Transcript:

Rick Currier (00:01.324)

Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan De La Parra (00:03.608)

Thank you for having me.

Rick Currier (00:04.816)

So do we just jump straight into Dungeons and Dragons or do we like do it proper introduction first?

Ryan De La Parra (00:08.16)

my God. I mean, you, you lead, you tell me where you want to go with this one. I'm happy to tell.

Rick Currier (00:13.868)

Well, I can't bury the lead right there. it's funny, you and I were just chatting and you were talking about your voice was a little raspy. You want to tell everybody why?

Ryan De La Parra (00:23.486)

Yep. Yeah, so I was confessing to you that I have this little bit of a rasp in my voice. And the reason behind this is me and a group of friends who have all kind of grown up and gotten our big boy jobs and now live across America and don't really see each other that often found a great way to stay connected. And we have a now two year long campaign in Dungeons and Dragons and we try to meet every Wednesday night. So

Rick Currier (00:50.096)

I love it. I really put you on the spot there, which I told you I wouldn't do, but I love it because we're going to talk about AI today and workflows and automation. a big part of this show for me is a big part of business. think in general is that human connection and the fact that that's you. This is who you are. And AI is helping you. But at the end of the day, you're still getting together with your buddies, geeking out on something you love and having fun. I think that's important.

Ryan De La Parra (00:52.002)

Happy.

Ryan De La Parra (00:56.514)

Yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (01:10.284)

Yeah, of course.

Ryan De La Parra (01:19.126)

Yeah, and let me tell you, the invention of AI has vastly helped our campaigns from image creation to storyline crafting. It takes the imagination that we all have and extrapolates on it. it helps us world build a little bit. So AI is so integrated in every facet of life, whether it's work or personal. it's been quite the help in that campaign. like I said to you, it's

I find as I grow a little bit older, what's cool and what's not cool doesn't really matter anymore. And being authentically yourself is what's key. And I think people gravitate towards that. So, you know, if I got some kudos for being a Dungeons and Dragons nerd, so be it. And if somebody turns this podcast off now, then they weren't my audience.

Rick Currier (01:51.065)

Yeah.

Rick Currier (02:04.368)

No, that's all right. See you later. Well, all right. So beyond Dungeons and Dragons, let's talk a little bit about your day job, you know, for the audience out there. You who are you? What do you do? Who do you work for?

Ryan De La Parra (02:14.646)

Absolutely. So my name is Ryan De La Parra. I'm the head of global field, sorry, global partner marketing at Nassuni. So I've been at Nassuni for about six and a half years and I came in as the first channel marketer, individual contributor role where I was covering two VARs and two hyperscalers. The hyperscalers were our Microsoft and our AWS relationship. So that's kind of where I started.

And prior to this uni, I'd spent about 10 years at a bar. It's a local bar here where I'm based out of New Hampshire called PC Connection. They go by connection now. And whilst I was there, I ran the Dell EMC portfolio for four years prior to joining this uni. So I have a very vast kind of lens as far as working with a tech integrator, working with a bar, now sitting at an ISV, working for bars, working for SIs.

covering the hyperscalers. So the breadth of what I work with, who I work with in the partners scape is very multifaceted. from six and a half years ago to now, as we were growing, I was employed 107. We were about 40-ish million ARR back in 2019. And we have just extrapolated and grown. We had a press release about a year ago that said we crossed 150 million ARR. We're above 600 employees now.

Vista Equity Partners has taken a major stake in our company last year. So we are PE backed by one of the best PE firms out there. So the growth has just been phenomenal at this uni. And with that comes the need for a robust partner program. So that has been my love labor lately, building that out.

Rick Currier (03:58.608)

Yeah, wow. mean, with that amount of growth, your job probably has changed a lot since the day you started to today. What does that journey look like at Nisuni for you?

Ryan De La Parra (04:06.029)

Yes.

Ryan De La Parra (04:10.926)

Um, you know, one of the things for me that was shocking when I walked in the door, uh, being an employee in the 100 range, uh, was just how much you do need to roll up your sleeves when you're in a startup like environment. Um, connection was about, I think 2000 ish employees when I left, um, so not on the, like the fortune 50 large scale, but definitely not a small company. Uh, and it was, it was a well-oiled machine. It's been around for a long time. had.

