• 0:00 – 0:33 Introduction and Chris Daigle background
• 0:50 – 2:24 Founding ChiefAIOfficer.com and defining the CAIO role
• 2:51 – 4:37 First steps for non-technical executives adopting AI
• 4:37 – 5:00 Governance and AI use policy importance
• 5:23 – 6:15 Biggest executive mistake in AI adoption
• 7:05 – 9:20 Immediate AI use cases for marketing, finance, and sales
• 9:59 – 11:26 Executive immersion and leading AI from the top
• 11:26 – 15:19 Tool overload, hype cycles, and the 10–80–10 principle
• 15:45 – 17:19 AI impact on revenue growth and KPIs
• 17:19 – 20:02 Employee fear, job displacement, and career positioning
• 20:02 – 21:30 The future of the Chief AI Officer role
• 22:03 – 22:57 Roadshow announcement and closing

“When GPT-3.5 came out in November of 2022, I knew it was going to be a huge opportunity… I didn’t really understand that generative was this accessible.”

“A Chief AI Officer is not a data scientist… It’s someone who knows business and is paying attention to the generative landscape and can bring solutions and implementation to companies.”

“You don’t have to be an expert at AI, but I would suggest you strive for expert-level usage of the tool.”

“Every business that says, ‘We don’t allow AI yet,’ people are using it. They’re using it on their phones. They’re using it at home.”

“The huge mistake? Not doing anything about it today.”

“Overestimating your AI capabilities is probably a common mistake I see at the executive level.”

“Arithmetic is not an opinion.”

“We call it the 10–80–10 principle… The first 10% is clarity. The next 80% is the model doing the heavy lifting. The final 10% is human review.”

“If your company doesn’t introduce it, that company is not going to be viable very much longer.”

“Whoever gets right-sized in these businesses, it’s probably not going to be the person who went and got certified in AI.”

“Every company needs somebody who is thinking about the business as the AI landscape changes.”

Jayden Schaefer 0:00
Welcome to the AI chat podcast. I'm your host, Jayden Schaefer, today on the podcast, we have the pleasure of being joined by the legendary Chris Daigle. He is the founder and CEO of ChiefAIOfficer.com he helps executives turn basically AI into practical business strategies. Before that, he spent a decade scaling SaaS and consulting companies across the US and Europe, and he also serves on advisory boards, including Corp. And while he's also hosting the using "AI At Work" podcast, we love to have another podcast around the show. Welcome Chris!

Chris Daigle 0:31
Thanks, buddy. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

Jayden Schaefer 0:33
So super excited to have you on the show today. I guess just giving everyone a little bit of context about what you what you do, I would love to hear a little bit about chiefaiofficer.com What got you into that? And basically, what, what people get away from that, with the value that that adds and kind of what you're doing there.

Chris Daigle 0:50
Sure, you know, man, when, when GPT 3.5 came out in November of 2022, I knew it was going to be a huge opportunity, but my understanding was it would be an opportunity for someone else. I'm a non technical, business professional. I didn't really understand that generative was this accessible.

Chris Daigle 1:06
Then in early 2023 I had my aha moment and said, "Well, I'll use this with my clients." And my very next thought was, there's no leverage there. Why don't you train others on a combination of your growth architecture frameworks, leveraging AI. And that kind of morphed into fulfilling a definition I heard Peter Diamandis say about this idea of a Chief AI Officer - It's somebody who, is not a data scientist, is not a machine learning expert. It's someone who knows business, but also they're understanding, they're paying attention to the generative landscape, and they're able to come in and bring solutions, and implementation and deployment for companies as that kind of like combo domain expertise of those two areas, business and AI.

Chris Daigle 1:52
We started, we assembled a faculty team to faculty with MIT Sloan grads and PMPs and double MBAs to teach technical side of generative AI trained up about 350 Chief AI officers through that program over the course of 2024, but the demand is such now that we are more focused on like we're bringing our knowledge into companies through -- call it AI Transformation Services/Fractional Chief AI Officer services. So being the quote, unquote AI guy for the company,

Jayden Schaefer 2:24
Okay, I love it. That's so needed today, I'm kind of interested in so I think a lot of, like our listeners on the show, they're in kind of this AI bubble with, with you and I, where we're all trying to figure out the latest in AI all the time. But a lot of them work with, I mean, some of them are, you know, non technical and new to this, but a lot of but whether they are or not, they're definitely all working inside of their organization, and they know people that are in this position. And so I think this question is kind of relevant, whether this is you or someone that you know.

