Jon Nordmark interview - Using AI to Implement New Tech Faster
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We all know that innovation is happening at light speed; there are new technologies that allow for better and faster ways of connecting with customers and expediting transactions. But one of the biggest challenges that innovators face in bringing new technology to market is that too often new tech doesn't play nice with old Tech. Well, my guest today is using AI and low code to bring new technologies to industry 17 times faster than traditional approaches. I'm talking today with tech entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer, John Nordmark, CEO and co-founder of iterate.AI, about how a new generation of artificial intelligence and technologies will revolutionize customer engagement.
David Avrin: I really could, experience the communication part of all of this, you know, it's always sort of eluded me is the technologies. I'm not a Luddite. It's not that I'm not bad with technology, but I'm really good at at utilizing the technology without really understanding where it all comes from. Now, understand, this is coming from a guy whose father was a an actual rocket scientist, I mean. My father invented the first cameras that ever took pictures on the surface of another planet. He worked on the camera systems for Viking, went up in the in the work on Jupiter missions. I was a cheerleader in college, so clearly it skips a generation, but but what I like to do is surround myself with people really understand the the technologies and the methodologies behind the the capabilities. And so I'm excited to to to talk to a friend of mine today. and and I've all admission I've known him for from way back, because our our kids were in in preschool together. But at the time he was the CEO of one of the biggest
David Avrin: early e-commerce giants e-bags, and so I'll do a quick introduction, and they will officially say, I don't sort of rambling at the beginning But John or Mark is the co-founder, and CEO of iterate AI. He was also the co-founder, and CEO of Ebags for 10 years, his as CEO from 2,001 to 2,008, they sold
David Avrin: almost one in 3 quarters, 1 billion dollars worth of bags and luggage, and and it. It was one of the early days, and what was interesting is part of the background. And maybe he'll tell us about that as well. He's working at Samsonite. He had an idea to do this. They said, no, thanks. So we went, did it himself, and ultimately Samss Night Bottom
David Avrin: for over a hundred 1 billion dollars. So one of those great success stories. But he's taken that success. And he's helped other technology startups and others to bring their products to market and and doing so has developed some amazing software. We're going to talk about that as well. So a quick welcome to John Nordmark. Thanks for being with us on the show.
Jon Nordmark: and I love the story. I'm I'm a little bit like you. By the way, I'm I'm not. I don't write the code. But I admire the people that do. And I feel like I'm an interpreter of.
Jon Nordmark: There's stories, yeah. But but but you know, you know what you want to accomplish. And fortunate for all of us is there are some wicked, smart people in the world, and the key is they're all over the world, aren't they?
Jon Nordmark: Yeah? Oh, yeah, like, we have them in Sri Lank and India in Silicon Valley, in Colorado. they are all over the world.
Jon Nordmark: So talk to us real quickly. It's a little bit about your background. What happened with ebags and what you learned during all of that, and what led you to working with technology startups and sort of creating that software that created a go between and the problems that you're solving today give us a little bit of background. Well, it ebags we were. We were known as an early adopter of in of of technology. So we were one of the first online retailers to become profitable
Jon Nordmark: we. We did it in the during the dot bomb, like in 2,001 business week, recognized us Amazon over stock and blue Nile is the first 4 that really made it.
Jon Nordmark: and but we did it by experimenting.
Jon Nordmark: and it was all due to kind of the combination of the creative thinking.
Jon Nordmark: that the merchants and marketers brought to the table as well as the creative thinking from the technologists. But the the technologies people their ability to kind of invent
Jon Nordmark: methods of that we wanted to experiment with. So one of the things we wrote early on it. It at Ebags was a a B split test platform.
Jon Nordmark: and it it was a guy named Val Augustino. He was a young engineer, probably 26 years old. He came to my office late one night.
Jon Nordmark: and he said, I think I know how to save the company, because that's what we were trying to figure out how to do like come profitable, it was either become profitable or die. You know we either move from a be being in a venture to a business, or we die. And so I asked, now, what what is it? You know? It'll take his profitable. And he said, You know, do you know, like you're a marketer, David.
