Beware of the AI Savvy CEO

Chris Davis 0:10
And we’re back with another episode of the All Systems Go podcast. And let me start off by just Again, I can’t thank you all enough. The DMs on LinkedIn, Facebook, those of you who have taken the initiative and joined the community at no cost to add, add value and start to learn how to expedite what you’ve learned with AI. And it’s, it’s interesting.

Chris Davis 0:39
I say with AI because I’m, I’m really talking to the senior builders. Those are my people. The, the, the folks who have a professional career. They’re not starting a professional career and that career could be in entrepreneurship or not, but they know what they want to do.

Chris Davis 0:59
They’re just trying to learn how to use AI to help them do it. AI and automation. Right. They may have had success with make.

Chris Davis 1:08
com or make.com zapiers n8n and you probably still have some of those workflows running, but you haven’t quite leapt all the way, leaped all the way into really agentifying your operations. And you’re starting to pop up one by one. And come one, come all, we love having you.

Chris Davis 1:36
We love sharing strategies and software. And it actually indirectly ties into this episode. And I say beware, it’s not a bad thing unless you make it one. Right?

Chris Davis 1:55
For the CEO. For the. When I say AI savvy CEO, I’ll start with a story. All right.

Chris Davis 2:03
I had a client, and I had been working with this client on and off for years. It was one of my first clients when I was just getting started as a freelancer. And then they just propagated through the ladders. You know, they, they started out as an entrepreneur and then they eventually became a CEO of a company.

Chris Davis 2:25
And all along the way, they would bring me in to help with email tech and all of that. So in a sense, we’ve kind of grown together. I have a good idea of their personality. And something happened the more recent time that they brought me on to be a CTO and start to lead their team and their tech to streamline their stack, make sure they’re implementing AI safely and securely with, you know, layer of governance, and essentially create a lean tech team that can take them into the next, the, the, the next era for their business.

Chris Davis 3:01
So, of course, all of those things, I’m like, yes, yes, this is, you’re speaking my language. I am here. You’re welcome. Right?

Chris Davis 3:08
Not in a bold, boastful way. And not in a boastful way, but in a bold, confident way of myself and my skill set. And what ended up happening is I will find myself on multiple calls and I, and at the time, everybody listen, AI was still fairly, it’s still new now at the time of this recording in 2026, but still at that point I hadn’t seen a lot of non technical people using it correctly. So all of the techie builders were kind of on edge, like, oh, AI can’t replace me.

Chris Davis 3:39
I know how to do this, do that. Everybody was feeling threatened and rightfully so. Nobody really knew what it was. We still don’t know what it is, still don’t understand the implications.

Chris Davis 3:48
We won’t know until maybe another few months, maybe a few years, whatever. But I would be on calls and the CEO would be questioning. Not that they didn’t believe in my approach or what I was doing or even my expertise, but I found these questions a bit offensive and I started to think, well, why did you hire me if you’re just going to question everything that I do? Why would you bring me on board if the goal for you is to just run an age?

Chris Davis 4:28
Go to ChatGPT, ask it what to do and then ask me why I’m not doing it. And it was, it was very frustrating and it led me to start to have these conversations that, hey, look, you hire somebody for a reason. We’re not against chatgpt, Claude, whoever you want to use, but just know that you’re paying for my expertise. So either choose if you’re going to pay for, choose whether you, you’re going to pay for my expertise or if you’re satisfied with ChatGPT, but, but not, not both in the way that I was experiencing them.

Chris Davis 5:12
And I don’t know if anybody on this call has a builder, senior builder, has experienced that, or a leader in tech where you, the CEO sees things and they want answers, they want solutions. So they ask you and AI. And the issue was whenever they would say, hey, well, why can’t we do this? Or why doesn’t this work?

Chris Davis 5:34
At the time I didn’t realize it was coming from AI and I was like, but that wouldn’t work for your company. That’s like a very broad recommendation. And then one time we were on Zoom and they end up sharing their screen and I saw their ChatGPT dashboard and it had all of the chats that essentially they had been asking me about and then that’s when it clicked. That’s why it felt so broad, because they, the Agent, the platform, the LLM.