Jayden Schaefer 2:51
So my question would be, basically, for non technical executives, what is the first step that they should be taking when they want to basically bring AI into their business? Maybe they're feeling overwhelmed. There's a lot going on, even when you're like, like, even me who reads, you know, every single AI article that comes out every day, and I feel like I'm on top of it. Sometimes it feels overwhelming just the amount of tools and things coming out. So what's kind of the first steps that you would recommend for people?

Chris Daigle 3:14
Honestly, I would recommend that you yourself, personally, get upskilled and know how to use it. You don't have to be an expert at AI, but I would suggest that you strive for expert level usage of the tool. You don't necessarily need to worry about why the light turns on when you flip the switch right. Don't worry about what's going on under the hood. Just start thinking about your role or your business, whether it's a strategic level or a tactical level. How can I create that reflex of, let me go to the models, oh, let me use ChatGPT and it helped me, I don't know, like, get into get your repetitions in, and it becomes really a new behavior.

Chris Daigle 3:52
I think Ethan Malik from Wharton referenced that is kind of like a cyborg, where you get to this point to where it's the usage of AI is just a seamless part of your day, and you'll see a compression of the results cycle for whatever your deliverable is, happen almost instantly, it's pretty incredible. And then be the evangelist inside the company, right? Like other people. Oh, let me show you. Here's something I learned. Hey, have you tried? Yeah. Now, obviously that goes through the lens of governance and use policies. If those aren't in place, I would be the guy that said, hey, we need to, we need to think about this.

Chris Daigle 4:25
Because every business you know, you ask business owners, oh, we don't allow AI to be used yet. We're still kind of figuring that out. People are using it. They're using it on their phones. They're using it at home as they're working on stuff.

Chris Daigle 4:37
So having some sort of a governance understanding and a use policy and training in place for the team. It's going to mitigate any concerns or risk you might have from unauthorized or just amateur usage of the tools, entering the wrong information in there that shouldn't be used, not having the things toggled to where it's training the models.

Jayden Schaefer 5:00
Right? Yep. No, I think that's that, uh, that's spot on. I mean, so there's a lot of these people now that are kind of getting into it. I'd be curious, what is the biggest mistake that you're seeing, basically, leaders make when they're trying to adopt, AI, too quickly, right? Like, there's kind of two sides of the coin. There's people that definitely are being, I would say, way too slow on adoption. Do you see? Is there another side of the coin to that? Like, what are you seeing in the in the space?

Chris Daigle 5:23
Yep - so huge mistake? Not doing anything about it today. The pot is heating up, and the frog doesn't know that the water is getting hot yet, right? Like, but it's happening. You may not be aware of it, but the number one, I guess, mistake, we'll call it, that I see with executives is, we'll talk to them, we'll say, Hey, are you guys using Ai? They'll go, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm using it. And when we dig a little deeper, their usage is limited to really, like, writing emails or summarizing documents, which is helpful, but they haven't had, like, they haven't made the connection. As far as, like, the level of impact this can have on every single role and knowledge work or out in the field, it doesn't matter.

Chris Daigle 6:07
So I think overestimating your AI capabilities is probably a common mistake I see at the executive level.

Jayden Schaefer 6:15
Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense, like, basically everyone's tried ChatGPT and maybe they find one or two use cases. It always drives me crazy when people are like, Oh, it's not like, I and I think that this, like, I think it's very easy for us in this AI bubble to think, like, Oh, everybody uses AI a ton, maybe, like we do and and then come to find out, you know, I'm having dinner with someone recently who was like, oh, like, I use it occasionally for this and that. And like, I know their industry, and I know people that are in just using it non stop, all day long, and I'm like, I'm like, No, you gotta like, there's so much more to it. So I think that it's true, like people definitely are under utilizing it in a lot of regards, or they might be using it for a fraction of what they could possibly use for.

Jayden Schaefer 6:36
Maybe give me two to three simple AI use cases that you think any business I know this is broad, but could implement today to see some immediate ROI and so, yeah, I know this is broad, but talk about some of the interesting use cases you're seeing with it right now.