Jon Nordmark: you know, when you send one letter to a customer with one headline and to a similar customer you send
Jon Nordmark: a different headline. And you you measure which one does the best, he said. What if we could do that with our website
Jon Nordmark: like on every page? And I said we could do that, and he said, I I think we could. And so I said How? And he said, Well, if you give me 3 weeks. I think I could write the software. I just so, I said, Oh, my gosh! Go home and don't come back like until it's done.
Jon Nordmark: I don't remember if he came back to work or not. But he did write the software and we became an A B split test machine. So we probably did I? I don't know. Like a thousand tests. And we were able to move the conversion rate on our website, the people that come to the website and buy as a percentage
Jon Nordmark: every time from about point 7, when we started
Jon Nordmark: to on a monthly basis, 13 on a day about 5. So so how do you do that? I mean, we. I think we're. We're familiar with the concept of testing. Right? You said a couple of different ones measure which one works
Jon Nordmark: devote your resource that direction. How do you do it on a website? Is it that every time they go they're seeing a different website or different. Where do you have? I mean, tell us how you did that. let's say you and me are lookalikes. And we know that you know when you come in we're able to measure like where you come from. Are you coming through an affiliate side? Are you coming through Google? Are you coming through.
Jon Nordmark: Are you coming directly we segment all that traffic out, and then you will get a different. And it's always very contained, you know, scientifically, like, maybe all we're testing is how many pictures you see.
Jon Nordmark: we? And that was one of the tests we did, you know, is it okay to show 4 pictures? Or do you need to do 7? Or you know, how does a video impact the the sales?
Jon Nordmark: I get a video and I don't But it's all controlled like that. And then we're able to measure. And it usually took. You know it. It depends on you. Get you got to do it scientifically. So you got to wait for a certain amount of traffic to
Jon Nordmark: come in, make it statistically valid
Jon Nordmark: machine, basically a, a, a line of photography with real photographers at base. And so the fewer photos we shot the the less money it cost us. But we realized to get a high conversion rate, you need 7 photos
Jon Nordmark: and So anyway, that's what we did, and and And then, when a test concluded, if if it was significantly positive, we would make the change for everybody if it was negative, you know, we would
Jon Nordmark: just stay with the control.
Jon Nordmark: No, no, no, no, I would just say today. That's table stakes. Yeah, analytics that they do.
Jon Nordmark: The company economics are already set it. It's working. Let's say you're a big retailer, you know, it's working. So
Jon Nordmark: I, the employees of a place like that, may not have the impetus or the
Jon Nordmark: the in the life or death, desire to make
Jon Nordmark: testing a high speed, you know, priority
Jon Nordmark: and an e-bags that we had to, because if we didn't make it work, we we all lost our jobs when we talked about sort of this was in the in the.com bust. Very few were profitable, because, of course, the mindset of change from the the the goal, the the measurement
David Avrin: being clicks to actually sales that drove profitability. What a concept! But it was such a false premise in the early days that there were very few that really had had mastered that connection between sales and profitability.
Jon Nordmark: Yeah. And it was, you know, I remember, there were so many metrics because we could measure so many things. And I mean, it sounds so basic today. But we sat down and remember many discussions. Or what about what are the 5 things we really need to pay attention to.
Jon Nordmark: Gross margin was one
Jon Nordmark: you know, which is obvious, I guess, to most people today. But back then it wasn't, I mean, and and that's evident by the failure rate of all the you know, tons of startups. And back in those days.
Jon Nordmark: but it was. It was stuff like gross margin, not really revenue, but the gross margin we produced.
Jon Nordmark: the
Jon Nordmark: The conversion rate was mission critical, and so everything we did was to try to improve the conversion rate relative to the gross margin, and you know, and and and gradually to but but relatively fast, we were able to
Jon Nordmark: to get there, and I remember in the beginning we were selling for every dollar of revenue we were getting. We were spending like $2, and that was true with many, many in the day, but it was that acceptable losses early days. Amazon was very much like that as well. Yeah. And for us. A a dollar in revenue was really
Jon Nordmark: 30 cents in in gross margin. So it would be like, you know, for every $2 we're spending and marketing. We'd get 30 cents in
Jon Nordmark: in gross margin, and that's the the recipe for implosion. And but within 2 years we got it down to I mean we had in revenue for every $1 market or $2 in marketing, spending, and that's how we lived, and that's how we became profitable. But it was like it was just methodically going after that, and that that required many tests like we were a testing machine and
Jon Nordmark: you know. And and and I learned during that, David, too, that it didn't matter where you went to school, how smart you were. You couldn't predict what a consumer was going to do. The only way to do it was through testing.
