[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Marketing Zone. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and today we unlock the marketing that actually works. You're watching Now Media Television.
Welcome to the Marketing Zone. I'm Marilyn Jenkins. Today I want to talk about sustainable growth and market disruption from an innovation perspective. In business, entering rapidly evolving spaces is exciting, but it introduces tremendous pressure. Markets shift overnight, complex legal tech regulations evolve and competition increases when the operational pressure rises. The true quality of leadership shows up everywhere in the metrics, the brand equity and how teams execute. My guest today is a recognized authority on artificial intelligence, energy innovation and transformative problem solving. Todd Thomas is a best selling author and founder and CEO of Woodchuck AI, a climate tech startup transforming waste into value. He holds an MBA and an economics degree in studied strategy execution at Harvard Business School. He's a legend. He is legendary for turning dense data into clear growth strategies. Todd, welcome to the Marketing Zone.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Hi Marilyn, thanks so much for having me on.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your journey.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Well, I've had a pretty fortunate career. I've been able to work in a number of different industries, which is really, I think, kind of an odd, eclectic background that prepared me well for Woodchuck.
The common theme throughout my career has always been leveraging the latest emerging technologies to really drive efficiencies and find new commercialization opportunities.
And that's exactly what we're doing at Woodchuck. We're really bringing existing technologies into a space that is void of technologies and thirsty for disruption. So we're bringing AI into waste hauling and material recovery and it's going very well.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, that's very exciting. Anything AI is very exciting right now. So when an innovation or climate startup is under intense pressure, what separates those steady leaders from reactive leaders?
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Well, every startup is going to face hurdles, you're going to face problems and unexpected challenges along the way. And I think the key for any startup is really to expect those things to happen and be prepared for them.
Build in a margin of error, build in a plan B and a plan C, because usually you're going to end up on plan B anyway. So you better be prepared for that. You don't always know what that problem is going to be, but something's going to happen. So be prepared, be flexible and have a margin of error.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: I agree, I agree with startups in general, but specifically with new technology that adds a whole new level of complexity to
[00:03:02] Speaker B: really does.
I think it's particularly true in the technology world because technology changes so fast.
So Woodchuck is a relatively new startup. We're just in our third year and when we launched two and a half years ago, we were an AI native company and we were using image recognition and we were using generative AI.
And at the time that was unique and put us in front. But today agentic AI is absolutely the new surge. And so the things that we were doing with generative AI and image recognition, those are really old hat. So we're again, we're only in our third year, but we're rethinking our entire technology stack from an agentic AI perspective.
And we don't others will be able to surpass what we're doing.
Particularly in technology, you always need to be aware of what are the new technologies that are coming out. How does this impact our sector, how does this potentially drive more value for our clients, or how does this enable potential competitors? And what do we need to do to make sure that we're in the forefront of development?
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Well, and keeping keeping up with all of that is crazy. I'm sure you probably have a chief AI officer or someone that's watching things that are coming out or using an agent for that.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Well, so my co founder and I, Dre Nelson is my, is my co founder. So he and I are the architects of our platform and he does all the design and development work.
So I really view that as my responsibility and his responsibility to stay on top of the new technologies.
So we do have another number of agents that are out there working for us every day. But staying abreast of technology, that's a personal responsibility.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. So how do you help or how do leaders make smart high yield growth decisions when emerging technology is changing so quickly?
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Well, the thing that I try to keep in mind both for us and I would tell any young entrepreneur or anybody launching a startup, is start with the problem that you're trying to solve.
Ideally, you do that in conjunction with a client that has a particular problem and a problem that's big enough that they're willing to pay to solve that problem and then let the problem define the solution.
I think a challenge that a lot of startups have is like AI is the big thing right now, right? We're already talking about AI, but lots of companies are doing it backwards. Lots of companies, we're certainly seeing this in corporate big enterprises saying, hey, we have to have an AI project, let's get AI out there. So they're just building AI projects for the sake of building AI projects. And that's why we're seeing huge failure rates of these programs.