You know, everyone had their own specific swim lane and they did their thing. At Nisuni, when I came in, it was, you know, who's in charge of that? And the answer was always like, I don't know, you are now. And I was like, okay, who do I go to for this? You're the one who's going to make this. you know, for some people that's scary. But for me, was, it was passion, right? Because I could now build and craft and I had this clay in front of me that I can start making what needs to happen.

like putting the lay lines down for the systematic way that we do things. And as we have grown, some of the systems that I've built over the past six years are now the gold standard in which we do things. taking a step back and looking at these past six years and seeing like, wow, like I did that is a really cool feeling. And I think if you're ever, anyone's listening now has an opportunity to step into a startup and they're thinking about, know, should I do this or should I not do that? Listen to that story because I feel like

The reward of growing a company is just, I wouldn't change a thing. I think it was fantastic.

Rick Currier (05:44.014)

Now, obviously a lot different than probably working at PC connection, 2000 employees, any connective tissue though, from, you know, the startup world where you're having to build stuff from the ground up versus what you were doing before and things that help prepare you for this, for this job.

Ryan De La Parra (05:55.433)

Oh, Everything. I was able to bring a lot. Did I lose it? you have yes. Okay, sorry. I thought we broke up. Yeah, I was I was able to bring a lot of what I did at at connection over to the SUNY. First and foremost, one of our lifelines at the SUNY and the way we go to market is through partner.

Rick Currier (05:59.504)

He

Rick Currier (06:04.367)

Yeah, no, you're good.

Ryan De La Parra (06:24.13)

So coming from a partner and knowing how they operate and knowing how they work was just, is very key in how I do my day-to-day job. We don't sell direct. Like we are a 100 % partner company. there is no way a customer can come to the SUNY and acquire us without working through a partner. So we are a very channel friendly company and I take pride in that. And I'm glad that we all embrace the channel in the way that we should as an ISV in this community.

And then building out the relationship with Dell EMC on Dell Technologies now, back in those four years, Dell was not a channel company and EMC was. So when they merged, there was this growing pain that I was able to witness covering that account. It was like a new role for me at the company because there was no Dell product manager connection at the time because they just didn't exist. There was an EMC one.

So when they merged, was a need to actually like grow this business as these two behemoths collided in the market. And watching a direct company of Dell and a channel company of EMC put a company together was just like a masterclass. It was one of the best and largest tech integrations, I think in history and just how they did it. I learned so much from like the best practices of that partner program and what they put into play.

So I take a lot of tips from their playbooks there and how they go about crafting the right kind of partner community. My next mission here at this uni is now that we're growing is building a partner advisory board out. I think we're approaching a state where we could use that. So yeah, there's a lot of learnings that I was able to take from my prior life into this uni.

Rick Currier (08:07.842)

It's good to know that you can come from a world like that and be successful in the startup world where you're building things from the ground up. Let me ask you, I want to get a little bit into this new hire sales academy that you had to build, but just thinking about just building things from the ground up in general, is that a skill that you developed? Is that something that you always had? And I'm approaching this thinking about like, if I'm in your shoes at a big company and I'm thinking about going to a startup.

Should I be afraid if I'm not a builder, right? Or is that something I can develop and learn and get better at?

Ryan De La Parra (08:39.182)

No, it's a valid question. You know, I thought about this, I've been thinking about this actually a lot recently about what makes me tick, right? You know, just a lot of self reflection. And one of the things that I kind of came to and I mean, I'm looking at with why am why am I the way I am, right? I was a kid that pressed every button on the remote because I wanted to know what it did. And then and it's like that tinkering mentality that I've always kind of had ever since I was a child.

My parents will say that was super annoying because I always ask, but why? But why? But why? Because I just want to get to the bottom of it. I need to understand the why behind it. you know, the, we've always done it this way, never always sat well with me. And I'm not saying that, that I'm, you know, somebody who just like will break all rules because like rules are meant to be there for a reason. But I, I always like to understand, right, and figure out why is it that we do things the way that we do. And then once I understand why we do things the way we do, can we improve that?

