Diana Kander is a keynote speaker, bestselling author, and a vanguard when it comes to memorable pitches. She is the author of Go Big or Go Home, a book that teaches readers the art and science of making impactful pitches for film, sports, business, and philanthropy. Her pioneering research reveals the direct correlation between emotion and memory, offering insights into enhancing audience engagement and recall. In this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, Diana joins Barry O’Reilly in a thought-provoking conversation about making presentations more engaging and memorable. They unpack the concept of co-creation in presentations and provide real-world examples of successful pitches that involve audience participation. Go Big or Go HomeDiana shares the genesis of her book Go Big or Go Home, shedding light on her journey into the world of memorable pitches. "I was approached by the CEO of a company who was struggling to keep his audience engaged during presentations. This triggered my exploration," she recalls. The CEO's predicament posed a compelling challenge for Diana, propelling her investigative journey into what makes pitches memorable. This challenge was a catalyst for her bestselling book. She researched the real-life struggles of professionals to create an impact with their pitches. The result was a book that unveiled the secrets behind delivering pitches that are not just heard, but remembered.Creating Emotional Resonance"Connecting emotionally helps the audience remember your message long after the presentation is over," Diana tells Barry. Her research unveiled five tools needed to create emotional resonance in presentations: The element of surprise keeps the audience engaged and alert. Analysis helps the audience to understand and connect with the data or information being presented. The pitch order, or how the information is arranged, can evoke different emotional responses. Using 3D objects during presentations provides a tangible element that can make the pitch more memorable. Co-creation involves the audience in the presentation or problem-solving process, creating a sense of ownership and engagement among them. By using these tools, Diana believes presenters can create a deep emotional resonance with their audience that outlasts the presentation itself.Co-creation: Including the AudienceCo-creation is a strategic tool in presentations where the presenter involves the audience in the process of problem-solving or idea generation. Rather than being passive recipients of information, the audience actively participates in the creation process. Diana views co-creation as a pivotal tool in the success of a presentation. She states, "Co-creation is not just about soliciting input from the audience; it's about immersing them in the process. This participatory approach creates a sense of ownership among the audience, enhancing their connection with the material and, ultimately, the presenter." Co-creation transforms the conventional presentation dynamic into a shared journey. "Involving the audience in problem-solving can create a mutual sense of accomplishment. This shared ownership is an essential part of engagement and retention," Barry remarks.Looking AheadDiana also announces a free digital copy of her book to anyone who reaches out via email.Read full show notes at BarryO'Reilly.comResourcesDiana Kander on the Web | LinkedIn | TwitterGo Big or Go Home

Etienne de Bruin is a visionary community builder, successful startup founder, and accomplished author. Overcoming personal struggles and adversity, he has channeled his experience into creating an emotionally intelligent community for CTOs called 7CTOs, now with 300 members globally. In addition to leading this thriving community, Etienne penned the impactful book, CTO Excellence in 100 Days, where he articulates the essence of heart-centered leadership and empathetic networking. With his sights set firmly on the future, Etienne - along with host Barry O’Reilly - is also co-founder of Nobody Studios, an innovative venture studio with the audacious ambition of launching 100 companies over the next five years. In this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, Etienne joins Barry to share his journey of self-discovery and discuss the importance of having a compelling 'why', the challenges and opportunities of building a successful startup, as well as insights from his book. From Suffering to Service Etienne opens up about his early struggles, touching on a particularly dark phase of depression. He was able to find the “seed of a greater purpose” in the “crucible of suffering.” He shares an anecdote, saying, “I was sitting in a hot tub, looking at the mountains, and I had a sudden realization of privilege… It motivated me to find ways to solve inequality issues creatively." This realization prompted him to establish an emotionally intelligent community for CTOs. Behind the Scene of CTO Excellence in 100 Days Etienne's journey didn't stop there. He recounts his experience writing the book CTO Excellence in 100 Days, a practical guide focusing on heart-centered leadership and empathetic networking. In it, he aims to support new and existing CTOs to better integrate within their organization and form stronger relationships. It is a blueprint for leaders who want to effect meaningful change in their organizations. Quoting from his book, Etienne emphasizes, "In the first 100 days, a leader must focus not on showcasing technical prowess, but understanding what the company needs.” This phase sets the tone and style of their leadership. Becoming a Sponge Leads to Success Discussing lessons in leadership and technological excellence, Etienne underlines the importance of pacing and being receptive to learning. Leaders should not rush to show all their cards at once but should instead display patience, taking the time to