873 Alysia Silberg:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Alysia Silberg:

I believe each one of us has a superpower. We have something unique that we offer in the workplace as a means of earning a living. And you do something very specific that you are world class at that I can’t do. And it applies to each of us. Your superpower, plus the power of AI, plus the power of the Internet. Start playing with different AI tools. You’ve got this toolkit that gives you superpowers like you think of Iron man, and he’s got this suit that enables him to do anything. Basically, those AI tools that you start collecting, that are unique to you, that enable you to do incredible things in the world, that’s your toolkit and that’s your moat around this

business you are creating for yourself, whether you work for someone or whether you work for someone for yourself.

Melinda Wittstock:

Most people fear change, and when a powerful new technology like artificial intelligence comes along to change almost everything about how we work, how we live and what we do, the fear can become overwhelming. Is AI going to replace us? Kill us? Or is AI going to allow us to step into our individual creative genius, taking away all the busy work, democratizing the business playing field, even saving us from ourselves? Anything is possible and as AI innovator and investor Alysia Silberg says, it is up to us to influence the way it is built and how we choose to use it. Today we strip away all the complexity and explore how AI can enhance our creativity, connections, and the essence of what it means to be human.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a 5-time serial entrepreneur, so this podcast is all about catalyzing an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who first saw the promise of AI more than a decade ago as one of the first people to explore real-world applications for the technology with one of the first voice-driven sales coaches. When entrepreneur and investor Alysia Silberg first witnessed AI’s transformative power she saw it as a tool of empowerment.

Alysia is the Founder and CEO of UnemployableAI, specializing in harnessing AI to drive growth, scalability, and profits for companies. She is also Founder and General Partner of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Street Global, where she mentors tech startups and helps them go public. Alysia is also the author of the multi award-winning book, Unemployable: How AI Transformed my Work and Life, a guide to infinite success and personal development.

Today we address everything from how to ensure AI is ethical, transparent, and influenced by women and diverse voices, ensuring it is built and deployed for the highest good of the human race. We also discuss why Alysia believes AI is here not to displace us but to amplify our unique skills, or superpowers. We’ll also get into real-world applications, from how AI assisted Alysia in leading a successful VC firm to leveling the playing field in various industries. Plus, we’ll uncover practical tips for integrating AI into your work, regardless of your field or technical expertise.

Alysia will be here in a moment, and first:

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Melinda Wittstock:

Imagine creating an AI that is your personal coach, helping you master a new skill faster than ever possible before? Or an AI that pre-qualifies all your potential clients, tells you what to say to them to be more effective in closing the sale? Or an AI that monitors your health, tells you when your stress levels need addressing and what to do about it?

There are myriad applications for AI in our personal and professional lives as well as ways AI can transform or disrupt major industries to create billion-dollar businesses.

Alysia Silberg, an early AI pioneer and investor, believes AI is the key to helping us step into our creative genius, and today she shares how she’s deployed AI in her own life for transformational outcomes.

A math and science prodigy, Alysia nurtured her entrepreneurial instincts while still in grade school, starting her first business, an import-export agency, at the young age 11. So, it’s not surprising she was one of the first to see the potential of AI, when she acquired one of the first voice-driven sales coaches. Alysia founded Unemployable AI and went on to become an influential investor as founder and general partner of VC firm Street Global.

Today we demystify AI, stripping away all its complexities so you can learn practical applications to enhance your life and grow your business. We also dig into why diverse, and women’s voices are needed in the evolution of AI, so it is ethical and representative, and much more.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Alysia Silberg and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Alysia, welcome to Wings.

Alysia Silberg:

Thank you for hosting me. I’m incredibly excited to be joining you today. Me too.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I love to talk to anybody who’s innovating in AI, and AI has been your best friend and your coach. How did this happen?

Alysia Silberg:

My journey with AI goes back quite some time, so I’ll have to give you some backstory. So, it started far away from Silicon Valley in traditional sales. I bought one of the first voice driven sales coaches in the world over a decade ago. And that’s where I saw the power of AI, not just for technology, but to empower people. And that ignited my curiosity in a profound way. And I became obsessed with its ability to truly help me excel. And that led me to building a venture capital firm, focusing on AI investments. And it kept lingering with me at the back of my mind the whole way through.

Alysia Silberg:

It’s like, could AI work for everyone? Is this a revolution just for the privileged view? There were a lot of ethical concerns for me that led me, of course, we were chatting about it to write unemployable, how AI transform my work and my life. And that eventually led me to building my new AI company, where my mission is to democratize this transformative technology and making sure that it’s not just a tool for the elite, but that can help everyone level up. So happy to dive in deeper in terms of. I know I’ve shared a lot there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, there’s so many directions to go in, so we’ll make sure in our conversation that we cover them all. I’m really fascinated by this concept of democratization of AI because right now, and the ethics around it, because right now we look at who has the control over it, these large language models, what’s the data into them? Is it ethical? Is it being used ethically? It’s expensive as well. Like, if you want to go build your own large, just the compute cost and such is so great. So, tell me a little bit about how you’re democratizing it.

Alysia Silberg:

So again, I’m going to go back a little bit to ensure that your listeners are with us because this is such an important topic and you raised so many important things to discuss. So, for me, if I look back on this journey and I think about we had this huge struggle with accelerance, and this was very early on. No one was doing anything like this. We were trying to scale sales teams effectively. The way of doing things in the past was very slow. People were being left behind. It was very cumbersome. And the way we saw it is we never ever saw AI as this draconian thing.