Because you can't go out there and pick the technology and then find a problem to solve. It just, it doesn't work well that way. You need to figure out what is the particular problem that your industry or your company has or your client has that you're trying to solve, and then let that problem define the solution. Maybe it's an AI solution, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's a simple process improvement, or maybe it's something mechanical, maybe it requires AI, but you need to let the problem define that.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: That's a great example. That's a great explanation. Because everybody right now wants to dive into AI for everything. And we are seeing weekly, if not more often, headlines where large corporations have replaced numerous people with AI and it's backfired on them. So I think going in the wrong direction.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: That is true. That is true. But we're also. I actually just saw a new article out this morning and the data suggesting that companies that are really embracing AI and becoming AI native, the companies that are using the AI, most are actually having larger employee gains, larger hiring momentum.
There's a clear advantage to those that are using AI.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: I love that. I think that makes you extremely, it can make you very much more efficient and there's, there's a lot of ways to ease it into your company. Agreed.
Now, in high growth innovation spaces, how do leaders know when speed is helping them scale and when speed is actually creating unnecessary risk?
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, one of the phrases we hear a lot in the technology world now is speed is the only differentiator. Speed is the only defensible moat.
You have to stay ahead of your competitors.
And so you do want to move fast, but you're right. At the same time, if you move too fast and you're making silly mistakes, they can be very inefficient.
So, yeah, there's a balance there that you need strike. You need to be aware of new technologies, you need to learn them and figure out which aspects of those you want to include in your company.
But you need to take at least enough time to put some forethought into it and some planning so you're not just spinning your wheels.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: And I think knowing your numbers has got to be important. And how are your numbers affected each day by this new decision you made?
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Know your, your financial model, your, your financial, your costs and your, and your, and your revenue drivers and, and your workforce and, and what they're spending their time on and, and what are the pieces of their, their Workflows that can be replaced with technology to drive efficiencies. And then if you were able to do that, what does that free your people to do, and what do you want them to now spend their time on? If you're able to free them up of rote, repetitive tasks?
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Excellent. Yeah. And what leadership habit helps companies stay strategically focused during deep market uncertainty?
[00:09:03] Speaker B: So my brother was a consultant for Bain years ago, and when he. When you, when you started one of those big consulting companies, they really crank you on the hours. I mean, you're in the office early, you're in the office late. You're. You're there all the time.
And when my brother was kind of at the. The height of that, I think it was like year two at the. Bain where they're really cranking on him. And he told me, put aside at least 25% of your day every day just to think about your business and think about how you can be doing it better. He said, it's really hard because you have all these different demands on your time. But he said, block out your calendar, put 25% of your day, you think about your business, and you give your mind time to think. He said, it's absolutely critical. It's really hard, but you have to do that. And I've tried to maintain that throughout my career. Your mind needs time to think. You need time to think about these problems. So I think just. And whether that's, you know, time hiking, time walking around a lake, or, you know, time sitting in your office with no appointments, find that mental time to really focus on your business and figure out, you know, what are the next moves that you should make.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: That makes so much sense. You know, we're always taught by business coaches, you know, you need to have time to work on your business, not in your business. And I, I love the 25% seems dramatic, but at the same time, we're taking a walk or we're getting outside every day anyway, so it gives us the time to do that. That's. That's quite interesting. And definitely analyze a lot of that.
This is. This is interesting. This is such an important foundation because pressure does not automatically create performance. It re reveals the systems, habits, and leadership decisions already in place when leaders can stay clear under pressure. And the business has a much better chance of growing with discipline instead of reacting from fear. After the break, I want to talk about people as a growth strategy and why talent development should not be treated only as an expense.
We'll be right back with more tools, tactics, and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the Marketing Zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish. If you're on the move, catch the podcast
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i'm here with Todd Thomas, global engineer, innovation leader, best selling author and the visionary founder and CEO of Woodchuck AI.
