The 2 AM AI Mistake That Can Destroy Your Business Overnight

Chris Hutchins: Welcome back to the signal room. I'm Chris Hutchins. There's a version of AI that quietly grows your business while you sleep. And there's a version that sends the wrong client the wrong message at 2 AM and nobody notices for a week. Same tools, the only difference is what you keep a human on.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Hey Chris, thank you for having me.

Chris Hutchins: it's a pleasure. really enjoyed having some some conversations with you over the last couple of weeks. I'm like, well we gotta do this for everyone else so they can actually listen in. Fascinating stuff you're doing. But why don't we kind of start with really who you are, what you're about, and tell us about what overclocked AI does.

Ethan Seib: Yeah, absolutely. my name's Ethan. I am 27. I live in Canada right now. my path that is that's gonna be more the east side. we like to bug them about the the Canadian accent. there is a stereotypical accent. It's on the east side, not the west side. but yeah, Chris my my path here wasn't exactly a straight line. just to to back it up a little bit.

Chris Hutchins: Okay, I got it.

Ethan Seib: I I spent a lot of years, my early years in the restaurant industry starting at 15. was there for many years after COVID hit my my town. It was it took a long time to to build back up. I moved out to the Okanagan for a year around that time to chase a commercial pilot's license after getting out of the restaurant industry. And I've always been wired for adventure and flying felt like a way to to make travel and freedom a permanent part of my life. very quickly, that didn't work out due to hitting a wall on the medical exam. And I ended up having to go back home and you know figure, figure things out what was next for me. after that, I had an opportunity with a national group benefits consultancy as a sales consultant for a couple of years. it built good skills and I come from a family of business owners in in that space. So I knew early on it wasn't where I wanted to be, but I did want to you know, build something of my own. And I was always, you know, raised to be ambitious about creating something and and building something of your own, but also being passionate about it. So what really shaped me where I was at, you know, during COVID, I was watching a lot of people working from a laptop, living in incredible places, building income without asking anyone's permission for, you know, two weeks off in a year. That really hit something in me. and it took time to to find the actual path. But AI was one of the things that clicked. around when it started getting you know more popular and just being talked about more, it Very quickly for for me, I believed that it would be, you know, the next internet boom in a way, the way it would shape work and just the world going forward. I was very confident in it. And that was a few years ago. We've obviously seen how AI has come out of that. there's some some companies that are going way and beyond with where they're

Chris Hutchins: Right.

Ethan Seib: With where they're at, right? Tesla building robots, crazy stuff. So we're nowhere at that level, but

Chris Hutchins: Yeah. Right.

Ethan Seib: Yeah, just believing early on that it was gonna be a a really big thing, I believed it was important to get into it early on. So that brings us to where we're at today. that's what became overclocked AI. what we do is help consulting firms build a predictable pipeline instead of relying on referrals and manual outreach. we call it an AI. growth engine and we can get into that in a little bit. it's three pieces. It's an AI agent that handles outbound research and personalized outreach. there's an AI sales department representative that takes over once someone replies. And answering questions, handling objections and and booking meetings straight onto the calendar 247, you know, that's that's some of the things that we try to focus on.

Chris Hutchins: That's that's fascinating. I I I really appreciate your resilience. You obviously you've you're heading down a pathway and then all of a sudden like, wow, I've got a pivot and you've kind of been kind of in that mindset that that's what you're gonna do. not everybody pivots like that. kudos to you for for making the change. I'm sure for somebody who really was kind of passionate and wanted to to fly airplanes, it kind of stung a little bit for a bit, you know, but look look at you now.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Exactly. And yeah, and and some of those those, you know, early on stories, I I know are completely you know, not a a part of what we're talking about today. But I like to paint a picture that, you know, for me I didn't know what I wanted to do. and I think there's so many people in this space that sorry, not in this space, but just out there that you know, they just go one thing to the other, not figuring out what is meant for them. So

Chris Hutchins: Right.

Ethan Seib: you're not alone out there. there's there's many of us and you'll find what, you know, works best for you.