Chris Davis 6:05
Let me say that the LLM didn’t have the context of their business, so they’re just spouting out general solutions. I’m hired to work on a specific solution. We come in, we’re putting in specific workflows, hiring specific people for your business. AI was just saying, oh yeah, you can do this, you can do that.

Chris Davis 6:27
So once I understood that, I said, okay, I’m really up against AI, not necessarily her questioning my expertise. She’s going, she and he are going. They let me just say that they’re going, the leaders, that is, they’re going out to identify, try to figure it out themselves and then use me as like cross reference. Is this right?

Chris Davis 6:49
And in some cases tell me what to do. And my thing is my intelligence will always be AI, but my speed may not, if I’m just honest. Okay, I can say this honestly, that my intelligence will always beat it because I’m a human. I know context, I know personalities, I can read people, I can understand their disposition.

Chris Davis 7:13
I’m emotionally aware and intelligent. So you can’t beat me on that front AI, but you may be able to beat me with speed. Okay? And, and I, and I say that, to say that, that what I learned was just a phase.

Chris Davis 7:33
That was the founder, the leadership layer of the company starting to use AI. And, and this is cutting edge just for a, you know, CEO to be this, this integrated with AI and using it to recommend on strategy, hiring initiatives, troubleshooting. Hey, I’m always having this problem, what could the issue be? And then they bring the issue to me and again, I’m ready now.

Chris Davis 8:01
And I’m like, okay, that’s AI’s version. Let me give you the contextual version of this thing, right? And, and overall it went from having these questions without context to I realized the other day we’re having very, very intelligent conversations and they’re contextual. So the dots that I connected is that they’ve learned how to prompt better.

Chris Davis 8:30
They’ve learned how to record meetings and use that as context and train their model. They’ve learned how to not just put anything in there and get anything out. And this was over time because I, I took a fence off the table and realized they’re not questioning my intelligence, they’re learning AI, they’re learning the boundaries. That was the first thing that I had to do.

Chris Davis 8:53
Again, emotional intelligence. Some of you are getting too offended too fast and staying there too long. Okay. People are going to question what you know with respect to what AI told them and it may not always come off like you like it.

Chris Davis 9:09
It may come off as, hey, we should be doing this instead of asking you what should we be doing? Again, take offense. Off the table. Understand everybody’s trying to figure it out.

Chris Davis 9:19
And when I started to understand that, that’s when I, that’s when I was able to have a better relationship. And as they were learning now, as they learned, they got much better. They got much better again with feeding it context. So, so what happens?

Chris Davis 9:39
What happens is they start, this is, this is where beware comes from. Everyone, here’s what happens. They start accurately assessing the team, the workload and the output. They’re asking, hey, do I need four developers?

Chris Davis 9:58
Do I need three designers? How can we do this better? And AI is giving them recommendations on streamlining workflows, streamlining team, all of these things. However, to the founder and CEOs credit, they never just took what AI said and ran with it.

Chris Davis 10:19
They always came to the leaders that they hired, myself being one of them, and said, hey, this is what I’m thinking, this is what I’m seeing. And in doing so, they got to cover all of their bases. They get the context maybe they lacked. They get the intelligence from AI, they get the intelligence from humans.

Chris Davis 10:37
And you create what I would say is the future of these organizations. And you’ll see where beware comes from. And the future of these organizations is essentially managed agents. Managed agents, right.

Chris Davis 10:54
The, the cost of doing has dramatically dropped without the quality of output. Before AI, you pay $5 to get a task done. You’re going to get you a $5 task output right now, you pay $20 a month, you can get a whole bunch of high quality outputs. Pay 100.

Chris Davis 11:22
Oh my goodness. If you’re on the supermax and Claw, I don’t know what it is now. 200, 500, whatever, unlimited. I’m not exaggerating.

Chris Davis 11:31
The limitation is you and what you understand can be possible, right? So with that being said, if you’re banking on, hey, this is what I can do, and this is why you should pay me, you’re at the wrong bank. You should be at the bank of, hey, this is what I know how to get done. And that’s why you should pay me.