Before the break, we talked about the growth under pressure and what leaders need when markets, teams and business conditions are changing. Now I want to talk about something every business owner and executive has to understand. Integrating artificial intelligence and climate metrics is not just a cost line or a luxury compliance project. Advanced technology and true sustainability are a direct business growth strategy. Now, Todd, I know that my audience is going to want to connect with you and figure out where to reach out to you. Where should they find you?
[00:12:19] Speaker B: So I am easy to find. Woodchuck is online Woodchuck AI. And come check out our website. There's a lot of information there. There's some cool videos that actually will show you how some of our technology works without giving away the secret sauce. But it is pretty interesting to see.
You can also just find me on LinkedIn. I'm Todd Thomas on LinkedIn or if you'd like my latest book. My latest book, Hyperscale is out on Amazon and it really dives into AI data centers and what I term the next great expansion of global energy capacity.
So yeah, easy to find me.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Fantastic.
That's great.
And why should forward thinking businesses, business owners, see environmental climate impact as part of their growth strategy?
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Well, that ties into AI as well.
I think for a long time we had people focusing on sustainability or environmental impact purely for the environmental impact. At Woodchuck we definitely have the philosophy that in order for something to be sustainable, it can't just be environmentally friendly, it has to be financially sustainable.
It has to turn a profit. And so I think when you're looking at businesses and processes and you're trying to drive efficiencies, that's really what AI is all about. AI is about identifying repetitive tasks and replacing human time on those tasks and letting AI do that. Generally that's driving efficiencies. When you drive efficiencies and you reduce waste that typically has a positive sustainable impact. There's a real natural alignment between AI and sustainability. And driven through that common element of efficiency, we certainly see that within our business. And I think, I think most businesses can realize that. Because if we talk about efficiency and waste reduction, everybody agrees on those. Those are non political. Everybody likes efficiency, everybody likes waste reduction, everybody likes cost reduction.
And so luckily AI and sustainability line up on those factors.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: You are right. Those are very important things that people look at. And I don't think many people think of those together. We just hear so much about what AI is costing the environment.
How does leadership development and technology integration affect financial performance inside a company?
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Well, there's a direct link, right? You will succeed or fail based on the efforts of your team.
Your team is, I would argue, your biggest asset.
And so hire fantastic people.
Then give them all the tools to succeed and let them go work, let them do their thing.
Part of giving them the tools to succeed I think is fostering an environment of continual learning.
Empower people to raise ideas, bring new ideas. So you're really, you're driving a culture of continuous learning, welcoming all ideas to drive really a culture of innovation and invest in professional development for your team.
Again, the better your team is, the more you can surround yourself with smart, educated, always learning people, the better off your company's going to be.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: I think that's important. The always learning type person. We all want a players and there's certain that's one quality I think is incredibly important. Having someone that's always looking to learn more.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Absolutely, Absolutely. I would say that a leadership superpower is not knowing everything because that's literally impossible.
But setting up a culture where anyone on your team can go out there and learn anything, create an environment that promotes that and that's the most powerful thing you can do as a leader.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: I absolutely agree. Absolutely. Now, how can executive leaders identify hidden waste and trapped capital inside their current operational pipelines?
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Well, I think when you're looking for process improvement or for innovation, don't try to do that solely in the executive suite. Bring in a big tent.
I like working whiteboard sessions.
So you bring a big team together. You can bring your execs, but bring your people that are closest to your clients. So maybe that's your BD team or your sales team or your customer success team, but also bring your accountants, bring your operations people, bring them all in and talk about your process from top to bottom and identify improvements.
If you have an executive getaway where you all go somewhere ritzy for the weekend and you have a couple of working sessions with all your C level people. You know, you're probably going to come up with some good ideas, but you're going to miss so much. Get the people that are closest to your clients, get the people that are actually doing the work every day and understand at a detailed level what they are doing. And you will uncover inefficiencies, you will uncover gaps in the process.
