Ford Saeks:

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, I’m Jeff Walther and welcome back to the Training Impact podcast. My guest today is Ford Saeks. Ford is a serial entrepreneur.

 

AI integration strategist. He helps organizations accelerate growth, outpace disruption, and turn complexity into clarity. Ford, welcome to the program. Well, I’m glad to be here at IFA with you and your booth doing this episode. So I’m glad to be here. Yeah. So you got a big background there. So how’d you end up where you’re at? know, Hall of Fame keynote speaker, AI integration strategist, growth acceleration. How did Ford Saeks become Ford Saeks?

 

I will say it this way for your listeners and viewers, people watching this live and in the broadcast. Look, this isn’t about me. This is about your listeners. So how I became the Ford 6 I am is by finding what people’s top challenges were and bridging the gap. Because no matter where they are in the growth of their business, whatever their role or level of experience is, there’s always this gap, Jeff, of where they are and where they want to go. And so I’ve been specializing for three decades, helping people bridge that gap by identifying

 

the mindset, the strategies and the tactics to help them accelerate that. And I’ve worked with a lot of people in the training space, learning management systems, developing them, leading them and having organizations implement them. Yeah. So with regards to that, what do you find as the biggest gap when it comes to, you know, the hardest part on the channel training is that the folks don’t work for you. So you can’t tell them you have to do this to get your paycheck. Right.

 

What do you find is the biggest gap and how do they overcome that? Well, the biggest gap is really looking at, know, training isn’t something that you did, it’s something you do. So it’s creating a culture of ongoing learning. You know, the most scary people to me are the ones who think they know everything, but don’t know what they don’t know. Like for example, as a keynote speaker, I’m doing a lot of presentations right now on leveraging the power of AI. The problem is,

 

anybody with a laptop or that can fog a mirror is an expert now in AI. Maybe they’ve learned how to make a prompt and all of sudden they think they’re an expert. So when it comes to AI and learning, the biggest challenge has been is that they don’t realize that training is something that you have to do ongoing. The more you know, the more you’re going to learn that you don’t know. So even though I’m an established expert and I’m on TV and radio and stages across the world, it really comes down to what’s someone’s biggest challenge and how do they navigate that.

 

especially to get where they want to go. So we’re here at IFA. Yeah. International Franchise Association in Las Vegas. Las Vegas, which I believe is your hometown? Yeah, I live one exit down, so I’m going to be sleeping in my own bed tonight. You are a lucky man. Yes. I will not. It’ll take you longer to get back to your room than it will for me to get to my house. That is true. It’s good mile walk, and we’re staying at the hotel. That’s right. That’s crazy.

 

So let’s talk about AI, because you got a new book out. Yeah, I’ve got a couple new books on AI, and my books are a little bit different than just gimmicky things that people are going to publish that are going to be outdated by the time they come out. So what I do is I look at AI through that human experience. know, we’re in the customer journey, should you use AI to make better decisions, replicate processes that are time intensive, that’ll give you more time to work with your colleagues, your partners.

 

your vendor partners, your staff, and your customers or clients. So it’s really keeping the human in the loop and then how to leverage it effectively. And within channel enablement, I like that, but now what does that actually mean when the rubber hits the road? Because you’ve got operations, you’ve got training, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got your field support, you’ve got this whole complex web, this ecosystem that’s your channel or your…

 

your franchise. I’m going to flip it on you since you’re the podcast host. What do you feel your listeners biggest challenges? Well, a couple things. One is I think because they’re training their channel, it’s usually it’s all about training them to sell and service their products, you know, or in the case of franchise or get the franchise. to solve sales challenges, it sales challenges and the service side. But because it’s about them and their thing.

 

You can’t go off the shelf to a publisher and get a bunch of courses. have to create the content themselves. Right. They create their internal training processes that hold them compliant so that the people can do replicate their work. Well, one things you can do now with learning management systems and of course AI is you can role play. And AI is a great role play tool where you can train it to be your ideal customer or your, you know, whatever the channel or if it’s in sales, inside or outside sales or whatever process that you’re looking for.

 

And if you identify what those top challenges are and you use AI to solve AI problems, so whether it’s ChatGBT or Claude or Copilot or Gemini or Grok or DeepSeek or one of the other millions of ones that are out there right now, it’s looking at AI as a tool. know, see, AI is not going to replace humans, Jeff, it’s going to replace humans that aren’t using AI. And most people, when it comes to AI, are either on the fence,

 

They know it’s not a fad, but they don’t really understand why they should use it. Or maybe they’ve played with it a little bit. Or they’ve made a few prompts and now they’re dangerously overconfident. Do they think they understand what AI is? When in reality, they’re just grossly overconfident and they’re going to make a lot of brand damage. So the real currency of the future is using training in your channels, but also looking at where can you leverage that time? Where can you save time?

