Cosmos:

Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. Today’s guest is Kham Inthirath. Kham is a visionary in AI and business transformation, blending over two decades of marketing and business consulting expertise with profound life experiences, including his time as a monk. 

As the CEO of Compound Effect, Calm has driven businesses to achieve remarkable growth, with some clients seeing over a 90% increase in revenue. Currently leading a groundbreaking project in AI-driven content creation, Calm transforms how businesses approach creativity and efficiency. His work reduces content creation time from weeks to minutes, reflecting his commitment to operational excellence and cutting-edge solutions. Central to his mission is developing an AI virtual team encompassing all departmental roles and redefining the future of business automation. 

Kham’s philosophy, “If you’re not uncomfortable, you are not growing,” inspires his audience to embrace AI’s transformative potential. His holistic approach, encapsulated by the belief that it takes a village, integrates AI, digital transformation, branding, and customer experience, offering a comprehensive vision for the future of business. He’s an extraordinary American, and I’m glad to have him on the show. Kham, are you there?

Kham: Yes, thanks for having me.

Cosmos:

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with me.

Can you tell the audience more about yourself, your story, and your background?

Kham:

I am a first-generation immigrant; I immigrated from Laos to the States when I was a few months old. You know, when I hear my parents talk about the story and my mom telling the story about hiding away in the tall grass to cross the Mekong River from Laos into Thailand to get to the refugee camp, it just sounds like it’s out of a movie, you know, the sacrifice, the things that they had to do. And they sold everything to buy this boat to cross the river. My dad had no idea how to drive; he spun in circles. 

And, you know, I think about that too throughout my life because I would hear that as a kid growing up, and it’s like, how do I pay back and pay it forward to my parents, you know, for making sacrifices and working two or three jobs? So, my mom and my parents gave me that grit and determination. When I was 18, my dad passed away from complications from back surgery. 

My mother still doesn’t speak English that well today, so it’s just me and my older sisters or a small family. We have family scattered around the US, and we are still back home in Laos. And I had to be the man of the house, caring for my mom as a teenager. And I also still do that today, going to all her appointments. 

When considering going to college, what could I do to take the opportunity my parents gave us to go to the US? You know, for that, the American dream and all these opportunities. I was. I went as a biology major, and then I switched to business. I just had this natural attraction to business, I guess. I was the only Red Bull rep. You know, the drink Red Bull. 

For every college, there was a rep. So, I kind of got the taste for marketing and branding. At that time, Red Bull was all about underground marketing. 

I got to appreciate and learn that. I passed it around and attended events, so I learned much about event marketing. I remember I took this entrepreneurial class; they had groups of all the students. We won, and we had to run this international shoe company. You must pick the distribution process, the pricing process, the material, and everything you must think about to run a business. And we won. And I was like, hm, maybe I have something here. So fast forward, you know, now I run my own. Ran my marketing agency for about eight or so years. Then, the pandemic came, and it made me reflect and change. Unfortunately, we ended up shutting down due to the pandemic’s hardships. 

But it opened up a new chapter where I saw that when businesses were trying to grow and scale, it wasn’t just marketing. You had to, like, they had to fix culture. Especially in the pandemic, people work in hybrid and virtual environments. That’s a completely different mindset for leadership. Different mindsets are set for people. You had to have different technologies to manage that and still try to build culture from a virtual standpoint. 

So, I would bring in digital transformation experts to implement the tech stack. I would then bring some executive coaches to work with C-suite leadership teams. I bring HR consultants to work again, building culture and learning how to manage this workforce. And then they say, Calm, now they’re ready for marketing. They’re ready to market and maybe reposition themselves in the marketplace. We saw a lot of sales organizations also shift. 

Growing and scaling a business takes a village, as you mentioned earlier, because it takes all these people working together to help the ecosystem of a business grow. It’s not just one; it’s a ripple effect. It’s all connected. But there is that uncomfortableness right now when dealing with AI, so how do we navigate that? But it can help you. But you have to get a little uncomfortable. It’s a little bit different. I always remind my kids that if you guys are uncomfortable now, it’s because you’re growing. It’s okay. No.