understand their team, the organization, and the challenges it faces. They should also ensure they gradually make their mark, avoiding an overwhelming influx of changes that could cause disarray and discomfort. As he puts it, "We must transition from being a showcase of knowledge to becoming a sponge, absorbing information from others around us." Barry echoes this sentiment, adding, "Knowledge isn't just about speaking; it's about listening and absorbing." This may involve setting aside their own ego or technical inclinations and adopting new approaches or solutions that align with the organization's requirements. Looking Ahead Etienne shares his aspiration to spark a revolution in the way we validate business ideas. Through Nobody Studios, he aims to foster a conducive ecosystem for startups, making it faster, more accessible, and less risky for entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into reality. Etienne's future plans include writing more books for CTOs and developing an organization called "Every Dev'' for developers at every stage of their career. Go to BarryO'Reilly.com for full show notes. Resources Etienne de Bruin on the Web | LinkedIn | Twitter

Chris Butler is a seasoned technology leader with a proven ability to lead teams, drive innovation, and deliver results in a fast-paced and dynamic industry. He is a highly accomplished executive with over 20 years of experience in the industry. Prior to his current role at Google, Chris held several leadership positions at companies like Microsoft, Facebook Reality Labs, Kayak, and Waze, where he gained extensive experience in the areas of product management, engineering, and business development. In this episode of Unlearn Podcast, Chris joins Barry O’Reilly to discuss his career journey. He emphasizes the importance of challenging mental models and learning from user research and data analysis to shift perspectives toward new technologies. Where Novelty Leads Chris talks about his passion for novelty and his interest in exploring new things since his youth. He mentions his early interest in technology, having created "red boxes" to make payphone calls. Chris credits his father, who was an art director, for introducing him to the transition from traditional typesetting to digital typesetting using programs like QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, and hand-coded HTML. User Research and Industry Shifts You need to be adaptable and open to change in the technology industry, Chris and Barry agree. With new innovations emerging all the time, you need to be willing to question assumptions and try new approaches. By doing so, you can stay ahead of the curve and continue to make a positive impact in your organization. Chris and Barry discuss the challenges of transitioning from desktop web experiences to mobile ones. Chris recounts how difficult it was to convince executives to invest in mobile, even though it was clear that more people were using their mobile devices to browse for travel options. He had to help them understand that mobile was not just another channel, but rather a new type of omnichannel experience that required a different approach. Barry shares his own experiences with this kind of shift, recalling how customers' behaviors were starting to change, but the technology was not yet there to support it. He asks Chris how he was able to identify these changes in behavior and help executives understand the need to invest in new technologies. “I had a bit of natural distrust in my leaders,” he replies. Chris often questioned the dominant logic theory that most leaders operated on, which involved using past successes as a mental model for future circumstances. He emphasizes the importance of personal user research and asking the right questions of customers. Chris cites his experience with Complete Seating, a restaurant tech startup, where they were able to “steal” high-value accounts from Open Table by focusing on usage segmentation rather than channel segmentation. Looking Ahead Chris mentions how he uses speculative futures to situate the future in a way that is tangible and more interesting than traditional company missions and visions. “Everything we do when building software is a speculative future because it aims to impact the future and make the world a better place,” he explains. He emphasizes the importance of looking forward when making decisions in product management and aligning the spine of product between strategy, roadmap and tasks. Chris believes that this approach to product management can be powerful and inspiring. For full show notes, please visit BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Chris Butler on the Web | LinkedIn | Twitter

Have you ever wondered why so many people fail to land their dream job after attending a boot camp or taking an online course? In this episode of Unlearn Podcast, Barry O'Reilly chats with Sarah Doody, a UX researcher and designer, and the founder and CEO of the Career Strategy Lab, a program that helps UX and product professionals at all career stages navigate the job search and articulate their skills and experience to help them grow. Sarah talks about her journey of designing her career and helping others do the same. She and Barry discuss the need for ongoing career development, the importance of setting boundaries, and why systems and design thinking is important in building a successful business and career. Designing Your Career “When I think back, I realized that I've always been designing my career,” Sarah remarks. She describes herself as a systems thinker who can spot problems and opportunities in sales, marketing, product, and engineering. However, her multi-talented nature often meant people didn't know what to do with her, and she had to design her own roles at different startups. Barry recalls how when he joined ThoughtWorks in 2010, only engineers were considered essential, and designers were struggling to find a place. He comments that the talent to design from experience to prototype is a core skill, and one of the main reasons his former colleague went on to become CEO of Thoughtworks. “When I think of design, it's not like just designing products, it's designing processes,” Barry comments. “It's designing onboarding experiences for people, …to know what the needs are, and then to create a solution that creates this great experience.”  