Integrating AI in Business: Strategies for Success with Kevin Dean

Freddy D: 00:01:54

Hey there, Freddy D. Here in this episode 92, we're joined by Kevin Dean, the CEO and President of Manobyte.

Since founding the company in: 2007

He's also scramble enthusiast, a connoisseur of.

Freddy D: 00:02:31

Bad dad jokes, and someone who lives.

Freddy D: 00:02:34

By the motto, that worry is a waste of time. Get ready for a thoughtful and entertaining dive into tech growth and the power of AI in business.

Freddy D: 00:02:45

Welcome, Kevin, to the Business Superfans podcast. How are you today?

Kevin Dean: 00:02:50

Freddy, I am doing fabulous and it is great to be on the show today.

Freddy D: 00:02:53

Well, we're excited to have you. Tell us, Kevin, about the backstory of how Nanobyte came about. What's the story where that evolved?

Kevin Dean: 00:03:05

Yeah. So you and me have a similar background.

Both of us being from Michigan, spending some time there, and both of us having a connection to Eaton Corporation, a large Fortune 500 company. That was where I started my corporate career.

After being there for quite some time, traveling a lot and working in the technology space, I decided I wanted to go out and do my own thing. I was on vacation in Hawaii, that's where my mother lived. I was doing some scuba diving.

Thought, you know, it's time for me to just go out and help businesses leverage technology from a business perspective to get things done. While I was out there scuba diving, I decided to make this shift from corporate America and starting my own company.

Mano is the Hawaiian word for shark. Right. So shark by. By having that technology towards it.

For me, it's always been this collaboration of business strategy tied to technology to get the best results for businesses so that they can grow, succeed and scale.

Freddy D: 00:04:10

I like the story of how you came about the name. That's pretty cool.

Kevin Dean: 00:04:14

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:04:15

And the thing is, technology is very transformative for a business, provided it's applied properly. That's really the big aspect. A lot of companies from my experience have gotten technology, but the expectations are not correct.

Sometimes they bought the tech and expect it to be operational and making money immediately. Part of that problem is expectations are not set up properly to implement the technology.

Kevin Dean: 00:04:47

Yeah. One of the things that I think about all the time is, and you're 100% right, it's the misapplication of technology.

Technology is really nothing more than a tool. Right. If I am a builder and I build a House. I've got lots of tools in my tool case. I've got a hammer, a nail gun.

Those tools may be the best money can buy, but if I don't have a plan on I'm going to build, what type of house I'm going to build, how many stories, how many rooms does it have, what's it be used for, who's going to live in it? All those tools really don't matter. If I don't have the architectural plans in place for what I'm going to build, how I'm going to use it.

And that's the problem that businesses run into with technology. Technology is great, AI is great. But if you don't have a business strategy, a business plan, and technology is not the plan, it is only a tool.

If you don't have that plan, that vision in place, then you're going to be disappointed every single time. And it's not going to get you the results that you want.

And what ends up happening is, is that business leaders, business executives get upset and say, oh, the technology was wrong. Oh, we picked the wrong vendor. Oh, this. No, no, no, no. Your strategy was wrong. Right.

Your implementation and how you effectively leverage change management for the cultural shift of how that's going to be used was wrong. Wasn't the technology's fault, it was your initial business plan. And so that's where businesses have to start.

They've got to start with, what is my real business objective? What's the vision? What are we trying to do? And then use these tools, use technology to help get you there faster.

Freddy D: 00:06:40

Oh, absolutely correct. You remind me of a story. I was in the CAD CAM space, Computer aided design, computer manufacturing space. I was an applications guy.

given the manuals. This is E: 1981

I was kicked out the door and says, okay, now start installing software and training people. Here's the manual. Good luck. My first training was at a company called Westinghouse. It was just me and this other guy and I had the manual.

And I'm just looking through the manual. You know, John, these are the command strings you need to do is really not the world's greatest training.

I'm in Eaton Corporation and now I'm in front of a group of engineers. And I was going the same approach of training because nobody trained me.

And I'll never forget this, I share it often because there's a point behind it. At the end of that Day that manager pulled me aside and said, that was the worst effing training I've ever seen in my entire life.

It's burned into my brain.

He goes, I'm going to give you till tomorrow to get it figured out and sorted, where I'm calling your manager and having your dumb blank, blank, blank terminated. I slept well that night and what I ended up doing was created engagement training, which was okay.

I would turn around, says, okay, I put the string up, you know, Kevin, is this the right command string? Well, not sure. Mike, do you agree with Kevin? What's wrong with it? And he'd say this, well, okay, Steve, do you agree with Kevin and Mike?