Chris Hutchins: I'm glad you put it that way. And you know, it just it reminds me of something I heard Gary V talk about on on one of his podcasts. he he tells people this a lot. He said, Look, you're young. The one thing that you have, it's of the most valuable thing, it's time. And in your twenties and your thirties, you've got plenty of time to figure stuff out. So if you haven't figured it out, don't sweat it. You're in a really good spot. You've got the time to learn. one of the things that I was inspired by is when I first heard about Colonel Sanders launched his business after he was retired. He's six over sixty years old. So th there's hope. Don't don't get too discouraged, folks. You're doing just fine. So let's kind of get into a little bit more about, you know, how did you get into this this mode that you're in, you know, working with overclocked AI? How'd you get here? And what's an AI growth engine really for a consultant or a small team?

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Yeah, It's the idea that I had when I when I took this on was just jumping back to the COVID days, there was a big boom of obviously everyone was at home. so a lot of people started working from home. and coming out of COVID, things stayed that way for a lot of companies. many companies also switched to a hybrid model where you know you're at work some, but also still working at home. And I think a lot of people built an appreciation for you know being being in a place that I guess wasn't work that they were like forced to be, you know, they got to spend time around their families. They got to you know, focus on their health, right? Like how many people were had access to you know, be cooking at home instead of, you know, going a full day without eating or having to pack a lunch or something, or, you know, having half hour for a lunch, right? So it really, it really In a way, we were we we were a little spoiled and then we realized that, you know, we can take work wherever we go. going back to you know the COVID days, there was also a big boom of people on Instagram, right? you had content creators that were posting videos like I mentioned before, where they would just be, you know, on a beach somewhere working a couple hours a week. I knew that it was possible. I also, you know, like I Like I mentioned earlier, having to, you know, request from a boss to have your your two weeks in a year. I I just started to really struggle with the idea that, you know, you get one life, you get to, you know, you you you can live it how you want. Right. So that's what got me into this space. I wanted to not only have financial freedom, but freedom over my time and be able to live my life every single day, even from a young age, exactly how I wanted it to. I believe that answers one of your questions. I forget what the other question was there.

Chris Hutchins: I I I love the answer and it and i it it's fantastic to me because i I I remember going through the same kind of transformation or in transition during the during the pandemic. but one of the things that I found so remarkable is that the resiliency and the way that people seem to be able to step up and just navigate that difficulty. I had I was working in New York and had some team members, managers and directors, people that were all were respon responsible for teams. And b both spouses were home working they mean had to work from home. There's all the kids, all the pets. And honestly, that was one of the f best parts of it that I re that I like to think about. I mean, I got to know people in a very different way. 'Cause when you're in an office environment, I mean you can do the you know, a a random stop by at somebody's desk or whatever and chat. But it's a whole different thing when you're not able to do that. And then you see people in their own elevat you're seeing them differently. And I I I loved it. I got to know the team on a level that I probably wouldn't have any other way. So there was a a a silver lining in there. not to say that there was much else that was positive about the the the experience other than just the people part of it. And understand obviously heroism for all of us probably got redefined during those those years. So let's just you've kind of

Ethan Seib: Yeah.

Chris Hutchins: Teased up the the the growth engine a little bit. let's kind of go past a demo and what actually becomes the a true reality when an agent is doing the work. we're talking about agentic AI minus the hype, essentially. When AI is an a the agent doing some of the outreach and the follow-up, where does it earn its keep from your perspective and where might it quietly break?