The Career Strategy Lab Sarah shares her journey from UX consulting to building her education business, Career Strategy Lab, which helps job seekers and professionals find purpose, reward, and recognition in their careers. She describes the evolution of the lab, from creating online classes and in-person workshops to running a six-month career incubator. “We go through creating all kinds of the assets you need for your job search,” she tells Barry. “It's a joy to watch,” Barry remarks, “but also to see the results, creating social mobility for all these people, helping them figure out what they actually want to do and enjoy, and then actually creating better opportunities for them. It's tangible. Not many people get to build products where they really can see how they're helping their users.” Looking Ahead Sarah’s new podcast, Career Strategy Podcast, is a strategic marketing move for her business. She plans to repurpose the podcast content to create social media content and she has designed a system to make this happen. She also talks about her upcoming book with Rosenfeld, The Product of You, and how she plans to use the podcast interviews as content for the book. A special message to listeners Nobody Studios is a new venture studio, co-founded by Barry, with the purpose of derisking pre-seed stage business ideas. Our goal is to create 100 compelling companies in the next five years. We believe we can achieve this by minimizing the time, speed, and capital required to validate truly repeatable and scalable business models before any significant venture investment. We're excited about radically changing how companies are built and funded, and even democratizing wealth creation. If you share our passion and want to contribute your talent, capital, or influence, we would love to hear from you! Contact us at: Nobody Studios | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram | Pinterest  Find full show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Sarah Doody on LinkedIn Career Strategy Lab | Career Strategy Podcast The Product of You

On this episode of Unlearn Podcast, Barry O'Reilly hosts Anurag Gupta, founder and CEO of Shoreline, a product that helps reliability engineers reduce the “heavy lifting of dealing with incidents” so they can focus on improving their systems. Anurag is a notable leader in the reliability space: his experience includes joining Oracle in its infancy, and over seven years at AWS, where he ran their analytics and relational database services. In this episode, he explores the importance of embracing failure, creating a blameless culture, and sharing knowledge to build more reliable and resilient systems. The power of a clear vision There is power in having a clear vision of what you want to become in life, Anurag believes. He shares how he sat down and imagined what people would say about him after he died, which helped him define his personal story arc. He knew he wanted to start his own company but recognized he needed to learn how to do it first. He joined a startup, traded his skills at Oracle, and eventually landed at AWS, where he helped build successful products like Aurora and Redshift. Barry remarks, "If you want something to come to life and create it, you have to envisage it." Anurag adds, “I believe that if you really know what you want, the universe kind of bends its way to help you get it. …If I want something real, I think the world will bend in my favor.” A community for engineers Innovators who are exploring novel ideas often create communities of like-minded persons. Barry asks Anurag about Reliability.org, the community Anurag created. Reliability.org is a nonprofit community for engineers who want to learn how to build and operate highly reliable systems, Anurag responds. Unlearning is about getting past your own experience and biases to learn from others who have walked different paths from yourself but have shared goals, he says. Thus, Reliability.org is a community created for engineers who want to learn from and debate with one another. Anurag believes that building highly reliable systems is still a black art, and engineers should embrace learning from those who have first hand experience. Looking ahead Anurag is excited about building something ubiquitous with Shoreline, where if “anyone anywhere has fixed a problem, everyone everywhere gets the benefit”. He is willing it into existence with Reliability.org. A special message to listeners Nobody Studios is a new venture studio, co-founded by Barry, with the purpose of derisking pre-seed stage business ideas. Our goal is to create 100 compelling companies in the next five years. We believe we can achieve this by minimizing the time, speed, and capital required to validate truly repeatable and scalable business models before any significant venture investment. We're excited about radically changing how companies are built and funded, and even democratizing wealth creation. If you share our passion and want to contribute your talent, capital, or influence, we would love to hear from you! Contact us at: Nobody Studios | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram | Pinterest  For full show notes, please visit BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Anurag Gupta on LinkedIn Shoreline Reliability.org