Alysia Silberg:

We never saw it as this thing that was there to oversee people, where they lost their sense of humanity. I’ve always seen it as this incredible tool for enhancing our creativity. Where my lens a decade ago was that I wanted to create something, actually, two decades ago, I wanted to create something that would enable us as humans to do the 20% that was the most important, most creative, most powerful us at our absolute best. And I think of, like, Warren Buffett, where he talked about how to work every day because he loved it so much. And I wanted to create technology that would enable everyone to do that, where the AI would do the heavy lifting. And so, a solution we created very early on was we were analyzing huge amounts of data, and they were listening to thousands of calls. I’d spent hours in call centers finding what made up a sale and how to personalize that experience, both for the salesperson and the customer. And so, it was real time coaching.

Alysia Silberg:

I’ve been obsessed with empowering people. I’ve been a teacher in that, and I’ve just obsessed with how can I help humans be at their absolute best? And the interesting stuff, like, if you look at it today and the direction AI is taking, was that while the sales soared, the big win was actually in the humans. That was the part, that really was the interesting part where I’m an empath, so I’m very empathetic in that. And we could see that AI wasn’t just about numbers. It was about unlocking human potential and integrating that relationship between human AI relationships. And I know you’re involved in AI. You get it. The thing about AI that I found so powerful is that it reveals these hidden strengths.

Alysia Silberg:

It’s both in our teams, within ourselves. It beats the guesswork. Often, I’m an investor, we can dive into that. And I’d be like, okay, this is the bet I think of taking, and then I’ll run it against my AI. And it’s like, ultimately, us as a team, me and the AI, we come up with better decisions. And for me, the idea that we can train these machines, I’m curious. I’m obsessed with learning and the idea that we can never stop learning as a result of working with them. And how do we use that for the benefit of humanity? For me, these are things that I think I have a different take in the sense that I know there’s a lot of difficult conversations that have to be had about the future of AI in terms of the data and all these important conversations that have to take place.

Alysia Silberg:

But from a personal perspective, as someone that’s been involved in this for a very long time, I see it as incredibly powerful, empowering. I feel they can give us each in our own way, our own unique form of superpowers on steroids.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. I’m just thinking of you in all these call centers, all these volumes of calls, in terms of what’s going on for customer success, but also what’s going on, what’s working. Getting to know the customer avatar, like all these things instantaneously at your fingertips, is obviously going to advance a team far faster. Makes total sense to me. So, what did that look like in practice, in terms of a tool and how you were using it back then?

Alysia Silberg:

Thank you. Brilliant question. I’ll give you a case study of a client that came to us. So, a big global pharmaceutical company, a lens manufacturer, and they had this challenge where they had declining sales numbers year over year, and very open-minded CEO. So, if you think back a decade ago, he was reading Harvard Business Review and he read about the world and where it would eventually go, and he came and he, you know, we can’t come right on our own. We’re willing to try anything. We know you guys are doing some very innovative stuff. Can we try and can we see what happens? And so, literally, we built this AR powered platform focusing on the sales analysis and coaching.

Alysia Silberg:

And now it seems so mainstream. But at the time, if you think about it, the way we were sitting in these call centers, and we eventually had to build a call center of our own specifically for this client and the AI nets in order to track what was happening, to get the buy in of the team, both working for the client and our own team, our own coaches, our own salespeople, to see the value in what we were doing. And I’d be sitting there listening to these call transcripts and we were building this AI, and it was very difficult at the time, like nothing existed. We had to build everything from the ground up, and we never realized how visionary it was. But the results were incredible. And that was very early on. So, we reversed the downward trend. We achieved an impressive 18% increase in sales.

Alysia Silberg:

They started doing very well. And it showcased even so early the power of AI and how it could unlock a team’s potential. And we went on to have consumer products companies. There were so many where, if they needed a boost in product lines, all kinds, improving interactions like healthcare providers, net, there were so many different use cases where the AI, putting it to work in a very practical way, could leverage phenomenal growth, like driving revenues increasing, just conversion rates in that. And so, for me, it just made me even more passionate, and I would use the word obsessive in a very positive way about seeing how we go even deeper in terms of helping people be at their best and help companies fly.

Melinda Wittstock:

What was the interface like back then? Because we’ve gotten used to, say, ChatGPT. Now the average person is kind of using that or some of the image creators and things like that, and that tends to be most people’s experience of it. But on an enterprise level, how did that manifest in practice?

Alysia Silberg:

I was incredibly lucky. My co-founder happened to be very involved in the pharmaceutical industry from a technology perspective from very early on. And so, he’d been working with sales reps and pharmaceutical companies for a very long time, optimizing what they were doing in the field. He had an understanding of how simple it needed to be in a way that it was easy and user friendly, and we leveraged that in a very big way. And so now, looking back, it was probably very simple, but at the same time, it covered the most important elements. And when I think about now how we build these dashboards for unemployable AI, that power of simplicity often works. It’s like you don’t need to drown people in data on a screen. Like you talk about chat GPT, it’s so user friendly.

Alysia Silberg:

And as I play with these other LLMs, I’m like, wow, are these as intuitive as GPT, or is it just a different kind of user experience? And what does that feel like as a human? And it’s just been really interesting, because at the end of the day, I look at our customers, they’re interested in their KPIs, they’re interested in is this AI tool giving me the result I ultimately seek? They have a hair on fire problem. I’m obsessed with solving hair on fire problems. And the goal of the AI is not to add complexity, it’s not to be a cool gimmick, it’s not to be a cool toy. It’s there to solve a problem easier and better than what was already in place. And so, for me, the idea that one of my team is incredibly strong when it comes to building apps and keeping things very clean and simple, and he learned that the hard way. Like, if you know his story, he’s originally a founder backed, and the links he went to get customer data to ensure that the customer experience in that interaction with the technology was super simple and super easy, was incredibly important for him. And for me, the AI doesn’t need to be front and center. It needs to be there doing the heavy lifting, but it doesn’t need to be in your face to scare you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly. People want to see the results. They don’t necessarily have to see the “how”. I find that people tend to want data, but they actually don’t want data.