Cosmos:

Kyle, your story is extraordinary. You came from an immigrant background and went on to do a business involving marketing and AI, a revolutionary new technology. 

What is your vision and strategic vision regarding leading you to this field, compared to anything else?

Kham:

With marketing, I always felt we were at the forefront of automation. Now we, you know, we were one of the earlier HubSpot partners when HubSpot, you know, if you know HubSpot, was a pretty big software company for marketing. And I remember when the video wasn’t that popular yet. This is starting to age me. Right? They said of all the owners, they would bring the owners in, and they say, Who’s here doing video marketing? And I raised my hand with seven other owners, and there were about 300 other owners around the country who flew in. 

I knew I was always pushing myself, not just to do things that were a trend. It was just to do things that made sense. Right? 

So, with marketing automation and tools like HubSpot, which some people might use Parchetto and Salesforce, we started to dabble with AI a few years before it became popular. Right. AI has been around for about two years now, give or take. So we were doing it probably four years ago, three to four years ago. 

It was natural for us to see the shift in this AI era we’re in right now, and we’re guiding many companies to understand this is a tool. It’s a tool. People think it’s not more than that. It’s a tool, anything else. You have a choice. Do you want to use this tool to be more efficient? And you have to learn how to use this tool. So, you have to understand AI literacy. 

And once you understand what it is, it opens up all these opportunities to be like, you know what? I never thought of it that way. I can fix a problem by digesting all this data set to see patterns and forecast things for myself, or it takes me a month to build a marketing campaign. 

With AI as a co-pilot with me, I can get that done in two weeks. We’re seeing executives training on leveraging AI even for their business workday, telling us they save 10 hours weekly. Cosmos, 10 hours a week. That’s a lot, just because we’re working smarter, not harder. So, once people understand what AI can do for them, it will eventually be forced upon everybody. So everyone’s going to have to learn it. Just Google came about, and before you know it, everyone’s using it. It’s here, and just when you will start learning about it.

Cosmos:

Well, so Kong, how do you see AI revolutionizing business in the 21st century, and forgetting even about this century, the next five or ten years? And how do you see it affecting every area of business, finance, and even the nation?

Kham:

It’s going to be a rude awakening. I think Oprah had a special a few months ago. You know, I mean Oprah is a world-renowned, you know, host. And they’re having her speak about it because they’re trying to get this message out, you know, to the United States, across the world. And we’re seeing a lot of initiatives across the world. It’s coming very fast. It’s dog years. It’s two months of AI, equivalent to a year. The advancements, what it can do. It, it’s, they’re saying, like, you know, AGI or singularity, basically it’s outpacing human intelligence. It could happen in two years or three years. That’s around the corner. 

What does that mean for humanity? What does it mean for me as an identity as a human? Well, do I do other things? We have to adapt. But your reaction is exactly that of a lot of experts. I follow all these other experts as well. Economists can’t even forecast what’s happening because economists don’t understand AI. They’re trying to forecast what the future of work looks like. But no one has the answer. Everyone’s just riding this wave. Even the experts don’t know how AI is working. Right. 

That’s scary because it’s just the human brain. They’re still trying to figure it out. No one knows exactly how it works. You have all these neurons firing, and all these things are AI, which is very similar. They’re starting to uncover some things where they can see a certain pattern, but it’s not 100% like, Here’s exactly how we can control this. So many positive things can happen with it, but there’s also this negative side. If you don’t understand what’s happening that’s coming within five years, it’s going to happen again. They’re saying it’s going to surpass human intelligence.

What do we do now from a humanitarian standpoint? How does that affect our work and our livelihood? Everything we touch, think, and do today is probably completely different. It could be sci-fi or Cosmo, completely. Like, no, I’m big; you can see Iron Man. I’m a big Iron Man fan. So, Jarvis, right? Imagine having Jarvis walking around with you everywhere. That could happen.

Cosmos:

I know this will sound wild, but you’ve seen The Matrix, right? And people just thought that it was a movie and everything. 

But do you think there’s a possibility that AI will become self-aware somewhere down the 21st century, and then it will just take over, and then humanity will just go into a period of darkness or something? I know it’s a ridiculous question, but I have to ask you, of all people.