Accountability is a buzzword in business, but is the traditional notion of assigning ownership to a single individual the most effective approach? In this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, Barry O'Reilly is joined by Kate Tarling, author of The Service Organization: How To Deliver and Lead Successful Services, Sustainably. Kate is the founder of a services company and a service leader and designer who has made a significant impact in public and private organizations, especially in the UK Government. Kate shares her experiences in creating high-performing services and teams and establishing accountability in large organizations. Kate and Barry discuss the challenges of getting different teams to work together effectively and the importance of intentional effort and investment to create end-to-end services and improve the customer experience.  Great customer experiences Creating great services is a better way to market products than relying on promotions and discounts. Kate says of the pivotal moment she realized this: “... if we just design this to work really well, if people love using it, then I feel like that is a way into marketing rather than having to offer promotions.” Her varied career experiences - in roles from operations to marketing to product - led her to realize the connecting thread in her work was a focus on service ownership and design. She tells Barry that she was working in service ownership before she even knew it was a thing. Lessons learned from Lean Startup Weekend Kate shares her experiences from a Lean Startup Weekend over a decade ago, where she worked on designing a solution for care homes. This was an example of a high-performing team coming together to iterate toward success using a user-centered design process. While this process is useful for designing products and services from scratch, Kate found that scaling this process to larger organizations presented a different set of challenges. She began to capture the questions and challenges faced when applying these principles to organizations, such as the way governance and decision-making structures work, the flow of money through the organization, and team structures. Principles and techniques of creating successful teams  In large organizations with multiple teams, it is essential to have a sense of what brings them together and a clear understanding of what they are moving towards. Kate and Barry discuss how to create successful teams in large organizations, particularly those aiming to demonstrate new, modern, agile ways of working. Kate emphasizes the importance of having a clear sense of what is being aimed for, not in terms of target states, but a clear strategy and performance indicators. She says, "Having a sense of what you're aiming for, not so much a target state, but a set of ideas or some performance indicators or something can help, but it really takes everybody to know what that is." She stresses that everyone must work together for the good of what they are driving at, rather than just focusing on their individual roles, profession or teams. Democratizing wealth creation through Nobody Studios Barry O'Reilly shares his excitement about co-founding Nobody Studios, a venture studio that aims to rapidly create new companies and derisk pre-seed stage business ideas. The studio's goal is to start 100 companies over the next five years and democratize wealth creation and distribution. Barry invites those interested in changing the way work is done and products are created to get involved in Nobody Studios. Read full show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Kate Tarling on LinkedIn The Service Organization: How To Deliver and Lead Successful Services, Sustainably

“Joining a startup is irrational for most people. Launching a venture studio to build a hundred startups is totally irrational to pretty much everybody,” Barry O’Reilly remarks. “You've got two sticks, you rubbed them together, and you're telling people that this is going to turn into a 500-story skyscraper."  On this show, Barry celebrates this 100th episode of the Unlearn Podcast with Mark McNally, co-founder of Nobody Studios. Mark, who has started 14 companies in his career, shares that what sets Nobody Studios apart is its purpose-driven Why, which is to give people agency and create something bigger than themselves that will outlast them.  Together, they reflect on the last two years of building their venture studio, Nobody Studios, the importance of diversity, and how this journey has been a transformational personal development experience. This shows dives into their vision for creating a vehicle that brings together ideas, resources, and dreams to impact the world beyond their own lifetimes. Absorb Everything It’s important to be open to learning and stretching yourself. With Nobody Studios' board set of ventures, Barry and Mark have been exposed to different perspectives, which has helped them learn and grow. “I can say without a doubt I've learned more in the last three years than I have in my entire career and my entire life. It's just the diversity and the creativity and people who join a call… I come out of that 1-hour call, and it's like I got a piece of their brilliance, a piece of their perspective, and it's stretching me,” Mark comments. Barry says that he has been transformed by listening to the stories and experiences of different entrepreneurs. They encourage listeners to be like a sponge and absorb everything that is exposed to them. "While you have a strategy and you have plans, at the same time, we're a learning, breathing thing. You just want to be a sponge, and you want to just inherit and absorb the things that you’re exposed to," Mark says. Success and Scars are Equally Valuable “When you're doing things for the right reason,” Mark tells Barry, “and there's some informed lessons and scars along the way, things tend to play out the way you