Cause I always love process improvement and efficiencies automation that I've always gravitated towards these things. So with the invention of this AI and the gentic world that we're moving into the ability to automate and improve and create the, the, the creation, the ability to create is in so many people's hands, you know, five years ago, you couldn't just put a photo into a tool and then say, change.

this photo and put glasses on the guy. You'd have to go to somebody who knows how to use Photoshop. The barriers of creation are breaking down. And with that comes people who have the idea of how they want to do things without the know-how. Now it's a being able to take their idea of being able to do things and do it themselves. And that's cool. And I love that. I lean into that. I implore my team to use AI where they can.

Be curious, figure out how you can be crafty and do things a new way. But to bring this back to your original question is, you know, what do I have to be a builder to be into startup? I think you need to have that drive. I think when you're that small of a company, think everyone needs to be front and center and bring value and expand across their swimlands. I think that's like a mantra every startup will probably want you to have. Roll up your sleeves and get in there and, you know, provide the value.

Rick Currier (10:59.364)

Now I think it's a really good takeaway too for people that that even aren't at startups. You know they're big corporations. Just be curious. Ask why because I've worked at big corporations and I've seen so many things just been done because that's the way we've always done things. And it always takes someone being a little curious and asking why because to your point there might be a better way to do it.

Ryan De La Parra (11:12.462)

Yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (11:20.302)

Yeah, you you get in that situation where, you know, it's like, well, I'm doing this because John told me and you go to John, I'm like, John, why did you tell him to do that? He's like, Oh, I'm doing it because Pete told me and Pete's the one who told me to go talk to John. So you're caught in this like sick look of people don't know why they're doing what they're doing. Yeah.

Rick Currier (11:29.15)

Yeah.

Rick Currier (11:33.507)

Seriously been there many a times believe me. So I want to ask you about the new hire sales Academy because you were telling me a little bit about this before and this was kind of the genesis of the AI discussion that we want to have today. I thought it was a really cool story. I'd love to hear it again. I think you just kind of covered the top line for me, but it's just it's a good example. I think of you building something from the ground up. So you want to want to walk us through like the challenge ahead of you and kind of what you learn through it and then we can kind of get into the fun AI stuff.

Ryan De La Parra (11:40.802)

Yeah.

Sure.

Ryan De La Parra (11:59.714)

Yeah, sure. I'll give a little context to the listeners because they didn't hear our pre-conversation on this. I was tapped earlier this year by Vista as one of their growth marketing motions that they're doing. we know, areas of improvement. And one of the good things about having PE at your back is they bring a lot of value to the company as like, know, here's an area where you guys can improve in like 10x and here's an area where you can improve in 30x.

one of the areas of improvement was, Hey, we need a, we need a robust sales enablement academy. I've been at the company for six and a half years and they needed someone to project manage it. At the time we didn't have a sales enablement director. They were interviewing and I believe they were planning to hire in the May timeframe. and this was two months prior to that, but we already had a robust new hire class that needed to go through a sales enablement training.

So where they were like, okay, let's find somebody who can project manage rebuilding what we currently have, which is, was a three day program, virtual about half day for those three days. Wasn't that got the job done, but it wasn't robust. So they said, we need somebody to project manage this. And our CMO at the time sat me down and was like, Hey, would you be interested in doing this? They've identified you as somebody who would be the best for this task because of your deep product knowledge of the SUNY being here for six and a half years, knowing all the

players and the stakeholders and where you need to go and tap and ask for help. And you're really good at just building things. I had just completed a really good Microsoft Ignite build out earlier at the end of the year prior. So of course I said yes, knowing nothing about sales enablement. I said, let's go, let's do this. And it was about a seven to eight week sprint and we were able to deliver a

9am to 5, I think like 4.30pm, five day, Monday through Friday, sales enablement bootcamp that gave a full 360 view of Nsuni, how we go to market, how we work with our partners, the backend, the professional services. It never went too deep, but it left the new hires feeling like, okay, I get it. I understand the mission and what we're doing here and how to do my job. And that was fantastic.