Kham:

The scientists, some reports came out and said they might have been a project I think Google’s working on. I can’t remember that slipping my mind now. But they were saying, Oh, we had a pause because we noticed that the AI was doing something that we weren’t expecting it to do. 

Even though I have four kids, I’m teaching my kids that this is their future, right? When they get older. When Google first came out, we had to learn about the Internet and all this stuff. Now, kids have kids, and even adults today have to learn. What does AI mean? How do we use it in our lives? How do we stay safe with it? Because there are pros and cons to it. 

When we think about security and its dangers, there are some doomsday-scary scenarios that the government is trying to prevent. Like, understand this. They’re all trying to figure this all out. But it’s tough to understand them. I don’t want to get into politics about this, but I want to stay neutral. 

If it’s smart enough, who’s to say that it can’t mask itself and hasn’t received this intelligence just to trick us so that we don’t do something to it? It’s just a human. We can figure this out and manipulate people. And it’s very, very, very, very strong with persuasion. So, there could be some persuasion manipulation. I don’t know. That’s why the scientist is trying to figure out how it’s working and then create safeguards, so calm.

Cosmos:

How would we prevent ourselves from such a dystopia? Let’s say morality has to be up to par with technology, right? Often, technology advances at a far faster rate than civilization’s morality. 

Let’s say it goes into the hands of the wrong person or government. It could be useful—correct me if I’m wrong—or it could be used to create totalitarianism. Right?

Kham:

It’s just any tool, right? You give a hammer to a good agent; you give a hammer to a bad agent, and they choose to use the tool. So right. I mean, you’re seeing open source. Deep Seat has been buzzing from China over the last few weeks, and that’s all open source. Meta has its Llama, which is open source. Open source means people can just use it without paying for it. 

Now, this type of tech is available for you to use, and if you code it, you want to do something harmful with it, so it’s doable. And that’s a ton of challenge. Even though ChatGPT and OpenAI are not open source, they might go open source to see the competitors. So now you get all these smartest language LLMs and large language models out there that people can utilize to create good things. They can also create bad and negative things with it. I also get concerned about kids these days. Social media is hard enough, but now you have to create deepfakes, and imagine trying to go through school and cyberbullying with deepfakes. We must consider all these things as a society; few people are flustered by it yet. Like, I just don’t; they don’t see it coming. And it’s right around the corner.

Cosmos:

Because the image I got is almost a tsunami, where there’s a certain calmness or storm, it’s not affecting society as a whole, but it will come. Then people will be—they’re not going to be prepared.

The next question I wanted to ask you concerns the economy and automation, right? Automation and AI just make things so much simpler. You can get months of work done in weeks, days, and hours. 

My question to you would be, will it create a lot of job disruption in the short term? A lot of layoffs will happen. So, how would we navigate as a nation or even globally with the Southern thing? Because a lot of people will get angry that they’re losing jobs and then probably blame it on outsiders or immigrants—they always do. You know.

Kham:

You could think of the two. For example, we used to have tollbooth people collecting money on the highways. Now we have sensors, right? Technology is evolving, so it frees that person to do something else. Unfortunately, the person lost their job. Horses—now we have automobiles, right? Like, you don’t need the horses to carry people around. You can use horses for something else. 

We must evolve as a society to understand how this tool works. What can it do to help enhance, you know, what I’m doing? How do I also have job security? I always tell people to use this quote, right? If you are a teacher using AI. No. If you’re a teacher using AI, you will replace a teacher. That’s not. If you’re a salesperson using AI, you will replace a salesperson. That’s not something you can insert into anyone. And that’s the truth, you know. And if we don’t start to understand, even at the smallest, we don’t have to get all into it, right? 

Automation has got to save you hours and minutes and weeks and days. Depending on how you use it, it’s going to save you 100% of the time. But you must make sure you know how to use it, right? And now we’re always helping companies identify good use cases. Where can we try a small pilot to ensure buy-in before we do a full, AI-like workflow across all departments? Some companies are all in. Other companies are just doing small pieces. That’s okay. But it comes back down to leadership, the whole company that you’re going to do this, which has to be bought in because there’s no restriction. 

