IAM2258 – CEO and Founder Discusses the Role of AI in Enhancing Business Efficiency

Michael Greenberg, founder and CEO of 3rd Brain Automation, discusses his insights on digital operations, automation, and the role of AI in enhancing business efficiency.

Michael emphasizes that implementing structured processes leads to consistent operations and clearer roles for team members.

He defines digital operations as the framework that helps businesses leverage their technology effectively.

Michael explains the importance of identifying what you do best and love to do.

Michael highlights the importance of staying connected to the business daily by showing up and engaging with various aspects of the company even on weekends.

Website: 3rd Brain

LinkedIn: Michael Greenberg

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Michael Greenberg Teaser 00:00

As a result of doing that, they understand that when we follow this process, first, they will see more consistent operations.

Then their team members will gain clarity and they will be able to gain clarity through dashboards into what their team is doing. Those 2, consistency and clarity, allow for capacity.

Intro 00:22

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:49

Hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Michael Greenberg. Michael, excited to have you on the show.

Michael Greenberg 00:57

Gresh, thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 00:58

Yes. I'm super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing.

And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Michael so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Michael is the founder and CEO of Third Brand Automation, where he leads, he leverages a decade of experience to drive growth for businesses with revenues ranging from 2 million to 100 million through advanced digital operations, automations, and AI.

Known for his expertise in AI, Michael has crafted innovative solutions to streamline workflows and enhance project management.

His entrepreneurial achievements include raising 1.5 million for a startup and successfully exiting a podcast production agency.

And one of the things I always talk about is not working in silos and how so much of the world is no longer silos.

And I think Michael and his team kind of brings those things together, which I'm going to be super excited to kind of delve into technology, AI, and automation.

He described as gap closers or multipliers, not necessarily replacement of vengeance.

So I thought that that is so powerful because sometimes we think AI is going to be all things, but having something in place and then amplifying it with those technologies is going to be absolutely huge.

So excited to have you on the show, Michael. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Michael Greenberg 02:08

Oh, yeah, you got me pumped now.

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Gresham Harkless 02:11

There you go. I did all the you did all our work. I just repeated a lot of awesome things you've been saying and doing.

So I did to kind of jive in a little bit deeper. So I guess to kick everything off, let's rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started. What I call  your CEO story.

Michael Greenberg 02:26

I come from entrepreneurs on both sides of the family. So my grandfather on my mom's side was a master plumber, just like his dad was before and after they immigrated to the US.

And on my dad's side, his great grandfather started in like textiles and opened like department stores in the country. Sold those and then moved into real estate.

And so everyone in my dad's family runs a different piece of that real estate business. My dad runs his own real estate business.

And then with both my grandpa's running their own businesses. I just sort of grew up around the idea that the way you actually make money is by being an entrepreneur.

CEO did not come up at that point. Nobody, it was just a businessman. Nobody talked about titles like that in my family.

Gresham Harkless 03:27

Yeah, but it sounds like you had those seeds that were planted. So I would love to drill down more here, a little bit more around that journey.

And of course, we'll let you to kind of build everything you've been building with third brain.

Michael Greenberg 03:37

Understanding some of the tech and understanding some of the business, this can be really powerful.

So I pretty much built my consulting career at least around that. I would do pitch presentations, go to market strategy, and then building MVPs with a team offshore in Ukraine. And that worked.

That made me some good money, but it wasn't like a business I could really grow in because I only knew how to raise a little over a million.

But if you really want to build in that business, you need to know how to raise hundreds of millions.

Little time went by, I took the national strategy of becoming a production business and that became my first podcasting agency, Call for Content, that I then built up and sold about 4 years ago now. That's when I knew I really knew nothing about business.

Gresham Harkless 04:37

When you're selling it or throughout the process.

Michael Greenberg 04:40

That's like when I got to the end and I look back, I sat down to start I was gonna like I'm gonna write a book about this.

And I wrote a book and the book was like, oh, this is all the lessons I learned for myself. I'm still not following all this stuff properly every day.

So I tried to go get a job. I applied I didn't get the job. But he sat me down, same guy, and he said, look, you didn't get the job, but I've got another offer for you part time.

Worked on his Twitter, then helped with go to market and back-end operations for a few of their companies.

And one of the big things he really impressed upon me was finding your zone of genius.

Which is that idea of like the thing you can do that's play, where it doesn't feel like work anymore because it combines what you are great at and what you love doing.

And I realized, oh, it's this overlap, it's technology and business, it's bridging that gap. So, Third Brain started out of those experiences.

We started just about 2 years ago now as a way to implement the divide because AI and automation were letting you get so much more leverage.

If you know how your business runs and all of the data is in order so it can pass between processes and departments and platforms, then suddenly you can do almost anything.

And I saw problems inside of the businesses at Gateway X that I was like, oh, you can automate this entire thing that you have like 30 people working on all day.

Gresham Harkless 06:32

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I love that you said you have to know your business to kind of leverage those things.

And I imagine that a lot of times even people that do know their business probably don't have the good operations or vice versa.

They have operations and their aspects of their business are changing or there's pandemics and things that happen that force people to pivot.

So I imagine there's always going to be that opportunity where those operations need to be improved and can always be more effective and efficient and probably need to evolve and change as well too.

Michael Greenberg 07:02

50, 60% of our clients, they come in, they're like, oh, we have this problem, or oh, we want to do an AI project.

But in reality, it's, oh, actually, we need to just, nobody's written down an SOP and a workflow on how somebody on boards to our team or how we handle our sales process from quote to cash.

