Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]
You're scrolling through your phone on midnight and another founder just posted that AI replaced their entire team. If you're like me, your stomach might drop a little bit on that one. You didn't sleep great, you've got your business to run on and do, and you don't have the time to learn twelve new tools nobody agrees on. That knot in your chest when somebody says, If you're not using AI, you are already behind and not really motivating, is it?
It's just noise dressed up as urgency. If you already tried a chatbot or two, you've watched the videos and none of it's stuck because none of it was built for a business your size. Stay with me, because today's guest spent 20 years running logistics for the Air Force before she built a company on one rule. "Do the right thing. And do the thing right". No hype, no bullshit, no bro marketing. Simply what works. By the end of this conversation, you might just walk away with an AI strategy for your small business. Not just the to-do list of tools that everybody is talking about and scripts and prompts that don't do the thing.
Yvonne Heimann [00:01:30]
If this is your first time here, welcome to She Is A Leader, the show for women building business on their own terms. One honest conversation at a time. And today I'm sitting down with Heather McLean, US Air Force veteran, CEO of McLean Forrester, and someone who spent two decades. We did not age you, that just happened the last 20 years, cutting through exactly that kind of noise. And Heather, I already mentioned in our intro, you've spent 20 years in logistics and IT before AI even became this buzzword, what it is now. What do you think is the difference between how the industry talks about AI now and what you actually saw work in the field?
Heather McLean [00:02:23]
Like you said, there's a lot of hype, right? And I think a lot of people that you know you hear all the time, it's gonna save you all this time and money and be more efficient. And those things are possible. I think, but the reality is that you're gonna see small wins to begin with. You're gonna see a small increase in productivity if you introduce, let's say, ChatGPT or Claude or something like that. And that's gonna help you do your work better. And I so I think you need to be grounded in like what's the reality of of what you know, what you're actually gonna see. there are companies seeing huge amounts of efficiencies. They are there are companies that are actually leveraging it, but they're doing a few things that maybe other companies aren't aren't, and we can we can talk about that as well.
Yvonne Heimann [00:03:05]
Which is the perfect lead on to my next question. So your motto is do the right thing and do the thing right. And yes, I'm looking at my scripts because that feels like a tongue breaker. However, I love the message behind it. So looking at AI advice out there, as I already mentioned, it's like, yeah, there is a lot. It seems to be the new guru marketing, the new bro marketing, the new buzzword, the new "just this one thing is gonna save you everything". Yes, I'm I'm jaded on AI marketing. Don't don't get me wrong. So when we look at your motto, do the right thing and do the thing right, where do you see AI marketing and AI advice in specific break that rule?
Heather McLean [00:03:54]
Well, I think anytime you might if you're talking to a vendor and they start talking to immediately about a tool, they're sort of breaking that rule, right? Because we talk about outcomes. It's really about what is this tool, this technology, no matter what it is, what is that going to do for you and what are the outcomes you're expecting to get from it? So I think if they're if you're just trying to sell a tool or you're hearing all about a tool, then that's probably that should tell you that person is maybe not always trying to do the right thing for you.
Yvonne Heimann [00:04:22]
And I know you build McLean Forrester on that idea that we don't have to choose between people and profit. And especially when it comes to AI, there seems to be not there just seems to be, there is the conversation going on of replacing people or hundred Xing people or now suddenly it's it's becoming a rat race and sometimes it feels like we are missing the people in it and we are focusing fully on just profit. At least again publicly, right? We often don't know what happens behind the scenes. And that's where I wanted to ask you.
When when you work with your clients, when you work with AI, and the first time you tested things, how how do you approach AI? I'm like, I have my opinion on the companies that integrate AI and which ones are gonna survive. I would love to hear your take on this, considering the public notion is I'm like, love me, some Zeb Evans off ClickUp, love the guy.