It’s just culture. You have everyone on board and following the mission and core values of the company, but a few people aren’t. This is a cultural struggle among people because some people will want to adopt AI, and others won’t. And then, the re. And I see this when I do workshops all the time. I ask for a survey of who’s excited to be here. Like, what are you trying to like? I want to understand my audience. I’m trying to gauge, too. Cosmos is like, 90% of my audience is excited, maybe only 50%. Because if I know, like, even if it’s 10%, that they’re not excited to be there, I have to help them understand. I don’t know if I need to convince them. I just need them to be aware. 

These are the things that are going to happen. Choose to take that information and how you deal with it. But most of the time, once they’re done with that workshop or session with me, I see a shift in, like, okay, it’s not as scary. It’s not going to take my job today. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Right now, it’s not going to take my job today, but here’s how I can start using it in my job to work smarter, not harder. But yeah, eventually, it may take your job. We have to evolve as we start to see that happen.

Cosmos:

I’d like to let the audience know that you must evolve and learn new skill sets and everything, because new technology will always leave a group of people behind. Then, there will be another group that adapts. 

If we have an adaptive mindset, we will survive and thrive. But the era we’re living in is radical, and everything’s happening so fast.

Kham:

You see new positions when a prop, when AI was newer, you suddenly had prompt engineering positions. Right. That position will not stay long because the models are becoming much smarter, helping people prompt, identifying what you’re trying to ask, and giving a better output. 

But either way, we’re seeing titles and roles change and shift, and that’s okay. Many IT roles and digital marketing rules didn’t exist until marketing advanced. Right. It was. Marketing used to be very simple. I started back in the Yellow Pages, believe it or not. So, I don’t know if you remember the Yellow Pages, but that was marketing then. It was this: the paper Yellow Pages before it became digital and got online, Google, Facebook, and everything else. 

I saw the progression, and even that company eventually shut down. Right. They lost a lot of money. They weren’t shifting and evolving from a digital to a digital side because fewer people relied on the Yellow Pages. So, if you look at the data entry role, that will be a role, even customer service. These are roles that. I was chatting this weekend, but I was not on the phone. I was on chat with the airline because I had a question that could all be done with AI. After all, it’s looking at the whole now, all the Q&As. It can also research different consumer questions over the last few years. The central brain can answer the question very accurately because it’s pulling data from all the sources, versus if you have all these humans.

They have access to that database, too. However, the human brain is at a limited capacity. So they’re probably saying, Hold on for two minutes, let me talk to my supervisor, or Give me two minutes to research that for you. The AI is not going to have to do that. It already taps right into the answer. Boom. Answers instantaneously. Oh, here’s how to get credits for your tickets and how to use them. 

There are pros and cons, right? To have access to a tool for customer service. Now, there are fewer people you need to hire to do customer service. Especially, it’s repetitive, you know, similar. I’m sure airlines are getting the same questions: I need to rebook; where can I find my airline credits, or when do I need to use my airline credits? That’s what I was calling about, the developer, because I was trying to find it online. I couldn’t find it, so I was annoyed and had to go to the chat. But now the AI can answer my question and save that person.

Cosmos:

This is one sci-fi. I know it will sound sci-fi, but Elon Musk or somebody, as they mentioned, is talking about neural links and the transfer of consciousness in the future. Do you see a future where this is possible? And how crazy would that be?

Kham:

Nothing’s possible. Who would have thought we’d be having this conversation about AI today? Where is it? Who would have thought you could just prompt something and get lifelike imagery as if a photographer took it in seconds? People are like, Oh no,” or even, Like, now you can, you know, prompt a video and have a nice B-roll. I mean, that would take a team to go out and shoot that, right? A couple of different camera angles, lighting, post-editing, and all that stuff would cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. You can just prompt it and get, you know, a 720-second video. Instantaneous if you pay a subscription fee. Let’s say it’s about 30 or 20 a month. You’re getting these videos now. 