And uncovering those things, identifying those things likely will not come from the C folks, right? It's going to come from the operations guys that are working every day to say, hey, you know what, if we had this, that would really help or if we could improve or eliminate this process, it would save us a bunch of time.
But yeah, talk to your accountants, talk to your operations guys.
That's where the really insightful ideas will come from.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: I absolutely agree. Especially the people that are directly working with those systems every day. What corners are they cutting that makes them more efficient? A lot of times that doesn't get put in the system's handbook.
So that's a great suggestion.
And what would be one practical, immediate way a mid sized business can begin building a technology first high performance culture.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Like tomorrow morning, embrace agentic AI. Invest in training your team. Agentic AI, let's say, you know, years ago when I came out of school and was starting my career, it was spreadsheets. You had to understand spreadsheets. You needed to be really good at Excel and the guys that were, or the people that were better at Excel had a clear advantage.
I think today it's agentic AI. Agentic AI is so powerful, it is such a force multiplier.
If you are not using it, if you're not aware of it, educate yourself. There are tons of free tools available.
MIT just made a ton of courses free. Google just made a ton of courses free.
Harvard just made a ton of courses free. And then of course there's paid programs as well.
Claude has a 13 class series that is free that will literally bring you from, I have no idea what's going on to being able to build your own agent within a matter of minutes.
So go out there and find these tools, make them available to your team and not just to your IT team.
Agentic AI. Once you learn the basics, it's so easy to use non technical people and can build agents in really short order without ever having to write a line of code. You don't need to be a coder.
The AI agent will take care of that for you. So embrace AI. Embrace agentic AI, make the tools available to your team and invest both the time and it doesn't have to be a lot of money. There's so many free tools out there to make sure that your team is up to speed on this and then let them. Then you can start having some of those work sessions where you're looking at workflows and you're redesigning those workflows in a more efficient way, leveraging agentic AI to take over all of those repetitive tasks, freeing up your team to really spend time on strategy and client development and the things where the inventive human mind really brings the most value.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Okay, can you break it down and give us a simple definition of what agentic AI? We all use ChatGPT at some point in time, or any of the platforms. What exactly is agentic AI? AI?
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So everybody's using AI all the time. You're right. Chat GPT is, is basic AI, right? You're asking it a question, it's giving you an answer.
An AI agent is basically a small piece of software that utilizes AI. You can think of it as an AI app, if you will. So you can have an AI agent that, for example, reads all of your emails every morning and all of your texts and looks at your calendar and gives you a morning report of Todd here, the top five most important emails and top five important tasks. And here are the three meetings that you need to prepare for. And you can get that report every morning. That's a pretty simple basic example of how people are using agents right now.
So that's an AI agent. When you talk about agentic AI, that's really a system of AI agents that are working together to solve larger problems, to really automate entire workflows, where you may have three or four or five different AI agents all coordinated and working together to solve a larger problem.
So, for example, you might have a workflow where you're receiving data from a client that you have to capture that data, translate it into some type of spreadsheet, and then insert that into your accounting system to generate invoicing. Right? So that's really manual, it's really detailed, it happens every day. That's a perfect process to use agentic AI, where you're going to build a couple of different agents to automate that workflow.
And you can use what's called a guardian agent. That'll put barriers on that, right? So that this agentic system can work within these defined borders so it can't do something risky. And when there's anomalies or issues with a, with an invoice, it can raise it for human review. So that's. So an AI agent is a small AI app that can do a specific task. Agentic AI is a system of AI agents that work in a coordinated fashion to really automate entire workflows.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Great explanation. I really, I appreciate that. I love it because numbers are often downstream from the operational systems, and when processes are unclear, unsupported, or misaligned, the business feels it financially. But when leaders develop systems with clear intention, they create better execution, stronger culture, and more sustainable performance.
Coming up next, I want to explore transformation, how leaders guide change without creating chaos.