Ryan De La Parra (14:19.138)

Like I love that. That was so good. And I leaned on AI a lot. You I was up late nights and asking about Kirkpatrick models and trying to figure out, you know, the best way to deliver a multifaceted sales enablement program. So I'm not just PowerPoint sliding people to death and I have workshops mixed in with quizzes, mixed in with slide decks. And it was, it was super fun. had a really good time, but AI helped me a lot during that journey.

Rick Currier (14:42.842)

Did you start the process knowing you were going to lean on AI or was there a certain point within there you realized, ah-ha, this is how we're going to do this?

Ryan De La Parra (14:51.434)

I always knew I was going to use AI to help me put the little things together, like, you know, help me, help me write this, this paragraph, right. But that it, always was like, okay, well, how can I use AI to help me here? And then I would just kind of look it up. I would find Instagram reels, TikTok reels on AI and go on Reddit and explore. There's so many subreddits out there people and how they use AI. And then I'll read something from somebody on Reddit and how they did something. And I'm like, you know what?

I'm not going to do it that way. I can use that tactic though and flip it over here and do it this way. So I'm very self-taught, very self-learned. But like I said, I love to press every button on the remote. I was an obsession of mine. So I dove deep and it benefited. I was able to come out the other side with full calendar.

an indexing of all the tools that we already have, how we're going to craft the week, project management workflows. We had like the two calls a week with the project leads. It was robust. And yeah, it was very fun. And AI definitely helped me have fun.

Rick Currier (15:55.758)

Now I know, yeah, I know I'm using AI all over the place. And one of the things I've learned is it tends to be only as good as what you put into it too. And I've seen a lot of examples of work from other people where I'm like, clearly you just asked AI to create something and you didn't put anything into it. From your experience building this out, how much of it was what you put in and having it refine it versus were you creating workflows? Any examples of how it really made your life easier?

Ryan De La Parra (16:24.206)

Yeah, no, I I heard somebody make this statement about AI that it's not going to replace humans. I was on this AI panel and it was, I'll give a shout out, it was a CMO at Pharaoh's IQ. She said this and I will give her credit. she said that we'll always want to see the human thumbprint in the clay pot. And I thought that was like a very profound statement. And I believe that, right? Like you, if you...

just go to AI and say, make me this. And then you throw that out into the world. It's going to look like a broken clay pot, right? It's going to be horrible. But if you spend time in the studio and you're molding the clay and you're putting together like, yes, sure. The AI is a spinning wheel tool, but you are still the human that is crafting that clay pot. And I think if you don't inject yourself into the stuff that comes out of AI, it will not be what everyone hopes it to be. You still need your guidance on it.

Rick Currier (16:56.442)

Yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (17:20.334)

Um, so it was about, I would say it was about 60 % me and then 40 % AI. Like it was very foundational. I use it to do the labor work, like the formatting, the frameworks, uh, getting the calendar grid lined up, but then I was able to fill it. Right. So instead of spending an hour building out, here's this Excel grid of a calendar. Like I just, it did it for me and then I could fill it in. Right. So that's how I would leverage and lean it and then use it for research. Like I said, I was.

figuring out like what's the Kirkpatrick model instead of Googling it, I said, you how would I use this in practice? And you use it as your coach. You can just start asking questions, turn on voice mode and just speak to it and it will speak back and teach you. So I did that a lot.

Rick Currier (18:01.88)

So I have to ask, what is the Kirkpatrick model?

Ryan De La Parra (18:04.942)

It's just a method of learning. It's like how people learn. you some people will, you start at the top and it's like a funnel, like marketing funnel, if you will. you know, some people learn this way and once you've accomplished this level of learning, then you can move down to the next level and then the next level. But it was, like I said, it's not really something that I'm proficient in as a partner and recorder. It's a sales enablement thing.

Rick Currier (18:18.51)

Okay. Yeah.

Rick Currier (18:31.3)

Yeah, yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (18:34.21)

but I was able to put it together. Reaction learning behavior results is the mode.