Jon Nordmark: And we. And there we used to run tests like, not not bets. But we'd all bet like, who's gonna win? This test is going to be A or B, and it didn't matter again, like
David Avrin: your background you couldn't pick. And I. So I always told people I know this like, I'm going to give you an opinion, but I know I'm only right half the time, right? So it's the old line with marketing, right? We know half of dollars are are wasted. We don't know which half the difference is today. They do so talk to me about your learning coming from that that made you. Let's be on a sought after as as a mentor for others as well, and how that brought you to tech startups and and some of those entities.
Jon Nordmark: well, you know it. I was lucky, and I I think I've been lucky many times in my life and
Jon Nordmark: because ebags worked and and we raised money from pretty famous venture capitalists back in the day people looked at my company and and me as knowing what we were doing.
Jon Nordmark: And I think that's how I became a mentor. I I've you know, I've mentored probably
Jon Nordmark: hundreds, and that's literally the number, like of startups and entrepreneurs, and all over the world. And
Jon Nordmark: But all all that is based on is just a lot of experience. And I know this, I'm way more.
David Avrin: I'm a way better mentor today than I probably was back when people sought me early on. Yeah, I I think a lot of us look that way, but but it also brought you to a place of recognizing what was missing in this ecosystem. Oh, yeah, entrepreneurs and tech controvers. Talk to us about connect that because I want to talk about iterate AI. As well talk to me about what you were doing. What you realized was a deficiency in the system, and how you said about addressing that
Jon Nordmark: well e-bags. Again, it was recognized as being one of the early adopters of technologies from other companies a lot. And you know, we were a retailer, an online retailer but we used many, many solutions that were built by other other startups.
Jon Nordmark: that would help improve conversion rates we were. All was seeking companies that could find traffic conversion rates, you know, whatever it was
Jon Nordmark: And
Jon Nordmark: and so, because of that, I just became, I became really intrigued by companies that built really interesting technologies. And you know, one was called Live Clicker. It was just a way to do video on
Jon Nordmark: all right product detail pages, you know, I became very close friends with the founders of that company, and always admired what they were doing. Another one was called in Decca by Steve, papa, who sold his company for over a billion dollars to to Indeca. And but it was navigation software. It's like unsexy. No one would know the name, but it was just so intriguing to me, and and we were able to, you know.
Jon Nordmark: identify that it improved. Conversion rates. Another one was amateur, which adobe it went public and adobe bought it, but it was anyway, these come. These people at these companies
Jon Nordmark: taught me how technology can really improve businesses and make them, you know, turn them from ventures into businesses. And
Jon Nordmark: and that's why I you know, when I was done with ebags, I sought people that could build software, and I, I got really lucky and found this guy, Brian Sathy and Nathan
Jon Nordmark: in the Ukraine.
Jon Nordmark: Who could you know who could? Who became ultimately my partner? Iterate?
Jon Nordmark: yeah. So that's kind of how I I you know how I became intrigued
David Avrin: with software startups and move from retail into software to talk to us about the the problem you saw right you the best businesses. There's no shortage businesses that are solutions looking for a problem right? Here's a new capability out. Do we need it? There was a real gap
David Avrin: with in. In finding some of these, these early stage tech companies and connecting them with others who could work synergistically with them or help them grow. Talk to me about that gap, and how you sought to to close that gap.
