Don't Be Scared of AI. Be Scared of the Competitor Using It w/ Roberto Martinez | S2E11

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:01.132)
Welcome to the Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I'm your host, Michael Salomon. Today's episode is a reality check. You probably listening every day in the headlines, in the news that for businesses to use AI, they probably need an AI lab, a data science team, and a six budget.

figure, budget to use or implement AI or to even stay relevant and keep up with. most businesses, really don't live in those headlines. They live in the day-to-day payroll, customer calls, invoices, and margins. AI headlines are written for big tech, really not Main Street, and small businesses are being sold complexity. These guys as innovation. My guest today,

is Roberto Martinez. He works hand on hand with the small and mid-sized businesses. And I'm very excited to have this conversation with him today. So we can take a look at it and dive deeper on what it feels to implement AI, especially with his experience working with businesses today. So Roberto, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Roberto Martinez (01:19.415)
Thank you so much, Michael. Very excited to be here today and chat about a very important and transformative challenge that businesses are facing. How to leverage technology, specifically AI for growth, for scale. And so that's what I do. I've been doing this for the past 10 years through my marketing agency. What we do is we help digitize and leverage technology to help businesses grow and scale.

And for the past nine and a half years, I've been what's called a Google coach for the state of California. I'm now covering different states across the nation, mostly Western states. I am an advisor to Amazon accelerator program. I work with TikTok shop to help businesses understand how to leverage these platforms. So my focus here today is to help businesses, regardless if you're just starting up, if you're already a million or if you're already at 50 million leverage.

AI and get behind the hype. Like there's a lot of hype around there's a lot of investment on the Fortune 500 side. How do we create a process where we as business owners can leverage this technology for growth and scale?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:30.232)
Amazing, amazing. And that's my hope also as well, to have really a human grounded conversation without cutting through the noise that we see every day about AI, right? So people can listen to it, get connected and understand what are really the things that matters to businesses and how they can get started with AI. And what works, what doesn't work, right? So we're gonna have all this conversation today.

And let's get things started, right Roberto? You work with businesses, real businesses every day. And I'm curious to hear from you. Where do you see the biggest disconnect between these AI headlines that we see every day and the small business is reality?

Roberto Martinez (03:14.956)
Well, there's a couple of pieces. There's three that I really want to talk about. The first one is AI is not really transforming my business. It hasn't really changed anything. It's business as usual. And to that I say, you're right. It's slow, slow, slow, and then all that once. And so it's incumbent for these business owners to get in front of the AI and to realize that other businesses have began implementing it. So while it hasn't drastically revolutionized in the industry sector,

that you're seeing behind the scenes, AI is definitely being leveraged by those Fortune 500 companies on the back end, which is one of the reasons why you're seeing these headlines when it comes to operationalizing it. Now there's a lot of context there. Some folks are saying they're using AI as a reason to lay off a workforce, and that is based on the pandemic. There was a big layoff, and then after that, we got out of the pandemic and there was a rehiring. And so now there's a new

rebalancing of realizing, hey, we don't need this many workers. We can't just fire them. Let's use AI as an excuse. So there's definitely arguments for and against. But what I would tell you is, as a business owner, you have to start thinking about how to implement AI within your business to make sure you grow and scale and operationalize that AI tool. And we'll touch on a little bit of points that I've seen businesses do this successfully. The second piece that I learned is you have to

own your data. And what do I mean by this? The AI revolution has changed how predictive analytics works. It's always been there for the past 15 years. We've used predictive analytics. It's nothing new. But with AI now, we can, in essence, create our own small language model for our own business. And so we're moving away from third party cookies. We're going to be moving away from

those tracking pixels and when there's new updates on your phone, there's more privacy protection because there's pressure. And what's gonna happen is businesses are going to have to own their data. It's gonna be first party as opposed to third party. And that approach is called the walled garden approach. And that's been around forever, 25, 30 years. It really came to bear in the early 90s to mid 90s with telecom realizing.

Roberto Martinez (05:38.262)
have to create your own value and your own ecosystem for your customers. And we could touch on that too. So you're going to have to own your data. And you're going to have to leverage that data to provide value to your customers, which big tech is already doing this. Big businesses are already doing this. You could think Disney. You could think Coke. Any time you touch that perspective business, they're understanding your habits. They're understanding your actions. And they're monetizing them through advertising.

And then the third piece is cybersecurity. And there's going to be a huge uptick in the near future when it comes to protecting your assets, your data. And there's going to be a lot of bad actors out there. So how do we as business owners protect ourselves and leveraging AI and implementing AI protocols to protect us from cybersecurity threats? So those are the big three focuses that most businesses are either implementing or are starting to implement.

