The AI Playbook Every Small Business Needs Right Now

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly cleaned up. Expect the odd misheard word.

1. 0:00
   Youssef Tawfik

   All the current technology is highly accessible, but people are not looking for it. Looking into the next five years, it's really about how we catch up, when do we catch up, and how fast we want to catch up. With AI, if I was a software engineer, should I be really scared? AI is here to honor the human mind, not to replace it. AI won't replace people, but someone that knows how to use AI better will replace people. What does that mean to the market, though? From a business perspective, that means way faster business cycle and overall reduction of cost.

   The ability to sprinkle AI into the business, takes it to the next level.

2. 0:33
   Wes Mathews

   So I'm super excited for today's guest, Youssef Tawfik. Dude, thanks so much for coming on. But first, I want to introduce you to set the stage, because we're talking to a national basketball team player from Egypt. Right. That's kind of where you come from. But you're an entrepreneur now. I love entrepreneurs and kind of just talking about, you know, why are you an entrepreneur? Right. I think you've you've been in it. You've had your company now for about three years. But like, why didn't you go down the traditional path of being a lawyer, doctor or engineer?

   Like, why put yourself through that and become an entrepreneur?

3. 1:08
   Youssef Tawfik

   Yeah, so I come from a background of software engineering. I got my degree in software engineering, worked in big tech for a while. But I think the whole concept of being a cog in a big machine didn't really sit well with me. And the more effort you put in, you're not getting a reward on top of it. You know how much you're making at the end of the year. You know how much is your salary. And really, your effort doesn't matter. People coast for years in corporate and they could you get paid the same thing.

   So honestly, that whole not being effective, not being really putting a putting something into out there in the world didn't sit well with me. So that's why I looked into entrepreneurship. And yeah, that that works for me really. Right.

4. 2:02
   Wes Mathews

   But it's kind of scary, right? Because some people love that predictable. I know I'm going to get at the end of the year. I know how much time energy effort I need to invest. Like going out on your own could be scary, right? Because that could be a big fat zero or lose everything you have. Or like, how do you how'd you get in that mindset of like leaving that predictable model?

5. 2:24
   Youssef Tawfik

   I don't know, honestly, I've been a risk taker for a long time. And I trust myself in the sense of I know that whatever work you're going to put, it's going to pay off maybe in a way that you don't think is the best way for you. But it's going to pay off a way or a way or another in your personal life, in your professional life, because anyone I believe, if anyone put in work into something, they're getting a payoff. Either or like it's it's it's not debatable.

   It might not be in the thing that you think you want, but it might be something better. And usually it's always something better. So honestly, for me, it's putting honest work, it's putting it's putting the right amount of work, the right amount of dedication to something and it will pay off. That's at least in my opinion.

6. 3:13
   Wes Mathews

   So I love it, right? You have to. Well, I hate to say you have to, but I feel like I have to believe in myself, like if nobody believes in you, you have a lot of people rooting for you, some rooting against you. You can't believe in yourself, right? Like how I get that mind over matter, right? But, you know, in that in that in that entrepreneurial switch, right? Like, how did you first you know, what did you see in the marketplace? Because I also feel personally, you have to believe in yourself and you have to have a vision.

   Yeah. Like for me, it's like what problems are you solving? Like, what was your vision to, you know, you have Revi, which we're going to dive into, but, you know, you believe you believed in yourself to do something and now you're sitting in Revi. What was that vision you had?

7. 3:58
   Youssef Tawfik

   Like when you when you're in technology, you feel that everyone is caught up. Everyone is using the latest and greatest. Everyone is up to date. But really, when you look into. What's really happening in the business world, you see that everyone needs to catch up. Everyone thinks that they are really there out there. And there is like, oh, we use the best and latest technology. But really, when you dig deeper into them and what they do, you guys are you guys are pretty late. Like there's a lot of work to be done here.

   So that's really the demand or the gap that we've seen in the market or I've seen in the market where it's like, OK, I'm a software engineer. I know the latest and greatest types of technologies out there. I use it myself. When you look at an SME or small, medium sized business, there's a lot of work to do there. Only the only the enterprise level companies are out there and actually utilizing the latest and greatest technologies. But everyone else, they're still independent paper excel sheet type of era.

   And we're in 2025 now. So that has been a very, very. Apparent gap and an issue with the market globally, not even only in Egypt or the United States or in Europe everywhere.