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. agentic AI just means that the the system doesn't just answer a question, you know, one input, one output. It it takes action across multiple steps to to get something done, like, you know, handing a task to an employee and letting them run with it. in our world, that is an AI agent, researching and reaching out on its own, then handling replies, objections, and you know. building or sorry, booking meetings without a person actually having to touch each step. it earns its its keep on repetitive. you know, it's it's time sensitive, it's low judgment work. the follow up that never it's a follow up that just never goes cold. So what people misunderstand is thinking that AI is some separate unpredictable thing. it's not. It's it's an extension of the person who built it, I believe. there's definitely, don't get me wrong, there is definitely AI systems out there that are intelligent, especially like the large language models like ChatGPT or Claude. I I do believe they are at the the place of you know being able to to research and learn on their own. but as far as like the systems that we build for for companies, we make sure that they are, you know. predictable. the the systems that we have are they're trained to respond the way that you would want them to or you know how how you would. if something feels off, that's just it's a guidance gap, not really the AI going rogue on its own. So yeah just on on the oversight we run a a 90 day path like you know like most would in this space. month one is is usually an integration built around the specific business. Month two is where we watch the performance and make fine tuning decisions on that. every industry responds differently. but then month three is gonna be, you know, largely hands off and your first month where you know you're actually pulling in the best results. So you can see results as early as month one in in the the you know the work that we do. But just getting to your your other question there, the part about, you know, that that no one demos. honestly, it's it's almost never the AI itself, I find. it's what's it's it's what it's working with, you know. if a firm's process is inconsistent or nobody agrees on what a qualified lead is, for example, or even, you know, looks like, automating that just makes the mess move faster. before automation actually pays off, you need to, you know, have clarity on who you're targeting, what a good fit actually actually looks like and what it means for your team, and what your process is when someone actually says yes. So the AI amplifies whatever is already there, whether it is good or messy.

Chris Hutchins: So one of the things that's I've I've been kind of thinking about over the last several months and more even recently, when we think about building a business, a traditional business, there are career level commitments that people make for the types of roles that we would typically hire for. And they're not all the same. And it occurs to me that what you're doing is very similar in that way in how you're building your business. your business and you're building the functions, all agents are not the same, right? I think most people just start p you know playing around with the prompts. but maybe talk about that how how different that is, because y if you're trying to use it as a Swiss Army knife, that's where you're gonna run into some trouble. And I I think that's something that you're really solving for.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Yeah. there's one key word that I love to use in this space. and it's probably gonna be surprising, but relationships. relationships, the human factor of things are still so important. especially people that that aren't even looking at AI or just think that AI is bad. I yeah, I can absolutely see, you know, why why it would be taken that way if you don't understand it. or or know what it can do. yeah, you know, it it's very easy to just assume that AI's gonna take over. There's you're not gonna be any work for people. You know, it's it this or that. There's so many, so many different ways that you could go about with AI to to give it a bad name. But at the end of the day, the agent should never own anything that requires real judgment or carries, you know, relationship risk. an unexpected objection, something emotional. an actual negotiation. Those are all things that you know, still need a human. it's easy to lose a relationship rather than to to build one, you know? So for what matters more right now, I would say relationships, you know, I've talked to a lot of founders about what their day-to-day actually looks like. And the most common answer that they've been giving me is that they're spending a huge chunk of their time

Chris Hutchins: That's for sure.

Ethan Seib: calling around businesses, writing outreach emails, chasing leads themselves. That's one of the biggest bottlenecks we see in business, the business owners right now is you know, they're trying to scale, but they're spending so much of their time on something that they could either get a staff member to do or you know, even just use an AI tool for. I wanna be clear, we're not you know, AI, AI can,

Chris Hutchins: Right.

Ethan Seib: you know, replace employees. It is at that point, unfortunately. but you know, that's not what we're in the the business of doing. we're trying to make, you know, the staff that you already have more efficient. take a sales consultant, for example. People, people want to do business with other people, right? we're giving them the tools to improve their skills, cut the repetitive stuff, and just free up their time for what actually matters, which is the relationship, right? So automation should create space for more human connection, but definitely not less so.

Chris Hutchins: Yeah. It's I like how you put it. You know, just the context is such an important thing for people. If you're if you're uncomfortable with something like that, it really helps to start to understand that what makes AI valuable is when there's a human being actually operating it effectively that has good judgment, has the ability to it to to learn, has the ability to adapt. It's not gonna be stuck on one idea that that they actually can actually you know, to your point, the AI's not gonna negotiate. Well human being can. There there's just a lot of value to learning how to use it. And I I like how you're how you're talking about it because I think that's where people need to r really start believing in the hype and just you start start playing around with it yourself just to kind of see what it what it is and what it can do. And you know, I I would also you know ask for your your thoughts on this, Ethan. what should organizations be doing to help people? Because I don't I think we often try to do things as a hobbyist, but to make these things really work, I think there's an investment that needs to be made in in upskilling. Don't do you agree with that?