And it got everybody into a conversation, everybody started learning. And so the reason I share that story is because it leads me into the next thing.

I got to the point where I was the most sought after applications guy and there was a company that had bought the technology, about 200,000 plus dollars and they were going to send it back because it didn't work. And so I got sent in as the heavy to say, okay, go look at what's going on.

They had not implemented it properly, they had just bought it, set it up, and then they were chastising the engineers because they didn't know how to use it. They had no systems in place, they had no procedures in place. And the reality is when you implement new technology, you gotta run concurrently.

And what they did is they just shut off some of the stuff and we're saying, well, it should be done on a computer. And it's really, no, you gotta do, you still gotta do business the old way, right?

And then you gotta transition into the new technology, set up processes and procedure to incorporate that technology. And they paid me to come in on the weekends and the company approved it. So I would go in on Saturdays and they would fly me out.

I think it was either Indiana or Ohio and over a course of two months completely proved to them that it wasn't the technology, it was the way they had implemented it. And they kept the system and became productive and became one of my super fans. The owner admitted that he handled it incorrectly.

Kevin Dean: 00:09:59

Yeah, that's a great story. I love that.

That highlights the importance of understanding your audience and building community of people who will help you as you're moving forward, regardless of what you're doing. I think that's super important.

Now as we're starting to see not just shifts from a technology standpoint in the local enterprise on a global scale, we've got to rethink how we build and continue to feed our communities in this time of change.

Freddy D: 00:10:30

Yeah, because when I transitioned into sales, I wasn't selling the product. I would say, Kevin, there's other platforms that also do the job. We're not the only guys. They're out there, they've got products, they do the work.

Otherwise they wouldn't exist in business. So let's talk about where do you want to see your business in two to three to five years? What are the obstacles holding it? What are the issues?

Since Elsa selling in a tool and die shop, a lot of it was scrapping at a metal. When they're doing milling machines and cutting out the steel. So it'd be like, well, what's that costing you, that piece of scrap?

There's 20,000 bucks. How many times does that happen a year? If we could save two of those scraps, would that be worth it? Absolutely.

And next thing you know, it's half of what the software is. And they would buy because it wasn't about the tool, it was about where they wanted to go.

And then setting up the right expectations for the implementation right up front got me super fans out of the team because I had the spotlight off of the back of their heads because I bought them a road to be able to learn the technology, get it implemented and everything else.

Kevin Dean: 00:11:47

Yeah, that's so cool. The ability to really deliver results and you add an extreme amount of value and you're going to automatically build super fans.

That's one of the things businesses need to think about, how to continue to add value in the age of AI and build those super fans. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:12:05

So let's get into some of the things that Manobyte provides to the customers you're dealing with. Yeah.

Kevin Dean: 00:12:12

One of the things that we do at Nanobyte is helping companies think about their overall strategy and how they can grow at scale. Leveraging technology tied to business strategy. At Manoby, we have stuck with the Shark everything. Right. We have a framework that we call Shark.

And that Shark framework really involves a couple of things. Strategize, hybridize, activate, revolutionize, and Kaizen continual improvement. We start with our customers.

Identify what's your vision and how do we create a strategy for you to help you achieve your goals From a hybridized standpoint, we think about how do we leverage technology and humans together to ensure that we're helping you achieve that right strategy. Then to your point, once you have that plan in place and you look at how you're going to leverage both humans and technology, you got to activate it.

Right. You got to get it going. You got to say, here's our rollout plan, here's our change management plan.

Here's how we're going to transition from this approach to the next approach in a way that doesn't disrupt business, but ensures business continuity, growth and scale. Then once we've done that, we can now revolutionize and we can begin to think about how do we innovate, how do we create greater value?

And then that's where the Kaizen continual improvement comes into place. Right. So we're always looking at, okay, we got this far.

How do we continue to go through that loop of continual improvement so that you can continue to grow and scale?

So that's really what we do is we take a holistic approach from a management consulting perspective to help companies think about how they can really build superfans.

Freddy D: 00:14:10

Yeah, you can leverage technology to engage whatever the business is, you're engaging with your team. So it all starts with the team, the employees.

If they're not happy with the organization and feel that they're not appreciated, you can have all the tools in the world. But that energy and tonality will carry over to a prospective customer, an existing customer, a supplier or a contractor.

And people are going to go, I'm not sure about that company. So you can leverage technology to maintain engagement with your team as well as recognizing people expressing appreciation and gratitude.