8. 5:14
   Wes Mathews

   What's interesting to me, right? As an entrepreneur, like you mentioned work, we're in 2025. I started around like 2006. And at some point, I thought businesses would be like buttoned up. And at some point, businesses would have it figured out. But I think as I maybe I'm a little smarter, more experienced, as I said today. But I feel like I talk to so many businesses that they don't even have a proper CRM. They're not doing the most basic things from a marketing perspective. So like from a software perspective, I look at the world from oh, six till now, like, oh, my gosh.

   But especially from now until the next five years and some of the things that are coming down the pipe. Talk a little bit about that, because I used to tell people back then, you know, you don't want your sister's cousin's brother managing your marketing. Right. Because things are complex. The joke today is that person can because all the software and all the technology out there, but in your world, like, how do you even wrap your mind around that as a small business and how do you even begin to get started to figure out what's going to make the biggest impact and what you actually even need to do?

   Absolutely.

9. 6:26
   Youssef Tawfik

   So as you mentioned, it's it's really it's really that illusion of, oh, we have everything, everything is but buttoned up, but really comes with education or, you know, maybe the let's call it the temporarily ignorance. People right now are not ignorant. They're temporarily ignorant. So that means that the available information is available, but no one knows. So they haven't accessed it yet. So with all the current technologies, it's highly accessible, but people are not looking for it. And when they start to look for it, they start to have conversations with people like us.

   It's like, OK, we want to start to implement, let's say, for example, AI, we sit down with them, we uncover what's happening, what they're doing, how are they doing their internal processes? But then we discover that you guys are stuck in still no six. You guys are still using pen and paper for this. You guys are still having a secretary sitting down and manually sorting through a list of people, calling them on the phone to do specific things, even though this could be highly automated. So with that, looking into the next five years, I think the next five years won't be a huge boom in technology for the latest and greatest.

   I think for the next five years, it's going to be those businesses trying to catch up and trying to reach twenty five. Then what's new, businesses will always be behind the curve because technology changes at an extra extraordinary rate. And if you don't have the money to back it, you'll you'll get behind. So it's really about how we catch up. When do we catch up on how fast we want to catch up? Because we looked at A.I. And I don't want to jump into it right now, but the booming that happened in the last five years, I don't think we're getting something like this in the next 10 years.

   I don't think, for my opinion, I think it's going to stall a little bit and it's time for people to catch up.

10. 8:25
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, it's interesting. So like your background software development and. You know, I just I have this vision of, you know, if you're a software engineer, like you were trained on code and maybe PHP, C plus, what have you like, that's not my forte. But like, what does this mean? Just to be like a software company, right? With this behemoth that's now here, which is A.I. So like if I was to write code, am I should I be really scared? Or is this a really big opportunity?

11. 9:00
    Youssef Tawfik

    I think history repeats itself. If you think a few years back at the Industrial Revolution, people in any factory, they used to do all the processes on a very manual basis. They used to knit, they used to put metal together, and it was a very slow supply chain. As technology evolved, as we have machines or we've created engines, that automation process, it didn't remove those people or those people or not now jobless. No, it evolved that. And something that I always say for people when they talk to me about the future of A.I.

    and how it's risky to be to the human mind or to humans. I feel that A.I. is here to honor the human mind, not to replace it, because the human mind is so powerful. It should not be doing things that A.I. cannot. So when we're talking to business owners like, oh, I will replace us, even software developers, even in my team right now and the team that were actually leaning into A.I., because the more you lean into A.I., the more productive you are, the more that you'll be able to push out, the faster you'll be able to push out, the more efficient you'll be able to push out.

    So it's really people won't replace A.I. won't replace people, but someone that knows how to use A.I. better will replace people. That's interesting.

12. 10:23
    Wes Mathews

    I met a guy yesterday. I got to share this with you because coming from software. So he's an attorney and I was talking to him when I said, hey, I said, I had this like really complex legal document that I used ChatGPT, right? And said, hey, I'm looking at this, this, and that. And it analyzed it, gave me all the feedback. And then I took that feedback, right? And then gave it to the attorney and said, hey, I think I just saved 80% of the hours, which I, which I did.

    Like I would have had a bill this big, my bill was that big. And I'm talking to this attorney and I said, does that scare you? And he goes, no, because what we actually do is, is say, Wes, save that step. Let us do that. And we're going to get you that much better of a document. Like you don't even need to do that step because we're going to do that at a better capacity than you could. And we charged less. And I was like, holy cow.