And also his whole message of we just laid off twenty five people and we kept the AI knowledgeable people didn't I don't I don't know. I was kind of fifty fifty on it. I understand where he is going with people that embrace AI, people that learn. I understand the personality behind it because I don't want somebody on my team that says we are doing it this way because we always did it this way. I'm like, I don't want to cut off the ends of the roads just because my no that old story there. So asking you how do you how do you manage people and profit when it comes to AI? What do you think? Which kind of companies are going to survive this? How how does that show up nowadays with AI?
Heather McLean [00:06:35]
So what do I think about that? I think there's gonna be some job loss or some jobs that might be replaced, right? Every time we've seen a big technological change in the world, that's gonna happen. But I think responsible companies who care about people are gonna find ways to retrain, repurpose, find other work or different work for those people. So here's a great example IKEA.
Brought in an AI to answer phone calls that were coming in from customers, right? So instead of laying off 8,000 customer service representatives, they figured out that the what AI couldn't do for though their customers was help them with design problems that they had. You know, how do I put this thing in my room and how do I make it look good? So they retrained 8,500 customer service reps into design design advisors.
That's brilliant, isn't it? Right. So they didn't have to have that huge layoff. They found other work that was valuable and they invested in their people. So I think, you know, there that's gonna happen. I hope that happens more. I I hope more companies are responsible about trying to retrain people. But again, there's gonna be some some job loss in the mix. Even my own software engineering team, we went from a we had a project where we had about 15 developers a year ago. So we were in the thick of it and AI coding assistants weren't anything like they are now. Now that team is really two senior developers working with AI. So the just internally we've seen a huge decrease in the amount then you know the the team size that we have for the same output. And so I kind of conflicted about that, right? Because you know, these are people and these are people who you know, have entrusted their well-being to us as employees. And it's so well, you know, we're trying to focus on finding other work, kind of just scaling in that way so that we don't have to you know, have layoffs and things like that. It's it's there's no right answer. There's no perfect answer. But I hope more companies try to be like IKEA instead of like some of these other companies we're seeing these mass, mass layoffs.
And and even in these mass layoff companies like AWS, they actually brought people back because they realized that their AI was making mistakes and it was actually hurting the company. So they brought back those senior engineers because they realized they needed that oversight and that expertise.
Yvonne Heimann [00:09:00]
Step a let's let's step back for a second because there's a lot of selling out there right now, right? and when I look at people selling AI strategies specifically to small business owners, many of those right now have never run a business through a headcount decision. So they have a solution, they have something to sell. It's the
You don't know what you don't know situation, right? We've all been there, we've all done it. What's the mistake you see leaders make when they let a vendor, vendor, vendor, gotta love the German accent on this one. What do you see leaders make, business owners, small business owners do when they let the vendor decide and not their own value of what gets automated?
Heather McLean [00:09:55]
Ooh I anytime you have a vendor coming in giving you a tool, like I said, you need to be cautious. I mean, our approach is let's talk about outcomes. Let's start with what do you want to get out of this technology, right? So are you looking to speed up processes? Are you looking to you know, make your people more efficient and maybe can do more work, right? So let's let's figure out what that is. And then instead of writing a big strategy, you know, let's start with a use case.
That we think is going to bring you a lot of value and start small. Like let's run a little pilot and see what we can do and use real data and see how we can leverage that AI. and I think the big mistake that a lot of companies make is picking some random tool or even some well-thought out tool and and thinking that that's gonna change things without the people side of it. So there's always a change management aspect to bringing in any new technology. And when you forget about the people side.
It doesn't get adopted or people don't know how to use it or they're, you know, they just feel like you're throwing a tool at them. Nobody likes that. So another thing we talk about is making your team part of the solution. If you're revamping a process, let's get all those people in a room and let them be the people, you know, let them be part of that process because people will support things that they create. So it's that people change management aspect that I think a lot of a lot of companies or leaders are forgetting about.