And if you're a small business to medium-sized business and you haven't started this process, you're going to be left behind.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (06:42.146)
Yeah, all that very, very interesting areas to cover. And I think depending on the size of your business, right, each one of these faces will mean something totally different. And I want to pick your brain and your experience and try to focus first on small businesses. Because I think the pain as a small business is very different, right? A small business is not a lot of resources.

usually a founder plus someone else helping, and not a lot of resources or capital to invest. What is the key to approach those small businesses and find out how they can leverage AI for their businesses and convince them this is you should implement it one way or the other? Curious to hear what you have seen there.

Roberto Martinez (07:32.258)
Yeah, that's a great.

Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. I always start with nothing new is under the sun. So let's talk about your pain point or just talk about your, your goals. I mean, one of the same way, depending on where you want to start viewing that. So when I talk to business owners and we run a lot of programs for the city, for the counties, for foundations and for tech companies, and we have to understand what is the pain point that the business owner has gone through and then leveraging AI to potentially solve that challenge that they have.

Or what are opportunities that you're seeing within your industry and sector because you are the subject matter expert in your space. And so those are the two lenses that we start the conversation for most small businesses. Where does it hurt? And if you have a magic wand and you could create any future, what does the future look like for your business? And then we back up into the type of tool, AI tool that you can leverage to expedite that process. Now there's a third

process that we can implement, which I unfortunately see a lot of small to medium sized businesses, particularly startup companies or mom and pop shops that they don't do really well, that AI is excellent for. And I will repeat that. There's a lot of startups or small businesses that they could leverage AI without identifying their pain point or their goals that they could start in, but most haven't done so. And that's process. If they have a process set in place,

If they have what modern folks call a workflow set in place, AI is excellent for improving that workflow. So most small businesses are just working in the business and they don't have time to step back and work on the business. So they haven't developed their processes. They haven't developed their procedures and AI is excellent for once you have that SOP down, once you have that process down, you bring in AI and

Roberto Martinez (09:31.604)
and GenTech AI and they would expedite that process saving you operational time and providing you operational efficiencies. Not that sexy, but extremely valuable, especially for product-based companies or anything that has multiple steps in that process. So businesses that have those things can start implementing AI to improve their operations and lower their costs. And I got plenty of examples where I could walk you through of how you would go about doing that for a use case study.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:02.072)
Yeah, and you touched on a really valid point, which is processes. And I think this is a challenge for a small, medium, and even large organizations that sometimes are not very well structured and having processes in places that we can just come in and leverage AI based on the processes. How do you break in for those small businesses or even medium-sized businesses that they don't have processes in place?

That's a step zero, if you ask me, right? But how do you convince the owners, hey, if you really want this, you will have to invest time on getting these processes laid out first.

Roberto Martinez (10:34.316)
Yeah.

Roberto Martinez (10:46.506)
Yeah, I think it's, you you could adopt or die and that sounds dramatic, but the businesses, you know, most people tell me, well, I'm scared of AI. And what I always tell them is you shouldn't be scared of AI. You should be scared of the businesses who are leveraging AI within your sector, within your industry. And so what those businesses are doing is they're

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:52.238)
Hmm.

Roberto Martinez (11:08.094)
Understanding I have an operational workflow. I have a manual already. How can AI improve that manual? You know, I have a You know, work with a lot of small businesses and there's this great Company here in I'm based out of Los Angeles and they have multiple hostels. I remember you remember your

college experience, maybe you traveled abroad and you might have stayed in the hostel. Well, she has three or four different hostels and she's trying to improve that onboarding when you get into the hostel and you check in and you check out. She has a manual. We literally took that manual and we realized what can't be outsourced to a team, what can't be outsourced to a team, and how can AI improve it.

And what she did is she leveraged notebook LN, which is a tool that Google provides at no cost. And within notebook LN, you could write a manual. You can have an onboarding manual in English and French and Italian and German and whatever language you want. You can even create a deck for them at no cost to you. And so that goes from having a person onboard a prospective visitor into her hostel to

using Notebook Alam, having the business owner, the customer come in and scan, and then improve that customer experience and save time and money. Amazing thought process. It's low hanging fruit. It took her a week to implement, but she needed to have that process. She needed to have that onboarding process down or that visitors welcoming kit down to be able to implement that. so things like that low hanging fruit allow her to start thinking differently now about her business and

thinking differently about how she can implement AI and the GenTech AI into improving other workflows for her business.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:53.57)
amazing use and business example there because it's exactly what we need people to think about. You don't need to start big. Actually, we go against starting big. You start for the things that can be a quick win, even for your organization and your business. And once you see that you start getting results, you start moving to other. And it's a mindset shift, right? Even for business owners, one day you start understanding how these tools

and this technology, how they can leverage to really be more efficient on their business, they will continue to try to find ways to make themselves and their business more efficient. So this is just a clear example of how you can start small, right? And getting a sense of how you can leverage technology and tools out there that are even freer, as you were mentioning this one from Google, to your advantage and to your business advantage. The key is to start.

