If I could turn back time...
If Cher sings about it...ya gotta listen!
In 1995, Bill Gates wrote "The Road Ahead."
I remember reading it not long after I got married in late 1995.
I was stationed at March AFB near Riverside, CA, and the next day, the AF moved us to the thriving metropolis of Biloxi, MS.
After making a few calls, we went to an internet company's office to pick up a stack of 3.5" floppy disks in an envelope so we could install their software and get online.
They were the only game in town offering 28.8 dial-up, so we went with them, since they were literally twice as fast as everyone else.
While I had used computers since 1988, my experience was mostly with word processing, spreadsheets, and some gaming.
In fact, I despised computer courses at USAFA, so I was by no means an expert on the world that was blooming right under my nose, and there was no one I knew and trusted to help me get up to speed.
Besides, I was an officer in the Air Force with a new wife.
We lived in officer housing, which was a 3/2 with a carport on the back Bay of Biloxi, just four houses from the clubhouse.
Heck, my backyard butted up to the 10th tee box, a short little par 3 with the bay on the left and a yard for our dogs.
I'd call from the clubhouse and my wife would meet us with our dogs and sandwiches and beers as we made the turn!
I had every other Friday off, no pager, no cellphone, dial-up internet, casinos up and down the coast, 25 years old, no kids, a new wife...so I was in no hurry to learn about computers...and the internet...and the information superhighway...and digital convergence...and e-commerce...
I hadn't heard of Enron or WorldCom or Pets.com or eToys or Global Crossing or Lucent, so their epic run-ups and collapses didn't affect me...until about six years later, but I digress.
I thought I had life figured out, so why upset the applecart, right?
RIGHT?
Which brings me to Cher and her song, "If I Could Turn Back Time."
We cannot turn back time.
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, it makes for a good movie, but would you really listen to someone grabbing you by the arm in a mall or a park in 1995, and they say,…
"Bruh...really...trust me on this...I'm from 2025. You need to put a mortgage on your home, borrow everything you can, and put it all into Inuvo (INUV). It's gonna give you a 79,761.11% return over the next five years...but pull it out in the year 2,000, okay? BRUH!!! TRUST ME!!!"
At a minimum, you'd chuckle and be glad he let you go as you get back to your Sony Walkman and Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" or maybe "Creep" by TLC or "Here Comes The Hotstepper" (name that performer!)
While we cannot turn back time, we can read the hints it gives us, because history does NOT repeat itself, but it emulates itself…it closely resembles itself…like fraternal twins…sorta…kinda…in a way…but I digress.
Here’s what I’m tryna to tell ya…
It feels like 1995 all over again.
It’s tech-related.
Sarah Connor warned us about it in 1984.
And now it’s here.
Heck, it was here at the start of the year, at least for the masses, and it’s growing exponentially…and it will affect everything we do, just like the internet and social media and smartphones do now.
If you are a professional salesperson, sales manager, business owner, or entrepreneur, how you approach AI in the next 6-12 months will set the trajectory of your business for the next 6-12 years…or longer.
I saw this in 2008 when I jumped onto the sales & marketing automation bandwagon with Infusionsoft, then HubSpot. (I’m still collecting overrides 17 years later.)
There is no analogy I can give you that can do it justice.
I’m spending nearly 100% of my time learning different platforms and building my own agents to resell.
One summarizes a webpage or a PDF or a YouTube video.
One creates a blog from a topic and a tone.
One summarizes an X thread.
These are not big things.
I can build each of them in under five minutes…now.
Can you?
Want some more examples…okay…let’s use AI to give you 12 more things you can do with the right platform and knowledge:
💼 1. Sales Call Summarizer & CRM Logger
Upload Zoom/Teams call transcript or YouTube link
Auto-summarize, extract key points, action items
Push directly into HubSpot, Keap, or Salesforce
🔥 Saves hours of manual CRM notes.