We'll be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the Marketing Zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. Today I'm speaking with Todd Thomas, CEO of Woodchuck AI, about corporate economics, emerging technology, and practical frameworks behind sustainable business transformation. We've dissected pressure and tech integration. Now let's talk about change. Because every successful company eventually reaches a critical inflection point where that what worked before simply no longer supports the scale of the future. The real challenge is whether the executive leader can guide structural transformation with absolute clarity instead of creating operational panic and chaotic disruption. Todd, what do many transformation and strategy execution efforts fail inside of growing companies?
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Well, change is always hard.
Human beings by nature, we don't like change. We like the routines that we're used to. We like doing things the way we've always done them. But as your intro explained, if you're using the same technologies and the same processes that you did three years ago or five years ago or 10 years ago, there are probably huge efficiencies, huge value creation that you're leaving on the table that if you are not embracing those, it's likely that one of your competitors probably is, which means they can bring more value to those clients or they can do it cheaper than you can or faster than you can. So you're really giving away an advantage. So, you know, in the first episode, we talked about the company's responsibility to stay abreast of new technologies and determine which technologies you need to embrace within your company, within your sector.
And I think that's absolutely true. When you start talking about processes, then the last segment or, you know, we were talking about agentic AI, and that really, I believe, is a significant game changer so as a team, as a leader, I think you really need to look at your company's processes and how you can improve those. But you really need a mindset shift as you do that. When you think about AI, particularly agentic AI, you really shouldn't approach it of how can we simply automate our existing human tasks.
I mean, certainly that will bring humanity incremental improvement. But the beauty of agentic AI is you can approach and say, okay, what is the ideal workflow here? Not how do we do it today and how do we simply automate what we do today? But can we completely redesign this process? Where can you literally eliminate steps?
Can you define an overall smoother process that will drive significant efficiency gains?
And the answer is yes, you absolutely can. I mean, agentic AI is such a powerful tool, there's so much process and efficiency that can be gained from that.
So if you, if you do that and you embrace that and you redesign your processes, redesign your workflows from an agentic AI first perspective, you're going to drive efficiencies and that then frees you to do a number of different things, right? It's, it can be a huge force multiplier for your staff.
So your existing team can now do more work, faster work, arguably better work because you've got air systems built in there now. So you're producing better work faster, which should allow you to have a bigger throughput to provide value to your clients and efficiencies that are to drive cost reductions for you that you can then choose to pass on to your clients.
So when we look at AI, we really don't look at it as a way to reduce headcount at all. That's not what we're looking to do. What we're looking to do is provide tools that multiply the impact of our employees so they can do more work, better work, faster work, so we can provide more value to our clients.
And I think we were talking during one of the breaks, or maybe it was early in the show, that the companies that are really embracing AI right now are seeing bigger increases in hiring. And not just in the tech sectors and not just in the high level hiring, but even entry level hiring. Because young people today coming out of college or coming out of high school, they are, you could say, AI native. They've grown up with AI, they are used to AI.
It doesn't scare them. They use it every day.
I've talked to so many folks that, you know, 18 year old kid, 19 year old kid, they create AI agents, you know all the time to do all kinds of different things. So you can hire these, you know, entry level folks and they bring this wealth of technological technology knowledge with them that can really drive efficiency. So you can, you can bring an entry level person in and give them responsibilities, you know, mid level and higher level responsibilities that you'd never think of giving a new employee just a couple of years ago.
But with these new technology tools, not only can they do it, but they can do it really well and they can help to bring that new knowledge base and improve the overall knowledge of your entire team.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: In a way that's, that's great. I mean, that is also something that you can beat your competition because you are offering better customer service. You've got less of the mundane stuff being done in house and, and just giving better service, which increases your profit margin.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So for example, at Woodchuck we just took the whole team through an agentic AI intensive that Harvard Data Science Initiative offered. We didn't just bring the tech guys, we brought the whole team through the program.
