Latest / Reframe First / Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled | AI, Revenue Growth & Sales Transformation

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Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled | AI, Revenue Growth & Sales Transformation · Reframe First

• Oleksij Rak: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Free Frame First. I'm Alexey, the host of the podcast and let me welcome our today's guest, Jake Dunlop, founder and CEO at Scales Consulting. Jake, great having you here. ⁓ Jake: Yeah, I'm excited. This should be a fun conversation. I love talking about building and scaling businesses. So excited to get into it. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, awesome. I'm also looking forward to that. Thanks a lot for joining. And from what I learned at Scaled Consulting, your mission is to change the organization, sell and partner with customers and your revenue performance agency, helping B2Bs grow smarter, scale faster, and so on and forth. And with the use of AI. So you tell us more about what you do at Scaled? Jake: Yeah, definitely. So a little bit about my background. I was a multiple time VP of sales success operations. And what I started the firm to do is I had worked with consulting firms before and consistently felt Like I would get this really great plan and strategy, but I'm like, what do I actually, I need somebody to do this stuff. And so that's why I started Scaled was really to be able to come in and, help companies not just understand the direction they need to go, but also how to execute against that and bringing in people. So fast forward to today, we've got about 45 plus consultants in the business. And we do a mix of what you might consider more kind of revenue operations systems type optimization. We also do quite a bit of enablement work. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. ⁓ Jake: around helping people to optimize their revenue processes and playbooks and things like that. And then the fastest growing part of our business is our generative AI deployment. what we've really worked to develop, we've got a software called Journey as well that we went live with last year, and it's getting ready to go through a pretty big overhaul. Where we feel that the future is AI assisted, everything go to market. Everybody... Oleksij Rak: I live Jake: at a company is going to have their own AI co-pilot that knows exactly what they do. It's going to surface up insights for them. They can still chat and interact with it and really allow people to run deals in this new AI assisted world. And so that's really what I'm most excited about some of the work that we're doing today is really helping companies to say, yeah, that's how we used to grow in scale, but now we're going to deploy this way. And we're going to make sure that we have very clear understanding of Not just, we've purchased a tool, we've done some automations, but how do I actually work toward a North Star, which is that every single rep has an AI co-pilot. And that's really the future that we're focused on, you know, helping our clients and, you know, prospects and other folks to kind of work toward. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, awesome, awesome. And like, could you tell us a bit how it works in practice? Jake: Yeah. Well, yeah, what we find is most organizations are still, I would say we're at like step one to one and a half, which is we've maybe purchased a tool, a co-pilot, a Gemini, a chat GBT, Claude, insert one. And we're still requiring a lot of people to do prompts. And the future is we call it, there's kind of three layers to AI. There's interactive, that's your chat. And I think most people have an understanding of that. Two is proactive. So actually sending you alerts, Hey, this thing happened. you need to know that this is getting ready to happen, et cetera. So being able to be proactive, like I'll give you good example. We've got a deployment that just went live a couple of weeks ago where we take in, and this is a mix of the third bucket, which is also background automation, where as soon as a call recording finishes, we automatically are populating very customized kind of hot point notes, automatically syncing with Gmail, crafting the email for the rep, and then automatically scoring that call. And there's been a lot of revenue technologies. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah. Jake: That can do parts of that. But really the future that we see is that, you your reps are going to be spending all their time selling and that the proactive layer is going to be paying them on what to do and how to do it, et cetera. And then we're going to have these background automations. So every rep is going to have this cockpit that has an interactive. That's where I use my chat. A proactive that says, Hey, here's all the things that are happening in your deals right now. You know, here's the five things that you should do today. You have your numbers up there. So, you know, your own win rate and pipeline coverage. you know, numbers for you specifically versus these median numbers that we tend to manage people to. that's really kind of through a series of automations is how we get to that kind of final cockpit where you've got that one place you plug in like a fighter pilot or something ⁓ F1 driver and you get in there and the lights are telling you what to do, you know, and now, and now you still have to