Alysia Silberg:

Exactly. That’s exactly it. Exactly. And it’s like, I think, surrounding yourself with people, like, I’ve given you examples of people on my team who’ve had a lot of experience surrounding yourself with people who have mastery over their field, which enables you to, as you said, for the person to have the data they want versus all the data they don’t want, which is like, I don’t want to see that stuff, don’t show me that stuff. Show me the clean and simple version which enables me to see am I getting the results I want or not? And I often say that to people when it comes to AI, it’s pretty simple. Is it helping you move towards the goal you want? Are you seeing that goal being met or not? And if it’s not, then it’s not the right AI tool.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. This is so important because all the data and all the insights in the world mean nothing if they’re not actionable and if they’re not actually creating a result. So that combination of the user experience with all the AI that’s working its magic in the background, right, it goes back to what you were saying, is, how can you let people concentrate on the 20% that’s really valuable to them, like their own specific genius, and advance that genius and take away the rest of the drudgery?

Alysia Silberg:

You’ve got it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, the only reason it’s an interesting thing because it sounds so good, but it sparks fear in a lot of people because they think, oh, well, I’m doing this job right now. How will I be employed? Because my job is drudge and so will there be a job for me. Right. It sparks all these fears in people with any new massive technological leap. There’s always sort of social instability that comes with it because there’s so much fear around it. So how do we navigate that as a society? Because what you’re saying is very compelling. I agree with it. And yet you’ve got a lot of people saying, oh, my God, what does it mean for my livelihood?

Alysia Silberg:

I have this formula and I’d love to share it. I know often people say it’s too complex. I’m trying to simplify it. But I feel like it applies in this context, where I believe each one of us has a superpower. We have something unique that we offer in the workplace as a means of earning a living. And you do something very specific that you are world class at that I can’t do. And it applies to each of us. And so, this formula is your superpower, plus the power of AI, plus the power of the Internet.

Alysia Silberg:

There are billions of people now online enables you to build a billion-dollar company. That’s the era we now are living in. And if we dive into that, so many people are so fearful of losing their jobs. But instead of saying, how am I fearful of losing my job? Think about it from a perspective of what makes me unique, that this organization is paying me to do that. If I left today, I could have this organization as a customer or anyone else as a customer. There’s your superpower. And if you don’t know what it is, ask your friends and family. So, you get your superpower.

Alysia Silberg:

Then you start playing with different AI tools. So, if an AI tool was going to replace you, what would it look like? The goal is not to replace yourself. The goal is to think about it. That you’ve got this toolkit that gives you superpowers like you think of Iron man, and he’s got this suit that enables him to do anything. Basically, those AI tools that you start collecting, that are unique to you, that enable you to do incredible things in the world, that’s your toolkit and that’s your moat around this business you are creating for yourself, whether you work for someone or whether you work for someone for yourself. And the third part of it is the fact that as you build customers, you don’t need 10,000 customers, you need like 100 customers, 100 people that will support you. And the Internet has unlimited amounts of customers. So, if you know what you’re doing and you’re starting to work with the AI in a very basic way, even that means you’re already starting to put yourself in a very powerful position.

Alysia Silberg:

And you’re recruiting customers online because you know what you’re doing. You’re recruiting the right customers because you’re putting yourself out there. No one’s taking your job from you. You are completely safe because you’re setting yourself up for the next decade, two decades, whereas the AI tools become more powerful, there will always be the part which, as we were discussing earlier, there will be that part that is the human part that the AI can’t do, that you are getting better and better at because it’s natural for you. And the AI will do the part that you don’t want to do, and that’s the goal for it to do the part you don’t want to do and for you to do the part that delights you. And there’s not a customer on earth that wouldn’t want to work with someone who’s delighted to provide them with a service and who’s leveraging AI to make it financially viable for both you and your customer. And so, I think even though there’s a lot of fear, understanding that these tools don’t replace mastery, that’s a really important thing. I was at USC, which has one of the best new movie and media entertainment programs in the world, and I was with one of my friends, and it was really interesting hearing.

Alysia Silberg:

I’m very interested in how AI is impacting the movie business and hearing how much fear is around the movie business. But at the same time, how as we each find our way through all that’s happening, it’s like, yes, we can go make our own movies, and it’s fantastic. At the same time, the movie makers are using this technology, too, so it’s democratizing it. They’ll have their way of using the technology. We as consumers will have our way of using the technology. And I think that’s the whole thing not seen as something that’s going to replace you, seeing it as something that can give you unlimited amounts of opportunities. The idea that, as I say, if someone like me wants to enter the movie business, a decade ago, I couldn’t. There was no way I could go make movies now because these AI tools are available.

Alysia Silberg:

I want to go make a movie. Not that I’m going to be making a movie, but if I want to make a movie, I can go make a movie. It’s that simple. It’s the democratized opportunities in a way that we’ve never seen in our lifetimes before.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, this is obviously of massive benefit to anyone who’s an entrepreneur, anyone who’s an executive. Is it good for anybody that’s an employee as well? Because I asked this in the context, is not everybody is a natural entrepreneur. I mean, it takes a very special sort of person to have the right mindset to go do this, build businesses, right? How do you see it evolving in the future in terms of what it means for our economy and what it means for that continuum between the kind of gig worker or the person with a side hustle, or people who now have the ability to be entrepreneurs? Where they maybe wouldn’t have had that impetus before because it’s easier. I suppose the AI makes it easier if you know your purpose and your mission and your unique genius, which a lot of people don’t. So how do you see that kind of playing out over the next ten years or so in terms of who’s using this and how it changes over the course?