Jon Nordmark: Well, iterate discovered kind of 2 major gaps, and they happened at 2 different times. The first one Brian and I were both board members
Jon Nordmark: of a a start, a startup accelerator like a tech stars in in in Kiev, in Ukraine and We started working there in 2,011. It wasn't full time we'd go there, you know, 3 times a year, 4 times a year for
Jon Nordmark: 4 days This is where we got to know each other, but it was toward the end of that in like the beginning, in 2,013, where I don't remember if it's Brian or me that set it. But
Jon Nordmark: or or another guy named Egor. So Sophie, who recruited us there. He, he a a good friend, anyway. Brian, and I
Jon Nordmark: thought, man, the
Jon Nordmark: the world of tech startups is the barrier to entry has become brains, not capital. So back when E-bag started, it cost, you know, millions of dollars to start a company because a a digital startup because you had to write all the code from scratch in the code libraries. You didn't have. You had to buy all your service. I mean, buy them, you know. $1,000 with no cloud, right? With no client. Yeah. It cost a fortune. So a young guy like myself, with no savings.
Jon Nordmark: had to go raise money to build a company like that. Well, when Brian and I were working in Ukraine, we realized that
Jon Nordmark: all the the the people that we're building. The the country's poor, I mean. It was poor prior to the war. It's it. The people didn't have money to buy servers. They couldn't raise money yet, these really smart people. We're building software Sas products on Amazon's Cloud, on the Aws.
Jon Nordmark: And they had no money right? And they're working out of their homes. Yeah, they were working out of Mom and dad's home, and you know, and and or a lot of times, that's why it was. That's how they are in a lot of those.
Jon Nordmark: But Brian and I and they were coming from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, wherever and Brian and I were like my gosh, I mean, they're able to produce amazing tech
Jon Nordmark: with no money and deploy it anywhere in the world.
Jon Nordmark: So that's when we decided we had to build a way for large organizations to find
Jon Nordmark: these unique technologies. And we became sort of a a tech provider for that. We have a database of 16.2 million companies now. And we we can find we need solutions from all over the world, but large organizations
Jon Nordmark: can engage with. And then we sort of became a consultancy on top of that, helping helping big companies find these really unique solutions all over the world. But then the second problem we found. And this was maybe even more well, more important in a sense, was that large organizations. They have it departments
Jon Nordmark: that are, you know, tons of money behind them.
Jon Nordmark: but they operate on technologies that built been built 1015, 20 years ago. You know, Ibm, or whatever they've got. Old oracle.
Jon Nordmark: you know, databases sap and even salesforce today, and a lot of cases would be considered a little bit older technology. But anyway, they're all operating on these massive, complex tech stacks. And if you have something new that you wanted to test, going back to money backs it like if you wanted to test something new and and be fast at testing. You couldn't do it because you'd have to get in line.
Jon Nordmark: you know, in the I the It department has priorities that were often set in a. you know, in all their strategy meetings and in the fall of the prior year.
Jon Nordmark: And if you weren't on that list. You just had to get line and wait for here. So Brian, my co-founder, who's who's
Jon Nordmark: Remarkable like technologists?
Jon Nordmark: he! He! You know he worked in apple secret products, in the early days of which is, you know, he has patents. On the first iphone. He he worked up tiny team that built that thing and invented it. Anyway, he said to me, John, I think I know how to fix this.
Jon Nordmark: What if we build it, you know? Middleware connective tissue really, between the legacy stack that exists in enterprise today and the startup ecosystem where all the AI and IoT and
Jon Nordmark: you know, emerging technologies are being built. And what if we could connect them without having to even talk to the it? Team and And I said again, like Val, we could do that.
Jon Nordmark: and he built it like he built it well, he was on vacation, the beginning of it, and he was at a wedding for 2 weeks, and and he built the beginning of what we call interplay, which is now 95 of our revenue.
Jon Nordmark: And it's it's a remarkable tool. No, a tool. I can't call it a tool platform, right? Right? So is it. Is it like a skeleton key? I mean, it's the idea that this can work with any system? Or is it is the magic of it? Because there's no shortage of companies that have tried to build interfaces to help you talk to to legacy technology.
David Avrin: what's unique? and talk to us about low code for for others who are on in
Jon Nordmark: Yeah, what's unique about it. It one piece is the low code. And and there are other low code platforms like you just said, but they tend to be workflow platforms. They're relatively.
Jon Nordmark: I don't want to call them unsophisticated because they're they're great at what they do. But but we have a a far more sophisticated coding capability within our low code platform that allow, like we have tons of AI nodes built into it, built by people with Phds. And you know.