steer, you still have to drive. And that's what's going to separate, you know, mediocre Oleksij Rak: I'm No. Mm-hmm. you Jake: or to poor performers to great performers is the people that really start to realize how to leverage AI throughout everything from top of the funnel through customer renewal and churn. So a lot of this is just kind of tactically, we have an AI jumpstart program. So we pick three initial automations. Usually they're very similar things to some of the examples I mentioned. then kind of help to build that roadmap because most people need to realize this is a one to two year journey. You like you're going to be transforming the way that these roles work. not just adding in a cool new thing. It's you used to do your job this way. Now this is how you do your job. Your cockpit has changed or the car has changed, et cetera. And, you know, everyone's going to have access to the same exact models. So the driver is what's going to matter. So step one is we need to get them set up correctly. And then that's where the salesperson or marketing person or customer success person needs to come in and execute. So tactically is really just helping people to get started on that journey. by picking the top two or three use cases and then building that roadmap with the end goal of that final stage that I mentioned. Oleksij Rak: Yep. What usually are the top two or three use cases that you mention? Jake: Yeah, that one I just mentioned that we just finished that new deployment for is a really good one. I try to tell our clients and really anybody, there are a lot of things that we have to do in revenue teams that add no value, none. Chasing people down, writing a follow-up email. And it's not that there's value in the follow-up email, obviously, but getting to V1, that's a good use of somebody's time. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: there. Jake: That's usually what I tell people is where's the bottleneck in our org, in our revenue machine today, and let's focus on those use cases. So like I said, manual data entry, teeing up emails that are going to be relatively similar every time, that's a great AI use case. Automatically enriching, and again, a lot of people do enrichment and there's a lot of different tools, but as a rep, Oleksij Rak: I'm going to Jake: Why am I going to three different sites? Just aggregate that in my CRM for me or push that to my sales engagement platform for me. I would say account research and insights is the other one. Call it manual task post meeting stuff is one bucket. Prep research and then coming up with ⁓ super relevant insights to, hey, I know what a VP of operations, not in just manufacturing, not in just industrial manufacturing, but a VP of operations in heavy equipment manufacturing. These are the top two or three trends that you're going to face with tariffs over the next two quarters. Here's how I think I can help you. And so there's, really an ability now at the top of the funnel to get very, very, targeted and relevant to people. And then the third use case is let's say post-sale, ⁓ of customer onboarding is just chasing people to book calendar invites. You know, right now I can put an agent there that kind of, sees all of your reps calendars, like their onboarding team or your customer success. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Okay. Okay. Jake: And it just does the booking for you. know, Jake misses a meeting. Well, guess what? AI takes over and you know, sometimes we'll give them names. So then Roger takes over and Roger just does that, that dumb back and forth stuff. You know, I see an account that's in trouble, like their usage is down. Well, why don't just auto craft the email in your draft. So then you walk in and you've got these three growth emails to send and these two churn reduction. So those are kind of three typical use cases, top of funnel getting hyper specific. Oleksij Rak: Okay. Thank you. Jake: very specific to your company-based research and insights that we can use to engage people. of funnel, automating a lot of those routine activities that doing every day. And then on the customer success side, taking over a lot of the non-human value add interaction. ⁓ me you an email that says, want to catch up, base, or check in. A human doesn't to craft that as a part of it. ⁓ Those are three areas throughout the funnel and we could get into some marketing use cases too we see as probably the most common places where you should start. Oleksij Rak: Was it your AI or your factual assistant who was chatting with my team about scheduling this meeting? Jake: No, no, no, I have an actual chief of staff. Yeah, I have an actual chief of staff. But again, like it's a good example. ⁓ know, chasing, you know, you know, ⁓ have on a given week this week, I think I have 70 meetings this week. And so ⁓ calendar is kind a nightmare. So there is some of that human nuance, but crafting the follow up email. My chief of staff uses AI for that. Oleksij Rak: It is, it is. Jake: helping to build version one of a statement of work. We use AI for that. And I think that that's one of the key point to hit on here for people is that just think you have your interactive layer. That's where you're kind of starting it. What most people's AI deployment should be is up to here, human in the loop. And I think what a lot of people are looking at, we're seeing these like automated SDRs and stuff and ⁓ seeing like real results from them. It's that the future is, it's like I said, In F1, if you're an F1 fan, they're still a driver, right? But these things are supercomputers, you know? ⁓ is how you need to think about your AI deployments, is that there's still a human in there who's making the judgment as part of that. And we're not trying to automate that away. And so as you're thinking about your AI deployments, you should not be looking... There are use cases, like I said, like automating notes to Salesforce, automating ⁓ those things. I still put that email as a draft. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Jake: for the human to come in and have the context. So, you know, that's, think a really important point to make is that you need to be thinking about a lot of your AI deployments of like, how far can I get this to where then a human should take over? Oleksij Rak: So. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely agree with you because we're doing the same. regards, you mentioned about hyper personal personalization in sales outreach or in sales campaigns. So you research company specifics and then you know the trends and you can send something really, really personal. Jake: Yeah. And it's, and it's for the individual. I just, just want to call this out really quick where I think a lot of companies are getting in trouble. Now is a lot of the insight signals that clay and a lot of these other tools are surfacing or about the company, which you have to realize is most people care about their department and their role and where AI can do is like, look, I don't know a lot about being a VP of operations and industrial manufacturing, right? But it can, it can allow me to connect with you at a level that shows like, this guy gets it. You know, this guy, you know, he, knows what's happening in my space. So this is going to be a worthwhile conversation as a part of it. So that's how I think about that. You know, that piece in particular is like, that's a good example of human in the loop where it's about the person. And if you can't be relevant to the person. Versus the company, that's where I see a lot of people's go to market strategy really falling down right now. Is there too focused on just, I know this about your company and the person's like, well, I care about my department. This is how I get compensated. This is what my role looks like. not just the company company, company, company. Oleksij Rak: Okay, awesome. So you learn about the company, you learn about the person, and how do you learn about the trends? How do you know what's specific for this? ⁓ Jake: AI man, just ask AI. Say what are the trends for blah, blah, blah? It's like, I don't know, you know, as a part of this. So yeah. You know, I think don't need to be an expert. Let AI tell you. Oleksij Rak: Okay. How much proper automation can save in terms of cost or terms of percentage of your work, like labor costs, whatever? What does it take? Jake: Yeah, we measure this, know, typically, yeah, yeah, we measure this for all of our deployments. And that's another really important thing to bring up that whenever we do one of these, you know, to partner with a company, ⁓ very upfront and say, look, you're going to judge our impact based on revenue, you know, as a part of this. you know, this isn't just a, you know, a, well, yeah, it's going to make people more productive, which it will. mean, ⁓ Oleksij Rak: you Okay. Jake: literally like three to five hours a week, easy with just some of the automations. Because we can track the before and after. I can track exactly what this person is doing before and after as a part of it. But a lot of these, look, if we're doing a better job and we're building AI solutions around having more relevant messaging, well, it's meetings booked as part of it. So yeah. You know, like I said, you should be looking for AI to make both a productivity impact and then the productivity should lead to increased revenue. Oleksij Rak: So still. Yeah, for sure. There is a trend of the market and I read a few articles about that. Personal is growing insanely, but the productivity ⁓ of companies usually does not really benefit much from AI. I recently a discussion with a guy here on the podcast and he mentioned like... people gaining their personal productivity use that save time to just ⁓ more coffee, know, and are not that big. ⁓ Jake: There could be, mean, yeah, and we never say you're going to capture a hundred percent of the time saved. ⁓ but we, know, you should recapture part of that, that time, you know, which I think is a really good point that, you know, you know, we don't go to a client and say, well, they, you they were spending 20 minutes doing this. Now it's five, you're to get 15 extra minutes every time they do that of selling time. You know, if we, if I can even recapture 20 % of that. Right. Then that's, that's a meaningful impact. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. can I capture more? Is there a way to capture more? Jake: capture more what specifically. Oleksij Rak: of the productivity gain. Jake: it's interesting. Hypothetically, should be able to recapture all of it, right? Like hypothetically, there ⁓ shouldn't a world that's like, just work ⁓ harder, I is what a lot of people do. ⁓ I think the to your question is actually this. We have to, and I touched on this briefly before, is we have to looking at Oleksij Rak: Yeah, but you can't see that. I have it in my... Jake: these as like, ⁓ this is a cool new way to do this thing. Right. And I think what I see with a lot of AI deployments that we walk into or people that are just getting started in their, in their real journey toward this, you know, proactive background world they're looking at it as like, this is going to be helpful to them. The reality is what the messaging actually has to be is, no, no, you don't do your job that way anymore. Now you do your job this way. And so there's a change management aspect to it that because I think many organizations aren't, aren't there yet where they're not comfortable or they're not already saying, no, no, guys, we built this because this is how you do your job now. Not, ⁓ we built this and you can use it for this. It's like, no, you, this, I don't want to see you doing it this way anymore. And so I think that, I think that that's what I see is the biggest gap. Oleksij Rak: Hmm. Jake: from people getting to your point, the full benefit is that they still are kind of making these AI adjustments and automations in a way that's helpful versus understanding what we're really doing is reworking the way that these people work. We're changing the way it's the same way. The easiest analogy is the internet. I wasn't in the workforce when the internet had already been out, but somebody in the mid 90s had to go train Oleksij Rak: Yeah, because they're changing. Jake: Rachel, like, hey, Rachel, we're going to send this in as an email now. Like, we're not going to send a handwritten note. And no, Mr. Executive, Mrs. Executive, I'm not going to print your emails out for you on your desk. By the way, that was actually a thing. People would like have their emails like printed from their assistant. And so, you know, we have to realize as companies and as executives, we are responsible for retraining the way that our people work. And it's, and it is, there's never been a time in my, you know, Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Jake: my work experience, your work experience that has been this massive shift in not just a technology, but a rework in the way that we work. And I think most companies don't realize that's what they're signing up for. it's like, you know, probably again, when the internet came out, people were like, ⁓ yeah, the internet's going to be helpful. Like, ⁓ yeah, being connected in this, that'll be helpful. And then finally they realized like, ⁓ no, no, this is a new way that we work. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, because you basically change the script of the work. before you had to go or somebody had to go research elite and prepare some proposals, whatever, nowadays it's done by AI. We got some AI agents that does the research on ⁓ person on the business behind the scenes and you get the result which you use for your follow-ups for next steps. Okay, awesome. ⁓ Jake: Yeah, exactly. Oleksij Rak: With regards to the buyers, how did the buyer's behavior change recently? Because you're helping people sell, but on the other hand, there is the other side and they also changed a lot. They also got AI, they also do research, they come prepared. Jake: Huh. Hmm. That's right. That's right. mean, if you look at that's it, that's it. I mean, if you look at, if I was a sales rep, I would, I would ask my marketing department how much of our traffic, you know, you know, over the last two years has come from agent referral, right? A E O or G E O. I've heard kind of both terms, you know, generative engine or agentic engine. you have to assume that your role and our role as humans that's evolving too is you're not going to have all the same information. Everyone's going to have the same information. And so if you don't know where you're strong or weak against a competitor, if you don't know how they talk about their product and somebody is coming in, I talk about this in my book, Innovative Seller, we've got different buyers. We've got buyers that are coming in vetted. I talk about vetted, educated, cold, and then self-service. You know, you have buyers now that are coming and they're like, look, I already, you know, with your two competitors before I'm already at step four in my process. Then these people might be just like educated, like, yeah, we know we need to do something. And they've already done their research. And so I think a lot of this is B2B sales in particular does not do a good job. We try to run everybody through this conveyor belt, which are like our opportunity stages, not really appreciating that people are coming in already at step three or four. And so maybe for that first call, I need to have my solutions engineer, my manager and somebody else on the first call because they're already further down the funnel. So the future is that we have to meet buyers where they're at in their journey and really understand that more and more buyers are coming in later in the funnel. And we've talked about this for a long time, but it's true now. You know, we've said, ⁓ buyers come in with X percent education and like kind of, but with generative AI. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. . Jake: I immediately, can copy and paste your link. Who are the top three competitors that they compete against? Here's what's important to my business. rank the two other people I should talk to. Give me one wild card startup that's doing something cool to talk to as well too. And help me to ⁓ kind make this decision for me. And so, ⁓ you a lot of this as a seller is just, you've got to be more in tune with where customers are in their journey and ask those questions. You know, hey, I talked to some people, we call it the magic email with every... salesperson should send before the first meeting. says, Hey, I talked to some people that are here. Some are here. Let me know where you're at in your process so I can make sure the team shows up prepared. And we just have to have that mindset throughout the journey that, you know, our job is to not just run somebody through our conveyor belt. We've got to be able to adapt to buyers being all over the continuum and have different conversations based on where they are. And that's the same for marketing content and you know, everything else as well too. Oleksij Rak: With regard to marketing, you can target specific areas of buyers and specific of their own conveyors. But with regards to ⁓ how you target that? Jake: Mm-hmm. Yeah, again, I think a lot of this comes down to if you're going to be, people are going to want to talk to you, this is maybe to the heart of your question. I don't need to talk to you ⁓ give me like a basic X. just, I already know this, right? I want to talk to a person about the nuances that are specific to my business. And if an as a revenue org, you're not listening. Oleksij Rak: You Yeah. Yeah. Jake: and you're not customizing what the plan's going to look like for that specific business in that specific situation, somebody else is going to do that. If your only job is information giving, is just as good, if not better, than most sellers at doing that. Oleksij Rak: that's what I'm hearing a lot. need to understand the buyer. need to understand where he is and what his specific problem is at this point of time. And address that problem. ⁓ Jake: And I think a lot of, yeah, and I, well, what I was going to say is I think a lot of sellers would hear what I just said and you said, they said, I do that. And then I'll ask, I was like, how many of you have actually listened to your calls? Like how, when's the last time, are you constantly listening to your calls? How can I be more customer centric? How can I, no, most of them, you know? So I think that that's a really good, like area of opportunity for a lot of people is if you aren't constantly getting better to be better in tune with the buyer, again, ⁓ buyer is going to go, ⁓ why am I even talking to this guy? Right? Like I I, I tell you know, how I buy things. say, one of the very first questions I'll ask the sales rep, said, if we do move forward with you, are you going to be the person who actually does our implementation and make sure we're successful? And well, why Oleksij Rak: the Jake: because that's all a company cares about. The company, I buy something to get an impact from it. So you to understand that, that the company cares about the impact, not this middle part. The middle part is to get there. And so I'll say, okay, great. Hey, if we get a next call, I want whoever's going to be our account rep, I want them on that call. Why? Because if you're going to hand me off, why I'm... If you're just going to hand me off and I care about being successful, then... Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Jake: And so that's where sellers I think really need to hone in on. Oleksij Rak: You mentioned one to two years. It's a journey for one to two years. How long does it usually take for companies to adapt? Jake: I don't think anybody's there yet. I heard a stat, the stats a year old. And when I heard this stat, it might even be like a year and a half old. At that point in AI, our human brain was already like two years behind what AI was actually capable of then. I don't know, we're five years behind what AI could possibly do right now. So I don't think anybody's, I don't think anybody... that we've seen and again, like that's obviously something that we were working with our clients to get there. I still think we're early in this and still executive leadership. I don't really think fully understands the art of possible and what they could be doing or building now versus slight improvements over what they were doing. So I don't think anybody's there now. That's why I think one to two years is realistic. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Jake: for people and then who knows what it'll be. I mean, who knows what will be possible in two years? I don't know what's gonna be possible in two years, like as a part of this. So you just gotta start the transformation now. Oleksij Rak: Nobody knows how that is. Yeah, but when you start working with company and help them fix their sales process or bring AI into their sales process, how long does it usually take for company to fully switch to a new way of working? Jake: Well, that's why we do the jumpstart program to start is you kind of got to get people in this new rhythm and building out a roadmap to get from point A. think realistically, if you were focused, you could get there in months, nine to 12 months, because again, it's not just the tech, right? The other thing is it's also the change management. Like, Hey, I'm 20 years doing this job. I'm 10 years doing this job. You we ⁓ humans, don't have a switch, right? Where it's like, ⁓ yeah, I'll just never do that again. Oleksij Rak: people. Jake: So what I would think about, is I would think about that you're not just signing up to do this AI experiment or this next thing. We're signing up to change the