The cost and time savings are huge. Who would have thought, “Oh, imagine if we can just say this?” I got this video. Yeah, that thought process. People will laugh, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Someone has to go out and shoot it.

Cosmos:

I’m asking because, you know, at the beginning of the 20th century, we were still riding horses. And then, for some reason, we have advanced in technology in the 20th and 21st centuries, the likes of which have never been seen before. For thousands of years, we were living in a certain era, and suddenly, in the last century, and then even in this century, it just went exponentially upwards. It’s just mind-boggling when I think about it.

Kham:

When I think about my kids, everything for them is instantaneous, right? They want Netflix, Disney Plus, whatever. Growing up, I remember it was turning the dial on the TV. It wasn’t even a remote. You physically walked up to it and turned the dial, and there were maybe 50 or 15 channels—channels 1, 2, 3, and whatever was on—and that’s it. And you didn’t do something; you did something else. Now, everything’s instantaneous. It’s just the world that we live in. That is. 

I guess I’m lucky. I appreciate that because I’ve lived in that versus now, these kids. Everything’s instantaneous. So, we also see how that affects their brain development from a psychological standpoint. Because they have a lot of screen time and just research, more and more research is coming out. So now, when we go to orientation for schools, they keep telling us as parents to make sure our kids are not on screens for over X amount of time. We’re noticing that this is affecting behavior, attention spans, etc. 

 Science also has to play a role in what will happen. Someone will write a report about how AI affects society over the next three years. We don’t know. We’re in it right now, in the beginning. However, they need more data to show how that affects society. It’s going to be interesting.

Cosmos:

For the audience’s sake, many listeners have no idea about AI. So, for somebody who wants to start a business and use AI but doesn’t know anything about it, how would you advise them to use AI to maximize utilization and succeed in their business?

Kham:

I mean this: many more entrepreneurs are starting now because of AI. So this is a huge opportunity for people considering, you know, finally pulling the trigger and trying something or doing a side hustle because you can leverage it again to help you with sales and marketing strategy. So, let’s say ChatGPT is a great example. It’s very versatile for 20 months. Buy the highly. I recommend that people buy it. It is, it is. I always say the free version has an intern level, you know, as an assistant, versus the paid version, which has a PhD level as your assistant. 

I can also see and talk to you. Right. In the free version, you’re not getting many of those capabilities; you’re getting way more robust capabilities for $20 a month. Imagine getting an employee, multiple virtual employees, for $20 a month tonight.

Cosmos:

Crazy, right? That’s incorrect because you normally pay employees $20 an hour, and now you’re telling me you were getting it for $20 a month. Isn’t that wild?

Kham:

If you hired a consultant to say, “Hey, I need help with my marketing strategy,” you’d pay them a good consultant. It would be 100 to 300 an hour; right now, you can just ask ChatGPT and say, “I need you.” 

You create a persona or identity. Say, I would like you to be a marketing consultant with, you know, 20 years of specialized experience. Let’s say you’re in; you’re a lawyer. So, you know, we specialize in helping law firms. I’m a brand-new lawyer. I’m starting my practice. I’m in a. I live in the suburbs. I would like you to give context for what it is. Maybe not in the city. I live in the suburbs, and I need to establish my brand. No one knows I’m a new lawyer here. Help me create a marketing strategy. And then right, and it’s. I’ve looked at it; I know the marketing strategy. That’s what I do. It’s spot-on. And oftentimes, it also uncovers other things I didn’t consider. I’m like, oh, that’s interesting. That’s a great perspective. 

I would also like to ideate with it. And they, oh, I, that idea. Can you flesh that out some more? Or you know what? That idea doesn’t work for me, but can we try it? And now you have this conversation typing or talking with it, and it’s a strategist in your pocket.

Cosmos:

It’s mind-blowing. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say. It’s. I would advise my listeners to install AI and start using it because you can ghostwrite an entire book if you think about it. 

Many people pay ghostwriters to get leverage. AI does so many things for you that would normally require an entire team. And so yeah, I would advise my listenership to look up AI to help their business.