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I absolutely do, Chris. I just want to you know, well, I'll I'll use an example. I'm sure everyone actually I know my Instagram, for example, all the ads, because I'm in AI, is it's full of you know other people advertising AI solutions or you know their agencies. and I'm sure other people listening to this have at least come across an AI ad from time to time. So

Chris Hutchins: Right. Yes.

Ethan Seib: The thing is, most of those ads now are being AI generated and uploaded. that's where we're at in this day and age. very rarely do you actually still have humans making custom posts and you know, all the graphics for that. There's still some out there, but a lot of it has been taken over. you're gonna see a ton of people or agencies out there, especially on Instagram where it's just easy to upload and ad. They're gonna be making promises. They're gonna, you know, be sugarcoating things. It's gonna be nice graphics on it. and and it's gonna be promises. It's gonna be something like we guarantee X amount of blank, whatever you know they're they're promising, let's say lead generation, within you know a certain amount of time, right? I've seen it where it's it's like we will grow your business to like five hundred and sixty thousand dollars or eight hundred thousand dollars. Like these are huge numbers.

Chris Hutchins: Right. Yes.

Ethan Seib: And you're making these promises before you even talked with the the the company owner or or anything like that. so as far as the the governance part of things and just being careful, it's it's definitely a space that you want to do, you know, a lot of research on. if you're considering services, you can hop into Chat GPT or Clot and just start working with it, just start talking with it and and all that and That's not something you really need to research on unless you want to learn how to use it. But as far as knowing who to trust in in the space, there's gonna be a lot of people out there that are just kind of throwing around different different ideas, right? so just on the the government's part, for a small shop, the government isn't the the policies or or the committees, you know, it's it's knowing what you'd never let the AI say or do. unsupervised. And and this goes for the actual business itself. And you know, if if a business is going to incorporate AI, this is some of the guidelines in a way that they should be thinking about, especially when they are, you know, considering their customers and how the customers are going to think or feel about them having AI, right? so you don't want to, you know, there's certain things you don't want unsupervised. you know, you want to be as a human, checking in regularly, especially early on, it's less about the bureaucracy of the of the company and more about the integration, right? You built the system, so you're responsible for for what it does in your name. yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Chris Hutchins: That's exactly the the way it is in the in reality if you're running a b business with people. You don't there's certain things that you just you're gonna be monitoring. If you're running a business, you want to have people who will represent you properly and know where the barriers are. Don't cross this line, don't see these types of things, don't do these types of things. But here's here's what I want you to do. Those I think we we forget sometimes.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins: we're we're really still trying to ad address the same y the same challenges and your AI needs the same boundaries you would put around a an employee. It's really that simple.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it it really is. And this actually ties directly into how we built our our growth engine in the first place. we don't just install some off-the-shelf, you know, here's a tool that gets gets you more leads set up. We don't do that. we do a deep dive into the business first, you know, how they operate, who they sell to, what their process looks like, what the numbers, right? The the revenue that they're bringing in. You know, you can't make an accurate prediction of where you can bring this company if you don't know where they're at right now. So

Chris Hutchins: Right. Right.

Ethan Seib: you know, making just getting all the information for for what you need. and that becomes the blueprint for the whole system, or where the whole system is built around, using precision from, you know, past data and and similar case studies to set realistic targets instead of generic promise. but real quick, Chris, here's where the government piece comes in. Even though the the build follows that blueprint and it it's meant to, you know, give to a company and we we would manage everything that we integrate and and that company would basically follow the plan that we put in place to get them to where they want to be.

Chris Hutchins: Right. So w can I can I get you to talk a little bit about this because you're you're talking about some of the foundational things that I think people need to t to understand a little bit better. w when you're implementing and we're just around the governance piece of it, where do you see things kind of usually bump into some some barriers? Is it the AI itself or the messy data and the processes that are sitting under it?