way that these people work, like I mentioned in the very beginning. And so ⁓ you to be focused on that as your end goal. And I think if a company was really dedicated, I think they could get there in nine maybe, nine to 12 months. Oleksij Rak: That's still a long journey. Yeah, nine months to a year or so. Jake: Yeah, I mean, look, obviously a smaller, more nimble company could probably get there faster. It's just the reality of what I'm seeing in the market. talked to hundreds of executives and private equity firms and sales leaders every quarter and at the top is where a lot of the knowledge is missing. Again, not really understanding, know, they have like, I've got Claude code downloaded on my terminal, you know, my computer over here. Right. And because I realized like, if I don't understand what this thing can do, I don't really even understand what the art of possible is. And so I think a lot of this is it could move faster, but the executive layers in many of these companies are just not staying up to speed on the art of possible. And so they're not, you know, they're not kind of looking to. make that wholesale change that is going to happen. I tell everyone this, I go, look, I don't really care if you work with us or not. You have to do what we're saying. Whether you do it with us or you build, I don't really care. But again, it's like the internet. You just don't do it that. Stop sending faxes, Rachel, right? Like send an email as a part of that. Shout out to fax machines, probably half of you. ⁓ Maybe know what a fax machine is. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. What was my man? next one would be, what are the changes? ⁓ What the trends on the market do you see? Because we ⁓ discussed ⁓ AI here ⁓ and have and they expect you to approach them ⁓ with knowledge how solve their particular problems. What else do you see? What is changing? Jake: We've talked about a lot of the big changes. speed at which this is going is changing. Like I'll give you good example. We had a client, we started to build, they're a Microsoft shop. And so we started to build in Azure AI Foundry, which is their build layer, which requires code. You know, it took us like a month a half to get like V1 of this, ⁓ seven agents live Teams. Well, then Microsoft in November at their conference, Oleksij Rak: Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Jake: a whole brand new version of Copilot Studio. It's like, well, ⁓ guess we can just go build there now. And then fast forward to today, we had an onsite with them, their whole executive team two weeks ago. And it's like, should we be doing that anymore? ⁓ ⁓ think a lot of this is just, you got to realize that the models that we use is Claude better than OpenAI is, ⁓ Gemini releases this new model. Who knows? And so I feel like Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. . . Jake: That is another really important thing to understand that unlike previous like development, right? You would kind of, spend a lot of time planning. You would deploy something. It's going to have a shelf life of years. know what I mean? Whereas in this new world with what AI can do and what is possible, you've got to be more, more nimble. You know, like you've got to be able to be more nimble and pivot toward what the art of possible is. So even when we build a roadmap, we know that in Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Jake: two to three months, we're going to need to evaluate, this still the right path to go down? great example of this is Claude, their CEO. This is maybe three or four weeks ago now. Anthropic CEO said they are not allowed to have a product roadmap more than 90 days long. And so ⁓ if of the companies that's leading the way in that space says, guys, we don't know what's going to happen in 90 days, you've got start your journey now because If you're still building off of what you knew about AI to nine months ago, right? You're going to continue to build like older cases where it's like, well, I can do this now. And so it does, ⁓ there's level of speed that is happening that is increasing the quality. Usually whenever we get faster at things, the quality degrades, right? Like you send more emails or template it or, know, insert a lot of things as the quantity increases, the quality degrades. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Jake: AI is the first thing where I can increase quantity and quality at the same time. That's a whole new way to think about how we interact with machines and those things. So if you're a company and you're getting started, you have to realize that these things are going to evolve and that you have to be nimble as a part of this. Oleksij Rak: Absolutely. That's what I experienced either. Over the last couple of months, it has changed so much with skills, with memory management, with all the kind of stuff. it's just different. know, MCP is in play ⁓ a year already, but still like a lot have changed. And my personal experience, I'm trying to build something around cloud coworker and some memory management tweaks and stuff. And then next release and it's all gone. Jake: man. Mm-hmm. Oleksij Rak: completely different system and it's advanced. How you even keep up? if you're building product on the edge of innovation and you're trying to sell it to other clients, how do you keep up with that? Because it's changing. That's what you mentioned. You're building something a month or two and then you're sitting together with the board of directors of whoever, physical executives. ⁓ And it's probably not relevant anymore. And they look at you and like, Jake, like, what have you paid for? ⁓ do you deal with that? Jake: Well, yeah, look, the, can't predict the future, right? And again, it goes back to, you know what your North, what's our North star here, our North star is, I'll go back to what I said in the beginning. Our North star is that everyone, and then every company is going to have their own AI brain that knows everything about your company and your data, blah, blah. you keep your North star, I'm trying to create an AI assistant for every role. And you keep that as your North star. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Jake: you can be more flexible, right? Then you're like, okay, well, the isn't actually helping him to do this. Let's fix that. And ⁓ now we've got this new model of thing we can do. Let's implement that model. So I think if we of lock in that that's the North Star, that ⁓ we want have a co-pilot for every role and that goes up to leadership and then that goes across your org, that can allow you to stay sane as a part of ⁓ this and not feel like you're constantly having to retread. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Jake: Because the agent concepts or ideas you had could still just be very applicable just to this new thing as a part of it. It just might be a little different on how you're going to get there. Oleksij Rak: ⁓ It feels like new tools are evolving, like new versions of models or whatever, new Gemini, whatever. It's just a tool. When you implement some agents, it helps with this particular process. It's still there. It can use just different tools. Jake: Yeah, exactly. Because again, a lot of this is just being comfortable, being uncomfortable with these new tools. Like you said, Claude, cowork, right? Like, ⁓ we have to all realize everybody, if you are a knowledge worker, you have to start investing in retraining yourself that you can't sit around and wait for your company to do it either because, you know, or go make sure you find a company that's, you know, moving, moving quickly. But the time is now. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Jake: If you're still messing around with just basic prompts or, I had it fixed this email for me, you are going to be the, the, cliff that we're headed toward is a lot of actual people who are very smart and competent, good people, smart. They just move so slow because they don't, they're not investing in understanding how AI can help them to get from point A to point B. They're still thinking, well, this is going to take Oleksij Rak: him. Jake: for, you know, this going to take eight to 12 weeks and da, da, da, da, da. And it's like, it does not have to take eight to 12 weeks. It can take this, but you don't know, you ⁓ a smart, capable ⁓ who's been very successful in their career over the last 15, 20 years, but you, you, you can't comprehend the new art of possible. And so, yeah, are you going to be under ⁓ from what you're used to? Probably. But a lot of this is about investing in ⁓ these tools. and not just dabbling, but really understanding how to leverage them. Because if you don't, again, you're just going to limit yourself to what knew made you successful five years ago. And that's just, we're in a different world now. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. a ⁓ about the problem of, not about the problem, I'm seeing facts that like companies that are in the market for like 15, 20 years, they are sitting on a huge pile of data, of knowledge base, and they are not just utilizing it. And I'm seeing like kind of opportunities to help use the knowledge. For instance, they have knowledge in travel industry, they have knowledge of customer support for 15 years, of how they were solving all kinds of issues and they have not yet automated, not even automated, they do not have the help or that will help the actual customer support guide to answer to a ticket. do you think about that direction in terms of getting use of your... knowledge that you have in the company somewhere documented in your theorems. ⁓ Jake: Yeah. I mean, that's why a lot of our clients and even us as a firm, you know, it's kind of crazy. If you'd have asked me, you know, at this point last year, Jake, are you, is your consulting firm going to be, you know, building stuff and, know, implementing work in snowflake or, you know, MongoDB? I would have probably not, but that's what we're seeing is right now. The key is just to get your data connected and then to add the, you know, semantic layer. ⁓ on top that can then activate the data, but the differentiator is, do you know what data matters and what doesn't? And that's, that's the key to a lot of this that, one of the advantages we have of being a go to market consulting firm is we know what good sales looks like. know what good customer success looks like, good marketing. And so we've got a lot of data around, how do you, know, we've got a lot of, know, after, don't even know how many millions of documents we have at this point, but can now say, Hey, Oleksij Rak: to. Jake: Yeah, we've got the data, but the agent, like what the agent is doing with the data needs to look like this. And so I think that's really the key is that there's no point in getting all of your data into one place. If you're not the execution needs to happen at the department level, because the department level, you know, has the internal knowledge to know, Hey, this is what good looks like. And so I need to use this data versus that data. So that's my, you know, Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jake: kind of call it like big picture here is I think for a lot of organizations, it's really trying to get focused on the use cases and the bottlenecks in our go-to-market, not just deploying AI or getting all our data there, you know, or it with IT and IT doesn't know how to help HR recruit more effectively, right? But maybe I have this type of data and this type of data. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Jake: And then, you know, there's an HR leader who says, Hey, the agent needs to run like this or a finance leader like this or a marketing leader like this. So it's the context around the data. That's usually the bottleneck. I think what I see more and more and more. Oleksij Rak: So, it's not the data, but it's the knowledge how to use the data. Jake: What do you do? Yeah, people do this all because again, we do a lot of rev ops. Like, well, we want to get all the data, da da da da da. And then one of the very first questions will say, why? What are you actually going to do with it? And if you, if you can't answer that question, then, then you're, you probably need to take a step back because if you don't know the, the why we need it, what we're going to do, well, then we can do this. Isn't this like, no, be specific. What is the revenue metric or the, or the productivity metric that this by getting our data here is actually going to solve for. And if you can't answer that question, then you're probably quickly towards something that's not going to have a big impact on your business. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, sure. Jack, my last one would be of what are you building nowadays at Scales? Or are you building anything at all because it's changing so fast? Jake: Yeah, no, we definitely know we're all in, man. I mean, we're like I said, this idea of the kind of central rep hub is what we're heading down building right now. So we built a product already. If you go to meet journey, M E E T J O U R N E Y dot AI. That's kind of our first like go to market chat focus, right? So it's a, you know, integrate with your CRM. Every account has kind of a mini through line. That's kind of V one and then V two is Now from your data, can I surface the relevant insights that actually tells somebody what they can do? And I think that's what's missing is so many of these tools are focused on here's the data. should you do? know, like, and AI can actually help us to say, look, based on that, here are the seven things that Jake needs to do today. Here are the 25 things that Ryan needs to do today. you know, as a part of this. So, you know, that's my, you know, thought here. is that most organizations need to really have this more, I don't know, holistic view, ⁓ going to really struggle to deploy things that are going to have impact, like what you mentioned earlier. Oleksij Rak: you're building a human orchestrator. ⁓ Jake: There's plenty of jobs for humans the future, but going to have to be good. I'm sorry that is the reality that again, if you're that rep, you gave this example. You just got this new AI work and it ⁓ saves you hours, two hours a day. I don't know. And you spend that same two hours, not getting better, not better connecting with customers. ⁓ You're going get beat. You're going to be one those super talented. whatever people that Jake over here, Jake's maybe a B sales rep, but he's so much more productive and effective that he beats you. And because he just knows how to work a deal and how to use AI and how to, you know, also put himself in the loop. And he's focused on using that two hours a day to get better or make more sales. that's, that's the reality of where we're headed to just from a workforce standpoint. Oleksij Rak: Awesome, Jake, that's a very interesting discussion. I got a lot of questions, but you are out of Jake: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it. definitely looking, you know, make sure. Yeah, it's up to you. Yeah, do you want to, we can, yeah, if we want to like, yeah, I mean, you can obviously edit this out. So yeah, you tell me if you want to do like a quick wrap up and then I can say some things at the end. Oleksij Rak: Thanks a lot for coming and before wrapping it up, is there anything? Yeah, before wrapping it up, is there anything you would like to add on top of that? Jake: I think we've covered a lot. think hopefully my, my, my, my final advice is just pick one of the things that we talked about today, right? If you're like, okay, I heard this Claude cowork. I heard Claude code. heard journey. you have to start your own journey, toward becoming AI effective now. And you can't afford to wait because this stuff is just snowballing. And so if you don't start to get on that snowball now, you know, you're going to be, you're going to be behind. And you're going to see a world where you're going to have the people that have really embraced this and invested the time outside of the day to day. And then the people that didn't and in two years are going to be in different spots. Oleksij Rak: Absolutely, that's true. Thanks a lot, Jake, for the discussion and have a great day. Jake: Awesome. All right. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, thanks for coming.