Alysia Silberg:

Absolutely. I feel like it does apply both. You mentioned employees, entrepreneurs, executives. I think we all see it as something that’s fantastic for entrepreneurs or for executives who want to make their companies more efficient, drive revenues, be more productive in that. But I think as employees, I think the idea that I have this newsletter that my team puts a ton of work into, I know I get, thank you. We put a ton of work into that. And I often say to people when they’re employees and they fearful of what’s coming, and say, just read the newsletter. And even if you don’t read everything on the newsletter, look at, we’ve got images every week on the newsletter, or look at go and play with one tool on the newsletter.

Alysia Silberg:

And what it will do is it will unlock your imagination, do absolutely anything, and just every week, just choose something on the newsletter and read it. Because after a few weeks, what we’ve noticed, and I’ve been tracking this data, is that people will move from a place of fear. So they’re working in their company, they’re hearing this news, companies are bringing in AI more and more. And they say within a couple of weeks, wow, opportunities that I thought weren’t available to me are available to me, because what comes after that? Because they’ll read something in the newsletter, and it’ll trigger something in their mind. And then if they’re curious enough, they’ll go online and they’ll start looking at AI tools. They’ll go play with GPT, or they’ll go and try Gemini, or there’ll be something because it’s so intriguing. And from going from a place of fear, and I’ve seen this substantial number of times, they start thinking about, well, maybe I could try this, maybe I could build this, maybe I could. And that moment of empowerment where the person says, maybe I can try, maybe I can build.

Alysia Silberg:

They reach out to me so often, Alysia, I’m thinking of doing this or doing that. That is the moment the person goes from a place of fear. I’m a victim of a future I don’t understand. And I am fearful because I’ve known my reality for so long and now there’s this unknown, which is scary to, oh, wow, I can participate in this revolution, too. And I think that’s the part where it’s really exciting because these jobs of the future haven’t even been created yet. If you say to me, Alicia, what is your job? What would you define yourself as, like, every day of your life? I’d say I’m a model manager. What is a model manager? A year ago, ten years ago, no one would have even understood what that term is. And a model manager means.

Alysia Silberg:

I manage AI models, and it gives me extraordinary amounts of joy. If I think about all the titles I’ve had as jobs, this is the coolest title I could ever have in my entire life. I get to play with AI models the whole day, every single day, and call it a job. And so, these jobs that are being created are not even known to us yet. But what we can see is that it’s creating a level of abundance that we haven’t experienced before. I can have this call with you because I have AI running in the background doing all the stuff that before would have taken me so long that I wasn’t particularly good at. And so instead of me doing stuff that I’m not particularly good at, I get to have a conversation with an extraordinary woman and a topic we’re both passionate about. And so that’s a form of abundance that we haven’t experienced.

Alysia Silberg:

But I think it comes down to the fact that saying, I’m going to take responsibility for my life, whether as an employer, whether an executive, whether entrepreneur, and say, I’m going to learn, I’m going to embrace this and I’m going to see what interests me the most. Like, I remember I was interviewed by a wonderful woman who was very talented when it came to art and design, and she said, well, I don’t know how this is going to work. And then we started having this conversation about AI. Next thing you know, she’s incorporating the AI into her design and she’s building this very nice business for herself. And so even though it seems complex at the outset, I see a world where each employee who is so fearful starts saying, I have these tools at my disposal. They make me a better employee should they choose to continue that route. And as they move into working at different companies, they take those tools with them. So, when they go to that next company, they’re like, hey, I’ve got these tools.

Alysia Silberg:

I’m well set up. I’m ready to go. I’m ready to hit the ground running, and I’m ready to deliver. And so, for me, I just think it’s extremely exciting. I can see it even with my portfolio companies, where I can see it in the healthcare space where these doctors use some of these tools that are being created. Like one of my portfolio companies is a company called Ambience Healthcare, and it’s the world’s leading autonomous scribe. And you’re welcome, and your listeners are welcome to go and survey doctors. And doctors were in so much pain because it was such a mission to work with human scribes, because there was such a shortage of them.

Alysia Silberg:

And so, there was this administrative function that doctors spend so much of their time focusing on versus focusing on the inpatient taking care of the patients, which is what doctors love to do. And when you talk to doctors, they are so grateful to have this tool available because it removes so much pain in their lives. Now, when a doctor moves from one hospital to another hospital, or they have a practice, whatever the case may be, that tool goes with the doctor. It’s helped the doctor be a better, more efficient doctor, so he can focus on, or she can focus on the thing they love most, which is making the patient better, 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

This applies exactly to what we’re doing at Podopolo, by making it using AI to make it much easier for podcasters to be discovered by exactly audiences. Right. How it pertains to recommendations, how it pertains to search, how it pertains to all the marketing copy and what’s going to convert, to be noted. I mean, there are so many different applications that really democratize and revolutionize a whole industry. And so, this is just the underpinning philosophy, I suppose, of everything that I’m doing with Podopolo as well.

Alysia Silberg:

It’s a brilliant use case. That’s a perfect use case to give people. It’s just so clear.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really is. It’s so funny. I wish I’d met you back in around, let’s see, 2010, 2011, when I was working on a previous startup of mine. It was a crowdsourced news platform, and we were using unstructured data, natural language processing, the beginnings of unsupervised machine learning, essentially to understand the relevance, but also the potential veracity of user generated content. Okay, way early.