So we, we finished the program on a Thursday and the following Monday, one of our operations guys, Zach Glenn, actually he used everything that he learned in the course and he built a new AI agent to automate kind of that manual data extraction process that he went through every morning with all of his vendors. He automated it. So he basically took a process that historically used an hour of his time every morning he automated it. So now he reviews that process once a week for 10 minutes. So he basically took an hour a day for five days and reduced it to 10 minutes. So that frees him to now spend more time on the phone with clients, figuring out how we can provide more value to them or out looking for new clients or talking with new clients. So it's again, it's, you know, it's a great example of give them the tools, let them do their work, drive efficiencies and really take away the repetitive tasks from your team and free them up to make the higher level thinking decisions or spend more time closer to your clients.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Amazing. Absolutely amazing. How can an executive team communicate heavy structural or technological change without creating panic? So we're wanting to do this, we want to get people buy in. How do you help them communicate without creating panic or confusion to their team?
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Well, there'll probably always be some anxiety when you bring in something new or a new process.
But educate them. What people are scared of are things they don't understand, things that they don't know. That's what scares them. So when you bring in a new idea, a new technology, a new process, educate your team, let them see the nuts and bolts and how it works and how they can do it themselves.
So they really understand the new technology or the new process and they understand the impact, the positive impact that that's going to have on, on their work, their workload, their success within the company, their success with clients.
And I think when you get that level of understanding, when you're transparent and you communicate all this to your team, that knowledge and that understanding will quell the fear, it will quiet the concerns.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: So it sounds like really a lot of it comes around to, it comes down to really good communication and talking with your team. So thinking about that, what is the first step towards transformation when a business feel stuck?
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Well, I've kind of come back to an idea we talked about earlier. If your business is stuck and, and you've got a, you've got an issue or a hurdle that you're facing, bring your team together, open it up to ideas, talk about. I mean, first start by defining exactly what is the problem here, what, what is our hurdle?
And then have an open discussion where you're including people from out your organization that can address ideas to unbreak that hurdle, to solve that problem. And again, don't do it with just your execs. Bring in the whole team. Bring in the people that are working with that particular problem every day, bringing your people that are closest to your clients and entertain all those ideas. Create an environment where everybody feels comfortable and safe. Bring their ideas to the table.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Do you think one of the better places to start or a good place to start would be in those looking at your systems and processes and see what is the most manual task, what's taking the most people the most steps.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great place to start. You know, do a, do an audit of your team and what they spend their time on.
And I think a lot of times you do these exercises and people realize they're spending a lot more time on tasks, on particular tasks that they're not aware of.
And that can be really enlightening. Yeah. So do an audit of your day or of your week and don't just do it mentally. Like a great way to prepare for that is have everybody to keep a log of exactly everything they did over the course of the last week before the meeting comes in. So when you come into that meeting, you can say, yes, last week I spent three hours doing this and four hours doing this and really spell it all out. That'll give you the data or the insight to really start identifying. Yeah, these are the repetitive tasks that are taking up a ton of our team's time. You know, how can we, how can we minimize that? How can we improve that process or automate that process?
[00:33:38] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And how do you, what do you think is the biggest communication mistake leaders make when rolling out these types of initiatives?
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Assuming people know things, don't, don't do that.
Start at a really high level and explain. Look, this is the challenge that we're facing. This is why we need to solve it.
This is the potential outcome that we're looking for if we can solve it. And so based on those things, we are going to do this exercise to help us figure out this solve. So kind of set the expectation up front of here's the problem, this is the solution we're going for. So, yeah, we're going to put in the time and we're going to do this exercise, but it's going to be worth your time and be transparent about that and communicate that and then pull your team together.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Fantastic. That's a powerful reminder because transformation is not just a strategic plan on paper. This is a leadership process. People need to understand where the business is going, why the change matters, and how their role connects to the outcome. When we come back, I want to bring this into a sales discipline, sustainable revenue, and the broader mission behind a legacy of abundance.