hope, your truth. I think our truth is resonating.” Building a globally distributed venture studio during the pandemic was a risky move. Mark and Barry credit the role of serendipity in their journey. Exciting Times Ahead The future is bright for Nobody Studios, and they are excited for what is to come. The business is still in its infancy, so they have a long way to go. Even when they have unlimited financial resources available to them, they plan to continue to make constraints one of the things that force them to get things right. In order to grow, they have to transition from doing everything to finding the right talent and systems. Making key hires to mature the organization and build the foundation is crucial. The flywheel is picking up momentum, which is a fascinating transition for any business. The Sky's the Limit Nobody Studios has twelve companies moving, with a few already in the market and eight more to come this year. They are well on their way, and the potential ahead is unlimited. The journey of Nobody Studios has been one of the most rewarding of Barry's life. He and Mark are excited about the road ahead, and this 100th episode is another great moment to reflect on the twists and turns of the journey. They are having fun, and they look forward to continuing building together. Go to Barry O'Reilly for full show notes. Resources Mark McNally on LinkedIn Nobody Studios Nobody Studios Equity Crowdfunding on Republic

Pascal Finette is a well-respected entrepreneur and innovation expert with a wealth of knowledge and insights to share about achieving success in the business world. Having led entrepreneurship and open innovation tracks at Singularity University, Pascal is an experienced mentor and coach with a focus on amplifying positive change in the world. He is an advocate for finding companies with a greater purpose and mission, and emphasizes the importance of taking risks and being open to new opportunities. Pascal has also recently released a book, Disruption: How to Decode the Future, Disrupt Your Industry, and Transform Your Business, which shares his insights on innovation and navigating disruption in the business world. Pascal provides insights into the mindset and experiences of a successful entrepreneur and innovator. In this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, host Barry O’Reilly converses with Pascal Finette about the importance of purpose, community, and an innovative, risk-taking spirit. He shares his story as he encourages listeners to follow their intuition and take action. Following Your Intellectual Curiosity Rather than being guided by a clear plan or strategy, Pascal relied on his gut feeling to guide him towards interesting opportunities. While his resume looks impressive in hindsight, he acknowledges that in the moment, his decisions never seemed to make any sense. By being willing to say yes to opportunities that presented themselves, he was able to forge a unique path that ultimately led to success. This eagerness to take risks and try new things is an important trait for anyone looking to innovate and create change in their personal or professional life. As Pascal puts it, "if it doesn't work out, it's fine.” Open Innovation Open innovation is about creating a community of people, including customers and collaborators, for the purpose of building something together. This is based on the principles of how communities work together, such as how the Amish build a church or a building. The idea is to apply these principles to the world of business to create something greater than what one organization or team could create on their own. Companies like Mozilla have made their code open source, inviting people to contribute to make it better for the benefit of everyone. In its heyday, something like 40% of Firefox’s code was written by volunteers, Pascal points out. be radical be radical is a company that helps individuals and organizations discover what matters for their future and how they can go and transform. Pascal was inspired to start this company while working at Singularity University where he helped people see the future differently, particularly when it comes to technology. Pascal found that there was an interesting gap between people seeing what could be and not knowing what to do about it. He wanted to help people build a future they could see. Looking Ahead Pascal is looking forward to the changes that AI will bring to the way we think about information retrieval, especially in terms of crafting better questions rather than just seeking answers. He believes that we are at a pivotal moment where the systems that define the web will change dramatically, and the way we think about browsers, searching, and information retrieval will change. Pascal is excited to see how people will make use of these changes and what they will create from them. Find full show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Pascal Finette on Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Disruption: How to Decode the Future, Disrupt Your Industry, and Transform Your Business be radical