Alysia Silberg:

We were all early. It’s fabulous. We were the OG, swear to God, way early.

Melinda Wittstock:

Now that company, NewsiT, would be crushing. I mean, we figured out the kind of fake news issue long before anyone knew it was impossible to raise money. It was very difficult to raise money for it. Right. And this is a good segue into the investment issue, especially for women. I remember taking meetings with VCs and so imagine 2010, sort of Instagram is just kind of getting going. Nobody had really figured Facebook hadn’t figured out their mobile UI yet. So here we have this crowdsource app, we have 500,000 users creating content.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I take meetings and they say, well, what makes you think user generated content is going to be big? And it’s like, well, it looks like Facebook is growing all the things you would say, and they’d say, okay, that’s great, but you seem to be putting all your effort into mobile. What makes you think mobile is going to be big? You go through all the answers, and they’d say, okay, well, so even if you have all this massive amount of content, my goodness, that’s going to be really expensive. How are you going to deal with all that? And I’d say, well, there’s this new thing called the cloud. Invariably the answer would be, well, what makes you think that’s going to be big, right and such. It was very difficult to get anybody because it seemed like so risky and so next at the time, really difficult to raise money now, do you think that has changed, especially for women in technology that still struggle really to get funded with your investment hat on? What’s the secret there? Because there’s a lot of women doing amazing things now in AI and all these different things. I think we’re built for it. We’re especially built for more of an abundance minded kind of ecosystem type play, a number of different things and the sort of business models I see a lot of women come up with, including myself. So, what’s the advice that you give somebody in this world to get funding for their AI company, or the way they’re using AI to transform an industry.

Alysia Silberg:

Like you? Thank you for sharing that. It’s incredibly interesting and you clearly are a visionary. I think, again, I can only speak from personal experience. Having done this for a long time, I couldn’t be more optimistic at this point, having experienced the challenges you’ve mentioned. All of it experienced the same stuff, all of that stuff. I completely get it.

[PROMO CREDIT]

Wings of Inspired Business is brought to you by the new podcast, Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets. Join me together with Steve Little – serial entrepreneur, investor and mergers & acquisitions maestro – as we explore the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a $5m business, and a $50mm even $500 mm business. That’s Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets, produced by Podopolo Brand Studio at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and available wherever you get your podcasts.

Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Alysia Silberg, founder of UnemployableAI and the founder and general partner of VC firm Street Global.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Alysia Silberg:

What I’m seeing is that the AI levels the playing field in a way that we may have touched on it briefly, but I have this AI coach that I built for myself, and it helps me become unstoppable when it comes to being the best investor I can, you know, I went to Silicon Valley, and I was going to get slaughtered.

Alysia Silberg:

There was no other way to describe know. The dream was to build this VC firm. And from day one I was out of my depth. And so, the only way I could figure out how to actually succeed was by means of using the AI. It was completely for survival. It was like, okay, I need to read 500 pages a day. I need to get this information in my head, and I need to apply it real time to ensure I get into the very best deals. It’s all easier said than done, but at each turn I started using whatever AI I could build myself, whatever AI tools I could find.

Alysia Silberg:

And I basically hacked together a VC firm leveraging the power of AI. If you think of like Bridgewater, the hedge fund, they were doing it at scale with tons of capital available. I didn’t have that capital and renaissance technology, similar sort of thing. I just had to make it work because otherwise I was going to fail. It was as simple as that.

Melinda Wittstock:

It enabled potential deal flow in real time.

Alysia Silberg:

Everything, absolutely everything. Like, I give an example, for example, the way I speak, I’m very warm, I’m very bubbly. It can, for the people I was interacting with, it could trigger them because they’re very engineering. They want things in a very orderly way. I very ordered. But at the same time, I can often tell a story. I love telling stories. So, there might be too much information in what I’m telling you.

Alysia Silberg:

I’d use the AI to simplify the message so the message would stay the same, but at the same time, I’d ensure that the receiver would understand it and they’d be able to understand. Okay, this is what, at least exactly, translate yourself.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, this is an issue that I have had. If your mind works very, in a very “matrixy” way, when most people are linear, I feel like I need an AI translator to translate me into linear.

Alysia Silberg:

There you go. We are on the same page. It’s fantastic. You completely get it. Like it was my translator. And what it did was in the process of translating as I could see myself gaining momentum because I was then being understood in the way I needed to be understood. I started applying it in all different aspects and so I just kept building on it. So eventually it did get to a point where I was using AI to pick deals and all those kinds of things.

Alysia Silberg:

And I invested in six female CEOs in the last year. And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, not one of those women got money, because people are like oh, you’re helping another woman. No, I wasn’t helping other women. I was betting on the best founders. And they happen to be extraordinarily talented founders, that when you get on a call with them, they deliver. When you see those investor updates, they deliver. They are building extremely good businesses. And one thing I’ve learned, and the AI has helped me a great deal in terms of this, if you deliver and you just keep delivering, it gives you a sense of confidence to just know who you are in all of this and say, I know the value of what I’m creating.

Alysia Silberg:

And the right customers will partner with you, the right investors will partner with you, the right founders, the right team members. I’m at a point now where I’m building an AI company and the interaction, I’m having with the people around me is my gender doesn’t even count anymore because it’s like I’ve proven myself to be committed to the problem I’m solving. I’m obsessed with helping my customers achieve their goals because that’s a driving force in terms of why else would you have a company if you’re not obsessed with helping your customers solve their problems? And it’s fun. It’s fun because the AI has taken away so much of the yucky stuff that I just don’t have to deal with anymore. Because somehow in removing a lot of these things that are just in society, it enables you to just focus on the signal and not the noise. And the more you do this stuff, the more you can just kind of like, okay, this is my signal. This is my goal. This is where I’m trying to get to.