They've got buy in into the vision of the company and they're energized to say, man, this is pretty cool stuff versus a bad implementation. This is going to replace my job and we get some of those situations.

But if it's brought in correctly, that can transform that person who says, wow, I'm actually elevating my playing field and my skill set. This is really cool. And that in turn starts building superfans internally. Your team will create super fans of all the external stuff.

Kevin Dean: 00:15:32

Yeah, 100%. I love that thought. Where you want to build super fans internally first and then you can build those super fans externally.

I think that's super important.

As we think about the shifts that AI is going to bring to the workforce, we're definitely thinking about how there's going to be a shift in the work that humans do versus what technology can do. And for people to say it's not going to be a shift or it's not going to impact jobs, they're really sticking their head in the sand.

Huge shifts are definitely going to come and are coming with the new implementation of technology. However, there has to be that human in the loop. Right. That human has to continue to add value. Right.

And I think that's what we need to help people understand is we can't hold on to the way things were. We have to live in the now and think about what are we doing to add value.

And I think this is an exciting time for everybody because this really does allow us to get to a point where we as humans can be thought leaders, strategic thinkers, critical thinkers, innovators, and leveraging technology like it's always promised to get rid of the mundane things that are repetitive that really we shouldn't be doing anyway. So I think we are definitely going to see a shift in the type of work that people do. Just like there aren't too many blacksmiths around anymore.

Technology has changed. I think there are going to be shifts in the type of work that's done at the enterprise level.

And to your point, people are going to need to learn how to create new skill sets that add value that really will energize them as a human. Oh, wow, I get to do this cool stuff now and all that stuff. I hated doing that. Go home and complain to my partner about.

Don't have to worry about that anymore.

Freddy D: 00:17:43

Yeah. I was a draftsman initially, and I was an engineer drawing on the drafting board. I was designing walled guns in the spot weld the body panels.

Well, today they have robots that do that. I got into the computer aided design space when it just began.

I looked at it as not losing my job, but actually getting a better job in learning the technology. It completely transformed my life because I embraced it.

Kevin Dean: 00:18:15

Yeah. And it's great that you embraced it. And I think that's a good thing for us to start thinking about as leaders.

How do we implement an organizational transformation plan that really allows people to do their best work? Kind of goes back to some of the things that you were doing. Right.

Freddy D: 00:18:35

Training.

Kevin Dean: 00:18:36

I think there's a big need for upskilling within the organization. Is going to be a big change that we're going to see. And the other thing, I think we're still in the early days of what Gen AI can do.

We don't want to get stuck into thinking, oh, I use quad, I use ChatGPT, therefore I'm leveraging Gen AI. No, you're not. You're not even scratching the surface.

I think that organizations need to start building out plans for their workforce to say, here's what Genai can do, here's how we're looking to implement it, and here's how we want to help you. Think about new ways to bring in value to the organization, for the individual and for the company.

Freddy D: 00:19:28

And you just said a key thing there, Kevin, involving the organization. If they're involved in the vision, they've got buy in. And if they've got buy in, they've got ownership.

And if they've got ownership, they'll take it upon themselves to take it to the next level versus the scenario where you say, well, this is what we're doing and you need to adapt to it. That strategy is yesterday and it doesn't work well in today's world.

But those companies that embrace their team and get everybody going in the same direction, think of a rowing team, right? You got four people in a racing rowboat, everybody's got a row in the same direction.

And more importantly, they got to be synchronized so that they're rowing at exactly the same time, all four of them.

You've got to get the company to be going and everybody in the team from the top down and from the bottom back up to be going in that same direction and have ownership of that direction. That's how businesses scale and scale rapidly because everybody's on board and going in one direction.

Kevin Dean: 00:20:37

Yeah, that's a great analogy. Leaders have to be the coxswain of the rowing team within their organization by clearly and loudly shouting out, this is our vision.

This is the direction. We do need employees to take ownership and champion what we're doing.

But it becomes a cacophony if everybody's just doing their own thing and it's not uniform. Leaders have to clearly and loudly and repeatedly help everybody understand the vision.

Here's where we're going, this is what we're doing, and these are our objectives. We're not going to go here, we're not going there. This is where we're going as an organization.

And everybody has to make sure they're rowing in that direction.

Now more than ever, executive leaders have to loudly, repeatedly and clearly articulate the vision because there's so much happening, there's a lot of noise. Research is telling us that organizations have to change their mission vision because what they were doing to add value won't add value anymore.

We've seen that time and time again.