Chris Daigle 7:05
I would say the lowest hanging fruit really is in in the marketing department, right? Like the use of ChatGPT or a similar model to add creative, to write, copy, things like that. Those are in most marketing departments that's specialized skills that, just like AI can do, let's say 95% of it. Maybe don't get rid of your copywriters or your your ad copy individuals, but at least get them in a situation where they they can produce a lot more at a higher velocity, and they're just kind of scanning or like evaluating. Yep, let's ship this. Oh, that's good. That's good. Nope. Let's get rid of it, certainly in finance. Look, I learned this a long time ago. Arithmetic is not an opinion, right? So, and that specifically applies to accounting in the US, at least there's standard accounting practices and principles. AI is familiar with all of those now, before you go entering your financials into the models you'd want to talk to somebody, or at least have, again, that governance in place to make sure that it was being done in a responsible manner, however, and we're not talking about automations. We're not talking about anything agents or anything like that. We're simply talking about using chat, GPT, the level of insight, error checking, all of that stuff, if it's not being used in the finance department, like, again, low hanging fruit sales, same kind of thing. Specifically, when it comes to preparing for that big sales meeting, pull all the information from the individual kind of determine. You know, how would this person, how do they need to be sold? How do they need to be communicated with? And we're seeing like close rates go up with companies significantly consistency across delivery or on the other side of that. Hey, why didn't this sales call close? Take that transcript, pop it into chat. GBT, you know, give it a mandate to act like Wolf of Wall Street or whatever sales methodologies you guys are following, and say, What could I have done to improve this call? And we see performance of salespeople go up significantly. Those would be kind of, there's a million of them, really. But those, I think, would be three that everybody would be able to go, Okay, I'm familiar with marketing, I'm familiar with finance, I'm familiar with sales,

Jayden Schaefer 9:20
yeah, and I think, like, extrapolate, obviously, every industry and every business, there's so many use cases. But no, I do love those mentioned earlier, basically, how a lot of times we have these executives that are maybe interested or dabbling, or they're like, Oh, we don't quite have it figured out yet. I know this can be frustrating a lot of times for people inside of organizations when maybe the employees are the ones that are, you know, going really hard on AI, but they don't really, it's not really sanctioned. So I know you kind of work in this regard. But like, what do you do to help board members, leadership, executives kind of shift from being, like, curious about AI to actually being committed and actually, like, rolling things out, making mandates and and getting the whole company on board?

Chris Daigle 9:59
Yeah. Sure. Here's what I know. If it's not led from the top, it's going to be challenging. There's going to be friction, right? So one of the things that we do is, is a one day, there's some follow up, but a one day, real executive immersion, an AI executive immersion, that's what I would recommend. Obviously, I've got a bias. That's the service that we provide for executives. But getting everybody on the executive team speaking the same language, having the same aha moment, allows for the conversation to continue after any type of consultant comes in, or you attend our AI executive immersion or whatever, but it allows for everybody that was in that room to be able to be on the same level, as far as understanding and awareness of what's possible for AI in the business. And once the executive team starts doing what we call think in AI, where you, you know, it's like, you start using it, you start, oh, right, having those aha moments, it seems to accelerate or ignite the interest in, hey, I want the rest of my team doing this. I want the rest of my company having the skills that I as an executive just just got from and listen the Tiktok video, the stuff like that, tactical, helpful, but not really like an approach to introducing AI in your business. So I would say, get some sort of structured like baseline creator, for at least the executive team, to get started

Jayden Schaefer 11:26
something that people ask me a lot. So I like asking other people as well. Basically, there's so many new tools coming out, there's a lot of hype. It drives me crazy. I swear half of the tools that come out, they say it's going to completely revelize, revolutionize how you do XYZ. And then I go and try the tool, and it doesn't feel like it has half the capabilities that, you know, some some like flashy marketing video made it seem like it would have. And I think this is kind of a can be a turn off for people, right? So basically, they're like, excited about it. They go try the tool, it doesn't have the capabilities. And they're like, ah, AI, is just not capable of doing this. And so I think that can be a turn off when you're training executives. I think it's especially important for you with all of kind of the hype around AI. How do you, basically, when you're talking to executives, how do you help them separate what's real and, like, maybe what's kind of noise in the industry?