    Like I didn't think about that and they're already doing it. So I love the idea of like, how do you embrace this to amplify what you're already doing so you could run faster, do better. So when it comes to software, like what does that mean to the market though? Right? I think back, let's go 2006, like software is clunky, software is expensive. What does that do for you? Does it make everything faster or less expensive or talk about that landscape?

13. 11:45
    Youssef Tawfik

    So we have to look at it from two lenses, right? We have to look at it from a more technical lens to actually what's going on under the hood versus what is its effect on the market. So if we, if we talk about it from a more technical perspective, the code that AI generates right now, it's not good yet. It's good, but it's not good yet to just live on its own. So software developers and companies should be very, very careful to review that generated code to make sure that we're not pushing things that could, you know, be at security risks, scalability risks, and it could just damage the whole code base.

    So that's from a technical perspective. It's not that good yet. We have to proceed with caution. That's what's next with it with developments, but it just can amplify and multiply the productivity, but we're not giving it, giving in 100% yet. That's number one. Go ahead. Nope. Go ahead. I was going to say that and now from a, from a more business perspective, for me to be able to generate, let's say a piece of front end or a CRUD system, like create, remove, update, and delete system.

    I can generate that now maybe five times faster just because it's way easier right now with AI. It's pretty straightforward. It's to the point AI can execute that. So you'll see the effects on the business side that, okay, when you come to me, instead of me telling you, oh, it's going to take three months to develop it. No, I can tell you, it's going to, it's 1.5 months. We can finish it in six weeks. That means better performance on the business side, way faster business cycle and overall reduction, reduction of costs.

    I've seen a number of companies, they're now advertising. Oh, we started to use AI and our costs are now down on work with us. So it makes technology more accessible. So that's why I mentioned that in the next five years, it's going to be people catching up because 2006 technology was expensive and it wasn't that good. It's not that good. Right now, being able to modularize things and being able to push things out faster, smoother and better, that's going to allow those SMEs to actually catch up and be as efficient as the big guys.

14. 14:02
    Wes Mathews

    So as a visionary entrepreneur myself, right? There's a couple of things that have happened the last three to five years. One of the biggest things in my opinion is cryptocurrency, right? And if you take an entrepreneur, they usually embrace it. There's thoughts around it, et cetera. If you take the average person, it's like the wild, wild West. I mean, regardless, it's the wild, wild West. Like it's a, it's a, not, it's not regulated. People have made a lot of money. People have lost a lot of money.

    Like when it comes to AI for businesses, I sort of, I think about that, right? Like user beware, or, you know, I think a lot of people associate AI to like Claude or ChatGPT, but it's so much more. But if you're a business, like what should you be thinking about? Are there compliance things? Are there, is there any type of standard that is being talked about, about being created? Because I feel like the gold rush is here, right? And there's a lot of companies that are like, Hey, we'll AI your business or do this or do that.

    And to me, it's like, man, you got to sort through all that to find the right company, like Revy to help you. But like, how do you, what's your thought and position on that?

15. 15:12
    Youssef Tawfik

    So when it comes to compliance or regulations in general, let's be honest. Governments are scrambling right now. No one knows how to regulate this thing. So this is a big, big gray area right now. No one really knows what is a good regulation for AI. Even Sam Altman is going out on Twitter. It's like, Oh, AI, this AI, that they're trying to push that bill. They're trying to push that bill. So when it comes to regulation, we don't know yet. There's nothing solid yet out there.

    But when it comes to actually how to differentiate a good company that wants to AI your business, let's just call it that way. It's really like you have to take a step back with good quality AI and even let's take a step back, one step either further, that AI that is available for consumers right now, that is the tip of the iceberg. AI has been here for a long time. The word artificial intelligence at its core can be interpreted in many, many ways through many, many dimensions into many, many systems.

    Right. But when you're talking right now, what's available to the consumer, which is LLMs, that was a game changer because it's very accessible. But when we were talking about even cryptocurrency and blockchain, that was too complicated of a technology for the normal people to be able to go in and use it. You needed to do this. You need to, that wasn't as accessible as LLM. So that's why I feel that, okay, now the transition between blockchain in 2022 and cryptocurrency into 2021, 2022, when AI started to raise, I said, this will stick.

    Blockchain is dying and cryptocurrency is dying, but this will actually stick. Right. So from there, how do we move and how do we actually determine if this is a good move when it comes to AI is to take a step back, look at our operations. AI is not the one, it's not the genie that's just going to come and solve everything in my business. When you're interacting with any AI model, the most important thing is actually the quality of the data that you're pushing into it and how it reasons with it.