Freddy D: 00:21:54

Absolutely correct.

Kevin Dean: 00:21:55

And when you're in that shift, you have to clearly articulate it and do it repeatedly. Today, because we're so early, most leaders are struggling to have a clear strategic vision for what they to board.

They're struggling to ensure that the entire organization understands that vision. So once they have that vision, step one, they can articulate at step two, we have to be clear about this.

There are going to be some within the organization who don't want to go along with that new vision because it's different. Right. It's going to change. There really is no more place for them with that new vision.

But then you've got the rest who want to help drive that vision. Right. And I think leaders have to understand that there's going to be these divisions.

They've got to be okay with it, and they've got to clearly say, this is where we're going, this is how, and get everybody on board to help meet that vision.

Freddy D: 00:23:02

Absolutely correct. Especially in today's world. I mean, you look at the automotive industry, you know, had to pivot and incorporate new technologies.

So it's the same thing with this. This is a new, revolutionary thing. So let's go into a little bit about how do you work with an organization?

So someone says, hey, Kevin, we're interested in your services. Tell me what happens.

Kevin Dean: 00:23:27

So the first thing we do is analyze their current state and figure out where are you today, what trying to achieve? Once we understand this, we move into the strategy phase. In that strategy phase, we help them build that vision plan.

And once they have that plan, they can activate it, implement it, and then we help them roll it out and then monitor it on a regular basis.

Freddy D: 00:23:53

Do you have a story of a company that you worked with and how the technology that you guys helped implement transformed their business?

Kevin Dean: 00:24:02

Yeah, lots and lots of different examples. I'll talk about one that a lot of people know, Nerd Wallet.

So if you've ever been to any sports game, you've seen their commercials, their billboards. So lots of people know who Nerd Wallet is. We helped them to transform the way they were doing business from the standpoint of leveraging technology.

They have lots of different customers and lots of different people that they have to engage with at different levels.

And it was hard for them to be able to track, monitor, communicate, and ensure that from a revenue standpoint, everything was coming in the right way. They already have lots of super fans, but they needed to ensure that all the super fans were getting the value that they needed.

We were able to help them implement a system where they could track all their relationships, ensure that everything was being captured from a revenue perspective, and ensure that once all the deliverables were in, they were able to execute on the back end. NerdWantler was a great example of how we were able to leverage technology to help them really scale and grow.

Freddy D: 00:25:14

And it had improved their communication with all their customers.

Kevin Dean: 00:25:18

Oh, significantly. It was able to help them improve their communication with their customers. It was able to help their internal teams be more effective. Right.

And so because of their internal teams being more effective, their customers were happier.

And then they were able to continue to do all the great things and deliver the value that they were doing, but in a much more efficient and scalable way.

Freddy D: 00:25:42

Yeah. Great story.

Do you have another example of how you stepped into another company and transformed them using AI and some of the other tools that you guys bring to the table?

Kevin Dean: 00:25:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell a story about TripAdvisor. They had a ton of customers who were asking questions on a regular.

They would always track their cost per ticket at a very, very high cost per ticket. And using Maven AGI AI platform, they were able to reduce the number of times a customer agent was actually having to engage with a ticket.

They were able to leverage AI to deflect ticket costs by 90%. That is huge. Right? So leveraging Maven, they were able to reduce ticket costs by 90%, a huge savings for a company of their size.

The tools were not only able to reduce ticket costs, but it also increased the customer experience. Consumers were happy because they were getting answers to their questions much quicker.

Freddy D: 00:26:57

Well, sure, because that's a great story. We all get frustrated when we don't know and we're asking for some assistance and then you're waiting 10 minutes for a response back.

You're leveraging AI to maintain that engagement. And more importantly, the AI can solve probably 80% of the things that are brought up.

And then that other 20%, like you said, moves into an actual person dealing with that. Now that person can handle the really complex, important things, and the AI just streamlined everything. And that's where you got that 90% savings.

Kevin Dean: 00:27:40

Huge. Absolutely huge.

Freddy D: 00:27:43

That's what people need to stop and think about from a business perspective. It's a great example of how technology really helped transform their whole engagement with their audience.

Kevin Dean: 00:27:58

Big time. Big, big time. I'll share just one more story. I'll tell the story of HubSpot.

HubBot also was leveraging Maven, but they were leveraging it in a different way. They were leveraging it to make humans smarter.

HubSpot would get a lot of really tough technical questions that would come in from a support standpoint because of being such a large organization. They had various levels of customer support reps, some who had been around for a long period of time, others who were relatively new.