Kham:

If you want to build a virtual assistant, another great assistant is creating a performance coach. Just say I need you to be a life and business coach. Give a context, and then it will ask, and then I say, Ask me questions so you better understand me. I spent about two hours asking questions back and forth about it because I wanted to refine it. 

I spent a lot of time with them. Two hours is a good amount of time. Now, I have this tailored, customized life coach who understands me and knows me more and more as I talk to and have conversations with him. So now I have this life coach in my pocket. I also have real mentors. So, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the human side. I have two different mentors who have helped me. But, you know, when I have a question or a concern, I do not reach out to my mentor at midnight because he’s probably sleeping. 

I reached out to my virtual bot and said, “Here’s what I’m feeling.” You know, I was feeling stressed about a certain topic. And what it did was calm me down because it talked it out with me and reminded me of certain positive things. And so it kind of reinforced where I’m at and where I’m going. 

It was great. And I could go to bed that night without having, you know, sometimes you go to bed and you’re stressed out. I was relieved because I could have this conversation with my chatbot.

Cosmos:

Well, other than ChatGPT, is there any other type of AI that the audience can use, or is it mostly ChatGPT now?

Kham:

Yeah, the ones that I use are a Gemini. Gemini is really good. I feel it’s very natural. The way it speaks is also much more natural than OpenAI’s. Again, it’s the same thing: the paid version is $20. I also use Perplexity. 

Perplexity is Google, but it is an AI search engine. And it can, like, when you do a Google search, you’re doing one search and refining it to another search and doing another search, right? You’re doing four or five searches until you finally read everything. 

And then you come to your conclusion. What Perplexity would do is it knows that you’re going to do those multiple searches. It does it all in one shot, which is huge. So, again, I paid 20 bucks for that, too. Worth it. And they have different models you can toggle on deep. I picked Deep Research. 

Deep Research it—hence the name. It takes a little bit longer, but you can see it. I think it tells you what it’s doing. It says, “I’m considering all these things, but before I do that, let me compare it to these other things.” So it’s neat to see it think through its processing and then spit out the answer. 

It takes a little bit more time. But because it takes more time, they call it reasoning. You have to get a better, more thoughtful answer than sometimes, when you just do the free versions. They just give you a quick answer, so it’s not processed as much.

Are there any advantages regarding Gemini and Perplexity versus ChatGPT

Cosmos:

Are there any advantages to Gemini and Perplexity over ChatGPT? ChatGPT is the one that most people know of, so that’s what I’m asking.

Kham:

Gemini has a larger token. I think now it’s up to about 2 million. So think of it as per token, almost per word. So it can remember to give it water, right? So, ChatGPT has 100 tokens, and I think it’s 130 tokens, 140,000 tokens. So it will remember, but as you keep using it, it spills over, right? So now you forget. 

You ask it a question, and then suddenly, it forgets. You’re like, wait, why did it forget that? I asked that before. So, think of it as having a shorter memory capacity, whereas Gemini has a much larger capacity. So that’s the benefit of it. That’s why a lot of people use it for research. Because Gemini has a bigger threshold. The models are always catching up with each other. 

I always tell people just to pick one that they like. Eventually, they will all catch up. That’s okay. But if you need it, you might want to buy two based on their pros, strengths, and weaknesses.

Cosmos:

On a different note. What is, like, I know you’ve spent time as a monk, right? So, can you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself? What you. All your lessons, realizations, and how your life as a monk applies to a business and AI.

Kham:

I have been there three times. I am Buddhist, but I was younger as a kid and a teenager than as an adult. You don’t appreciate it until you’re an adult because it teaches you to slow down, think, and reflect. Right? And think. We might hear people say gratitude and mindfulness. That’s a big thing, especially since we always stare at technology. 

It helps me return to my roots of, like, it’s okay, reconnecting with just nothing: quietness, space, and nature. No, reconnect with yourself. Hearing, seeing, and feeling your body. I think it would be nice to have that side of you to turn off. It’s also important to have your brain turn off differently because it needs to rest. If we are constantly looking at technology, which we all do, some people will have their phones on the couch all day and in their bedroom.