And I love that what you say, adopt and die. I really think people need to wake up because this is here. It's not going anywhere. And if you have a business and you are doing everything manual, your competition that is using AI will run over you. It's not being dramatic. It's the reality of today's business.

Roberto Martinez (14:15.584)
Yeah, no, I mean, that's a real life focus for us. Any agency, I'm sure you have plenty of agencies that marketing agencies that come in and work with you and you interview. And there's another clear example. We were working with a marketing agency and they were just telling us, you know, we're not scared because there's so much AI slop and there's so much content that's being created with AI and they can't win us. Like human element is so important.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:34.424)
Hmm.

Roberto Martinez (14:41.686)
And what I told them is like, see it differently. Instead of saying human is going to be valued over everything. You're right. The human in the loop within any AI workflow is implying there's hallucinations, there's, you know, false positives. We understand that. But what if you as an agency can now lower your operational costs? And so how do you go about doing this? Let's say you're a marketing agency that creates logos for companies. And on average, it might take you 20 hours to create

three or four examples of prospective logos for a business owner. Well, know, 20 hours is quite a long to create four concepts, but you can now use different AI tools that will create the logos very quickly and you'll have an intake form. You create three or four logos using AI as the starting point. So it went from spending 20 hours creating four logos through a designer to maybe two hours creating four logos.

with the designer guiding the AI tool, then you present to the owner. Here's for example, how about we narrow it down to two logos that you want to focus on. And then I, as the designer, can focus in on exactly what you want in these two logos. And then we'll get one logo done and we'll deliver it. So now you have a workflow that usually takes 40 hours, 60 hours, and you could shrink that down to 10, 15 hours and have the customer guided.

by not having to waste so many hours up front, but rather using the AI tool to provide them the right examples. And then you as a designer, you as a creative can now take that initial feedback and use the magic touch that the humans provide when it comes to creative energy and creative design. And so they took that, they ran with it. They went from producing logos at 25 hours a logo.

down to about six, seven hours. That's a winning of 17 hours, anywhere from 15, crazy. And so now she can scale it, she can lower the cost for production, she can pass on some of those savings to her customer base.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:41.09)
That's amazing.

Roberto Martinez (16:59.34)
Michael, did we lose you? there it is.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:03.233)
You're back.

Roberto Martinez (17:05.931)
I did I freeze up I have pretty strong Wi-Fi this is my office

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:10.698)
Yeah, it froze for a moment, but you're back now. You hear me now, right? All right, no problem. That can be edited. All right, so thank you, Roberto. I think all those are exactly the type of example that people need to think about and how AI is also helping businesses to cut on expenses is even to run more efficient, right? And to be more self-efficient.

Roberto Martinez (17:12.992)
Yeah. Yes. Yes, I hear you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:39.438)
What in the past you maybe needed to hire multiple people to get things done on the marketing side, on the sales side. There's so many use cases on how you can leverage AI to still help your business. And even if you are a solo founder, you can even be a solo founder with the help of AI and AI agents and tools to help you run your businesses. There are so many, many use cases from email drafting and follow ups.

For example, in customer support, triaging issues, scheduling reminders, so many use cases that a small business can take a look at it and implement today. All great stuff. Thank you for going over that. And we have focused this first part of the conversation on many of the examples regarding what the businesses should be doing and how to approach AI.

But I'm curious to ask you next, and what do you think the things that the businesses should not be doing with AI? Do you have anything that you have found that is concerning that they should not be using it or thinking about in some key areas of businesses, for example?

Roberto Martinez (18:56.786)
Not necessarily concerning, but I do think businesses have to protect their property and their intellectual property. so IP is a big one. So making sure that you understand that you're training these models and you need to make sure you protect your own IP. Making sure that you have safe and secure systems in place so that no one steals that IP, no one steals that data, no one steals that information. And that all starts with.