And as you would Imagine, the more experienced reps were much more successful at answering calls with the newer reps would oftentimes struggle. But regardless of whether you are an experienced rep or a newer rep, they always had to do a lot of research to answer some of these tough questions.

By leveraging Maven AGI, HubSpot was able to eliminate the gap of new reps versus seasoned rep by giving them a tool so that these newer reps had access to information at their fingertips. So they were able to answer questions at the same level as the more experienced reps because of using maven aids.

In addition, for both the seasoned reps and the newer reps, it significantly reduced the amount of time they had to spend doing research because they had answers at their fingertips and they were able to answer customer questions pretty much instantaneously in a way that improved customer satisfaction. So that's just another example for you?

Freddy D: 00:29:46

Yeah, that's a huge example. And the importance is that customer experience is really everything. And that's how you start creating super fans.

Now the team is not frustrated and there's not internal conflicts because the new person is frustrated and the pressure is on them to figure out the answer. The customer was getting frustrated because it has to get elevated.

I'm sorry, ma'am, we have to wait till we elevate you to the next level tech person. That person can't handle it. We go to the next person and you're there for an hour trying to get something resolved.

And now by incorporating the technology, you've done it in minutes. Everybody's happy in that whole ecosystem. And that's how you start transforming superfans internally. That in turn creates external superfans.

Kevin Dean: 00:30:39

Oh, 100%. 100%.

Freddy D: 00:30:43

And that's what's rewarding too, because you can look back and go, man, I helped make that happen. I'd look back at the days in some of the tool and die shops that I worked with selling computer aided manufacturing.

They were a 40 man shop, then they became a 60 man shop and then a hundred person shop. Bought the building next door and built a breezeway between the buildings.

And then they ended up buying a building next door and they built a breezeway there. And they ended up growing with the technology. They wouldn't let me in the door anymore. I'd say, what's up, guys?

And he says, well, every time you walk in, you cost us 100 grand. But the reality was they were able to scale because I helped them incorporate.

And that's what you're doing, helping these organizations solve the challenges. Of their processes. In turn, it's allowing them to provide a better service.

It allows them to scale because now they can handle more customers with the same amount of teams, so their profit margins improve and a multitude of other things.

Kevin Dean: 00:31:47

You know, there's a lot that's going on today and technology, while it's not the strategic focus it does, when implemented properly, help companies to achieve their results. And that's what we love doing. We love helping companies identify, figure out how they can add value, grow and scale and really do great things.

Freddy D: 00:32:12

It sounds like you've done some great things with some great companies. It speaks for itself.

Kevin Dean: 00:32:17

Cool.

Freddy D: 00:32:18

So Kevin, as we get closer to the end here on the show, how can people find you and connect with you?

Kevin Dean: 00:32:25

Yeah, I'm super easy to find. You can find me on LinkedIn, Kevin J. Dean, you'll find me there.

You can find me on my personal website, kevinjdean.com and then you can also go to my company website, mandelbyte.com and I'll be glad to connect and engage with anybody from there.

Freddy D: 00:32:45

Yeah, we'll definitely have that into the show. Notes, do you have anything for our audience?

Kevin Dean: 00:32:50

I think what I would end with is this. Stay focused. Think about taking action today. We've got to move forward.

We're living in a time where decisions are being made and changes are being made in a matter of weeks, not months and years. We really need to start moving forward or we're going to get left behind.

Freddy D: 00:33:15

Totally agree on that one. Kevin has been a great conversation, great insights shared with our audience.

We'll make sure that all the information is into the show notes and we look forward to having you on the show and continue the conversation again down the road.

Kevin Dean: 00:33:31

You, Freddie, love it. And we'll glad that we can continue to help people build superfans.

Freddy D: 00:33:39

Thank you my friend.

Kevin Dean: 00:33:40

Bye now.

Freddy D: 00:33:44

Hey, superfan superstar Freddie D. Here before we wrap, here's your three a playbook power move to attract ideal clients, turn them into advocates and accelerate your business success.

The top insight from this episode is AI is not your strategy, it's just your tool. And without a clear vision, it's a fast track to failure. So here's your business growth action step.

Create a detailed business strategy first, then map out how AI and tech will directly support each phase of your growth plan. Don't implement until that's done.

If today's conversation sparked an idea for you or you know of a fellow business leader who could benefit, share it with them and grab the full breakdown in the show.

Freddy D: 00:34:31

Notes.

Freddy D: 00:34:31

Let's accelerate together and start creating business superfans who champion your brand.