Be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the marketing zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
Welcome back to the final segment of the Marketing Zone. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish. If you're on the move, access our full audio catalog at www.nowmedia.tv.
i'm back with Todd Thomas, global energy innovation leader, best selling author and partner in corporate transformation. We've analyzed leading through stress engineering, cash systems and executing turnarounds without chaos. Now I want to bring this into daily sales discipline, sustainable corporate revenue and the core philosophy behind his breakthrough trilogy. Unleashing abundant energy, high level financial theories and advanced technology frameworks are completely useless if the executive cannot convert those deep thoughts into a clear, actionable roadmap that their team can execute flawlessly every day.
So, Todd, as a Sandler TRAINED SALES EXPERT what do you believe that business owners most frequently misunderstand about sales discipline and commercialization?
[00:36:21] Speaker B: There's a lot in there in that question.
But yeah, I guess I would come back to something we touched on early on, which is what is the problem that your company or your solution is trying to solve?
So when you're looking to build a sales strategy or sales processes, you need to engage with that client base and help them understand how your company or your technology is going to solve this problem for them.
And so there's always an aspect of education that comes along with that, or evangelism, if you will.
But the key is to communicate to your client that you understand their problem.
You can help quantify that problem and then educate them on your solution and how that will in fact solve that problem and quantify the results that you can provide as a result of that.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Excellent. I love that. And how does sales and operational discipline connect to the long term financial health?
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Well, sales. Well, I mean really it starts with marketing and public relations and leads into business development and leads into sales.
And it has to be a daily process because your success will build up over time.
And it's something you have to make that daily investment. You need to be making your calls, sending out your emails, sending out your newspaper articles and your press releases and really beating that drum on a regular basis to create awareness in the market.
I mean, the marketing, the PR really kind of softens the beaches for you. And then your business development team can go out there and engage with early clients and build early solutions. And once you have that mature product and you have proven product market fit and you have built that process that will bring that sale in the door, well, now you really have a product and a sales process that you can deliver to the sales team. So they can then go and, and repeat that process multiple times a day every day.
And those processes will look different at every company. And based on the different technology and certainly the sales cycle, the length of that can vary drastically from one industry to the other.
But the common factor is whatever the time frame of your sales cycle is or whatever your sales process is, you need to have a clearly defined value of your product that can be communicated quickly and clearly to your client that will quantify the benefit of what you're trying to sell them and then do that every day, make that investment every day in delivering that to your clients in your outreach.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: Love that. So let's talk about your book, Hyperscale. What inspired your book Hyperscale? And for executives watching us right now. What does it mean to rise up in leadership performance and purpose?
[00:39:32] Speaker B: So Hyperscale is my most recent book, and Hyperscale really talks about AI data centers and how data centers are driving just this massive explosion in energy capacity globally. Because what we're really seeing is data centers are no longer simply passive consumers of energy sitting on a grid and sucking energy.
What we're really seeing today is data centers are bringing their own capacity. They are generating power.
We're seeing a lot of hybrid solutions where data centers are utilizing renewable energy combined with storage or renewable energy combined with liquid natural gas to generate power so that they are not simply consuming energy.
Then that can either be behind the meter off grid, where the data center simply consumes the energy that they're producing, or really, in the ideal situation, the data center is producing their own energy and is also connected to the grid and really becomes an interactive part of that grid. So you can really have power utilization and power management across the entire grid, where you can have demand capacity response. Meaning at times when the community needs more power, maybe there's a heat wave and everybody's cranking up their academy during that time period, the data center can use less power, potentially generate more, and feed energy back to the grid. Then at times in the middle of the night, when there is low power use by the community, that's a time period when the grid may send more energy to the data center.
But by having that data center be an active member of that grid, you can really manage power use across the larger grid.
And the net benefits to the community can be fantastic. You can actually have lower energy costs for that community as a result of this big new data center coming to your community.
That's really what we talk about in the book Hyperscale.
