the folks wondering, some of the advice that we’ve been giving is because of the ability for workers to come in and if certain content can flag a personal review, even if you’re in chat and it gets locked down. So you just got to be careful with privileged and confidential. I mean lawyers obviously we have so many different duties to protect attorney client privilege and confidentiality. You can still use the tools, but you just need to be extra sensitive about your settings and what you’ve got set up. And there are some legal specific tools that you can also use that have those protections built in because they know that we have to protect against that. Obviously the work I’m doing is not privileged and I’m using it to help train my sales team. I’m okay, but it’s a good reminder for everyone when we’re using these different tools. 

  

Geoff Woods (40:02): 

I understand that side and I’m asking, will attorneys use Google Drive to store docs on a client or where do they store the information? 

  

Stephanie Everett (40:11): 

They will, but we also advise, that’s part of what we try to teach them is why Dropbox and these type of tools. You got to just, we have whole things on data security that are not my expertise. That’s why I have Zack and other people on the team that can do that. I know enough to be dangerous and to tell people, Hey, go check 

  

Geoff Woods (40:32): 

That. Cool. Here’s the bottom line. There’s inherent risk in using the technology. There’s biases. It makes things up. It’s called a hallucination. You got to fact check things. There’s also risk to not using it and the risk of inaction, I’m going to tell you is significant. A quote that used to be written on my whiteboard in Sharpie was What’s the business that will put you out of business? How can you build it first? I have asked that question for the last decade and I would encourage you to ask it. I’m not saying you’re going to be put out of business, but I’m asking you to ask what would be the firm that could put us out of business? What would they look like and what does it look like for me to build it first? Based on that, you get to decide are you going to make any changes or not? There are absolutely people in the legal profession that I know are taking massive action on this, that view this as an opportunity to create a disruptive model that’s way more valuable to clients, deliver a higher level of service in a fraction of the time, and I know plenty of attorneys that are absolutely resisting this right now, and that’s okay. They get to choose. I just personally focus on the people that are getting into the action. 

  

Stephanie Everett (41:53): 

Yeah, I think that’s a great reminder and if people want to learn more, obviously I think the book is so approachable. It’s an easy read. Like I said, we’ve required everyone on our leadership team, all of our team leads actually across the organization have this book and have been reading it and using it. It’s not just about obviously reading it. You’ve got to actually go apply it. It’s caused us, we’re really, I don’t know what the right word is, tripling down on AI on our team and how we’re going to help lawyers use it. We think this is so critical, so I would recommend the book to everyone. Any other resources you want to shout out if people are curious? 

  

Geoff Woods (42:33): 

No, I appreciate that. So the book is called The AI Driven Leader. Get it on Amazon. If you’re an audible person or a Kindle person, it’s available there as well. It is me reading the actual audio book, but I would strongly encourage the physical as well. There’s pictures in there, there’s actual prompts, like visual prompts that you can just apply right there. And I also created an AI thought partner, so my own AI agent that has been trained on the book to be me. So you can literally have conversations with me as the author about the book in terms of how to drive it through the AI model. And then our website is ai leadership.com. From there, I would strongly encourage you to get on the newsletter. I write emails for executives that don’t read email and every week we share a story of a real exec and how they used AI strategically and the actual prompt that they used just to expand your mind in terms of what’s possible. 

  

(43:24): 

I think you would get a lot of value from that and then you can learn more about the workshops we do. And then I mentioned the core of our business is that executive network, the AI driven leadership collective. If you are a partner or a C-level executive who you don’t need to be the AI expert and that’s not your goal, by the way, but you need to understand that you cannot delegate vision, you cannot delegate your strategy, and you cannot delegate your leadership. And if you want to learn how you actually think strategically and lead your company in a world that’s AI driven, I would encourage you to check out the collective. 

  

Stephanie Everett (44:00): 

Awesome. Thanks for being with me today, Geoff. This has been, 

  

Geoff Woods (44:03): 

Thanks for having me, Stephanie. I really appreciate it. 

 

 

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