In this episode of Unlearn Podcast, host Barry O'Reilly and two experienced tech executives, Melissa Perri and Gibson Biddle, meet for a Personal Board of Directors meeting. Melissa Perri is the founder and CEO of Produx Labs, a product management consultancy, and author of Escaping the Build Trap. She is also a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. Gibson Biddle is a former Chief Product Officer at Netflix and renowned product leader and speaker. Using the CAMPS Model (community, autonomy, mastery, purpose, scale), they share personal insights on the importance of building relationships, continuous learning, work-life balance, and feedback. Throughout the episode, they provide practical tips and advice for personal and professional growth, including valuable lessons and takeaways for listeners seeking to succeed in their own careers and personal lives. Building a Community People who surround themselves with a strong network of friends, colleagues, and mentors tend to be more successful in their personal and professional lives. Your community can also provide emotional support and accountability, which are important for achieving goals and personal growth. Gibson shares that he has been engaged with the community of product leaders all over the world but feels like he hasn't done enough to mechanize it. He admits that his community score is his lowest. He acknowledges that Lenny Bruchitski is a great role model for building a community. Gibson likes to teach through talks and workshops; he is still very much a one-person company, which limits his leverage in creating a community. [Listen from 6:20] Retiring Gracefully Barry asks Gibson what flexibility would look like for him now that he is retiring. Gibson responds that he has optimized for flexibility by deciding what he chooses to do or not do every week. For him, autonomy and flexibility are almost the same. Talking to people who are presently or soon-to-be retired has also been helpful in providing insights, he tells Barry. His passion for speaking at events and workshops is what keeps him energized, and he plans to continue doing this even in retirement. “I get energy from my talks and workshops. It helps me age gracefully, stay current,” he remarks. “...You have to have a purpose,” Gibson stresses. “Even in retirement, you have to have goals. You have to be learning new stuff.” He explains how he learned to let go of his ego and focus on creating value instead of money. He rates himself on mastery, purpose and scale and shares his rationale for the scores. [Listen from 9:00] Find the complete show notes at BarryO'Reilly.com Resources: Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Website | Product Institute | Produx Labs Gibson Biddle on LinkedIn | Twitter | Website   Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

On this episode of the Unlearn podcast, host Barry O'Reilly is joined by Michael Wu, Chief AI Strategist at PROS. Michael is a seasoned expert in the field of AI, with over 25 years of experience and a background in math, physics, and molecular biology. Michael shares his journey from studying nonlinear dynamics and the brain to working in the tech industry and how his diverse education has helped him approach problems from multiple angles. He and Barry also talk about how influence spreads, and how AI is impacting our lives now and into the future. A Strong Desire to Understand “The conviction is just a strong desire to understand something,” Michael tells Barry. “At the bottom of my heart, I think even right now, in my current role, I still try to understand a lot of things fundamentally.” Barry asks Michael about his decision to change his approach to studying the brain. Michael explains that his decision was driven by a strong desire to understand how the brain works, and he felt that using a physics-based approach would be impractical. He was fascinated by the biology-based approach and felt that taking this approach, along with a top-down approach, would provide a deeper understanding of social media platforms and why people use them. He explains that combining both approaches allowed him to reach a deeper understanding than either approach alone would have. How Influence Propagates One area Michael has been studying deeply over the years is the idea of how influence spreads. We all influence others and we’re also always being influenced. Barry asks Michael, “What were some of the interesting surprises that you found as you were trying to model this idea of what influence is?” Michael responds that he identified six factors that were necessary for influence to propagate. By understanding how people shared, how frequently they shared, who they shared with, the timeliness of their responses, and other behavioral profiles, he was able to identify influencers before they became popular. He encourages brands to cultivate these “influencers in the making” as potential advocates. Pricing and Sales Efficacy PROS dubs itself ‘A CFO’s best kept secret to profitable growth’. This is because the company’s main focus is on pricing and sales efficacy. Pricing has been shown to have a more significant impact on monetization than any other factor: a 1% change in price can lead to as much as 11% improvement in margins! The second tool provided by PROS is sales efficacy, which helps companies have a more effective and efficient sales team. Michael explains his work mainly falls under the category of demand forecasting, which involves finding the right balance between supply and demand. This balance determines the equilibrium price, which optimizes revenue when supply matches demand. How AI Impacts Our Lives Artificial intelligence and data analysis can help companies make decisions based on data rather than just trusting instincts. A good example is GPS navigation systems, which have now evolved to optimize routes based on travel time, traffic patterns, and weather. Michael encourages businesses to learn to trust the data and use it to their advantage, even if the answers might be unexpected.  “People don't realize that the AI sometimes doesn't have to be as good as a human to be beneficial,” Michael points out. “In many cases, it doesn't have to be. It just needs to be good enough. It doesn't even need to be as good as you. But if it could be like 70% as good as a human, it could help you tremendously by making your work or your processes a lot more efficient.”  AI is being used in many areas, whether we are aware of it or not, and those who do not embrace it risk being left behind, Michael warns. Read full show notes at BarryO'Reilly Resources Michael Wu on LinkedIn PROS