Chris Daigle 12:12
Sure, well, so anytime somebody says, Well, I tried it. It's not that good. Here's my response, yet, right? Like, these models are content. You could have tried, you know, creating video, like text to video a year ago, and you've been like, I can't do this. Go, look at po three, right? Like, national commercials. I think Jack Daniels did a televised like, they're using it to create commercials that they're spending a lot of ad budget beyond. So I wouldn't, here's what I would tell anybody, if there's a tool that has a narrative around it, how it can help your role or your industry or whatever, and you try it out and it's not there. I wouldn't give up on it. I would try back in a month, and then maybe, but eventually they will, models will improve, and they will end up nailing it. And we don't like kind of the way we look at it is, it's not like, oh, AI is going to take it over. We call it a 8010 principle, meaning that the first 10% of an AI result is you being clear on what you want, whether that's a prompt or you're dictating it into chatgpt, whatever next 80% is after you hit the enter button, the models do the heavy lifting, but I never suggest you ship output unless that final 10% that's human review, that's you're still like in the process. Please do not you know it's, it's not there yet to where you can, just like, blindly copy, paste and ship. Now, as far as keeping up with tools, that's the number one concern and issues in 2020. Tracked about four major updates across all the models and tools every week. This year, we're tracking more like 11 every week. Wow. So it is a concern, how do I keep up with this stuff? And here's what I would tell you, plug in to a community like at the chief AI office. We have a free community. But in there, here's what you've got. You've got 1600 AI enthusiasts who are filtering things out, right? Like you're only get some place where you can leverage collective knowledge. Hey, Has anybody tried this tool? And what'd you think? And you get people that, yes, I've tried it. Here's what I here's how I'd use it. Here's the wins I got from so that would be one thing. And then if you don't have access to that. Here's what you do. You pick a tool stack. When I say tool stack, the kind of the AI tools that you use, pick an AI tool stack and just stick with it. You don't have to know that Jen spark and Hey, Jen or Jen spark and Manus and Claude and meta and mistral. You don't have to know that, oh, this was better at this. You don't have to find a model and just start using it, and just look. And here's what I can tell you, if, oh well, they do this, they do, you know, they've got this advantage. Not for long, the models are reaching a level of parity on least functionality. I mean, look at the tests, where they're like, which one is smarter? They're within some of some of these models, they're. Than like a hair performance, so it doesn't. You don't need to be using the best at all times. On a personal level for your business, though, I would suggest again, that you have somebody who's paying attention to the landscape and saying, this tech is now ready for this function of the business. Let's run right.

Jayden Schaefer 15:19
I love that. I think there's a ton of news and like, people talking about basically how AI is being used to cut costs in a lot of areas, and people worried about layoffs, those types of things. My question for you would be beyond just kind of cost cutting, or those are you actually seen as far as AI driving actual revenue growth, or deal velocity, or basically growing businesses, kind of you're working with all the executives? What? What are people seeing, kind of, in that area?

Chris Daigle 15:45
Well, just flat out increase in sales volume. The business development team is able to, you know, do it, do more production faster and at a higher quality, leading to the sales team they're doing, they're able to close faster. They're getting more production at a higher quality that every department of the company is now operating as if they had a level of expertise that they didn't have prior, and as if you've got anywhere from 10 to 20% more employees without an increase in the headcount cost. So just just if you didn't look to be the the example of your industry. You just implemented this stuff. You should expect what we tell people is a 10 to 40% positive impact on any KPI that gets it's called AI, ifI, right? So you know, it's the results are there. Anecdotally, experimentally. I'm witnessing it our own business. Others listening to this podcast can tell you the same thing. So if you are not, I mean the water, as I referenced, the frog in the boiling pot, the water is heating up. And I would suggest that the time for you to sit on the sidelines. Okay, let's see what happens. That window will close very quickly, and you will realize I should have done something sooner. I should have been more aggressive about champion championing this inside of my business, my client businesses, whatever it is. So, yeah, that's my thoughts on that.

Jayden Schaefer 17:19
Okay, yeah, no, I think that's pretty spot on something that I was literally just having a conversation with. Again, I feel like we're kind of in this bubble, and so it's important to think, like, to figure out what people that might not be necessarily inside the AI bubble are thinking. And I was recently just having a conversation a couple days ago with someone, and they basically were expressing to me the fear that AI they were like, Oh my gosh. Like, I hope it doesn't get much better, because it's gonna really impact my industry. And, like, I might, I, you know, can replace me, as you know, I could be out of a job, etc, etc. And, I mean, I think obviously that's, like, the worst mindset or framework, because obviously it's gonna get better. So like, what do you basically say to people when it comes to maybe, like, the fear that is inside of organizations from the employee side. How do you talk to understandable, yeah.