I think that's just a discussion. Those discussions are happening in communities all over, not just the United States, but across North America and really across the world.
Is the data center coming to your town, to your county, to your state? And how is your community going to either embrace that or reject that?
[00:41:56] Speaker A: That's interesting because we hear one side or the other when it comes to data centers, and I love the fact that the impact is not they're just pulling power. They're actually working to put power back into the grid. And it's a big piece of the puzzle, not just a user.
That's something. I didn't earn a list.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: I mean, there are absolutely legitimate concerns, right? Communities should be concerned with what's the impact on energy cost? What's the impact on water use? What are the tax implications both for the developer of the data center as well as the community? Those are all good questions and communities should be asking those questions, but developers should be engaging in those discussions. And if you're having a, then a, you know, a transparent, open discussion about those questions, you can build a win win scenario where the data center can come into a town.
The data center can build the data center, provide an energy partner, you can do closed loop water systems, you're not using everybody's water, and you can set up tax incentives where there are incentives for that data center to come to your community, but there also is increased tax revenue that's coming back to that community. And you can use that tax revenue for infrastructure or schools or libraries or whatever you want.
But I think the key is, yes, ask those questions. Those are very legitimate concerns and you should discuss them. But have a transparent, open discussion and build a win win for the AI data center and the community. I actually think done well, these things can be huge boost for the local community in terms of employment, investment, tax revenue.
I foresee a day when communities are competing for hyperscale data centers the same way they do for sports franchises because of all of the benefit that they bring to the local community.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: That's very interesting. I do think it's definitely something to explore and have a conversation about if it's coming into your community.
Let's talk about daily discipline. So when you're looking at leaders, what daily disciplines? Separate leaders who sustain momentum from those who constantly feel like they're rebuilding from scratch?
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Well, I think you constantly need to be reviewing your company. And like we talked about early on, you need to have a certain amount of mental time every day. Not just to do all the tasks that are in front of you, but to think about your business, think about where you are going, where you want to be, and how do you get there.
Technologies are always changing. Personnel is always changing. Competitors are always changing. You need to be abreast of those changes, keep your eyes open, be informed, be educated, and make those constant daily adjustments to make sure that your company continues to move the direction that you want it to go.
And that may sometimes be identifying gaps in technology or gaps in personnel or gaps in knowledge that you need to address and fill. And if you are simply so busy, completely consumed running your business, you may not see those gaps and that will create opportunities for competitors.
But being, you know, really taking the mental time to, to audit your business regularly can lead to improvements that allow you to bring more value to your competitors, more efficiencies when you're on processes. So take that mental time and constantly be reviewing your business.
Are you on track to. To go where you want to be going?
[00:45:30] Speaker A: I love that this has been a great conversation, Todd. I know our audience want to connect with you, pick up your book. Where, where's the best way they can do that? And tell us again about where we can get your book.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: So Woodchuck is Woodchuck AI. So come visit our website. Lots of great information on the website. Some, some fun videos that explain some of the technology that we use.
You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm just Todd Thomas on LinkedIn, pretty easy to find.
And my latest book is Hyperscale AI Data Centers, the next great expansion of global energy capacity. You can find that at Amazon. So just go to Amazon and type in hyperscale and that should pop up. Or you can type in Todd Thomas and see all the books that I have. But Hyperscale is the latest and greatest. So yeah, go grab a copy.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Fantastic. We'll definitely do that. I can't wait to dig into the book. Todd. This has been such a valuable conversation because you remind us that sustainable growth is never just about strategy. On paper, it's about people, leadership, discipline, trust, and the ability to keep developing human potential even when the business environment's changing. What I hope viewers take away is this. If we want stronger financial performance, we have to look at the leadership behind the numbers. We have to look at how people are developed, how change is communicated, how sales are disciplined, and the purpose is connected to performance.
Thank you so much for joining me today on NOW Media TV in the marketing zone.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me. Great discussion.