Rick Currier (18:37.776)

Okay. Well, it's a great example though, like AI is helping you with these topics, right? You don't have to spend hours or days researching. It can help you distill very complex topics quickly to then actionize that information, I love. So let me ask you, coming out of this project, now you're going back to your day job, how has this experience, this learning process, has it changed your go-to-market approach and how you're working with partners and putting together your programs? What does it look like now that you're on the other side?

Ryan De La Parra (19:05.645)

Absolutely. I use it like all the time and I have a couple like tricks and tips and things that I do. One of the things that we love to do is when we do partner webinars and we'll record it and I'm sure this is there's going to be an audio transcript of this podcast as well. But taking that audio transcript after you're done recording a webinar, putting it through AI, but matching it up with let's say your ICP or matching it up with another piece of content that's relevant to that web.

webcast that you just recorded and ask it to create an outreach email based off of this content that you have, the text from this webinar and our ICP, I would like you to hone an outreach email that will promote this webinar to this ICP. And then you can do that across different ICPs that you wanna promote that webinar to instead of sitting there and then crafting out the email by hand and doing it and then trying to figure out what was said where.

the tool will just kind of put it all together for you. And then it will give you these email sequences that you can then use to promote the webinar based off of the content from the webinar. And it's just this great flywheel that kind of starts happening when it comes to content creation in the partnerscape.

Rick Currier (20:19.214)

I absolutely love that because I'm doing half of that and now I realize I'm only doing half a good job. because like, no, because like this, what you just said is exactly what I do to a certain point. So, you know, I'll get the transcript from this. It'll help me create the title and the abstract. We make blog posts and all sorts of stuff, but I'm not doing it within the context of the ICP of who we're trying to reach with this show. So I feel like I'm, I'm only doing half a good job. So I'm just thinking right off my bat right here, I'm going to go create.

Ryan De La Parra (20:42.712)

Sure.

Rick Currier (20:47.898)

Well, we have an ICP and we have a write up. I just need to pair that with my prompt and AI to provide some context to the output. So that I love it. I love it. So I got to take away now.

Ryan De La Parra (20:48.578)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (20:55.276)

Yeah. Yeah, there you go. mean, and then, you know, just yesterday, actually, I have a live example. I was walking by one of the field marketers desks and he was in chat, TBT and our, and our NISUNI instance. do have, we have it's that that's another thing too, is I feel like a lot of people will start kind of like going out there and using it if companies don't have like a good line guard rail for everyone.

you know, you're going to lose control over it, but we do utilize it at this uni. So he was in our instance and he was working on the sequencing. And I noticed on this left bar, he didn't use any projects. And I was like, have you ever used projects before? And he's like, I don't know. I actually don't even, I'm not really sure what you mean. you know, projects, and this is just a chat GPT chip, is a really cool way of organizing all the stuff that you're, like, let's say you want to do a webinar promotion, right?

You can create a project, the cool thing about a project is it has a system tool, a system prompt that will guide all of its responses within that project. So you can go to chat GPT and say, Hey, I would like you to embody a content marketers persona. want your sole goal is to XYZ and you just open up your mic on your phone and you speak this to chat GPT and you ask it to create you a system control and it will.

give you a system control of that persona. And then you take that and you drop it into the management of that project. And now every ask that you do inside that project will stick true to the content of what you're trying to accomplish, which is promote this webinar. And that's that project. And now you have it all contained and embodied within one small little rag model, if you will. And it will give you way better than results than if you just go open up AI and say, hey, give me an email sequence for a webinar.

Right? So like tweaking it and honing it down into how you want to use it is a very strong way to use AI.

Rick Currier (22:45.4)

Yeah, it's funny to say that because that's been one of my biggest learnings, I think, the last month was utilizing AI with my AI prompts. And so just getting information back from AI and how I should script this. And it actually came about because building an app right now with one, I'm using Glide and they have built an AI. Then I'm using ChatGPT to help write my prompts for the AI chatbot on Glide. And so I'm literally going back and forth between two AIs talking back and forth essentially.

Ryan De La Parra (23:10.84)

Yes.

I mean, that is perfect. You should be doing that. I'll give you one more, another fun one, because I'm full of these. We were chatting. I love just giving a peek inside of the methodology. For those of you out here who haven't heard of Notebook LM, it's a Google tool, but it is so strong in terms of taking content that's available and disseminating it. It's not good for, let's say, chat GPT of generating content. Notebook LM is good for analyzing content.