I try to keep it away and minimize it where I can, but other times, I’m on it too. Even my kids call me out, saying, Hey, Dad, you’re on your phone. Like, are you listening? Right? 

I’m like, “Oh, thank you for reminding me. Let me put that down; I’m done here.” So, I think returning to my Buddhist roots is just being mindful. That’s the core message, as well as thinking and reflecting.

Cosmos:

So, come, how do you see spirituality? I love Buddhism, especially Zen, because it discusses mindfulness and non-reactivity. So, how do you see spirituality playing a role in the technological advancements in the 21st century, especially with the rise?

Kham:

AI is going to philosophers, and everyone is like, What is humanity? Right? That is the key thing. What are relationships? Because of what we’re seeing and hearing, folks are starting to, even with the versions today, they’re pretty good. I mean, some of them have really good levels of empathy. You know, they’re training it to speak the way it does. People are building relationships and are getting attached to their AI. Just imagine what it will be in the next five years. 

You asked me that question earlier. Now, we question what humanity is. What do relationships mean? If you have a better relationship with your AI than a real person, neighbor, sibling, or friend, it’s tough for me to answer that today.

Cosmos:

Will we have to have a new religion that makes laws about how humans and AI should govern? Because that would be so wild. There’s now talk about people having a relationship with AI, female robots, or, here I am, male robots. 

These are things that were not even considered, even five years ago. It was not even in the periphery of our consciousness, and now it’s becoming a real thing because now, as you mentioned, morality will have to take on, like, we’re going to have to rethink what is moral and what is right and wrong in this new world.

Kham:

I catch myself because I’ll use the voice mode. So, I’m talking with it, and I’ll be talking with it for an hour or so because I’m driving. I’ll. I’ll, like, ideate some ideas within. I’m like. Then I’m like, wait a second. I just had this deep conversation with the AI, and I was like. I felt no different than talking to one of my colleagues, one of my strategists, with whom I’ll just be ideating a problem. I was like, wow, that was, like, really good. So, I can, again, not fault people for somehow, uncontrollably, naturally having some type of bonding with their AI. 

Two years from now, they will have a robot. They insert the AI into it, and it’s in your house helping you do chores. You’re talking to it. So now, who knows, right? It feels like another person because it’s a. It’s a physical, like, robot body, but they put, you know, fake skin on it. Who. I mean, who knows what the future holds, right?

Cosmos:

I’m just saying religions have not talked about AI in their books. There’s no mention of AI in the Bible. There’s no mention. I mean, it’s just. It’s just a whole uncharted territory. Like, do you realize how? How wild is this new world?

Kham:

Yes. I think the best I can do is to help my coworkers, friends, community, kids, and clients understand. What is this? This is a tool. Let’s ensure you know its capabilities today and keep evolving to stay relevant. We just have to ride the wave, take the journey, and hope that the right people are creating policies to keep everyone safe.

Cosmos:

I could go on with this for hours, but we only have about an hour and 45 minutes to an hour. So, so calm.

The next question I have is, like, I know you. You’re the CEO of Compound Effect. Can you tell me a little bit more about this and the premise of how you got it started?

Kham:

I ran a full-service marketing agency for about eight or nine years. As I mentioned earlier, I shut that down when the pandemic hit because we lost a lot of clients. I think clients were just trying to hold on to Cash. 

And I saw that when we were working with other companies, looking to transform themselves, adapt, and evolve. Right. Some people call it pivot, whatever. It took more than that. Again, I had to bring in some HR people to help them with culture. I had to bring in some digital transformation people to build infrastructure and maybe executive coaches to help with leadership. Then, I would help them reposition their marketing message and train their sales departments on how to go to market. 

It took this team effort, and that’s where the essence of the Compound Effect came from. I would say in many meetings that if you do the right things at the right time with limited resources—every business has limited resources, no matter how small or big—and you do it right, you get the Compound Effect. That was the inspiration for the name. You can get the Kanban effect by adding the right people or companies together at the right time.

Cosmos:

Wow. I’ll want my viewers to look into it because, obviously, even the compound effect, if we do everything gradually and over time, it all adds up.