We talked about the three points, cybersecurity and making sure you protect your assets, protect your data, protect your customer's data. And I sometimes feel that they hear that point, but they don't think it could happen to them. Stanford study realized that the majority of errors when it comes to cybersecurity are human errors. So it's the human who's actually causing the breach in data. So creating protocols and systems, regardless of how big you are, if you're working with clients,

If you're capturing clients private information or sensitive information, you should have some type of protocol already set up because the last thing you want to do is get in the position where you're maintaining sensitive information and you have a data breach. And then that's going to affect, it's going to be a very long day and a very bad day if you have those challenges. it's really, I see that as a challenge for most businesses because they don't realize how vulnerable they are.

when it comes to cybersecurity attacks and how if you don't set up systems to protect your business and protect yourself, you will be very exposed and you could potentially have a lawsuit on your hands. Nowadays, we work with different cities and different counties and we have to take out insurance and the insurance has errors and omissions and that insurance has been going up and up and up. Why? Because they realize the risk involved with cybersecurity.

and the cost that will be associated to that type of breach of information.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:54.552)
Yeah, cybersecurity and data privacy continues to be and will continue to be a concern for, it should be a concern for everyone because everybody, everything leaves out there, right? And especially if you're dealing with customer and confidential information, it is extremely important that whatever the tool that you implement, AI or processes, you keep that data privacy at the top of your concerns.

Because as you say, the last thing you want is a lawsuit knocking your door because of issues or challenges with data. And that's an area in the whole AI conversation that I continue to think there's more needs to be done on providing clarity for us and businesses on how the data has been managed, where the data has been stored. I've seen from, for example, Microsoft and OpenAI,

trying to get more businesses and even the government, right? And then providing similar parts of their application, on secure tenants, that your data lives in your tenant in a way to get more of those businesses that are very conscious about data and privacy.

Roberto Martinez (22:12.29)
Well, you know what the beauty is that we are finding that policy is shifting and we have more data privacy as consumers, especially when it comes to if you use an iOS device, they're passing stranger and stranger sharing of data and information. And we touched on this in very beginning of the podcast about the walled city approach, the walled garden, excuse me, approach. that really...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (22:37.272)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Martinez (22:40.52)
speaks to the importance of you creating an environment for your customers that's safe, that's secure, and that's value. And once you're able to do that, the customer will self-select to come in and use your product or service, and you can capture all that data and create great experiences for that prospective customer. And you don't need to be a Fortune 500 company to do that.

You have amazing assets already. You have your website, you have your social media sites, you have your landing pages, you have your email marketing. All of this can be a reservoir of information so that you can better serve that prospective customer.

And so obviously you need a database, a CRM tool that captures that information. And once you're able to capture that information, you're able to make sense using predictive analytics about the habits and the needs, wants and desires of your customer. So you can almost get ahead of that specific need at the right time, at the right place that your customer has those needs. I'll never forget, we did a case study many, many, many years ago when I was back in business school about the Four Seasons.

And you know what makes the Four Seasons so exceptional? And it's because they can understand your needs before you understand your needs. They know what you're going to want before you know it. let's say you want you're on vacation and they'll bring the towel before you go to the pool. They'll realize that you're thirsty because you just went on a five hour tour of the city. So they'll have food and water ready for you. That prediction of understanding the needs of your customer.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:16.558)
Hmm.

Roberto Martinez (24:17.28)
made them exceptional. Nowadays with AI, predictive analytics and having all these different assets, digital assets at your disposal, it allows you as a business owner to provide content that really moves the needle for your customer. And it's not even targeting, it's predictive. You're not saying, you're just making a segmentation of that audience and realizing they care about these things.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:31.928)
The targets, yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:36.397)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Martinez (24:43.35)
Let's make sure we give them the things that they care about through content, through video, through audio, and that gets them to trust you more.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:50.67)
We know that you like this. I'm going to put it in front of you 24x7 so you can do it. And it's funny that you touch on that because the way algorithm works. And it's just so funny how all this data, especially in social media, and you can see that every day in social media, right? They know what you like, right? They know what you spend time on watching.

Roberto Martinez (24:57.186)
That's actually right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:20.042)
let's say an Instagram or whatever social media, because they know that and they know if you have engaged and they know how long you spend on watching those videos, that's the type of content that is coming to you. And it's just back to your point, it's the data. If you have the data, you are keen because only when you have access to data, that's when you can put in practice all these different initiatives.

to target, to be more aggressive about putting your business out there. But the core of everything, and especially in this conversation, AI also will be as good as the data it has access to.

Roberto Martinez (26:03.596)
That's a good data in, good data out. It's, you know, data in, bad data out. And so yes, completely right. What AI does is it helps you predict at a very high efficiency the wants, needs and desires of your customers.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:06.455)
Yeah.