Alysia Silberg:

How do I ensure that I only work with the right people? So, say, for example, sales. In order for someone to be a customer of my company, before I meet with that person, I’ve already ranked that entire business, the person, everything that’s online about that person. Unless a person gets an eight out of ten ranking, I’m not going to meet with them as a customer because it’s not a fit for my company. Now that doesn’t seem like that has an effect on the greater scheme of things, but it does, because it means when I’m talking to a customer, I’m talking to a customer that shares values with me, that shares a long-term view of their business, how we’re going to help them achieve that goal, and they’re going to treat me and my team with respect. And so, at each turn within the business, I’ve enabled myself to basically say, how do I do this? In a way where my gender is irrelevant.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. That makes so much sense. And the obvious is it saving you an immense amount of time and you.

Alysia Silberg:

Have no idea that’s the best part to everyone listening, you know that if I look back, I wonder what number you’d come up with. I probably think that 30 or 40% of my time in the past was dealing with that friction that didn’t contribute to success. And the AI enables me to remove that yucky friction that I just don’t want to deal with, that none of us should be forced to deal with. So that I’m focusing on the problem, the customer, the investors that are aligned with what we’re doing, the team that’s aligned. I’ve created an ecosystem where I can remove all the pain and heartache and suffering that I just shouldn’t have to deal with. And the AI did that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So, the qualification mechanism of AI, whether it’s building your perfect team, finding the right people for your team, whether it’s the right clients, customers, or whether it’s the right investors, I was just thinking, man, I need this little AI just to go qualify investors. This is so interesting. And so, for anybody listening, saying, okay, this all sounds great, but how do I start? I’m just thinking of an average listener. I don’t know how to build this model for myself. Is that something that you do? Do you help people figure out these models for themselves? Are they the things that are readily available off the shelf? How do they navigate all of this in terms of putting this into action most easily?

Alysia Silberg:

Well, I think I’d like to give you an answer. Let’s say, for example, our customers are unemployable AI. We’re working with private equity firms and companies that are at an inflection point in terms of their growth. And so, in that situation, of course you can reach out to me, and we don’t build cookie cutter solutions or anything. We stop understanding your unique needs, your pain points, and goals, and how the AI can be tailored to achieve that. So of course, if you’re interested in being custom of unemployable air, we can definitely have a conversation around that if it’s like what you were talking about for your own personal growth and those things. I have a ton of custom GPTs. I build, as I say, probably one to two GPTs a day, just because as I find a problem, I build a GPT and then allow other people to play with it and see if it helps them.

Alysia Silberg:

So, if, for example, you’re an individual, you have a struggle. You want the AI coach; you can access my custom GPT. You’re welcome to reach out to me. There are so many ways of supporting you with that, but I think the easiest is if you reach out to me on LinkedIn and you’re like, this is my problem. Can you assist me? I’ll make sure that we reach back and we’re like, okay, this is the best solution specifically for you or for your company. Either I can give you the tools for you to build it yourself, or if it’s a very sophisticated solution, as it is for many of these private equity firms, then we can help you build it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It’s interesting you’re working with private equity because they’re looking, say whether they’re looking at, okay, we want to do some sort of roll up strategy. We want to figure out all the brands that are doing X or Y, or we want to do this, or we want to figure out which companies are closest to exit in the next two-year horizon. My mind is blown because there’s so many different applications of this across the board. Right, for any VCs. Do you think more VCs are doing this now, or are you still very unique in applying it?

Alysia Silberg:

I think people are starting to consider doing it. I think there are VCs already doing it. Like Tim Draper wrote the forward for my book, and I know he’s very open minded to this. I think it comes down to, are you comfortable having the conversation with the fact that an AI may be smarter than you at your job, which we.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s a certain amount of getting out of your own way, which is really important. I mean, I joke with our board chairman that you can be right, or you can be rich. I mean, which one are you?

Alysia Silberg:

Very smart. You’ve got it. And I was very comfortable very early on with the idea that a machine was going to be much smarter than me, and I was 100% fine with that. The idea that I could learn from it and it could, as you said, right, or rich. I wanted to achieve my goals from when I was as young as five years old. I had these big, lofty dreams, and I realized very early that I could only do so much. And the AI enabled me to become that team, to be able to say, okay, I can dream as big as I want, but at the same time, I can leverage the power of a machine in order to achieve it. That’s a very empowering feeling.

Alysia Silberg:

And so, the idea that we say, okay, we know what we know, we know what we don’t know, but the AI can compensate for things we don’t know. And there’s a part of it that will never be human like us. It just doesn’t have that. No matter how smart it may be, there’s something special about being human, and that should give you comfort.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I mean, there’s this soul thing, or…

Alysia Silberg:

Got it.

Melinda Wittstock:

…Energy. Right. That unique thing. Right. So, this is interesting because a good segue, I suppose, is in this whole debate about how close we are to AGI, or artificial general intelligence. Lots of debates going on about this. Some people say, oh, five years from now, and other people. No, you know what I mean? Where do you stand on that?