🛠️ 2. Proposal Builder Agent
Ask a few questions: project type, budget, goals
Auto-generates a PDF or docx proposal
Option to email or upload to Google Drive
🔥 Closes deals faster with consistent branding.
✍️ 3. Weekly Newsletter Writer (from URLs or PDFs)
Input blog post links, YouTube videos, PDFs
Agent summarizes and formats into a ready-to-send email newsletter
🔥 Perfect for agency owners, content creators, or personal brands.
Sidebar: As a writer myself, I’m not a fan of this, but it is what it is. Most professional salespeople, sales managers, business owners, and entrepreneurs hate writing, so this can help a lot of you…but only if you learn how to humanize what it gives you.
If your prospects or clients discover you’re just blasting them with AI content, they’ll block you because you’re taking their time while adding nothing new to what they already have access to.
📞 4. Cold Outreach Personalizer
Upload a CSV of leads with name, company, industry
Agent personalizes emails or LinkedIn DMs using research and tone
🔥 Cuts cold outreach prep by 90%.
Sidebar: I’ve been on LinkedIn since Jan 5, 2004, so I have a decent following there, which is also the source of 90% of the spam I get both in my email and LinkedIn messages, so once again, tread lightly here.
📚 5. Lead Magnet Generator
Input your expertise or niche
Agent creates a lead magnet (eBook, checklist, swipe file)
🔥 No more blank-page syndrome. Great for lead gen.
🧠 6. YouTube Transcript to Blog + Social Posts
Paste a video link
Agent turns it into: blog post, 3 social media posts, 5 hashtags, and email teaser
🔥 Multi-channel content in 2 minutes.
🧾 7. Invoice Explainer for Clients
Paste or upload an invoice
Agent explains the line items, taxes, and payment terms in plain English
🔥 Reduces back-and-forth with confused clients.
🧰 8. Client Onboarding Assistant
Collects info from a new client
Creates a shared Google Doc or Notion page with links, timeline, and assets needed
🔥 Eliminates repetitive onboarding emails.
🧳 9. Trip Planner Concierge
User enters destination, budget, interests
Agent creates a detailed travel itinerary with links, map, hotel suggestions
🔥 Great as a lead magnet for travel agents or influencers.
📚 10. Online Course Outliner
Input: course topic + audience + length
Agent generates a full course outline, lesson objectives, and module titles
🔥 Kickstarts info products in minutes.
🔁 11. Customer Support Answer Generator
Paste a customer email or chat
Agent drafts a polished, branded reply using your tone of voice
🔥 Reduces support fatigue and speeds replies.
🛍️ 12. Amazon Listing Optimizer
Paste your Amazon product link or bullet points
Agent rewrites them for SEO, benefits-focused copy, and competitive differentiation
🔥 Increases discoverability and conversions.
*****End of AI-generated list…back to your regularly-scheduled ramblings, already in progress…
Look, here’s the deal…
Much like NFTs and “bored apes” a few years ago, everyone and their brother is hopping on the AI bandwagon.
While many of them are right for the wrong reasons, the greatest risk AI poses to you today is ignoring it for another day.
It’s easier—WAY easier—than learning and deploying a new CRM.
It’s WAY cheaper than buying a new CRM.
If we spoke for 1-2 hours about your business, I could create several agents for you, train you on them, and deploy them for you in under a week, and I could guarantee they’d save you time, money, and frustration both immediately and for as long as you run them.
With a few built, you can then clone them and make new ones on your own.
Sound interesting?
Well, I gotta take my daughter and her cousin to the pool. They’re getting back from Panda Express and summer is winding down, so a dad’s gotta do what a dad’s gotta do.
But if you’d like to discuss this, schedule a call with me here, now.
This is taking off, and I’m working 1-on-1 with clients, so between Jiu-Jitsu, two kids still at home, four grandkids 10 minutes away, and six of my seven kids between here and one hour away, I ain’t working til the wee hours of the morning anymore…and I’ll show you how to do the same.
Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.