Chris Daigle 18:04
And the landscape is shifting, and there will be juxtaposition of human and robot. I say robot, but AI eventually robots that will occur. It would kind of be like if you were the tele telegram guy, and all of a sudden phones are there, and you, I hope nobody uses that phone, I hope like they're going to it's going to happen. And if your your hope that AI doesn't get better, that I hope my company doesn't, here's what you need to understand. If your company doesn't introduce it, if you're at, you know, an employee level, and your company doesn't introduce it, that company is not going to be viable very much longer. So if they don't do it, you still lose by sitting on the sideline, right? So I would encourage you to understand, listen, whoever gets right sized in these businesses, it's probably not going to be the person who's been like, Hey, I went and got certified in AI, or I've been, you know, like, I'm helping the they have me join the meeting so that I can talk about it. Like, if you're that person, you're definitely not at the top of the list, right? Anything they'll want, they'll want to keep you because you've got experience in their business, like, you know that Judy has the keys and that on Thursday, like, that's information that is important, whether or not, why, if you have that internal domain experience and you understand AI, I don't see that your career being suppressed. I only see like upward trajectory because businesses are scrambling. Like, who knows this stuff? Who can we trust? Who they know you? Right? You're already in the company, so you're hopefully your company trusts you as an individual and trust your acumen. And then when you tell them, like, I've taken my own initiative to go get upskilled on this stuff, I'd like to present some of my ideas, they're not going to say hogwash. They're going to say, Thursday at four, right? Let's get together within the boardroom kind of thing. So that's, that's, that's the risk. The Gator, for anybody who's concerned about their career.

Jayden Schaefer 20:02
And I mean, looking into the future, like, let's say in the next five years. I know you, you work a lot with Chief AI officers, yeah. Do you think, like, Chief AI officer is going to be something that every company has in five years? Or do you think that's just going to be kind of part of every executive's job? Like, how do you kind of look at that in the future?

Chris Daigle 20:19
You know, I would suspect that some level of, like most executives, if they have an MBA, right, they've got, like this general knowledge of business, if I would expect a similar level of general understanding of the use of AI for every executive. However, as we've talked about, like, things change quickly. You tell people, like, 90 days from now, I may have to come back and say, I'm sorry I told you that it's no longer correct, like it moves quickly. So I would suggest that every company, whatever they call it, but the chief AI officer seems to be something that everybody like, Oh, what do they do? Oh, they're a C suite. Ai person. I like, I get it. There's no mystery to that role. I would recommend that they have somebody, whether full time internally, they have a fractional but you need somebody that is thinking about your business as they're seeing all of this change and improvement happening in the AI landscape, so that they can say, oh, I need to go tell the team about this kind of thing. So yes, I would encourage. I mean, somebody reached out the other day. They were talking about us on NBC News, like people are waking up that there needs to be aI person, right? Like, oh, go talk to Chris. Go talk to Jade, right? Like they can answer that. They know AI, they know what's happening.

Jayden Schaefer 21:30
No, 100% I think you're spot on. I think there's so much need right now. And yeah, honestly, really excited about what you're working on, about your initiative. I will say to everyone that's listening, I'll put a link in the description to Chief ai officer.com your website, if they're interested in checking it out and learning more about how they can upskill their executives and their organization. Obviously, this is basically, I think, one of the most critical times when this could be incredibly useful for you, Chris, if anyone is interested in reaching out to you that they've heard the show where's the best place for them to find you?

Chris Daigle 22:03
We generate a lot of thought on LinkedIn, for sure. So Dr David is my we'll add that to the show notes as well. But if you go to the website, and for some of you in a select group of cities, I don't know when this is coming out, but starting August 29 through October 29 we're hitting 10 different cities doing live in person, free. Oh, wow. Half day AI immersions for executives, just to get the word out, start to build relationships in certain markets. And if you go to Chief ai officer.com, forward slash roadshow, you'll actually see all the city's dates. You can RSVP again. There's no charge. There's no Gotcha. That's not a pitch fest, but it is an opportunity to start waking up executives of all industries on how we recommend that you start thinking and using AI in your business.

Jayden Schaefer 22:57
Okay, I love that. Yeah. Send me that link as well. I'll put that in the show notes for anyone listening again. Thank you so much for coming on the show to all of the listeners. Thanks so much for tuning in to the podcast. Make sure to leave us a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts, and we will see you in the next episode.