Ethan Seib: The the Yeah. Yeah, It's I yeah, in in my experience I find that a lot of like what's going wrong in in you know the systems is going to be on the human side, right? it yeah, i in my experience, you know, especially when working with with founders and you know the key decision makers in the space.

Chris Hutchins: Yeah.

Ethan Seib: They have a way of of wanting to do things, right? And how they want to run the the business. And, you know, coming in as a strategic partner with them, we absolutely want them to be running things. We want them to be in charge. they tell us how they want to do things, but at some point you also have to, you know, let l if you've hired somebody for a s an ex you know a a reason, right? You have to let them do what they're there to do, right? So we can make suggestions.

Chris Hutchins: Yes.

Ethan Seib: but we're not gonna run the company for you. We just manage what we what we put in place. And you know, in in the case of our company, we would, you know, usually have like weekly, weekly calls with whoever we set it up with. And we want to do weekly check-ins, you know, just make sure that you're getting the results that you want. If we're behind on something in the project, we will be up front with you about that and, you know, tell you where we're at and where we're going. I think I got a little off topic there. but I think you wanted me to more dial in, you know, the AI compared to the human factor, where does it usually fall apart? Was that the the question?

Chris Hutchins: Yeah, well, yeah, where there where are some of the barriers that you get to? Because I mean, ultimately, I I'm I'm just thinking about this from how you do an implementation and where you've had the best success. What are the things that were in place that the the the your clients had started to deal with that made them ready for you to be able to help them take things to the next level? because there's definitely some that are really good. There's some that are maybe struggle more than others. But I'm I'm just I just want to make sure our listeners are hearing.

Ethan Seib: Mm. Yeah.

Chris Hutchins: if they're thinking about doing this, what are the things that you know, you're gonna hope that they're thinking about and doing it so they're ready for you.

Ethan Seib: Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I the thing with our our company is we are, you know, we we do offer custom solutions. So if there was something that we want to do a deep dive on, we could, you know, absolutely do that. So I think I've talked a lot about like the lead generation of s side of things. but you know, for example, a question would be like how do we track all that, right? What happens if this company doesn't have certain systems set up already. So there would definitely be you know, we we can come in and we can work with the the current systems and operations that you are working with, but it would be a different conversation if there was things that were not working and needed to be changed. so we could definitely set up some systems there and then, you know, get get you on our systems. We get all of your information moved over, make sure it's all organized. you know, it it would be like a big data transfer in a in a way. and then from there, it that's only if your your current system is just needing an upgrade. but for the most part, the the main bottlenecks are going to be more on the the human side of things, right? like I said, we would be there to to help you scale and get your company to where you want it to be. and that's that's assuming that you're not happy with where it is now or you are just ready for that growth. So it it it definitely speeds up the process if you have been managing your operations well and your team well and and you know you're you're you're happy with where you're at. but if there's you know if you're needing to make changes within a team, that is going to be one of the bigger bottlenecks that will that will slow you down.

Chris Hutchins: Yeah, you you you're you're kinda g leaning into some of this already, but w maybe we can just touch on where's the line in in terms of what where you need a human to be s you know, remain in the loop. and what happens and what have you seen happen when you know it's somebody actually removes that and there's no human in the loop? What what are some of the types of things that you've seen in in in what would you tell people? in in terms of thinking through where they need to put those lines so that they don't end up, you know, undermining what they're trying to accomplish.

Ethan Seib: Yeah. like I mentioned before, it the biggest thing and the the most simple thing is going to be if you have broken systems right now and we don't know that, we would obviously need to identify those. But if if if we start adding to those broken systems, right, such as lead generation, if we start filling your calendar and what you have currently is already not working or things need fixing, you're just gonna create more of a mess on top of what you already have.

Chris Hutchins: Yeah.