Jon Nordmark: in swarm computing that that does. And you can modify it within the platform. But
Jon Nordmark: in any event,
Jon Nordmark: one really interesting thing about well, low code means drag and drop.
Jon Nordmark: So our platform consists of 600 ish
Jon Nordmark: nodes, so their little containers little that you can see visible containers, and if you think of it like a basketball floor or a hockey rink All these unused code nodes. Sit in the boxes on the side of the playing field.
Jon Nordmark: and what you can do is, you can drag the players out. So these nodes these containers out onto the playing field, and when you drag them out there, just like in a basketball game or a hockey game. They activate, you know, they start working, and you can bring out their their friends. And, you know, bring out another node and put it in there, and then you can connect them through lines. And because of that, we're able to develop some software by using pre built
Jon Nordmark: containers.
Jon Nordmark: then we can modify them a little bit but then on and and because of that we can move it. Just an incredible speed. So
Jon Nordmark: an example of that. We we were working with a 60 billion dollar company in, you know, that does
Jon Nordmark: convenience store fuel that
Jon Nordmark: sale. And they needed a way for people to check out
Jon Nordmark: of a gas station to check in, basically with their license plate in their car. But to check out using the cameras, you know, to activate the pump using the camera kind of frictionless check out within a
Jon Nordmark: yeah. And we built the whole thing in 3 weeks a a big consultancy thought they could do a prototype, that they were told that it the the the enterprise, was told that it would take about a year and over a million dollars to build it.
Jon Nordmark: and we built the whole thing in 3 weeks for $75,000. And it's now operating in like 4,000 edge locations over in Europe.
Jon Nordmark: that's what low code does. Yeah, well, it's amazing. Because, as I sort of said in the introduction, and as I've reviewed the site and and looking at how this applies.
David Avrin: as you would say, there, there's no shortage of brain power around the world, but there is. There are gaps in the system that that create
David Avrin: delay, the create friction that create right? And so somebody's got a great new technology, a new capability the organizations can tap into if they have to stand in line to even test it. If they have challenges of getting the system to talk to each other. There's a big delay in implementation and being a benefit for customers, and we know in this marketplace every bit of delay somebody else is jumping in. So you actually help those companies bring those.
those new technologies, capabilities to enterprise. Well, as the sites of 17 times faster. That's astonishing.
Jon Nordmark: Yeah, it's. And and that's what we see. Again and again, it's anywhere from 2 to 17 times the 7. We've kind of got documented. But a lot of times. It's 2, 3, 4, but still it it, you know. If you can do it 4 times faster, you can do 4 times as many tests. The the scary thing for developers is they feel like it might be 4 times more work, but it really it's it's less work it. It's kind of like the
Jon Nordmark: chat Gpt, that's coming out today where we're we're actually seeing the same thing. We're now able to create nodes in our website
Jon Nordmark: what it use takes 6 to 8 h per person per node.
Jon Nordmark: Guess what? You know we're down to like 6 min.
Jon Nordmark: And yeah, if if we need, it's just, you know, everything is becoming more accessible. But on the speed, even with the checkout like in that store, what you have to be able to do like at a convenient store. You have to be able to recognize the car within milliseconds. Not 3 s, 4 s. You have to be able to turn the pump on in milliseconds, using the cameras basically to detect
Jon Nordmark: in milliseconds not 3 4 s. You have to be able to process the payment also really fast. And in order to do that, we've had to do a lot of really interesting tech work behind the scenes at a kernel level where we're modifying, you know, code at the ones and zeros operating system level. And so that we can do 2 things, one operate on an edge, instance to an AI
Jon Nordmark: on on an edge in this. That means in the store, not on the Amazon cloud or Google Cloud. So that's really unique about our platform. We're one of the only in the world that we think can do that. We're partner with Nvidia, you know, because of those capabilities.
Jon Nordmark: And then we can all we've also written. We've got patents on an ability to process data in a parallel way. You know where you have
Jon Nordmark: parallel processing happening which makes it incredibly fast, too, and that the people that invented that are the guys out of our X out of apple. You know, the the secret product guys.