    And let's just call it at the quality of the LLM is the quality of the data that you're pushing it through. What are the prompts that you're sending it to? So the first step when you're interacting with any business, how are you guys collecting your data? How are you automating the process? What, what, what type of the reports that you guys are generating, how are you generating it? It's just a, is that a piece of paper that someone signs on it physically? Is that an Excel sheet that has some mathematical formulas?

    How do you really take that? So it's really the setup first, make sure that the business is up to par with their technology and then the ability to sprinkle, let's just call it sprinkle AI into the business takes it to the next level.

16. 17:50
    Wes Mathews

    So that sounds amazing, right? I think any business that hears that gets excited, but I also feel like a lot of businesses I talk to, it's like, like they're so, they're so far away, right? Like we're talking about 2025, like they're just catching on to like 2015. Like I use certain tools that keep me efficient. Like I use Calendly, you know, we're a HubSpot shop. Like there's certain things that we use, but a lot of businesses are still on like yellow pads and like things are like very archaic.

    How would a business, I mean, obviously they could sit with you, but like, are there, are there some low hanging fruit things that cross all small businesses that they can say, Hey, is it like, if you're putting this into a process AI can automate this at a faster, better rate than you could think of. Like is that, how do you introduce companies to these concepts?

17. 18:43
    Youssef Tawfik

    We start to usually ask what Excel sheets you guys are using because usually that is the first low hanging fruit because Excel is a very, let's call it reliable. It's like an old car. It's a very reliable motor, but it's going to give out with the speed and the, and the needs of today's, today's business, right? So you actually need to start to think with yourself, what, what, what spreadsheets are we using right now? So from there, okay, we're using the spreadsheet to do, to track inventory.

    So we need an inventory system to actually track it well, to make sure that everyone has access to that. It's a centralized database. That's one our tracking our customers. Is it a notepad that would just type writing on it? You need a CRM. So it's really looking at your day to day operations and thinking, what takes me longest time to do, what takes multiple people to do and it should not be that what is redundant where I'm putting the information multiple times at the same, for the same information that I should not be wasting my time on it.

    So those are usually the lowest hanging fruits when we're interacting with any business. Obviously it's like currently, obviously a CRM, obviously an accounting system. Those are the things that you should start to look at jumping in and AI, I like to use it when it comes to analysis. Once you have your house in order, once you have your data centralized in somewhere, now we can start to expose AI into it and make it to, to allow us to make smarter and faster decisions.

18. 20:14
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah. I think for me, what's interesting is like, I have a nice office, but I do most of my meetings on zoom. Zoom's got the AI companion, right? That'll record everything. And then I have, you know, I use ChatGPT. I use the paid version cause I think it's secure. Maybe you could verify that for me or not, but you know, it's kind of crazy like using this AI companion in your zoom meeting and then syncing that over to ChatGPT, ChatGPT, understanding my persona and then like all the stuff I don't want to do.

    Like it literally spits out like here's your next step. I almost feel like I'm cheating. Like it's just so easy to use, but even that, like I, I glaze over that thought process, but I'm just curious like how many businesses these tools are right in front of them. They're already using ChatGPT is like 20 bucks a month for the one version. Like, I mean, if they, if they, hopefully they never listened to this, I probably, you know, everybody's listening, but you know, if they were like, Hey, this is two grand a month, like I'd pay it.

    If it was 10 grand a month, I'd have to pay it. I mean, it literally adds that much value. Yeah. The value it's providing. So like, are there tips like that? Right? I get, you know, should I use ChatGPT or Claude or Grok or this or that? I'm like, I don't know. You know, I'm not, I'm not the AI guy. They're all the same. They're all the same.

19. 21:35
    Youssef Tawfik

    At the end of the day, at the end of the day, it's just an LLM.

20. 21:41
    Wes Mathews

    Define that acronym right there. You've mentioned it a couple of times, but. Large language model. It's a large language model. What does that mean? Like, is it scouring the web to get their information? Like how do we even know the information that has is accurate?

21. 21:54
    Youssef Tawfik

    We don't because it is, it is, it's using whatever is out there on the internet to be able to generate those responses to you. Right. Just like when you do any Google search, you need to read out what's different. It's not the ultimate truth, because it's using knowledge where it's online to be trained. Those are large language models to be able to give you an answer. So it's not the ultimate truth, but then, and as you mentioned, and really if you remember the thought process that I walked you through, you're doing it right now.

