AI Tools Are Changing Work Faster Than Teams Can Adapt

We talk through what it really takes to get staff comfortable with AI when the tools are changing fast and the results are not always right. Then we zoom out to the industries most at risk, from SEO to CRM and project management software, and what that means for junior career pathways. 
• setting expectations with staff so experimentation does not erode trust 
• getting buy in by asking for feedback and normalising mistakes early 
• why we no longer write off AI tools after a bad first try 
• the real switching cost shift for software and CRMs 
• HubSpot pricing pressure and the logic behind building a CRM alternative 
• which industries AI may hit hardest and why regulation slows some sectors 
• the junior talent problem in finance and law when AI does the starter work 
• why SEO agencies, CRM vendors and project management tools look exposed 

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Transcript

Setting Expectations With Staff

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you had a conversation with your staff to talk to them about how we're experimenting with AI and that, you know, things aren't going to be 100% right and maybe laid those kinds of things out to them, talk to them about that?

SPEAKER_01 0:12

I have. Have I done it often? Probably not. Does it make a difference? I don't know, actually. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

It'd be interesting. It'd be interesting. If if I put myself in employees' shoes, like I totally appreciate that they want you to give them the answers, the direction. So they've got that confidence in you. And it's, you know, as as the leader of the business. But I wonder whether, you know, reassuring staff that, hey, look, these AI tools, they're not going to be eliminating your job. They're just going to make things a lot easier, a lot more efficient. Well, that's another topic altogether. Absolutely. Which they've got to buy in, I suppose, is the first sort of level of buy-in. But then that second level of buy-in is to keep persisting because there's going to be mistakes made. And maybe identifying to them, you know, hey, this is something we're trialing. Give me your feedback. Those kinds of things might be helpful.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

As much as I like to think that is helpful, if I applied the same standards to a politician, than the Amadini, if he went up and said the capital age tax, I'm just rethinking about that. Or what is it, the inheritance tax? I'm just rethinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

I think you're a bit more honest than Albanese. I'd like to think that your staff know that. Good point.

Why Tools Improve Too Fast To Quit

SPEAKER_00 1:23

The other thing around that different AI tools, so I reckon prior to this year, if I'd picked up a piece of software or started with a new tool online and it didn't work, I would have written it off completely and just moved on and found something else. Yeah, I wasn't the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yeah, I was the same for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

This year, because things are moving so quickly, I know that if something doesn't work the way I want it to, if that company uh is about growth, they'll be listening to their customers, they'll be getting this feedback, they'll be looking at the data. The AI is probably distilling the AI data for them. They'll be moving at pace, they'll be making changes. There would be. And I don't know, I'm not gonna ride off that particular tool.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

And ChatGPT is a perfect example because ChatGPT was behind Claude in effectiveness and usefulness and ability for most of the year until two weeks ago or last week, where ChatGPT released a new product. It was a Gentech and it unsurped Claude. It is now the better tool. Unfortunately, I started my Claude journey, but if my Claude journey just even has a slight deterioration in quality output, I'm immediately back to Jack GPT because it's now known to be the better model.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

It's so easy for you to then switch over. There's like the conversation around around CRM. CRM to change platforms was an entire project. Now, depending on the size of the business, it it probably still would be an entire project for a big corporate. But for a smaller size or medium-sized business like the one you operate, the ease at which that you can pick up your data, drop it into a new system. It's day and night to what it used

HubSpot Costs And DIY CRM Plans

SPEAKER_00 2:52

to be. And that comes back to, I mean, I was using HubSpot this morning and one of my staff members said, I don't have these permissions to create this workflow that we want to do. Okay, no worries. So I go in there, have a look at what's required. They want $1,000 a month for it. Oh. $1,000 a month they want for the upgrading, yeah. Just to enable us to send out the automations that we want to send out.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

And what do you do? You've got to explore other options.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

You have to. At that point, is that an ongoing type of task that needs to be done on a monthly basis? Getting paid in one month, get the data that you need, stop paying, and then just roll with the data that you have.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

If you want that workflow and that automation to continue to operate, you have to keep paying.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, yeah. And that's that's too much. But that's foolish on the part of HubSpot and a lot of the CRM system because the AI systems can replicate what they do very easily. The number of connectors that I saw on Cloud, I'm connecting everything 365, Gmail, OneDrive, as well as even connecting to no, I don't think it connects to HubSpot, actually. It would be ironic if it did. But with those connectors, it could actually replicate and create its own CRM system that you could utilize for a small business at least in the space of a couple of minutes if you know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Are you still exploring your own CRM?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I'm hoping that by the time I publish this, that we've done already, but we are still very close to completing that project. Wow. I do have the HubSpot salesperson meeting as a video this afternoon. So we'll see. That's gonna be an interesting conversation. Well, I'd talk about this in that conversation. So I'm just hoping that by the time this gets released, then we would have gone from HubSpot already. But yes, replicating HubSpot using the tools that I see is a very easy process. Which brings me to my next question.

Which Jobs Get Hit First

SPEAKER_01 4:38

What are the top industries that you see are going to be affected very, very detrimentally because of AI? That's a good question. I can say the ones that won't be.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

We're talking about food, but I don't think they'll be very much impacted. Promotional product suppliers. Promotional product suppliers, physical tangibles. Yeah. All that sort of stuff won't be. Construction.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Construction. Um there are robotics then, AI powered robotics, brick uh brick probably a bigger.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah, they'll make a difference. They will. They will. But it but it also comes down to what the governments allow because they want to protect that industry. If the government, if the government want to protect the employees and keep growing that, then the pathways to be able to factory build the house are going to be a little bit limited.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yes, it is a Labour party, after all. Yeah, exactly right. If I reason.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yep. Exactly. There's there's there are plenty of prefab builders out there, but and I'm sure automation is going to have an impact on them. But yeah, I think we've got to factor in that as well. What's what's the other one that would be? Probably medical doctors. Because today you can already go online and and put your symptoms in. But how much do you trust that? And how much are you going to trust?