So what I like to do sometimes, if I want to learn about something, I go into the Kirkpatrick model and this is how I did it. I'll ask for a deep research report and then I'll take that deep research report through, let's say Google Gemini or Perplexity and it'll generate this long report about like 60 pages. You can kind of like hone in and craft it. Now you take that 60 page report and then you put it into Notebook LM and then you ask it to generate an audio podcast.

And now I take that audio podcast and I listen to it on my two hour commute into the Seaport sometimes when I go in. So now I'm consuming generated content specific to me that I want to learn about in an audio format that I have just created versus looking on Spotify for a podcast for this or going through and looking for that. It's not how I like to consume 24 seven, but it's a cool way to kind of like take in information. it's soul trick.

Rick Currier (24:36.974)

Yeah, and if you haven't listened to Notebook, it's Notebook L.M., right? Is how you say it. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a real life podcast. I mean, it is unbelievable. It's a little scary.

Ryan De La Parra (24:42.102)

Yeah, notebook LL. Yeah, it's a Google tool.

Ryan De La Parra (24:48.054)

It's crazy how they do it. They've actually moved some of their audio capabilities over to Gemini. So if you go into Gemini and you look for audio overview, it's Notebook LM on the backend, which is cool.

Rick Currier (24:58.724)

Yeah. No, I love that though, because I've utilized it, but basically taking reports I'm getting off the internet, I haven't gone out and created my own report and then embedded it. And then they're going back to the AI with AI. So that's a really, really great takeaway. Anything else? mean, I know you're full of it. I don't want to, I don't want to jump the gun and leave, leave some off the table.

Ryan De La Parra (25:15.476)

Hahaha.

Let's see. I think using natural language for picture manipulation is really strong as well in these tools. I go back and forth. My two primaries are chat, GBT and Gemini. I do use Claude and I will use notebook LLM and other tools and perplexity sometimes, but those are my two primaries.

Rick Currier (25:37.442)

Any tips on that? Because I've I've struggled with the image generation utilizing AI and never. I always feel like I end up wasting my time. So what's working for you?

Ryan De La Parra (25:42.884)

yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (25:46.136)

So here's a really cool one. Somebody taught me this. again, this goes back to like speak to your peers, people who are using it, figure out what they're doing and how they're doing it. And then take something of what they're doing and make it better, right? Like just iterate and then give it back to them and say, hey, here's how I took your idea and did this. But so a peer of mine, you told me this little trick that he did with generation. He said he will use JSON markdown for generation. But then what's really cool is you could take, and this is how I iterate on it.

You can take an image, give it to AI and say, Hey, give me a JSON markdown of what you see. And it will give you like the code, like the natural language text readout of what it sees. And then you just go in there and it says where it says chair Brown, you say chair blue. And then you take that JSON and send it back in and say, generate an image with this JSON text. And it will give you that same image, but with the chairs blue. And so it's a good way to like precision manipulate images with natural language. And I found that one.

Pretty handy in a few moments. I don't use it often, but it's like a cool little like, okay, I know how to tweak this image precisely. And then...

Rick Currier (26:52.58)

Now that's good because when I try to tweak images with a prompt, I end up getting like a totally different image sometimes. that's...

Ryan De La Parra (26:58.624)

Yes, exactly. this stops, this puts the guardrails up because now it has the JSON, like the large JSON context of what it needs to generate to a T. And you just change that one little thing that you want to change. It's really cool. And then slide deck. Sorry, go ahead.

Rick Currier (27:10.01)

Very cool, very cool. Let me ask you this. Well, let, go ahead.

Ryan De La Parra (27:13.89)

I was gonna say slide deck in Gemini is great. Like asking it, go open up a canvas and asking it to generate a PowerPoint based off of like bullets that you provided. Say, hey, can you please give me an image of this? And it will give you a nice image. And you can take that HTML and drop it in a text file, open it as an HTML on your computer and then size it the right way you want, screenshot it, drop it into a PowerPoint.