Chris Davis 11:54
I know how to manage four agents, I know how to train agents, I know how to improve the output. And I’m not saying this like everybody get dumb and let robots take over. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is there is a level of intelligence that’s required to manage an agent Correctly and the things that agents can do if we’re honest, most of you don’t want to do it anyway.

Chris Davis 12:24
Let me give you an example. Builder, senior builder, that is, if you didn’t have to go into lead pages, click funnels, elementor, whatever, page builder. Build a landing page, copy the text, adjust the image, do the styling, configure the pop up integrated with your CRM. Yes, you know how to do all those things.

Chris Davis 12:50
But let’s be honest, you don’t want to have to do any of them. And if somebody could do it for you and you just say, okay, this landing page looks good, it’s been tested, let’s launch. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t make you a better marketing leader. You can’t tell me that.

Chris Davis 13:06
I’m not even asking you because you can’t tell me that that wouldn’t help. So these are the tasks that were required to get to where you’re at in your career, but you no longer need to do nor hire someone to do. You have an agent for that? You can’t.

Chris Davis 13:24
Let me say you can have an agent for that. Writing articles, if you have a thought, you dictate that thought, you put it down. You should have an agent that can take that thought and put it into a full article in your voice and tone. You know how to do that.

Chris Davis 13:41
You know how to sit down and type it out and do all the proofreading and editing and. Yes, but why? So now, because I don’t have to do it. I still need to be intelligent, but I don’t have to do it.

Chris Davis 13:54
Now my output is scaled. Now I can do more without doing more. I can get more done without doing more. I’ve scaled my intelligence and I’m telling you all this because this is the expectation of the AI savvy CEO.

Chris Davis 14:14
They’re looking for people who can leverage AI and multiply their output. They want agents running their business, but they also want people who can manage those agents. They need technical expertise. Now this is where I come in to make sure you put the governance security in that, Let me say the security layer in there that has the governance and the permissions so that when somebody does have an agent, it can’t go rogue.

Chris Davis 14:45
Let me give you an example. We’ve got sales agents in a lot of the e commerce companies that I, that I’ve fractionally fractional CTO with and sometimes they need to get some financial information. Well, well, there are certain tables they should not have access to in Shopify. And if you and if you can’t, if, if you, if all of your sensitive sales information is in one table.

Chris Davis 15:14
Well, of course, this is why we use automation and AI to then extract certain numbers to a table and put it in a data warehouse like Snowflake, and then give them access to just that table. Right? So that they cannot query, they can’t ask their agent anything and get sensitive information back about the company. These are guardrails, everyone.

Chris Davis 15:38
So, yes, the savvy CEO, AI savvy CEO is going to say, hey, I need you to manage agents and deploy them and make sure that you’re not the one doing everything, because I need more output for what I. I would desire more output than for what I’m paying you. Well, that person can go do it, but then there needs to be that technical leadership to make sure that it’s done in a safe and secure way. That’s where I come in.

Chris Davis 16:05
Right, but that’s another. Another topic, another day. What I want you to know is that this, you may be experiencing the beginnings of an AI savvy CEO. You may be getting questions.

Chris Davis 16:17
You. You may be getting recommendations, and you’re like, why? Where is that coming from? Why would they ask this?

Chris Davis 16:23
That won’t work for their business. Well, they’re learning. And if they continue to learn, their learning turns into questioning. Not in a bad way.

Chris Davis 16:35
I’m not trying to say questions. Question your intelligence, question your capability, questioning your operations. And not because they can’t trust you, but because they’re learning that they can get more. They’re testing it out.

Chris Davis 16:53
They’re creating their own agents and realizing, oh, my goodness, I was able to do that in five minutes. And if it’s a task close to what maybe somebody on your team is doing and they’re claiming it’s taking them two days, they’re gonna start scratching their head. Now watch this. Two days may still be fast in old, older times.