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Oh, I'm trusting it more and more prescription. The prescription depends on how low level it is. I mean, if I lost my arm in an accident, I lost my arm. I'm going to need to see something about that. But if it's something that's, you know, I may have had the flu, I self-prescribe myself some vitamin C or perhaps on coding flu tablets, it works, then I'm not going to see a doctor next time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

I wonder, because there's companies now that that do delphin fions of different cosmetic, different cosmetic serums and treatments. Yeah, good luck. I wonder if that will come into medical where you could self-vaccinate yourself if it already hasn't. I don't know, it hasn't.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

TGA in Australia have a bit of experience because we sell things like sunscreen and hand sanitizers. They're real strict. Yeah, so strict. Labeling laws, ingredient laws, lab testing. For better or for worse, Australian consumers are very well protected when it comes to safety. Yeah. But I do know a lot of people are buying those performance injections, whatever they're called, peptides, and they just go straight into someone's mailbox. It doesn't go past TGA. So those would be quite worrisome.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think which industries, like I think a lot of other industries, are going to be heavily impacted, particularly in the junior level. I was talking about it with a colleague today. He does financial reporting and analysis and CFO and advisory. And he was saying that that the junior level for that, where they're putting together the presentation and the experience that you get in being able to put together presentations and marry up the data and analyze the data, which is given to him for then him to have the conversation with the client, he's doing all that himself. So what's the pathway going to look like for those juniors coming into those senior roles? And I think it's going to be similar. He was saying in in law as well. If you've got juniors that have to go and do all that research on previous cases and find precedents and all those kinds of things, what's their pathway going to look like to get into those more senior roles? I think it's going to shift.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

I don't think there's a I've heard somewhere where there's a hollow hollowing out of the middle. And so those juniors is really going to separate them. There's no slow transition. You're just going to be there. Now, if you perform poorly, you're going to be moved on. But if you perform well, you're going to be moved. And by performing well, they would need to self-educate essentially and really find out why is it and what is it that they're doing and learn very, very quickly themselves. And there are students out there, you know, young young kids out there that really have a transparent view of what needs to be done from an objective when given a given a task. And those are the type of people that typically will do well in mathematics, typically know the outcome that they're look working towards, and those would thrive like nothing before. So I wouldn't be surprised if maybe sucking in some 20-year-old CEOs of companies out there. Absolutely. But then I also won't be surprised if there is a legion of unemployed young people as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

It's scary to think about with your kids coming through and all that and and you know big decisions to make around where that where are they going to study, what are they going to study. I think that's crucial. What what do you think in terms of the industry is going to be really heavily impacted with AI?

SEO And Software Businesses Under Threat

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah, number one, off the bat, search engine optimization industry. So I I I read this quote from Condi Nast, the publisher. Condi Nast, for those who don't know, published Vogue and literally a dozen, two dozen other very, very high-profile titles. And Condi Nast reckons that search engine traffic to their website would hit zero. And he's instructed his team to work towards this environment, this brand new environment, brand new age where people would find their product, maybe be social media, or maybe it'd be them building a brand new, which they have a powerful branding, possibly one of the most powerful in history with Verg and others, and that they build these ecosystems of followers. A very quick word. My name is Charles. I run an agency called Cubic Promote. We are the leading supplier of promotional products and uniforms in Australia and also in New Zealand. We supply it to 3,000 organizations on any given year. If you're looking for a reliable partner to supply you with merchandise for your office or uniforms for your organization, trust us, Cubic Promote. And now back to the show. But he's not expecting any new traffic in the future to come through search engines, which is very, very interesting. And I I myself, we used to use a couple of search engine optimization companies. Obviously, we want our company to be seen when people are searching for marketing, uniforms, obviously, etc. etc. And from experience, a couple of things. Number one, AI has specific modules just for SEO. By SEO, I mean content. And so we could create the content quality that we use to outsource. Number two, when it comes to back linking and internal linking, enough that SEO agency industry, my experience with them, every single one of them, I've been using directories. For example, a directory will be Yellow Pages, for example. Just list the marketing these paid directories. Google's knowing this for almost a decade now. They had no value. Having one link from a PR person, from an actual journalist, is the equivalent of getting hundreds of these links. However, to get a PR journalist to do an article on you is a personal experience. It's not something that you can outsource and buy through an SEO company. And so the entire SEO model is already 2025. They're still doing very well this year, I've got no doubt about it. But I struggle to see how they could find relevancy towards the latter half of this year going to the future. It has to be a good idea. No, no, no, there's simply no need for them because what they have to offer is ineffective. Yeah. The second top industry I think will be impacted would be a very large industry, the CRM industry. I've got a friend who's in the process of building a tool that is going to replace the booking structure for his entertainment. He he he runs quad bikes. I don't know, the entertainment piece. And previously he would have paid a CRM agency. CRM agency would create the interface when customers book and they would take a clip of the bookings. That's how the CRM company made money. He took a week of research and now he's created one. The CRM industry would be a big one. Yeah, big time. Yeah. The third one that I think is going to be impacted would be the project management software. Monday.coms, the Atlassian. I think they're in a world of trouble right now because once again, your software, which was a subscription service, can be replicated very easily. And those those are the big industries. And then there's the micro industries, which is those who develop apps for customers. Once again, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Web web design.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Yep. Web design. Web design, another one.