    You have zoom first, you have counting, you have up spot and you have chaggy picking. So you have your house in order. Let's sprinkle AI in there and let's make everything talk to each other. Right. So with there, it's the same thing when you're trying to, let's just call it specializing the AI in your business, making sure the AI knows your business and knows you well. So we try to use the LLM to reason and analyze data, not just come up with random hallucinations because when you're interacting with an LLM, it hallucinates, right?

    It sometimes it gives you the worst response that you've ever seen. Like you're stupid and that comes back to prompt engineering, training data, all of that. So when you're setting up an LLM or an AI model for your business, getting your house in order is crucial. That's huge step number one, making sure that the quality of the knowledge base is top notch. The prompting that you're sending to the LLM is top notch, cleaning up the data, making sure everything is to the point. So it can reason with your information, with the information that you provided about you, about your business, about your goals, about your SONA, about your tone, to give you the most applicable response for your business.

22. 23:44
    Wes Mathews

    So I only kind of hang around with visionary entrepreneurs because I am one and that's just my tribe of people, right? And I feel like visionary entrepreneurs have really good ideas, but they typically lack the ability to execute. So like based on your experience, if that's true or not, like who in the company is best suited to like, number one, there's like the idea generation of like, you just, you just kind of dove into a problem of, you know, I use Zoom, Calendly, this, that, and the other.

    And I'm like, I still have to move these things around and I just want them to be automated. Right? But like who in that company is number one, coming up with a vision of how to do this and who's actually executing and seeing these things through and then rolling that out to the team and embracing all this change in your experience.

23. 24:31
    Youssef Tawfik

    I think the visionary plays a huge, a huge role into that because for me, what we do is what we try to do is when we're interacting with any company is educating first. And after you educate and open up the possibilities, usually the visionary starts getting ideas. The light bulb starts to pop. I can't tell you how I can implement AI in your business. You're the only person that can tell me, how can I implement AI in your business? My role would be giving you the possibilities, giving you the ideations, just lighting the light bulb, bulb it on top of your head to make sure that you get how it works.

    And you naturally, a visionary will just apply it onto the business directly and he will come up with the ideas. Netit opens up the conversation of, OK, Youssef, I need this to talk to this and this and this and this. I need to do this. I need to do that. Next step with that is sitting down with them and assessing feasibility. OK, Wes, I think that's a great goal. I think we can achieve it by doing all of those steps, but this is not feasible. The workaround is this.

    So that is usually the conversation. The visionary is very important in that process because they are the one that tell me how can I apply directly onto the business.

24. 25:48
    Wes Mathews

    We were talking about something before we started taping, and I think it's important going back to you being an entrepreneur and, you know, looking at this world with eyes wide open. It's, you know, how do you how do you get through your day, right? We talked about like delegating, you know, so we're talking about the visionary on this side, but then you as the business owner, right? Like you're able to kind of kick start the conversation, get the ideas flowing. But like what's important to you to like grow and scale a company and not getting sidetracked of where all this AI and all this cool stuff could take you, you know, like what would you surround yourself with?

    You like just run yourself with really smart software engineers to say, here's the vision strategy, figure it out. Or how do you how do you operate?

25. 26:28
    Youssef Tawfik

    So for me, it's honestly, I'm blessed that I come from an engineering background. So the conversation that I just described for you, where you come up with the idea and be assessed feasibility, I can do it here. So it kind of goes directly into people that is already we have this idea. That's how we're going to do it. That's the architecture of the system. And that's the tools that we're going to use. So from there, you'll be able to surround yourself by very smart software engineers and the team is this is very smart and they can basically get anything done out there.

    And once you delegate to the right people, get the design people and get the development people and get the back end team and put the architecture in, you have the right elements of actually going in and executing on that vision. Because usually I believe that technical founders have that upper hand on top of non-technical founders, because the non-technical founders always need a technical founder next to them. But technical founders, they can just roll with it.

26. 27:31
    Wes Mathews

    So let me ask you a question that just kind of focusing in on you at Revy as an entrepreneur and AI, like you're able to solve some massive problems and create massive value. Like, does that shift your thinking away of like how the future of business is generated, like versus like getting paid for a project versus taking an equity stake in a company or, you know, what is it? I mean, it's got to change your perspective a little bit about the traditional way of how business has been done, because if you're able to like get a company to 10x within a year or two, right, but you're like, oh, it's $10,000 for this project.