Roberto Martinez (26:22.068)
And you won't have to follow your customer around different platforms. can, if you're really think about the value that you provide your customer, you could create amazing content that the customers are going to say, yes, I want to keep working with Michael. want to hear more podcasts. he dropped the PDF. I want to download that PDF. I want to go to his website and learn about his tour. I want to be part of his ecosystem. I choose to select myself into his ecosystem. That's why it's called the walled garden.

because it's beautiful, it's exciting, it's gorgeous. And I want to be in this ecosystem. So when he drops that he's on tour in Los Angeles on this date, I opt in. I say, yes, I want to go see him in real person, in real life, in person. And so that's incumbent on business owners to be able to leverage that technology that corporate America five years ago have been leveraging. When you think about, I always use the example of Disney because they do such a great job, delighting you and

You opt in to go to the Disney website. You opt in to go to ESPN. You opt in to go to the Disney channel. And so they're gathering all this information about your habits. And they're not following you around in different websites. They're just seeing, hey, this is the time of day they opened up the browser. This is the time of day they opened up the social site, the streaming service, and this is the type of content they want. So is it any surprise that they understand what you like and what you don't like and get you to

purchase what you might want to purchase. It doesn't feel like a push, but it feels like, they knew that I was going to go on vacation with my family in March. And so they offered me a discounted rate for this particular trip. Now you can have reservations about that system that's being built. And I'm with you. I also have reservations, but the fact that it's being built, it's not going backwards. We're not going to move away from that process. It's already being built right now. It's already...

being executed right now. If anything, smaller business owners are late to adopt that strategy.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:28.246)
Yeah, there's no coming back. There's no going back. It's from where we are into the future now. And this is why businesses need to understand this as well. Even if you don't like it, if you don't understand it, you as a business owner, you need to give your best to really get on board and understand and look for help on how you can leverage this technology, right? Because your business will definitely appreciate it.

And Roberto, want to ask you because for businesses, right, depending, maybe it's for all medium-sized businesses, you know, it's no one wants to overspend. It may not be budgeted, for example. So, know, businesses, always have a concern about how they invest their money, right? And no one likes to overspend. So

What is the key to prove the value to the business, to a business owner that may not understand fully how to leverage this technology without providing a return on investment to them? And I think for some people, like consultants, for example, that are trying to offer automations,

opportunities of AI solutions to business that continues to be a struggle because how you can, yes, everybody knows that AI is there and everybody have heard about AI, but how can you convince a business owner you need to get a board and you need to pay this and you will get efficiency in the future. you know, if I'm the business owner, how can you make that case to me?

Roberto Martinez (30:20.579)
That's a great question. And you know, you'll be surprised how many business owners start talking about a and end up talking about 10. You're like, well, we're talking about numbers and letters. Now we're talking about numbers. And so getting hyper clear what

the cut what the client wants is if you're a consultant, that's, mean, we're not telling anything that clients that the consultants don't know about it. So understanding the needs and desires of the business, having an emotional hug to get them to say yes, understanding what their why is, and then getting that why in a way that makes sense to them emotionally is very important. You we've, you have to build that in, but when it comes to AI, it's,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (30:54.478)
Mmm.

Roberto Martinez (31:08.123)
leveraging the information you have and making it relevant to them. And so what do I mean by that? Use case studies of past examples of what was success. What has worked in this space? Some business owners are not early adopters, so what we have to do is meet them where they're at. Well, OK, well, we won't start off with the Porsche. We'll work down and get you the Honda. And then once you're ready to take that purchase and have a centralized system, CRM system, we'll graduate to that.

But meeting them where they're at. And you talked about this earlier, Michael, you nailed it. Starting, starting small, showing value very early, having a, you yourself having the process in place, you know, sometimes, uh, you know, the beauty of digital is that you could track everything and we have KPIs for everything. And sometimes you talk to the client of our KPIs and their eyes glaze over. They're like, oh, boring. Yeah. Yeah. And so.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (32:02.284)
this science fiction.

Roberto Martinez (32:05.731)
Helping them understand how this is real is extremely important. So maybe talking to them in the way that they associate value for us It's operational like how do we lower your operational costs this month was a thousand dollars now? It's five hundred You have an additional five hundred dollars. That's great. And if you project that out over the year How much are you gonna save or it cost you? Ten dollars to acquire a perspective lead now. It's costing you three dollars

So being able to tell that story is extremely important and that's part of it when it comes to AI. It's telling that story in a way that resonates to your customer and being able to show success fairly early on. That's more of what any consulting or agency provides. If you don't talk to past clients, if you don't do your due diligence and realize, can you give me through referrals so I can work with them and I could see what you did for them.

If they're not providing you that point of reference and benchmark, it doesn't matter what they're promising you. It doesn't matter if they talk about AI or not. You're not going to trust them. so testimonials and trust factors are extremely important in this space. having market validation is extremely important in any industry. And so that's where we typically start the conversation. It's like, what do you need to know to get to yes? What are opportunities that you have in front of you right now that you want to capture?