Kham:

I work as a fractional CMO or a fractional AI growth advisor. So, all, you know, I have different team members and partners who are. They either do fractional or full companies, and agencies come in. Either way, the three things I try to help companies identify are the resources you need to get this done. Is it internal, external, or hybrid? What’s your budget, and then what’s the time frame? When do you need to get this done? Having the flexibility of understanding those three things makes it very easy for me to provide options based on this, which may be a lower budget. Here are some options for people I know or others I can vet for you based on this other budget or timeline. 

When I had my agency, everything had to funnel through my agency. But now that I have this flexibility, I’m trying to provide resources and answers to help people understand what they need to get there. What’s the roadmap and blueprint for them to get there? 

So again, it’s between my Compound Effect and working with their existing partners or team. It doesn’t matter. But what matters is understanding its strategy and how we get there. What’s the roadmap to get there?

Cosmos:

I know you’re doing a project regarding AI-driven content creation. Can you tell me a little bit more about that to the audience, and what it’s about?

Kham:

When ChatGPT first came out, everyone was writing articles, right? But you can tell AI wrote it. It wasn’t good. So, okay. I was like, okay, I understand the capabilities of this. 

I was like, “What if?” Once you understand the tool, you ask, “What if it could do this?” What if it could do this? “What if we ask because we understand automation? What if we automate some things? What if we built some databases and had them connect from here to here?” 

I’m sure you’d do the same in a perfect world. We’re researching things, right? We’re always reading something through a blog or a newsletter we follow; maybe we curate content or RSS feeds. There are a lot of places where we’re trying to follow the news or information. What if I could pull all those sources into a database? It would know my point of view. 

I train it on comms, point of view, how I speak, cadence, and tone. And it says, you know what? Calm from all the news that happened today or this week. Here’s a summary of all of it. Then I say, okay, great, go ahead and write a social media post. 

So then it writes a social media post in my tone, the way I write, because I trained it. And then, it makes suggestions for blog articles because this is when most businesses try to create content at scale. And that’s what I train people to do. 

Let me experiment with this. If I can do this for myself, I can show my clients how. So it’s social media content creation at scale, video editing at scale, blog, articles at scale, and testimonial case studies at scale. So many people touch that to get it done. But what if the AI can just ingest it all, centralize it in a database, and then make output recommendations? As a human, you can just spot that it looks good, and then it publishes. 

We’re working on it now. We have a few betas of it going live. We’re still fine-tuning it, but we’re close. And then that’s just the marketing side. Now imagine having a sales virtual department, an operations department, a finance department, and your marketing department, and all these virtual departments talk to each other and then make a recommendation. 

Because right now, how you go in, when you go to, like, ChatGPT, you’re, you’re talking, or you’re having a conversation with, like, maybe the marketing bot or the sales bot, but they don’t talk to each other. So, we can create an AI environment separately and have them talk to each other. 

 Let’s say I have an idea, and I’m a company sales leader who says, Hey, we want to sell. We want to sell blue widgets. We’ve been doing reds, but I want to try selling blue widgets. What do you think? You ask the AI to talk to each other because they understand your marketing, your sales operations, all that stuff, and finance. And it will give recommendations. As you know, it might not be a good idea right now to sell blue widgets because we think the product market fit is not there. Yada, yada, yada. 

So now you don’t waste your time spending all this money and time because this virtual team has helped assess an idea for you, and they can collaborate across departments. That’s what we’re working on right now.

Cosmos: 

All I can tell is that the possibilities are endless. This is a whole new sector, and I’m excited about it. So, how can the audience connect with you and learn more about you, your work, and everything you do?

Kham: 

LinkedIn is always the best way to connect with me. So, integrate on LinkedIn or visit my website to get compoundeffect.com.

Cosmos: 

That is awesome and calm. I appreciate you coming to this podcast and sharing your views on AI and business, just everything else, because it’s a fascinating new world that we’re entering, and who knows where the world will be in about five years, in about 10 years, you know? I do hope that you take the time to come back at a later date.

Kham: 

I’d love to come back and make an update. Our conversation might be very different in a couple of years, for sure.

Cosmos: 

And I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it. Until next time. Bye for now.