Nobody sat down and actually documented this thing. And so because nobody's documented it, a whole bunch of people are confused.

They don't have clarity in their roles or how they should be doing things. And then we get that clarity.

And then they realize, oh, the problem is not that we didn't have this information or this person wasn't doing this thing.

The problem is that we don't have any online signing right now and we're sending our customers PDFs to sign we need to integrate Panda Doc and boom now you need to take automations and take everything from the CRM and move it into the proposal document in PandaDoc and then you can send it and then you can trigger the signing and then you can automate the invoice.

And so we're able to do all of that and that can start from just, hey, and this is a literal example.

And so it all starts with one problem and you find out you don't have great documentation.

When you don't have the documentation, you can't tell a robot to do something if you can't tell a human to do it.

Gresham Harkless 08:29

All Right.

Michael Greenberg 08:33

The catchphrase, and I'll end on this, the catchphrase we use is don't use a chainsaw if you can't swing an axe.

Gresham Harkless 08:42

I love that. I almost wonder if that's part of what might be your secret sauce, your zoning genius, your superpowers, being able to kind of see the forest for the trees for like a better term.

You mentioned a couple of times, being able to kind of understand the business and technology aspect.

Cause I feel like so many times, and I don't know if you run into this with clients, you're like, oh, we need AI, we need some of that technology automation, we need some of that, but not really being able to kind of understand that it's really the amplification of the things that you're doing.

And if you don't have that, for lack of a better term, that foundation in place, it becomes, I don't want to say impossible because I imagine you can add AI and automation to anything, but it doesn't really serve the purpose that you ultimately wanted to serve.

Michael Greenberg 09:22

Yes. I think, and this is sort of the, this is not only our secret sauce, but this is, this is the positioning that has, that I saw originally that I set out for Third Brain and that I think has really set us apart from other firms.

It's this idea of digital operations as a whole. Our job is just to educate clients on this mindset, on this framework, on this process.

And as a result of doing that, they understand that when we follow this process, first they will see more consistent operations.

Then their team members will gain clarity and they will be able to gain clarity through dashboards into what their team is doing.

Those 2, consistency and clarity, allow for capacity. So the team can take on more work. They're more comfortable with their work.

They're less stressed. That turns into confidence, not only in the team, but in the business's ability to grow.

Then finally, 6 months in, 12 months in, we can look at the bottom line and see cash flow.

Because all of this is really about reducing labor costs. At the end of the day, you can see a business that follows the digital operations process that levels up.

Gresham Harkless 10:54

I love it. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

So This could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Michael Greenberg 11:05

I use whatever the smartest model is at the moment because any idea I have, I run past the AI first. I know with a tool like Claude, it's always going to give me the answer I want.

So like, it's trained to not say no, which makes it terrible for like, breaking ideas down or really dissecting things.

But it's really useful for like summarizing or for combining ideas in new ways. The new O1 model that OpenAI came out with a little while back now.

That is good enough where I can give it things and it's like, no, this isn't as good as it could be. I'm going to make it better.

And you can give it specific copywriting frameworks and you can tell it to think longer on this thing.

And it really does improve. Point being, this is really generational technology, and it's not really clear how it's going to affect the world everywhere yet. And that just leaves so much opportunity to make money until it does.

Gresham Harkless 12:15

Yeah, I appreciate you expounding upon that. What would you consider to be a little bit more, you might have already touched on this, CEO nugget?

That could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or you would tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine.

Michael Greenberg 12:31

It comes down to 2 things. One, you need to find your zone of genius. Cannot stress that enough.

But two, and this is probably the better one that people don't always tell you. It took me 10 years to realize that my real unique skills had nothing to do with my zone of genius.

They were just the extra things I picked up along the way that made me stand out as sort of a combined skill set from other people.

And at least for me, it turned out that, oh, it wasn't just being able to close that gap.

It wasn't just being able to close that gap it wasn't just being able to talk tech or just being able to do a little marketing it turned out at least for me that secret piece was I was really good at finding diamond in the rough, like technical operations people that I could put through a month or 2 of training.

And then they'd be great at this thing. And that turned out to be the unique advantage that let me build a business with a margin that allowed me to pursue different tactics and different opportunities that my competitors cannot pursue.

Gresham Harkless 14:03

That's powerful. I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Michael, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Michael Greenberg 14:15

I think at least to me, being a CEO means showing up every day and making the decisions that nobody else will.

Because if I'm making decisions that somebody else can make in my team, then I'm not doing a good job being a CEO.

And I show up 7 days a week, not because my team's there, but because I think it is important for me to touch the company and to sort of feel it all the time.

So what does that look like on a Saturday? Twitter. What does that look like on a Sunday? Back to work, Strategy Sunday every time. But being a CEO, end of the day, showing up and making the decisions nobody else can.

Gresham Harkless 15:15

Well Michael, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, your team, find out all the awesome things that you all are working learn.

Michael Greenberg 15:31

You can find me at 3rdbrain.co. That's the number 3-R-D-B-R-A-I-N.co. And you can actually find a white paper that goes way more into depth on everything we talked about here right on that website.

And then if you want to reach out to me directly, you can find me at Gent of Tech on all social media. I love to talk about this stuff and I will chat your ear off as I'm sure you noticed today.

Gresham Harkless 16:08

Yeah, absolutely. We're definitely in the right place to chat our ears off and of course to make it even easier.

We'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you find about all the awesome things that you and your team are working on and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Michael Greenberg 16:22

Likewise, thanks for having me on.

 Outro 16:24

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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