Yvonne Heimann [00:11:20]
How similar we are in our approach, right? With us building out ClickUp, usually, right? That's the one tool we implement for clients. We run into the same point, right? Especially when I use the word automation, suddenly I can see the team just turn white. It's like, great, here's change management again, and in about two weeks, we're gonna lay off 10% of the of the team. And I'm like, guys, I'm not here to take your work away. I'm here to make your life easier. Do you really want to do apply manually assign work that that has been the same process for five years? Not to mention that if it's the same process for five years, let's look at it, make sure it's a really good process. That's why it's been the same for five years, and not needing an an update.
And also, as you said, bringing the people that do the work that are involved with it, bring them in the door. I'm like, I love nothing more at sitting down the team, and I'm like, break it. Break it. One of the reasons developers love me because I break the unbreakable. Go have them play with it. Go it's yes, yes, do all of the above. Now, we also know that.
The best strategy, the best tool, the best thing has its bad days. Doesn't always work as planned. And I'm curious when we look at a good AI strategy, what does it look like on a bad day when it's not saving anyone time? Was people get frustrated because it's something new and something else on my plate now that I need to do?
What makes an AI strategy good even on a bad day?
Heather McLean [00:13:13]
Well, what we what I recommend is you start start with building that trust that AI can deliver something of value. So that's why you start with those quick wins that you know are gonna bring high value, because you've got to start building that institutional trust. It's that trust that will help you sustain maybe a failed pilot or something that doesn't work out right. Yeah, it's kind of like trust with people. you have to build up that trust so that when something challenging happens you can work through it together because there's that foundation of trust. So that really helps. And in, you know, no strategies is going to be perfect or no implementation's going to be perfect. But if you have people sort of on board and they're seeing the value, then you can weather those things.
Yvonne Heimann [00:13:58]
Now we already talked about you help leaders, small business owners, CEOs, teams cut through this AI hype that we are seeing right now, right? Like with everything new, it's fancy. But you're also selling AI strategy work. How do you personally know when you are the one giving advice and when you are the one who benefits from somebody scared enough to hire you. So for everybody listening, let me repeat this because I want to set this up right and not you misperceive what I'm saying. Throughout this whole episode, we have heard you are not buying into this AI hype, you are educating, you are going the right route.
This is this is how AI should be done, not by fear. And also the fear-based marketing is out there, right? The hype is out there. I am pretty certain you're gonna have some people knock on your door and come with this fear, even if this is not how you market, even this is not how you educate. How do you make the difference between the ones that are not buying into the hype and that are there to work with you?
Or the ones that have bought into hype that are coming out of a fear position where psychologically and potentially even revenue based, you profit of that fear. What do you do with that?
Heather McLean [00:15:35]
Yeah. I'm gonna go back to an agile principle, which is deliver value early and often. And again, that comes back to trust. So if you're if we're working towards if I sense that there's a lot of hesitation, then and and we're gonna really try to deliver something small of value as fast as we can, because that is where that trust wheel starts starts building.
And at some point, either some at some point throughout the engagement, they're either gonna trust you or you don't, right? But you I I we've learned that just small demonstrations of valuable output is really how you start building that trust. And you know, people will do business with people they trust and continue to do business with people they trust. And so that's why for us, that's like the most important thing when we start an engagement and we have our kickoff, whether that's in person, which is best, or virtually, that's where that trust building starts, right? We're getting to know each other. We are getting to understand their goals. And I think, you know, another thing that helps us is just that we do live by that motto, do the right thing and do the thing right, which means I'm going to put your interests as the client above my own, which means I might recommend something that means zero work for me.
I might recommend something that you thought you wanted, but I can see down the road, you're not gonna get the you're not gonna get the value out of that thing you thought. And we'll talk about talk about why and try to get you to understand that because I don't want my clients wasting money because that would not be doing the thing that's in their best interest. So I think just, you know, also our core values really help ground us in those conversations.