    You're like, well, that didn't feel great, right? How do you think about that? I'm just curious as an entrepreneur how you're sort of thinking about that.

27. 28:15
    Youssef Tawfik

    So currently our job is to develop solutions. When you think about equity or transforming a specific business, developing the tool is on percent of the actual execution. You know, just because I'm a software engineer, just because I have a development company, you can't imagine the number of people that come to me. You said, I have this great idea. I want you guys to build it. I'll give you equity in the company and it's just going to go great. You have to take a step back and think about Uber as a business.

    It's just not the application. It's everything else about the application. It's a full business to run. So when you're looking at a business, OK, I've generated I've created this amazing tool for them that could 10x their income and all of this, right? But if the people in the business are not as dedicated, they're not as forward thinking to actually go in and use it doesn't make sense to take equity in the company, because the business is the people, it's the overall operation, it's the marketing, it's the sales, it's the sales people, it's the employees.

    It's not only the app. We play a great part and we play a huge part of it. And a lot of those incredible transformations could not happen without us. But the people inside of the business and the overall business is actually what makes it, you know, it's like if you can, you can give the builder a hammer or power tools, but if they don't use it, they're not going to build the house.

28. 29:46
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I love that analogy. So, you know, in the States, you're probably familiar with Home Depot and you could probably walk into Home Depot and buy every single house to build a house. Right. But like I walk in there and I'm like, I'm dumb, like it's not my forte. So like you bring up an important point, right? Like you can you can make everything better and build all these tools and do all these different things. But if like how do you assist or how do you get a company ready to like you got to roll this stuff out?

    Like you got to roll it out. Number one, you got to get buy in from the team, typically like leadership team. And then it's got to roll out. Everybody's got to be trained. And in my experience, a lot of people on the team don't like change. Especially when it comes to this stuff, because they're like, well, I'm fearful it's going to take my position. Yeah, that's a huge project in and of itself. Right. How do you how do you manage or how do you talk to talk about that to a business when they're thinking about, you know, massively overhauling an operational item?

29. 30:44
    Youssef Tawfik

    I'll tell you this. We're working right now with a construction company, a remodeling company, and we're helping them automate their estimating process. They have a full time estimator. His full time job is to put out estimates. Imagine you as someone is your full time job is to create estimates. The owner of a company came to you and it's like, OK, Wes, we want to create a tool that would create estimates for us in an automated manner.

30. 31:14
    Wes Mathews

    It's not going to work. Don't do it. Yeah, that's what I would say, right? It's not going to work. Don't do it.

31. 31:20
    Youssef Tawfik

    It's not going to work. It's never going to be like me. All of that. You have to think about the about it from that perspective. It's like, OK, Wes, how many how many estimates are you pushing out daily? Maybe like one a week, maybe four or five, Max. What if you were able to push 10 to 20? It's like, that would be awesome. I would go back home early. I wouldn't need to put late nights and I'd get paid the same. So that's what we want to do.

    We want to make sure that you're more efficient. We want to make sure that you're putting out the best or not want to make sure that you're not putting the grunt work or the you know, the lazy, the work that can be automated. We want to make sure that you do you do what you're good at, which is managing that whole process. People used to do it manually back in the day, but now they manage machines to do it for them. They didn't lose their job.

    They got better at their job. They got more time. They got to have a better quality of life. So you have to think about it from a more optimization point, not replacement point. And that's how we kind of go through with companies when we're looking at digital transformations for them.

32. 32:23
    Wes Mathews

    No, I mean, and to be honest with you, like I love what you do. I love AI. I almost feel that piece that you just hit on is more important is the psych, the psychology around how to get people excited. I mean, you just took West going out, quoting it as best as I could every week. Right. Nobody's going to do it better to like, you know, because you have to have buy in from your team. And if they're resistant, they're not going to embrace the tool and champion.

    You're drawing dead. But to excite somebody to say, hey, you can make more money, get your time back, spend time with your family like that approach to me is amazing. So it's how do you, you know, you obviously like running a company, you have that capable, like how do you what would you recommend for a business? How could they start to think about that? Because I think they have to look at that other side equally as this is going to solve a lot of problems. But how do I humanize it to like speak that like, is there any tip or trick or clients you've worked with where you kind of, you know, somebody's got a good ability or way to do that?