Ethan Seib: so you know, it just going back to where I just mentioned that we could, you know, i upgrade those systems and things like that. It it really is all about it, it's not about like just giving you more services, more things to pay for, right? it it really is if we're gonna optimize this for you and manage things and get you to the targets that you wanna hit, let's do it right. Let's let's not start right in the middle. Let's not, you know, start, you know, a couple steps ahead. if you're not ready to be bringing in more business, we need to identify that first, rather than, you know, just piling on more leads, more business to you that will just get scrambled.

Chris Hutchins: Right. Yeah, and I that's that that's hugely important. I think it actually leads into this, you know, the some of the ideas around how does this free people up? You know, if we're putting these agents in place and we're using them properly, it creates capacity, you know, you know, presumably anyway, for for for human beings to be able to do much higher level work than they can do today. maybe d talk talk a little bit about that in what you see perhaps with some of your clients where All of a sudden they're they're they they're able to tackle things that were never even big they weren't close to getting to until some of this things these things were automated.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I it it's hard to it it really is case dependent on you know what what's going on in that business. But example, I I I mentioned earlier that you know, we I've spoken with a lot of people and like these are these are the business owners, right? Like they have so many things to worry about, to to you know, work on, especially when they are in the mindset of wanting to grow the business, to be spending

Chris Hutchins: Yeah. That's right.

Ethan Seib: All your time calling or sending emails. I I talked to somebody who said that he had to to research his own leads, I guess. And I was just thinking like how time consuming that would be. Imagine if the leads were coming in on their own. I I can't even think of an example of what what a a business owner would, you know, do in their spare time. Maybe they'd go golfing, right? But it at the end of the day, if if we could if we could fix one task that you're spending all your time on every day, most of your days in a week, all year long, like that is so many hours you could be putting towards other things, you know, building your relationships. You could even you know, you could even still do all of that if you really wanted to while having the automation and you could be just bringing in so much. So It it's it's not necessarily about taking the task on and now what task can they do now that that first one is done? It really is you have all this time now. What do you want to do with it? And what do you think is gonna be the best, you know, move for for your business? Where do you want to be?

Chris Hutchins: It's it's so fascinating too, because we're we're hitting some some things that are pretty much universal it across multiple industries and in in healthcare in particular. So I've I've I've talked to a lot of clinic clinical people, doctors, nurses, and one of the things they've always been a little frustrated by is we l when we're bringing new technologies, the conversation always tends to center around the productivity. but as I've listened to them They've echoed very loudly something that you just talked about. Is what you're doing gonna give me time back? And that's a massive, massive challenge that we've got to do a much better job with. And I'm glad that you're thinking about it that way. Because do you you're right. You know, it it is a lot of work that you're doing. And you, you know, you being a CEO yourself, it that I found out that means chief everything offer. So I mean everything's on my plate. And if I don't do it, no one's gonna do it because I don't I haven't hired anyone to do it. so that time measurement is one of the things that I think is a really, really big deal and kudos to you for realizing it and amplifying it because I think that's a really important thing for us to aim our attention at as people who are trying to improve the the lives of human beings and improve the value of the work that they do, make it easier and more enjoyable so you're not just pun pressing a button for eight hours. I mean those those things are not not all that attractive for a human being to be doing.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm.

Chris Hutchins: But I I I love that. Given time back. Kudos, man. I love that. You've talked about governance too. Go ahead.

Ethan Seib: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I love what you just brought up. Yeah. I I love what you just brought up, Chris. you know, just talking about like looking out for you know other people and and all that. it's really easy to start your own business and you know, be be driven by money and success and you know what you want for your own life. But in my journey of figuring out where I wanted to be or work, I didn't want to just be a

Chris Hutchins: Yeah.