Do you have short-term pain points or short-term goals and then long-term goals? It's built towards that long-term goal in a way that drives results in the first quarter. Sales 101, right? Like it's not hard to, when you get more, when you get to a larger company or a larger client, you know, in the five, 10, 15, 25 million, then you can start segmenting marketing qualified leads to self-qualified leads. And that process,

You'll be surprised how many businesses we talked to don't differentiate between marketing leads and sales leads and don't differentiate into like how many times do I have to touch that prospective customer to convert that prospective customer. What AI provides you is at a minimum a baseline of what the industry is recommending for you. And now you can back into, am I spending what I should be spending to acquire these leads if the market's telling me it's costing $10 to acquire a lead.

Roberto Martinez (34:28.803)
And I'm spending $5 and yet I'm yelling at this person or this marketing manager for not acquiring the leads and we're only spending $5. Wow, that's, you know, why am I yelling at this person if we know that the average is 10? And so AI is really good at just any kind of multimodal tool that you have right now with AI. They could benchmark your industry and sector very quickly. They could say, this is how much it costs to acquire a lead within your industry.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:38.734)
Hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:42.456)
Ha ha ha.

Roberto Martinez (34:57.667)
Are you doing it are you not doing it? And, you know, that's a difficult conversation to talk to any type of business owner. Hey, you're spending $5 on average. It costs $20 to acquire a prospective customer. I can't really help you here. And so what we see, especially in my space, is we see agencies specialize in industries that go really deep on their specialization. And we see most other agencies walk away from clients. They say,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:22.188)
Hmm

Roberto Martinez (35:28.225)
You're offering me a thousand dollars as a retainer and the average is 5,000. I cannot work with you. And that's hard for business owners to hear sometimes. And so what I always tell business owners is understand the value of your lead. So there's something called unit economics and so understanding unit economics. What's the customer acquisition costs? What's the lifetime value of my customer? If I bring in one customer, how long does it stay in my pipeline?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:49.985)
It's key. Yeah.

Roberto Martinez (35:57.281)
Those things are more operational minded, but guess what? Now you have AI who will be a thought partner for you. You could literally upload your marketing plan, your sales plan, your growth plan, and then ask it questions. Hey, my baseline should be, is my unit economics right for my industry, for my city, for my neighborhood? How much should I be borrowing? What's a good return on investment when it comes to ROAS, return on ad spend?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:11.19)
Analyze it, yeah.

Roberto Martinez (36:24.929)
These type of questions are going to help you feel like you're not flying the plane blindly, but you have a clear course to capture that value.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:33.794)
You were not kidding when you said that you had a lot of KPIs and you guys really did. Because now that you're mentioning all that, it's wow, I did not think about marketing and what you guys do this way. And I work with KPIs. mean, customer support. So we have a lot of KPIs. But boy, you guys have a lot of KPIs as well to think about.

Roberto Martinez (36:59.179)
Yeah. And each one is different. You one of the things that I love about the wild garden approach is that social media now with bots and bad actors, about the, you read any report 20 to 30%, potentially up to 40 % of folks are either bots or it's AI generated content, what people call AI slop. And so you're not even dealing with human beings now. Heartbreaking, right? But we knew this, we know that

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (37:01.39)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (37:19.086)
Yeah.

Roberto Martinez (37:28.707)
you know, a lot of third party channels, social channels, there's no one behind the wheel. There's no human behind the wheel. So if you control your own content and you create your own content, guess what? People love that authenticity. They're going to come to you. They're going to say, yes, Michael's creating content that really speaks to my need. And it's not a bot and it's not some AI generated slop. It's him using AI to create better value for me. And so that's a differentiation.

And businesses that can do this at a high level are going to succeed and grow and scale. And businesses who just think, it's gimmicky. I'm going to use Vl3 or, you know, Sora to create all this content. Like, you're not even thinking about your end user. Do they want that? Is that the type of content they care about? Is that the kind of engagement that they want? And so you have to think through that process. You can't get around the creative component. so agencies, companies who really can't...

leverage AI are the companies that understand you still need that human in the loop, giving it the brain power and the creativity and the heart that speaks to your audience.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:33.132)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:40.694)
Yeah, it's interesting that you touched on that because I'm seeing lately, especially, let's say, LinkedIn, Now, LinkedIn people are going to your post and they are not even taking the time to write their own words. Basically, what they're doing is you notice that it's an AI-generated response to your post because it's the same words and everybody's just saying the same.

So a lot of responses now, people going to your post, it's just AI generated response. So people are not even taking the time lately to live their humanity, Use their own words when they are replying to your post. If you want to use it for your post, that is fine. Everybody use it. But you know, when you're going to someone else post,

And then you are not even being yourself. You are just copy and paste your response from AI, from chat, GPT, or whatever you're using there. And it's, it's you not is that it's like, why you want to engage? Where are we getting? Where are we going from, from here, Roberto? So engagement has been such a critical aspect of being on social media that lately

you're not engaging because everybody's just AI generated stuff on your even on your post. So why are you going to engage with an AI?