Chris Davis 17:15
Let me not say older times. It makes it seem like two months ago was years ago, but that’s what AI makes it feel like, right? But two days may have been acceptable. Pre AI agents may have been acceptable.

Chris Davis 17:30
Now, 20 minutes is the standard with AI. So what are you going to do, senior Builder? What are you going to do when the savvy CEO has caught up, has learned how to use AI responsibly, and is now looking and saying, wait a minute. These tasks that you’re telling me are taking five days can be done in one hour.

Chris Davis 17:54
Wait a minute. This team that you’re telling me has that I Need to be paying five freelancers for. I could have two freelancers in six agents do it. This time is here.

Chris Davis 18:11
This, this is not in the future. This is not. Hey, one day. No, it is happening, everybody.

Chris Davis 18:17
This is why I’m recording this one. To warn my senior builders to make sure you’re doing all that you know to learn as much about functional AI as possible. I don’t want you just doing AI for the sake of doing it. Do it to replace function in companies starting with yours.

Chris Davis 18:38
That’s step number one. This is why the community exists. So you can ideate, so you can get inspiration. See?

Chris Davis 18:44
Oh, I didn’t. I didn’t realize I could create a plugin that did that. Oh, I didn’t know I could create an app that did that. Wow.

Chris Davis 18:49
I didn’t know I could MCP into this platform without leaving Claus interface and build an artifact around it. If you’re not doing all three of those things that I just mentioned, you’re behind. I’m just telling you, if you call yourself a senior builder, you’re behind. If you’re not doing all three of those things and doing them well, again, you’ve got help.

Chris Davis 19:10
The community is here to help you. Right? But this is going to be the norm. I just had a client.

Chris Davis 19:20
I had a hard time doing this because I love people, y’. All. I’m not trying to replace people. What I’m trying to do is train people to multiply their output so that they become that much more valuable.

Chris Davis 19:33
Yes, you’re replaceable if the only thing you can do are five tasks. But what if you add to your skill set and now you have an agent doing those five tasks or more at a more rapid speed? You’ve just made yourself valuable. It reminds me of.

Chris Davis 19:51
I’m on a quick tangent here, but it reminds me of the days where Napster. I don’t know if I’ve said this. I have so many speaking engagements. Hopefully I haven’t said this before.

Chris Davis 20:01
If I have, oh, well, you’ll hear it again. But the days of Napster and downloading MP3s, I’m dating myself here, right? And rappers and entertainers were going on Capitol Hill. They were on C Span trying to get this type of piracy ban.

Chris Davis 20:17
They’re like, we’re losing our livelihood, this, this and that. Only to innovate. They made in, in person. Concerts are now a thing.

Chris Davis 20:25
They started merch, they started doing getting paid for streaming. They started realizing, if I can get streaming ears, I can push product, I can push people to my they worked around it, they found out a way to stay relevant and valuable. Builders, that’s what you’re going to have to do. You’re going to have to find a way to stay relevant and valuable.

Chris Davis 20:48
You cannot rely on the skills of the old to work now and be valued the same. They’re just not. You’re gonna find yourself on the chopping block, not because you’re not a good developer, you’re not a good builder, you’re not a good marketer, but because you’re outdated, because you didn’t stay up to speed with everything that is happening with AI and how to deploy it in a way that multiplied your output, that took what you knew to do, did it for you, so that you can continue to think higher, operate higher, and get bigger, better results. This time is not coming.

Chris Davis 21:30
This time is here. I am talking with founders now. Let me say this. Everybody who’s real close to AI and in it, we’re all tainted.

Chris Davis 21:38
We all think that the marketplace is smarter than it is. I am very aware that it is not. However, the founders and CEOs that I’m talking to are not technical and they’re starting to take AI beyond chat, just regular chats. They’re starting to train it, they’re starting to give it context, they’re understanding when a response is too broad and how to tighten it down.

Chris Davis 22:05
So if that’s the case, there’s gonna be a lot of you who were good workers that no longer fit what they’re trying to achieve and it’s going to get exposed. And I don’t want you to get exposed. I really don’t. I want you to thrive in this.