    Or is that your secret sauce?

33. 33:27
    Youssef Tawfik

    No, no, I think it's it would be very helpful for people to be able to be at peace with it, right? At least I would say educate yourself about it. That's the most important thing. Right. Because if you really don't know what's happening, you'll always be afraid of it. So step number one is making sure they educate yourself, educate your team. What is AI? What does it do? It's not it's not going to go rogue.

34. 33:53
    Wes Mathews

    And we've seen a lot of that. Let me grab you there. So while I have you on that, what would you recommend? Like, where do I go? Do I go to AI dot com? Is there a book out there that like AI for dummies? Like, what would be that? Here's that first introduction into, you know what I mean? So I'll give you a perfect example. Anytime I meet an entrepreneur that's like really messed up, I'll talk about EOS or some type of framework and I'll give them a book traction because I'm like, read this book and it might just help you think differently.

    Right. Like, what's your first step?

35. 34:30
    Youssef Tawfik

    Going to ChatGPT dot com and go play with it. Go make it go make it right. And a LinkedIn post or a Facebook post. Go ask it questions. Right. Once you're comfortable with that, being able to jump into, for example, open AI's documentations, like what are they talking about AI? How are they talking about it? And also, as I can for the listeners, I can send the a quick presentation on AI 101. AI 101, basically, I think I think that would be very helpful to really understand how it works in the back end.

    And ease into how can we use it in our day to day?

36. 35:15
    Wes Mathews

    No, I love that because I think that's that's step one. I would love to ask from your opinion. I don't even know how many people are in the in the world, seven billion. Maybe I'm way off, but like how many from a percentage perspective do you think have actually gone on ChatGPT or we're talking like 90 percent of people or 10 percent of people?

37. 35:35
    Youssef Tawfik

    I think that's a big global scale. Like we're talking about global issues. You're like, some people don't have access to Internet. True.

38. 35:44
    Wes Mathews

    So let's drop, let's drop the top 20 percent, the bottom 20. And then just saw people in the middle.

39. 35:51
    Youssef Tawfik

    Honestly, I'm not sure. But it definitely became way more accessible to people, especially in the B2B space. As I mentioned, 2025 is the catching up phase. So they see now they now see successful examples of people utilizing AI in front of them. And they're like, oh, I wonder if I can do that. And they can start now going into it. So I wouldn't be able to give you a percentage. But I can tell you that in the next few years, that's where you see everyone using it very, very soon.

    And I'm not even talking about AI. I'm just talking about pure technology, like an inventory system, for example, like a company that they've been tracking their inventory through an Excel sheet for the last 25 years, whatever, you know. Now they will look into, OK, how can we put in an automated system? How can we make our search into our inventory way fast so we better for our salespeople, for our guys on ground? How can we now put alert systems into it? That's the transition that we're going to see going into the next few years.

40. 36:55
    Wes Mathews

    So I love the first step. Just play with the tool. Number two, I love, you know, I would love to like see employees are like, hey, how could you, based on what you're doing for the business, like, how could you scale that for you to be more productive? Right. And I think as visionary owners, a lot of them, they think they have all the answers and challenges. But the reality is a lot of them are sitting within the organization and just getting feedback on, hey, like, what do you love to do?

    What do you hate to do? My response was you could get a lot of great nuggets from your team on everything they hate to do. And then what would be the third thing? Like, and then what? Because I see this like I love with your one on one or what you could share with people is just like, you know, it's not something you're going to have done in a couple of weeks. Like, it's like almost like what's your AI roadmap? And, you know, even if you say just introduce chat GP and have your team mess around with it.

41. 37:53
    Youssef Tawfik

    Yeah, absolutely. Introduce ChatGPT, have your team mess around with it. I love that that the input that you said, what was that? What is the what is the most? What is the thing that you don't like doing and invite them to try to automate it via ChatGPT, via any automated system online and iterate on that because systems are not built in a day. Roman wasn't built in a day. Things take time to be able to reach a point where it's actually even doable. Like when we're developing a system, we do full technical documentation, full planning.

    We have a full team on it, but we beta test, we alpha test, we take people's feedback. It takes a lot of iterations to come up with something that actually works. So start to try to automate yourself and try to try to make it better every day. I think that that's what I will invite people to do the mentality. I invite people to use AI and utilize AI day to day.