Roberto Martinez (40:13.059)
Hey, blah, yeah. And you know what? One of my mentors would tell me, run your race. Don't worry about other people. And this is, this is great, advice. The fact that you still have that human element will differentiate you in the marketplace. Folks will realize what's AI stuff. And I know their video AI content is getting really, really great when it comes to.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:29.613)
Hmm.

Roberto Martinez (40:38.911)
replicating the human experience and how they look. But the fact that you still have that human element and you can speak to it in a way that's authentic and real, we still have some opportunity there. The other thing is most solutions now when it comes to third party websites and third party social media sites, you can buy third party applications that can identify which content is AI content.

generate content, which content is human content. And you could also start identifying bots within the platforms because it's important to recognize and to make sure that when you are spending marketing dollars, you're spending it on actual human beings. And so there's now third party applications that allow you as a business owner to identify, hey, this is a real person that spent time and money on this real person. You'll be surprised that LinkedIn is not too bash on LinkedIn because it does have its place, but

how many of those emails that you get or messages that you get aren't real human beings. They're literally an AI bot shooting you these messages because it improves the lead funnel and it's a numbers game for them. They touch a thousand folks, you get 1 % money well spent. And so if you lead from a different position and know how to leverage AI and when to leverage AI, it will actually convert. because that human interaction, that human elements is still very

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:45.538)
you

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:49.74)
Right.

Roberto Martinez (42:05.387)
relevant for us as human beings to create that community. And you can't get away from that. I think that's what you're going to see as well. The focus of community, the focus of building a network, an authentic network that resonates with your mission and vision.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (42:21.742)
Yeah, it's interesting time we are going through my friend and I'm very hopeful and I really think and that's part of why I started these podcasts and these messages. We really need to fight to keep us in the middle of these conversations, right? And our humanity and keep it and bring it more. But of course, there are so many benefits, right? It's a I is here to stay. There are so many benefits to.

to accelerate our growth, to help us as our thought partner, for example, and so many different other initiatives in the areas that AI will continue to help us. It's just that when you keep pushing, pushing and pushing, it's the more robotic that we sound, it's kind of lose a little bit of what being human means, right? But to your point, don't compare yourself to that.

keep being yourself and your humanity and the way you're doing things will continue to be a factor that you can leverage on in the future. I agree with that as well.

Roberto Martinez (43:31.733)
Yeah, no, I couldn't say it better myself. mean, don't need the whole market. You just need your tribe, your community. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:41.74)
Yeah, absolutely. So Roberto, I want to ask you what would be a piece of advice that you can give to business owners thinking about AI today? Let's say I'm a business owner. I hear about AI every day. What would you tell those business owners that are still not leveraging AI?

Roberto Martinez (44:07.797)
Okay, I'm going to sound repetitive, but step one, write out all your pain points. Where does it hurt? What do I need to do for my business to grow? Like where do I need to focus my energy? And then, on another piece of paper, write out your goals. Another mentor said, you not only have to know where you're running away from, you have to know what you're running towards. So that will cover those two pieces. Understanding where do I need to focus my energy to fix problems, and if...

I could create the world that I want to live in and use my intellect to create the world where I want to live in. What does that world look like? So my strategic goals for the year start with those two pieces. And then the third piece is if you do have workflows, if you do have SOPs, standard operating procedures, if you do have these manual set up, that's a great starting point. So either do one of those three things, put it into one of those and Gentek AI.

multimodal tools like Gemini, like JCPT, like Anthrolik, whichever one of those and say, hey, here are my pain points, how could I leverage AI? Here are my goals for the year, how could I leverage AI? Or here's my SOPs that I've built out, how could I streamline this operational system, this workflow, leveraging AI? And even any one of those three processes is gonna spit out a clear cut approach to how you can leverage AI.

I always say start with the basics, start with the easiest thing, which is where does it hurt? Because if you fix that pain point, first of all, you as a human are going to be really focused on what? On fixing that pain. If my teeth are in, sorry, if I have a toothache, I'm going to want to fix that because it's a high pain point. But you got to understand what motivates you to keep going and keep doing and keep implementing. So understanding that or if you...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:55.426)
Right, right, right.

Roberto Martinez (46:03.895)
have an amazing carrot in front of you and you know for sure, hey I want that $100,000. We're running a campaign right now and we're giving away all these free stuff because we got a grant. People still don't apply. But if you frame it in a way that makes their brain realize, hey, if I spend 15 minutes, I get $150,000, that drives people to action as opposed to you get a website, you get social media, you get a logo, you get paid ads.