Rick Currier (27:34.106)

So you like Gemini better for the PowerPoints?

Ryan De La Parra (27:37.65)

it depends. think Claude does a really good job at like creating imagery too. so I'll use Claude, I'll use Gemini. I think, chat GPT has its benefits as well. it just really depends on what you're trying to output. They all have their little flavor and take on how, on how things look.

Rick Currier (27:41.967)

Okay.

Rick Currier (27:53.266)

Cool, awesome. And I don't want to end on a bad note, but where do you think marketers are getting it? Yeah, let's just go. No, these are really great tips. And I know a lot of marketers are still struggling out there. from your perspective, why are they struggling? Where do you see marketers get it wrong with AI and not seeing the success that they should?

Ryan De La Parra (27:57.58)

Or we're gonna do it anyways.

Ryan De La Parra (28:12.27)

Yeah, you know, I read a lot and I'm always like exploring and then again, that questioning asking why and then, know, there's all these reports out there that, you know, companies are failing and the AI is just a bubble and MIT releases report that, you know, companies are, you know, don't even know how to use AI. it's just, I think what it amounts to is I don't think people are creating the right feedback communities to understand how to do it. So I just gave you a bunch of great examples and hopefully, hopefully somebody will listen to this podcast and be like,

You know, damn it, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that. And that will spark something great in them. And then they're going to start iterating on that idea that I just gave them and make it better. But my ask of whoever is listening and doing something good is tell somebody else what you just did. Don't keep it to yourself. This is how this will work, right? Democratizing AI is a good thought process to have.

sends us forward. And I think a lot of companies are just kind of floundering and they don't have the strategy and they don't know what to do. And they're like, well, we'll go use this and we'll go do that. And they're just ending like cross-eyed, you know? And that's why it's failing. So it needs structure. It needs alignment. It needs the North Star. You need to kind of say, okay, here's how we're going to use it. And here's the structure and here's what we're going to going to do.

all of our webinars, our content is going to be generated by this agentic bot that we just created. Boom, right there. You're going to see business value, right? So you start putting up these frameworks the right way. And that's how you're going to understand the value of AI. And just talk to your friends, ask your peers. I heard another good podcast where somebody was talking about how they use, they have an AI workshop once a quarter in their company where they will just, everyone just comes, they grab lunch, it's free.

and you share use cases on what you're doing. And I would go to that in this situation and I would just share what I just shared with you and say, hey, here's, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm doing this. And again, sparks the ideas, makes people think like, I could do that. And then you iterate on it.

Rick Currier (30:08.049)

Yeah, I love that. mean, that's exactly what we just did today. You know, and every, every time I talk to someone like you, I, I realized, I could, I could be doing double what I'm doing now. and I think just getting, getting together and sharing, but it's from an organization standpoint to your point, like you need that North star, you need the guard rails. Like, and I think there's a top down and a bottom up approach that really make it a really incredibly effective tool.

Ryan De La Parra (30:24.108)

Yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (30:31.098)

It will. just listening to the news through the noise. I've heard that statement before in my life and it rings so true with AI. There is just so much noise out there and so many people on Instagram trying to sell you N8N workflows that just don't work. know? figure out what is real. Use your critical thinking. Don't love or let that go and just be like, you know what? I'm listening to this person say to me that they can do this. I'm going to validate and figure that out.

Rick Currier (31:00.345)

Love it. Love it. Ryan, well, listen, we'll link to your LinkedIn on the show notes to Nasuni. Any place people should go for more information or they want to find out about the company.

Ryan De La Parra (31:07.266)

Yeah.

Ryan De La Parra (31:11.18)

Yeah, absolutely. Just newsuny.com. Go poke around, take a look, look at the partner pages. Become a partner, work with us. I think it'd be great. But yeah, just newsuny.com. Check it out. And my LinkedIn is open. I love talking to people. So just if you add me, please add a DM and let's have a conversation.

Rick Currier (31:30.147)

Awesome. Ryan, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a lot of fun and I learned a lot. So thank you.

Ryan De La Parra (31:34.7)

Yeah, good, Rick. Thank you for having me. This was fun.