Alysia Silberg:

Elon shared a statistic. He said, right now, there’s not a human in the world that’s as intelligent as an LLM. And by 2029, the collective intelligence of humanity will not be as intelligent as an LLM. So, I think I feel like I’ve seen glimpses of it already. I speak to a lot of the people I work with, and I’m like, have you seen glimpses of it? And they’re like, yes. The question is, what do we define as AGI? Like, we can go deep into the word consciousness. What does that mean? I think it’s inevitable.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, this is consciousness. In many cases, if you get into the realm of the quantum. Right. And you realize at that point that we’re all connected. We’re just energy. Right. We’re all connected. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced, I don’t know, thinking about somebody and they call you in that moment.

Alysia Silberg:

Of course, I do a lot of that energy work. We can go deep into that. It’s very interesting.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m way deep into that. Like, past the speed of light into the quantum field. Right. And what does that all mean? Because in the context of, say, AGI, it’s fascinating. I could talk about this for hours and hours and hours.

Alysia Silberg:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because it allows us to be well beyond our current abilities. But if it allows us time to really connect in that way, that’s also very interesting. Makes sense.

Alysia Silberg:

Absolutely. I think I’ve had conversations with people in Silicon Valley where Neuralink. And that is coming up more frequently in terms of people’s fear that the only way they can keep up is by means of having Neuralink, because it’s like the speed of things. I’ve taken a different view, like, you talked about energy, and I do a ton of meditation, and I’ve been doing some very interesting stuff in acupuncture in terms of consciousness on that, like raising the frequency of both my body and my mind’s consciousness, integrating them. And I feel like, again, we haven’t even scratched the surface of humanity’s intelligence and what we truly understand about, as you said, the quantum and that. And I feel like all of this is going to drive us to go deeper, to explore more, push the boundaries of what we know to new heights. And I feel like I spend nearly all my time with the AI, but at the same time, I spend a substantial amount of time thinking about this and studying this, and I feel like they go hand in hand. I don’t believe it’s one over the other, in the sense that I feel often when I spend too much time with the AI and not enough time on this connecting with other humans, I feel out of balance.

Alysia Silberg:

It’s so important to have that very balanced lens of not purely AI, only because I think that’s where we all become very unhappy, but the two together will enable humanity to thrive in a way I don’t think we’ve ever experienced before.

Melinda Wittstock:

I could not agree with you more. I mean, I’ve had the experience of where, say, if you’re in the hustle and grind, say, in your business, right? And you’re just working really hard, and you can only get so far. I’ve had moments where I’ve said, okay, well, I’ve advanced what I can advance today in terms of my human doingness, but now I’m going to go be a human being and meditate and put an intention out there, and then things just sort of magically happen, like the.

Alysia Silberg:

Right opportunity shows up. It’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s just incredible, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

And so that human connection, because right now our society feels, well, obviously, we’re very divided. There’s a lot of people in fear and anger on one level, and then there’s a lot of people who are just growing in consciousness on another level. It’s kind of very interesting time that we live in. And a lot of people are talking about being like, very, they’re connected on social media, and yet they’re very lonely. Like, there’s really this human connection piece that’s sort of missing. And so in ushering in this new era of AI and where that’s going, it would be amazing if it does enable that kind of human connection because you’re talking really about the whole person, and this is really huge, so that this gets back to the people who are building the AI and how are they building it, how is it being deployed and how is it going to be used? And a lot of kind of big ethical, big questions about all of that. So, I just want to say it’s wonderful talking to you because there’s not a lot of, or maybe there are more women in the space than. But, you know, the people who get the know, it’s Sam and it’s Elon and et cetera.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. The Anthropic guys, the Google guys. Guys, right? And so, we need this sort of human aspect of this woven into it. So how do you see yourself? Because you’re obviously a leader in this space. How do you see yourself and other women being able to contribute to that?

Alysia Silberg:

There was so much you shared there. I don’t want to forget anything. So, bear with me as I just make sure I cover all the points because it was really incredible and important what you said. So, there was one day where I was grinding, for lack of a better term, with the AI last year, July, and I was just like pushing really hard when your jaw aches and that, but you’re not aware of, like, you think you’re doing really great work, but your jaw, your neck, everything hurts.

Melinda Wittstock:

Everything hurts.

Alysia Silberg:

One of my founders came from San Francisco. I’m in LA, came to visit me, and we just went out for lunch, just sitting there chatting. And it was nothing about business. I happened to be friends with my founders. I want to be able to hang out with cool people and have cool conversations. And I went back to my AI because I’ve got this AI coach running and it said this profound thing and it was like, can you see anything here, Alysia? Can you see that? The ranking for the day was much higher, just in terms of my mental health and my productivity and my view of the world. Everything was different compared to previous days where from a productivity perspective, I was doing a brilliant job, but from a mental health and just feeling good about myself, I wasn’t doing well. And my AI is like, have you learned something here? Like, the lesson is that they need quality time with other humans.

Alysia Silberg:

Where you have this kinsman ship and you’re bonding with these other humans is extremely important. We need to ensure you do more of that going forward. And it made a profound impact going back to when you were talking about AGR. And I noticed whenever I just became too “matter” and not enough energy, where I’m an ATAR personality, I can grind 18, 20 hours a day without getting away from my desk. And then I see that I’m so good at it, yet I can see the physical effects. I get different pain in different parts of my body. I struggle to sleep that night even though I’m in flow, which is an interesting concept. So, there’s this low-level anxiety, obviously driving it.