Ethan Seib: you know, another number to a company, where you're just giving them results and there's just you're just not really how do I word this? I felt like I wasn't making an impact, I guess is is how I would put it. So I wanted to I I always wanted to be in a creative space. and I love, you know, working in tech. it's you know, I I built my own PC. So just getting back to we had a conversation earlier about like what overclocked means. overclocked is when you just like Boost your your PC and it's you know, you just ramp it up, all the specs on it. So we want to do that with companies. But just getting back to the the human factor. it's it was never about like getting a paycheck. You know, it's I always wanted to be doing something that helped others in a way. And maybe some people don't see it the way I do. you know, some people just hate AI or think that we're, you know, taking taking jobs or whatever. I I want to come in and I want to help people and free up their time and and hopefully just give them the perspective of what it would look like to to have a bit more of your time back and and be able to spend it how you want to. Maybe that is like diving headfirst fully into your business, doing more tasks that you could let you know, you get where I'm going with that, Chris. But yeah, you know, it's all about looking out for each other there.

Chris Hutchins: We do. Yeah. Yeah, I I I I I love it, man. I love it. You know, you talked a bit about governance and I think over the course of my years, I've seen governance talked about f almost exclusively from an academic exercise perspective. most organizations I've been around had stood up a data governance program, and started bringing in all the senior level people when there wasn't yet anything to govern or asking dis there was no decisions to be made. So over time those things kind of disappeared, but now here we are with AI and governance is important as you've already stressed. if you're working with a small group, let's just say it's a three-person shop, w it's almost sounds like it's a luxury to do where, you know, we gotta we've got to create this team. But maybe talk to talk to me a little bit about that. It's not r it sounds like a luxury, but I don't know that that's really the case. What does it actually look like for an operator with no compliance department? Why should they care about if something goes wrong? Or before something goes wrong, perhaps maybe that'd be better.

Ethan Seib: Yeah. I'll I'll I'll give you an an example and I think I can relate it to this. But I just spoke with somebody who was they do consulting in a in a way, but they worked with the US government, so they relied heavily on government contracts. they recently told me that they had been doged you know during this this

Chris Hutchins: Right.

Ethan Seib: this presidency and that they actually lost their government contract. So, you know, very quickly after that they they had to go more private. And I think they do still do some some government work, but it's just not coming in the same way that it did. So circling back to your question, Chris, the governance part of AI, I think, is extremely important. And it's even just giving, you know, the public peace of mind. AI in in spaces like healthcare, government, military, big, big things. You could even like, you know, say electrical grids, like things that the public really rely on. it needs to be tight. You know, there needs to be people that are overlooking these things and have proper regulations. Just because, you know, think about like what would happen if if data got across, you know, got in the wrong hands, right? So that's not something that the public wants. as well as, you know, it just just information, right? or AI getting to the point where it is running on its own. So it always needs to, you know, in a way, maybe have like a kill switch, right? I I yeah, I don't know how that would look like there, but again, AI has gotten so big in in certain areas. But talking about the small shops, getting onto the the smaller side of things. I think having too much regulation would actually be not good for businesses. it's already, you know, there's already enough hurdles to to start your own company and to you know maybe you're trademarking something, right? It just it it takes long a long time to actually go from the day you decide to start to, you know,

Chris Hutchins: That's right.

Ethan Seib: making it a success and getting through all those hurdles, all those those roadblocks, right? So if you were to start regulating AI in a way, you could I you could definitely, you know, regulate it a little bit. But as far as having mass amounts of of regulation where you have to check by everyone, or, you know, go through certain streams like government or whatever, there it it could just be very it could hold things up very quickly and kill dreams and

Chris Hutchins: Right.

Ethan Seib: And and things like that. So when it comes to small companies, it comes to like things like data or whatever, like they should absolutely be exercising extreme caution. sp you know, you're implementing clients, right? I I would have access if I implemented clients, I would have access to their stuff. So, you know, it really does come down to to trusting people. but yeah, it just at the end of the day, you gotta be careful with you know, who what what what you're limiting, but also making sure that it's not just a complete free for all.

Chris Hutchins: Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. As we kind of wind down a little bit now, I I just w I'd like to have you kind of put your futurist hat on for a second. And you know, look ahead, you know, maybe for the over the next year. where do you see things moving for small businesses over the next year, in line of what you're seeing in in the things that you're you're deploying and building. In fact, maybe you could talk about if there's things that you're that are in the in your pipeline that That you're excited about that you might be able to do to offer clients in the next year.