Yvonne Heimann [00:17:50]
Yeah, yeah. We are way too much alike. I might I might have I might have sent a couple of clients somewhere else too rather than starting to charge them. Now I always like to end on an action step. And like we can listen to all the information. If we don't do something about it, what are we doing? We're just professional learn this point. So, let's let's play through this. If somebody is listening, my audience is usually small business owners, a lot of female women, and with small teams. Let's just say five people business. And they haven't really implemented any AI strategy. They might have played around with a couple chats here and there, but there's no strategy behind it. There's no goal behind it. It's just like, okay, just talking through something, just put it nicely together in an email or something like that.
What's the one thing you would have them do this week or look at or start at? Where where does somebody that just kind of like dabbled in AI knows the advantage but doesn't even know where to start? Where should they start?
Heather McLean [00:18:28]
Yeah. I mean, this is our ideal client. So someone who knows they need to do something with AI, but they're not sure where to start. My advice would be to get help because and and that's n that's somewhat self-serving and doesn't even matter if it's me or not, but you don't even know what you don't know sometimes because you're g the value that you're really looking for is going to be in revamping your business processes. And if you don't know where to start with that journey, then you do need some help. You do need someone to come in. And, you know, we have this offering where in about two weeks and about five hours your team's time, we can help you narrow down like where do I start with that pilot project and what's going to bring us the most value. And so I would recommend something like that. if you can't afford that, you know, get reach out and we'll have a chat. You know, chat, we always say chats are free and I'll meet a new person and that'll be great. So but but don't
Don't do nothing. And I don't wanna say like you have to do something, but your it is true your competitors are probably pulling ahead because they're already leveraging AI in their business processes. And that is where we really see the most value, the most bang for the buck is when you're redesigning those business processes around the tool, you know, or leveraging the tool.
Yvonne Heimann [00:19:45]
And I think the the biggest point here is we don't know what we don't know. Right? I'm like I'm I'm such a tech nerd, I often forget that there's a lot of people out there that are technology challenged. Like I actually had a reminder this weekend where I was fixing something on my website and I'm like, my god, how do people do this that have not spent 10 years building websites?
And it really is this, yes, you can go out there and break the thing and figure it out yourself and spend how many hours trying to figure it out yourself? Professional learner over here. I have literally five days scheduled to just go down a rabbit hole and chase object shiny objects and just learn and just do because I know I love doing it. And then on Monday I have my call with my COO that's like, okay, cool.
You just went down a rabbit hole again. What are you what are we doing with this? And getting this help of number one, having something like this, where it's like, okay, this is what's happening in my business. Now suddenly it's not just happening in your head, it's coming out. And then having somebody that has broken the thing, that has tested the thing, that has done all the things to be like, ooh, mmm.
Not a bad idea, and we need to pay attention to this. And this is connected to that. And you might want to pay attention to that. So I am a big fan of, and it doesn't have to be a 12-year retainer agreement. Jump on a call. Jump on a call with somebody like you and be like, okay, this is what I'm thinking. What are we doing with this? And just get a roadmap.
Heather McLean [00:21:38]
Right, right. You know, I it it's a lot like if you're if you're a company and you don't have the AI expertise or experience, it's kinda like putting, let's say, five executives in a boat, in a sailboat and saying, Okay, you have everything you need, go sail. Well, of course, they're not gonna be able to figure that out because they don't have anyone who's ever done anything like that before. So it's it's no fault of your own that you've never done this before. But but it also means that you probably need someone who has to just guide you along the way.
Yvonne Heimann [00:22:11]
And it makes life just so much easier to not have to learn all the hard lessons themselves. And Heather said it early, do the right thing and do the thing right. That's the whole AI conversation here. You don't need every single freaking tool. You need one decision made on purpose. So if you know a woman that is struggling right now with what to do with AI or maybe going down this rabbit hole of the whole AI hype bullshit.
Go send her this episode and have her listen to it. It doesn't have to be this whole hype marketing. It doesn't have to be the panic. Tell her just to wait, listen to this episode, and then have a better idea of how to move forward. And thanks so much for joining me today. And all of you watching, I'll see you in the next episode. Bye everybody.