Alysia Silberg:

And so, I’ve become very aware of this, and I’ve gone very deep in terms of the yin and the yang, in terms of how do I be at my best as a human, but at the same time bold? The AI from a place of love, which has become more and more part of my life, where power companies in the past, it was very, for lack of a better term, but if you do a lot of this energy work like male energy, and it was very like I knew how to channel that energy and I knew how to get the result. But in the process, I wasn’t necessarily as happy as I could be. Someone turned around to me and he’s like, you need to celebrate more. Like you’ve accomplished so much in your life, but it doesn’t look like you actually stop and celebrate. And I started tracking that and I was like, I can work for years at a time to get something, and it will be a huge thing to work toward and to achieve. And then I will celebrate for 1 hour, and then after that 1 hour, I will feel a sense of guilt, and then I’ll go back and I’ll have to, okay, what’s my next goal? And I really had to think about this because I was feeling the physical effects and mental effects of it. And I’ve got this new book coming out, which is a following to the other one, because I felt there was so much that wasn’t said in the book that needed to be said in terms of building these AI companies. And many of the people I’m surrounded by are the smartest people in the world, but they’re fearful.

Alysia Silberg:

So, when people are, you mentioned, like employees and people in the mainstream world who are fearful of the AI, the smartest people in the world are also coming from a place of fear. The speed, the intensity, what’s the future going to look like? Like all these ethical concerns. And I had to make a conscious choice because I could see that if I continued to do AI, I needed to do it from a place of joy, delight, fulfillment, a sense of the pursuit of wholeness, both for myself and everyone around me. Or it just gets too dense, too heavy, too burdensome, too. Just like, why am I doing this? I’m going in the wrong direction. And so, I’ve learned to become really aware of my energy, the energy of the people around me, when to take a step back. I work very closely with this very interesting acupuncture doctor, and we work together on how to ensure that I’m at my absolute best in building unemployable AI. And we have these very profound conversations where he’s like a wise monk, and he’s like, take off your shoes.

Alysia Silberg:

And every day at 05:00 you need to go and walk on the beach. Not allowed to do anything, no earphones, nothing. Walk on the beach and meditate at the sense of gratitude. You’ve got this magnificent ocean; you’ve got the sun shining. You get to do this incredible stuff, but ground yourself in that, because otherwise you push your mind to this point where the quality of your thoughts goes down. I’m starting to integrate more and more of that, and I’m trying to educate other people that to get the best out of the AI requires us to get the best out of ourselves as humans, whether it’s as a parent, whether it’s in a relationship, it’s all interconnected. And for me, I feel like that’s the contribution I can make now, where I can build AI tools till they come out of my ears. But coming from a place of empathy with our clients, coming from a place of empathy for the CEO, for his executive team, where, for example, if a CFO is worried about losing his job because he’s like, well, is the AI going to replace me? Because you can build an AI CFO, the goal is not for the AI to replace the CFO.

Alysia Silberg:

The goal is to help the CFO be the very best CFO he can be, so that that company can excel. Same goes for their team, same goes for their customers. So, I think this idea that we as humans are empathetic, we’re conscientious, we’re ethical, we ask the right questions, we demand transparency when it comes to AI, so that it works for us rather than against us. And it starts with each of us, like our own choices in terms of who we want to be in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

What you said is so profound, and I love that you said, coming from a place of love, which is a very high vibration, emotion, as is gratitude, as is authenticity. Right? So, we’re really actually being ourselves and who we’re being when we create these products, the energy that we infuse into them is profound. This is so important. I mean, listening to you, I was thinking back on all the different things I’ve done in my life where there’s been a team that’s been creating from a place of joy. Product easily sells if there’s or whatever, it doesn’t. I think going back into my earliest days, like way back in my 20s when I was a television news anchor, if the team was great, I mean, the show would be great, and it would be really popular, and the ratings would just kind of inexplicable. But if there was discord or if there are people playing office politics or weird things or jealousies or just all that kind of base stuff, it just didn’t work right. And it was interesting. And I think that obviously applies to AI or any app or any product or anything, just the way we build our teams. It’s just so profound. Alysia, I could talk to you for many more hours. I think you’ll have to come on this show. I’d love it, for sure. And if you’re ever walking out on the beach anywhere near Santa Monica or Venice, that’s where I am at five.

Alysia Silberg:

I’m in Venice. We got to walk together.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m in Santa Monica. I try to do the same thing, right? My big goal this year is being really consistent in it, right? Because things start. Have you noticed you do it, and things start really well, and you start attracting all these amazing things and all of that, and then you’re like, oh, it’s going so well, and then you sort of fall off, right? And so just the consistency and also the acknowledgment of the accomplishment because we can be grateful, but we have to acknowledge ourselves in all that as well. So that’s a new practice for me. That’s really game changing, because you invite more of that into your life, but there’s so many more things that we could talk about. My goodness. And so, I want to make sure everybody knows how to kind of find you, work with you, just all the things, and it’ll all be in the show notes. But what’s the best way?

Alysia Silberg:

So, connect with me on LinkedIn. If you’ve got a specific request, please just drop me a note there and I’ll do my best to come back to you. We’ve talked about my daily AI newsletter. We’d love for you to read the newsletter, give feedback, and I’ll do my best. Of course, to come back to you there, too. And, yeah, don’t be shy to reach out. I’m here to support you. I know what it’s like in the crazy, exciting world of AI, so whatever I can do to be of help, I would love that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Alysia Silberg:

Thank you for having me.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Alysia Silberg is the Founder and CEO of UnemployableAI, specializing in harnessing AI to drive growth, scalability, and profits for companies. She is also Founder and General Partner of Silicon Valley venture firm Street Global and author of Unemployable: How AI Transformed my Work and Life. Be sure to download Podopolo, follow Wings of Inspired Business there, create and share your favorite moments with our viral episode clip feature, and join us in the episode comments section so we can all take the conversation further with your questions and comments.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show.

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