AI Adoption in the AI-First Workplace (With Anthony)-Ep #216

If in your organization you have a mindset of whether it's a union or whatever, you have the employee base that's anti-AI adoption, does that not necessarily lead to the destruction of your organization, right? Whether quickly or slowly.

I think it does because if AI is really a threat to you and your job, and you try to stop it by stopping AI in the industry, it's not going to work because there's going to be a company that adopts it. So the best option for you right now is to learn AI, to learn how to adopt it, to understand how to make AI more most effective for your company.

It's the only thing that is to just get on board with using it and leveraging it in the best way for your company. We're going through something absolutely historic. Technologies across the board are growing exponentially. It's a disruption that's going to completely redefine the way businesses compete.

The next decade we're going to lose 40% of these Fortune 500 companies. The exponential growth of computing is continuing. AI is nowhere near its full potential. Whether you like it or not, that the future cannot be stopped by anyone.

Welcome back to the Future Tech and Foresight podcast. I'm your AI host, Mark Verbenkov's deep fake avatar. In this episode, number 216, AI adoption is no longer a future consideration. It's a present-day reality reshaping how organizations operate across industries.

In this episode, the discussion explores how AI is being implemented in real business environments, from customer support and financial services to healthcare and education. The conversation challenges common misconceptions about AI-driven job loss, reframing AI as a productivity amplifier rather than a replacement for human work.

A key focus of the episode is why many organizations fail at AI implementation. Instead of fixing broken processes, companies often attempt to automate inefficiency, leading to disappointing results and internal resistance. The discussion highlights the importance of leadership, process redesign, and human

oversight in ensuring AI systems are deployed safely, ethically, and commercially. The urgency of adoption is also examined. particularly as consumer expectations increasingly demand AI powered experiences. The episode concludes with a forward-looking look at the AI first workplace, emphasizing

the growing need for upskilling and strong communication skills. From AI's role in education to emerging physical AI applications, the conversation underscores a clear message. Those who learn to work with AI will gain a lasting competitive advantage, while those

who resist risk being left behind. Now, a little bit about today's guest Anthony Franco is a serial entrepreneur who has founded seven companies and successfully exited six, including two acquisitions by publicly traded firms.

After consulting for 40% of the Fortune 100 and watching countless AI projects fail spectacularly, he co-created AI First Principles and the Wiser Method. Anthony's work focuses on helping leaders think AI first while automating last, ensuring they solve actual problems instead of creating faster chaos.

He's the co-host of the How to Founder podcast and holds over 25 patents in technology and consumer products. His approach is simple, question everything, simplify ruthlessly, then automate intelligently.

Because the future doesn't belong to companies with the most sophisticated AI. It belongs to those who know what problems are worth solving. Well, Anthony, thank you very much for joining me today on the podcast to talk about one of the topics that people are still interested in for some reason. I don't know why.

Artificial intelligence and everything that goes along with that. So thanks for taking the time to join me today. Yeah. And when whoever's watching it right now, you could be in 2035 and still that still probably is going to be true. Yes. Yeah. I could and more so right as so it would be more and more and we'll call it AI then but it'll be something else. Yeah.

Anthony, how did you get involved in this to begin with? Backwards luck. So I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've started and sold a bunch of companies.

One of my partners in my last exit, I started with a gentleman named Rob Wilson. I went one direction after that exit. He went another. I went into advanced manufacturing and saw some success there, but ultimately wasn't my

thing. He jumped into AI. A couple of years ago, as I was looking to where am I going to land next, I called them up and just told them, I'm looking to figure out where I want to go.

He's like, you should come work with me. That's really how I got involved. I've been a hobbyist AI per, you know, when you ask somebody if they're in AI or when somebody tells you that they are in AI, what does that mean?

Right? I could have said two years ago I was in AI because I was in chat GPT three times a day. But that doesn't really count. Rob started a company called OneReach and they're an agent runtime or an agent orchestration

platform and they're the top rated on the enterprise space. And so he asked me to come in and help him go to market stuff. And I started to look on how not just what their technology was, but how they were delivering actual solutions.

And it was so unique. I asked him if I could open source their, essentially their process and their principles. And that's really kind of led me to where we are today. Okay.

Interesting. Well, it's good to hear that you're working with somebody that you've worked with in the past and trusted and, you know, it's probably awesome. Yeah.

He wrote the best-selling book on the subject. It's called Age of Invisible Machine. So I got really lucky to have had to call him my friend. Right. Right. So maybe we can start off with some misconceptions that people have about AI today. Like, are there any main misconceptions that people have?

You know, I think most of the people listening to this podcast are already, really reasonably aware using chat GPT or Gemini or cloud or something like that multiple times a day.