Chris Davis 22:22
I want you to say, hey, listen, I just found a way to replace, to hook up into the database of this platform and build a database, build a dashboard that allows us to see everything that we want to see the way that you’ve been trying to for years. That’s valuable. That’s extremely valuable right now. You don’t become a question mark of, can I use AI to replace them.

Chris Davis 22:49
You become a consideration that, oh, they’re leveraging AI in a way that’s benefiting the company. Every CEO that I’ve met, every founder, wants to be able to say, we’re leveraging AI. They, they want to. That’s what I’m telling you.

Chris Davis 23:04
It is here. It’s here. You don’t have time to be like, oh, well, I don’t. Robots can’t replace me.

Chris Davis 23:11
That is, that is such a low level thinking. You’ve Got. You have to understand this. Can you imagine somebody not using the Internet because they’re like.

Chris Davis 23:24
Or let me say this. Can you imagine somebody not using a cell phone because they’re holding on to the White Pages and Yellow Pages because they knew that, oh, it’s alphabetical by last name in the White Pages, but it’s different in the yellow. I know how to find the businesses in the Yellow Pages and I know how to find people in the White Pages. And it’s like, dude, we got.

Chris Davis 23:47
We just search now. What are you doing? Oh, well, that Internet thing, it won’t always be there. What are you going to do when the Internet goes down?

Chris Davis 23:56
What are you going to do when your phone battery dies? Well, one, I’m gonna plug it up and charge it. Two, there has been no Internet outage in all of the years. Remember Y2K?

Chris Davis 24:07
I mean, certain technological advancements are here to stay. Now, perhaps it gets more expensive, perhaps it’s less accessible, but it’s here, everyone. So I say this as a warning to the senior builder and I also say it as encouragement to the CEO. Keep learning, keep doing, keep pushing the boundaries, keep training AI.

Chris Davis 24:31
Keep going to events where you’re meeting other founders that are showing how they’re doing AI and deploying agents in their companies and how they’re using LLMs to create more knowledge, more easily accessible inside. Keep doing it. This is a thing where we need you all to keep growing, to force those who are stuck in their ways to keep growing and then to highlight those of us who are continually growing. Without that, we need you to continue to learn, to continue to be as AI savvy as possible.

Chris Davis 25:06
Builders. Get it together. I don’t want to hear, you know what? In, in closing, I don’t want to hear one excuse because I go to school S K O O L, that online platform for, for community.

Chris Davis 25:21
And sometimes I’ll just type in AI or automation. There are so many groups now, with that being said, about 95% of them are trash in my estimation. For a senior builder, you’re not going to be able to go in there and actually learn something substantive. But there’s a solid 5%, maybe even 10% that are out there.

Chris Davis 25:40
You have to. Trial and error. Sorry, but I can tell you for sure. I have a community for senior builders that there is no trial and error required.

Chris Davis 25:50
One is free. Two, it’s already been proven. Right. But what, what I’m saying is you don’t have any excuses because there are so many ways that you could be learning how to identify your knowledge.

Chris Davis 26:03
You’re just simply not. Let’s call it what it is. And you need to those of you who are, great job. Keep going.

Chris Davis 26:12
Those of you in the community, I have to shout out all of you. Too many names to put on the podcast. But listen, you know how valuable you are to your companies. We talk about it in our office hours.

Chris Davis 26:22
We talk about it within the community. Keep going, keep growing. Now is the time to accelerate, not slow down. It’s a beautiful thing.

Chris Davis 26:31
So I say beware. What am I really saying? Beware of being stagnant. The savvy, the AI savvy CEO is going to push the limits and you need to be right along with them so that as they push limits, you remove limits.

Chris Davis 26:48
And what does that mean? That means the company becomes limitless and everybody wins in that scenario. All right, so hopefully this was helpful to both the builders who are senior in their career as well as the founders who are looking for such builders to get things done for them at a scaled way using AI. I hope something said today will help you in your operations tomorrow.

Chris Davis 27:18
As always, thank you for your listenership and until next time I see you all online, automate responsibly, my friends.