Jon Nordmark: So it takes some real tech to create these experiences that are okay for the or not. Okay, but better for the consumer
David Avrin: process that allows a faster, more personalized engagement experience. Well, now, you've done it. Now you can find a way to apply that to so many industries, because that's what we're seeing, right? We're seeing is is P industries learning from others, they're able to track that. They're able to give visibility. How does that apply to our industry. Well, if you look at our website, you're so right, David, because we can build a technology for the banking industry, let's just say in Asia.
Jon Nordmark: and it can apply to retailers in the United States
Jon Nordmark: and an an example. And you can see that on our website, I've I've talked to investors, and we have very few investors like I mean, no professional investors outside of this nice nice position to be in early on an amazing position to me, and and because it allows us to be nimble. But I've I've talked to venture capitalists who've said
Jon Nordmark: we think you're in too many industries, and I'm like, sorry we're we're going to keep going into more. I have no reason to be talking to you anymore, like you're too
Jon Nordmark: old school, you know, and and the thing is, we're a platform that can serve many, many industries. So with we're able to do extraction of data out of paper documents and do classification like on the fly using AI, we're able to find fraud. We're able to. So for the banking industry over in Asia, in Singapore and Malaysia, Japan. We're building technology to do that.
Jon Nordmark: And we built it already. And so that's very interesting to them because they can process documents a lot faster. They can pull information out of one document automatically, put it into another. It can come out of emails, out of forms, out of Pdfs. You know whatever
Jon Nordmark: a, and then move the data in where they need it.
Jon Nordmark: and that capability, I think, to your point that capability
Jon Nordmark: anywhere just needed by so many other industries. Yeah. So who cares like? If if we have a retail customers, why not show it to them like, here's what we did for banking. Would this be helpful to you? It's interesting when you talk about sort of Vcs. It's sort of the old way of thinking. But the other way of thinking is is the is the idea of specialization. Right? You've got to have that that you got to have that the expertise that you have that sole source. But here's what I like about your approaches. There. There's a different school of thought today, which is we're not specializing in the industries we serve. We're specializing in the services we provide, and we're applying it across a variety of
David Avrin: your your expertise. Your specialization is in what you do, not who you do it for, and I think it's absolutely valid marketplace position.
Jon Nordmark: and that's a great way to say it, and and to your point also the one you made before we're then we become a creative resource for companies in a variety of industries, because they can ask us, what are you seeing, you know, in automotive. What do you see? That was my next question. So so keep going. You have a unique insight into a variety of industries. So for our viewers.
listeners, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and others who are looking for
David Avrin: insights to make good strategic decisions. What do you see coming down the pike? What are some of the the cool new capabilities, amenities, processes that is important for people to understand from what you're seeing, give us pull out the crystal ball.
Jon Nordmark: Well, the thing that's everyone's talking about right now is this open AI chat? Gpt, you know, large language models. And that is a huge, huge deal.
Jon Nordmark: and and we're all over it because we can. We can do things like build private, large language models. That that is so. For instance, the the banks in Asia.
Jon Nordmark: Every one of them is looking at this right now. We probably talked to 10 banks over there. but they have. They have no interest of processing data on the cloud.
Jon Nordmark: They can't. They have to be secure and private. So what's really interesting for us is that we can process all that data on the edge, on their premise. In in any environment they want.
Jon Nordmark: We just need to train the data, you know, which is becoming a lot more easy to do. All the large language models are morphing and changing so much. It's that's one huge trend, is is that? And it'll impact everything like. And like I said earlier, we could in certain cases where it took us 6 to 8 h to write code. We can do it in 6 min now and edit it.
Jon Nordmark: I mean, think of that. I mean early earlier development, earlier testing faster to market. It allows those working strategically within organizations to deploy new amenities, capabilities faster.
Jon Nordmark: And and then another thing is edge, compute
Jon Nordmark: it. The edges become really important. So you know, everyone used to have their own as 400 in their office, or what what it you know, like, the compute was at Samsite when I worked there in the 19
Jon Nordmark: 90 or 95, you know, it had all the compute in their office in a cold room. Then data centers came about, you know, and and
Jon Nordmark: you know it. It changed a little bit, but then the cloud came, and everyone tried to move to the cloud, or a lot of companies did. Well, now that it's moving back. And every little gas station, every little store, every little bank will be able to process every car
Jon Nordmark: processes, data, AI data
Jon Nordmark: on the edge or can do that.