Ethan Seib: Yeah, absolutely. so Chris, I'll just say I I think in the next year this stops being a novelty. there's so many people right now that there's three categories, right? There's people that implemented AI from the beginning. I've spoken with a lot of companies that they don't even work in the AI space, but they have learned AI, they build their own products in shop to use for their own company and maybe the clients that they're working with, but it's not in the sense of an AI agency, right? So there's people that adopted it very well.

Chris Hutchins: Yeah.

Ethan Seib: There's other people that have been very skeptical, but they've done a little bit, right? So, you know, they start talking about, like, yeah, you know, I started running this project through Claude and I just wanted some feedback on it. and you know, they're thinking about, you know, getting into something simple like lead generation. I would absolutely say that that's like fairly entry level for, you know, businesses getting into AI, right? and then you're gonna have the people that, you know, they still hate it, they don't like what's going on. you know. You'll have people that worried about the the economy. Sorry, not the economy, the environment with these big data centers going up or you know, the amount of water being used for them. So things like that. I'll I'll say I hope they find better solutions. I heard China has been dropping data centers into the ocean. I think that's a much better way of cooling them rather than like near city or something. So but yeah, just yeah, i for cooling, right? So yeah, I I don't know,

Chris Hutchins: Yeah. That's an interesting interesting notion. I heard that. I love it.

Ethan Seib: If that's I don't know exactly if that's like eco-friendly. So nobody nobody get mad at me for that. I just heard it's a little better than you know some of the other solutions that that have been coming up. So yeah, like I said, it's I think it goes from stopping or it stops being a novelty and it just becomes how small firms operate. the ones who adopt it thoughtfully, not just the shortcut versions, but the real infrastructure versions, they're gonna

Chris Hutchins: Right.

Ethan Seib: you know, outpace the ones still doing everything manually. And that gap is going to widen fast. We've already seen that. it it's just gonna get, you know, more and more bigger. when I started my company this year, I've only been in this space for a couple months. But when I started it, you know, everyone was saying like this is the year of the agents, right? so agents, you know, doing those repetitive tasks are going to be bigger or sorry, more common. But I think after this, you know, agents are gonna be not not, you know old or anything, but like they'll have been around and AI is just it's it's just progressing like every day. So yeah. I think for me, I'm going to be, you know, really wanting to focus on refining the the growth engine. And the growth engine again is not one product, but it is more a a a multi-phase product line. So you know we would install different things, right? So once we've finished doing one thing, See how it runs. Make sure you've gotten your return on investment there. And then we would start on another one. And the growth engine, it would be completely considered like we do all these things, they're all running smoothly. You're scaling as we keep doing these. More leads coming in, you know, maybe you have more room to hire more people, right? It's all about growth, looking out for each other. like I said. So yeah.

Chris Hutchins: yeah, I I I love this. so so Ethan, if if people are hearing this today and they want to learn more, where c where where can they go to find you?

Ethan Seib: Yeah, my website it has all my services. You can book a call with me there. it is going to be overclockedai.net. and then you can find me at LinkedIn. that is going to be Ethan Saib spelt S-E-I-B. And I'm sure Chris will have those in the show notes. that last name it gets it tricks people sometimes. Yeah, no worries.

Chris Hutchins: The operators who win are the ones who know exactly which decisions to keep their hands on. In the meantime, go check out the operator lab. And thanks, Ethan, for trading seats with me. I've had a blast with you today, learned a lot, and I look forward to hearing more good things. And congrats on launching your business, and I wish you great success. Let's plan on catching up again soon. And I want to be learning all the things that I should be changing about how I'm operating my business as well. Thank you so much again for being on the show.

Ethan Seib: Absolutely, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. And just one quick note is I connected with Chris by doing a podcast with him first where we get to talk about everything Chris is doing and give him the spotlight. So if you'd like to have another perspective of what's going on with Chris, you can check out my YouTube channel. I will have his video up very soon.

Chris Hutchins: Thanks so much. And for for today, that's gonna do it for this episode of the Signa Room. I'll see you all next time.