No one cares. But if you make it very simple for them to conceptualize, 15 minutes equals $150,000. Where do I start? so then it's, it's marketing itself. It's, you know, it's framing it in a way that your brain will say yes, because it incentivizes them. So you have to incentivize your business, yourself, your community, your employees to act on AI through that pain point.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:35.598)
Hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:39.278)
What are people interest, right?

Roberto Martinez (47:01.269)
or through that opportunity to really drive adoption of innovation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:07.074)
Yeah, it's kind of it's a little bit of soul searching. And then you mentioned that earlier today. What is your why? Right? What are the things that you really want to be known for? Or what are the things that you know that you want to accomplish in your business? And only when you know that and when you come from that part, that's when you really can start looking at AI and implement it in a way that is going to solve real business problems for you.

But it all started with us, started with your business. What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? And from that moment on, that's when you try to see and adopt AI along those areas that you really want to improve in your business.

Roberto Martinez (47:52.596)
Yeah. You're right, Michael. So many businesses come to me and say, all right, how do I use AI? And I look at them, you know, yeah, you know, there's that great quote of Alice in Wonderland, the Wilshire cat, Alice meets the Wilshire cat and and Alice asks the cat, what direction should I go?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:59.502)
Like it's magic. It's magic.

Roberto Martinez (48:21.219)
And the cat says, well, where are you going? And then Alice says, I don't care anywhere. And then the cat says, well, then it doesn't matter what direction I point you, because any place will be good enough for you. You have to have clear goals. You have to have a clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish. And if you do have those things, AI will help you get there. It's just you have to be patient. You have to incentivize yourself and your team so that you can get there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:49.122)
Yeah, it started with the business owner, with the direction, your initiatives, your strategy, and where you want to go next. Can't agree more with that, Roberto. And thank you for all those insights. And before we finish our conversation today, I want to ask you something that I ask every single guest on the show, which is what

It's a piece of advice that you would give a younger version of yourself seeing him today. So imagine Roberto, 15, 16 years old, today going through this transition and transformational period with AI. What would you tell that kid?

Roberto Martinez (49:34.081)
Yeah, it's very simple. Like start, like start, start making mistakes, start jumping in. think some of us, we, we as business owners have analysis paralysis. So if I was to be my 20 years ago, if I was to be my myself, I would say you needed to get started. You need to, you need to move. just it. And part of that is fear dictates a lot of what we do as humans.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:46.062)
Hmm.

Roberto Martinez (50:01.613)
Don't be afraid of failure. Don't be afraid of failing. We learn through failure. You adapt and you learn through failure. Another piece of advice that someone gave me when I was, and I didn't take it too hard is.

We as humans are predisposed for...

not having high risk tolerance or risk averse by nature. Because if we made a mistake 200,000 years ago, it would cost us our lives, right? We're in the savanna, we're in Africa, a small mistake will end up potentially killing you. Nowadays, you can make multitude of mistakes and it won't kill you, but our brains are wired to have that high amount of fear because it saved us during that developmental phase of our humanity, of our human experience.

And as a result, we overestimate the risk as humans. So we have to be okay with taking on that risk and be a little bit more risk tolerant as opposed to risk averse. So if I were to tell him anything, it's like, keep shooting your shot, keep going. Don't be so afraid to keep trying. And it's okay if you make a mistake. Those mistakes are going to lead you to the right path.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:19.498)
love it. And that's something that I also talk a lot with my teams, with my friends and everyone. I think this new future, we should not be afraid about failing because failing is what teaches you and it pushes you to adapt and keep going. And the adaptability quotient, as they call it, really what's going to be a make it or break it type of thing. what it's really wanted.

separate successful people from not successful people because those that adapt as the circumstances that they're exposed to are the ones that are going to have a leg up in this new future. So I love that and I think everybody should be willing to fail so you can learn from it and keep going.

Roberto Martinez (52:06.551)
Yeah, seldom do you go to zero. You're either what's the expression? You're either win or you learn. So some of these billionaires that we might look up to, they felt a lot. They felt quite often they just had a great network and a great social network system like you have creating Michael that allowed them to learn from that mistake and keep moving forward. So definitely take on that risk.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:09.687)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:13.496)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:32.59)
Absolutely. Yeah, let's keep risking, right? Let's keep taking on those risks ourselves. But Roberto, thank you, right, for being with us today and for grounding this conversation and all these insights that you have provided to us based on your experience. Really appreciate you having you on the show today.

Roberto Martinez (52:53.335)
Thank you for your time and thank you for your community.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:54.994)
Absolutely. Yep. So if this episode helps you think differently about AI, share it with the business owner who's maybe tired of hype and looking for results. And follow the human protocol. And because the future isn't built by headlines, but it's built by people really doing real work. And talk to you guys next week. Thank you all.