Jon Nordmark: And so I think a lot of this edge computing will become more and more important. But edge computing
Jon Nordmark: in the world of AI. You know where it can take a product, and the product can start having a memory. It can start making decisions
Jon Nordmark: for a person. It can part. It can start making recommendations. And the data never needs to go to the cloud. So that means it stays private, like on your risk or in your car. It stays. You know it. It. It's it's special in that world or enterprise isn't going to require a new level of skill set to to manage and fix the technology. I I was talking to somebody who was with one of the one of the major, one of the top 3
David Avrin: 3 fast food chains. And they say part of their challenge was as they're moving to technology, touch screens and others. Now they are their 16 year olds have to be able to be able to handle when the system goes down. They used to have to know how to work the register, and now they need to know how to get the touch screen back up and running. Is that going to create a whole new level of challenges? Or is that still going to be managed. off site.
Jon Nordmark: Yeah, I I think it creates some challenges, I mean, certainly. I think that's another that's another trend that you're asked. It's upskilling. It's it's continuous learning, like we're in a world that is changing so fast, slow down like the to survive and thrive in in our new world, your kids and my kids.
Jon Nordmark: we'll just have to be continuous learners. Heck! Maybe you, you and me, too. But it's really our kids. But here's the thing is our our kids, though, are our technology natives? Well, we're these challenges right now, with all these great new technologies coming down is those who are 60 65 and older
David Avrin: of organizations having to really focus on omni-channel right? They've got the new technologies. We've got to have an on an off ramp to the real person. Right? The option. So they're not screaming agent, real person, real version right into the phone. And so we're sort of we are very much in that transition time, aren't we? And that's what the yeah. And that's what the large language models and all the pro, the training them within private data sets.
Jon Nordmark: you know. which we're working on now with large organizations, you know, kind of trying to combine the the public
Jon Nordmark: data with the private data that they'll never want going into the open AI systems, you know, and then turn that into a talking machine. But but your point back with the the 16 year old that has to maintain the store. One thing that we built for one company is what we call a store coach. And you can coach people through those things. I think, through
Jon Nordmark: other types of technology like, Oh, it's not working you, just you. You put it into the store coach. Our the store coach we built does stuff like does inventory it. It'll watch inventory through the cameras, you know, in the store, so it could count hot dogs, cups. We can look for spills. It can count the number of people going into the bathroom, and then it just alerts the storm and the store person, if there's only one there. Oh, we've got 10 people going the restroom. You should check it, you know, to make sure it's clean. Now
David Avrin: is that going to go on our social profile or our public took this much time in the restroom at our B's, because I don't want that out. Nobody
Jon Nordmark: that level of social currency and doesn't do the timer, but it'll do the the number of ends and outs. There you go. But anyway, that's a helpful tool for the store associate where it can train them kind of on the fly to do certain things.
Jon Nordmark: And so I think there'll be a lot of opportunities, for, you know.
Jon Nordmark: to help
David Avrin: keep people to upscale people and and help walk them through certain processes
David Avrin: real quickly. If people want to get in touch with you once again, talking to John Nordmark from iterate AI. How do people learn more about you and the organization and get in touch with you.
Jon Nordmark: Yeah. And easy way is just on Linkedin. I I look at that regularly and but it's John J. owen@iterate.ai, it just email me, too.
David Avrin: This is, this is so cool. it's like, I said, we're gonna we're gonna touch base later on and and keep everybody up to date on on the latest changes. I will remind everybody. Hang on. By the way, we'll talk on the other side you can pick up a copy of of my new book, which is here somewhere. There it is. It's called the Morning Huddle. Why,
David Avrin: powerful customer experience conversations to wake you up and shake you up and win more business. In fact, all of my books are available on Amazon, most of them, and audiobook as well. Be sure to click, to like this, podcast subscribe and click a little bell. You'll get notification of new episodes and be sure to leave a comment below, and once again click the little Bill icon as well. You can learn more about my keynote speaking
and consulting a David averin.com. Thanks for tuning in to the white customers lead, podcast remember to leave a comment and a big thanks to my guest, John Nordmark. I'm David aven be good.