42. 38:53
    Wes Mathews

    You know, one thing that's really helped me is I have somebody here in my company who really helps me like I need AI and a person. And I think what's really cool is up until this point as a visionary, everything makes a lot of sense in my head. And I've had a hard time like taking that and documenting that. So I've had a hard time working with like an assistant or people. But what's been really cool is putting my persona into ChatGPT. And now when we work together, a lot of her interaction is not coming to me.

    It's coming to the AI. I'm like how I would respond and how like that to me is like just insane. And like she is just able to move so fast and add so much. And if you think about it,

43. 39:42
    Youssef Tawfik

    it takes us back to setting up the environment for the AI to succeed. Getting your house in order, giving the AI the right information it needs, and it will soar afterwards. It takes us back to the same step.

44. 39:56
    Wes Mathews

    The beauty, like I actually had an email this morning and she was like, hey, you need to do this thing. Well, everybody has it like, oh, great. I'm paying somebody to tell me I need to do this thing. But she actually took a stab at it and was like, I've already drafted it for you. Like, just take a look at it. And I'm not even kidding, like I had no changes. And I'm like, I had a tear in my eye. I'm like, this is unreal. Like, it's just it's crazy to think about.

    Then your mind is a visionary. Like, how do I? But like, how do you how do you be careful with that, though? Because I already feel like as entrepreneurs and people, like you're already full throttle, right? There's not enough time in a day. Does this make things worse now? Because you're just now you're just like 10 Xing all of that. And it's more pressure or is it the opposite or do you think? Do you think it's it's more pressure? I think it's less pressure.

45. 40:51
    Youssef Tawfik

    You don't need to think about those anymore.

46. 40:54
    Wes Mathews

    I feel I have more spinning plates now than I did. And I don't know if you can juggle them. I can juggle them. I've been able to add more spinning plates and I feel better. I feel good. I trust the technology. So, yeah,

47. 41:11
    Youssef Tawfik

    so I think it's a good thing.

48. 41:13
    Wes Mathews

    Well, so you said, man, your wealth of knowledge, you mentioned something about A.I. 101 or something. If somebody's listening and they're like, I want to dip my toe and something would share, like, how do I just have an exploratory? Like, I think you're a cool guy to just you had a lot of value, right? So I think having a conversation with somebody like what's the best, easiest way for people to get in contact with you? Yeah, absolutely.

49. 41:35
    Youssef Tawfik

    They can go on our website, Revi.agency, Revi.agency. You can send us a message, shoot us a message there or come to us directly. And yeah, that's it.

50. 41:49
    Wes Mathews

    Well, cool, man. Keep me posted. I'd love to have you come to Detroit and workshops and stuff for some entrepreneurs, because it's just it's the craze, man. It's the gold rush. It's the Internet boom. It's probably bigger than the Internet, honestly. It's bigger.

51. 42:03
    Youssef Tawfik

    It's touching way more people and the people have been talking about it for three years now. People are executing now. People want to execute now. So that's why we've been busy, because the last year or so, people were just like, how are we going to use it? How we can utilize it? And we're just like dipping their toe. But people are actually executing starting 2025, which is very exciting.

52. 42:28
    Wes Mathews

    My crystal ball at a really simple level is, you know, I buy stuff on Amazon. I'm using Chachi BT and Chachi BT like it screws me over often, like it'll give me recommendations and things. Like I was looking for a new grill insert. I ordered this thing. It was 100 bucks. Well, it didn't fit. And Chachi BT was like, sorry, bro, like it was hilarious. But like I see this world of like, you know, I started an SEO company back in 06. Like I kind of hit the boom.

    Yeah, I do not use Google anymore. I use Chachi BT, right? So there's this world of, you know, do websites go away? Does all these things go away now? And it's just wrapped around this language model that's specific to me to the point of like, hey, I, here's my, it knows my height and weight, my attitude, the clothing I buy, right? If I was like, hey, I need a nice shirt to go golfing. And it's like, oh, Wes, like this will fit you beautifully based on your temper and your build and hyper personalization button.

    And it's already done. Like I'm not even having, so possibilities are endless. I think you're a great guy. I think you can create a lot of value for people to open up a conversation. Thanks so much for coming on. And, uh, looks forward to having me. Absolutely. Appreciate you having me, Wes.

53. 43:39
    Youssef Tawfik

    And thank you very much. Awesome, man.

54. 43:43
    Wes Mathews

    This has been another episode of entrepreneur Intel. Thank you for joining us for show notes for other episodes. Please visit us at entrepreneurintel.com until next time.