 

to have those better conversations. And in sales, there’s all different types of intents. And if those salespeople or those people in the process of selling whatever the product or service is, don’t understand the human side, again, I’ve said that a few times now in this episode, they’re going to lose market share. Yeah. Well, you know, I like what you said, you know, when it’s first about the using it to do role playing because what seemed to be the first thing, the generative AI helped you produce…

 

produce the content quicker, more efficiently. But what I’ve always been frustrated with, and a lot of listeners, is we, as learning and development professionals, we do a pretty good job, I think, as an industry, on knowledge acquisition, right? Like, hey, I’m a training manager, you’re my learner, I want you to learn what a red light means, I want you to learn what the little yellow line down the middle of street means. We’re pretty good at that. The challenging part has always been skill development.

 

because skill development is all about practice and coaching. And to date, that’s a very expensive thing, because that usually requires humans. So have you seen examples of companies using role playing and other types of things to do skill development? Well, 100%. I mean, you don’t want to get seduced by technology. It’s not the learning management system. It’s the training, and is the training targeted towards the type of listener and by their role and their intent. Attention spans have shortened.

 

There’s different generations in the marketplace, know, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen C, traditionalists, boomers, and so forth. And the adult learning model has changed. So with those shorter attention spans and the way people behave, I mean, they stream now. They get their news from social media. They shop online. So they do their own research. And that’s why AI is so powerful, because AI isn’t just looking at Google. It’s looking at Substack and Reddit and Wikipedia.

 

and a lot of different sources. So when a company creates training, they need to really identify the behavior changes in their ideal learner, because it depends on if they’re an executive level, or if they’re a staff level, or frontline staff, or in manufacturing, like it really depends. So that’s a long road to a tiny house, everybody. But what we’re really talking about here is identifying the outcome, it’s the old Stephen Covey, you know, start with the end in mind, and then testing. You know, when people, you know, people have invested

 

thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions in training. Again, those learning management systems are powerful, but it’s not the platform, it’s the content and the experience. Is it gamified? How long are the modules? Are they interactive? Are they current, timely, topical, and relevant? Too often, you go to take an AI master class or any master class or even use an LMS system, and the models are very boring.

 

and they’re really a cure for insomnia. If you can’t sleep, now for those podcast listeners, this is one that you stay away from. But if you can’t sleep, go watch some of those learning management systems because they’re pathetic. And it’s not the platform, it’s whoever did the industrial design and the modules wasn’t looking at the customer experience. And when I say customer experience, it’s an employee, whatever. Yeah, it was interesting.

 

Well the key thing about the strategy is people don’t know what they don’t know. Right? And so they’re always looking for ways to be better. There’s no such thing as job security.

 

There’s only skill security. Well, how do you get skill security is you leverage the power of a learning management system. I mean, that by its very definition is to manage the learning process because at the basic level you’ve got data, you everybody knows what data is, and then you’ve got information. That’s where that data is organized. And then you have knowledge where that data is now organized and people can understand it. And then you get wisdom, which that unconscious competence at the top. And so every company who’s trying to do training,

 

has to move towards knowledge and wisdom, and that’s by really looking carefully at whatever system they’re invested in, whatever role that they have in their employees, and taking a fresh perspective. So that’s my action step for everybody is to just take a fresh look at what they’re doing. it was interesting. We were talking because…

 

He and I have been talking for a couple years about AI and learning and that. What we’re seeing happen is going from, we could do better, faster, cheaper. We can create the skill development by using role-playing and all that to having the models and the courses themselves morph to the individual characteristics of the learner. Almost like having your own personal tutor that’s shaping the course where, like there’s a certain knowledge I want to get to you rather than going through a

 

A, B, C. For you, I might just go A, C. For somebody else, I might go A, B, C. And dynamically changing the learning experience to suit the individual. Because what you were saying earlier, that’s what triggered it, is it’s not just going to the Google. It’s not just, I want a course that’s going to train me on this stuff. I can change the way in which that training is being delivered, the way in which that skill is being developed, and have personalized coaching, as opposed to just generic coaching.

 

And I think it’s really fascinating. And I think we’re going to see time compressions happen in terms of skilling people up. Yeah, I think so too. And I think if you think about it, it just makes sense, right? The days of just content on demand and sitting there watching content is not the way people learn. They’re the way people are really interacting. And so when you have a learning management system, that not only does branch learning. Here’s a question, A, B, or C, and then it goes down the branch.

 

but really looking at it and saying, here’s a mini AI that’s been trained on our knowledge base, which isn’t going to get contaminated outside our compliance windows and where people can leverage it. So for example, I’m speaking for a company called Sketchers. Some people might’ve heard it. They’re one of the third largest shoe manufacturer in apparel on the planet. And Sketchers has their own AI. It’s called Sketch AI and it’s designed to help their internal team.

 

understand their product knowledge, understanding how to solve the biggest challenge. It’s got their HR, so if someone’s looking for a vacation or maternity leave. So it’s companies that are looking at using AI and LMSs to really create the best learning experience. So now it’s shifting gears a little bit. sure. It is your show, by the way. Well, thank you. Well, but you are the guest. I appreciate it. Go for it. well, because we’ve been talking about training and learning and that’s…

 

That’s what we do for a living. But we do it within, especially on external learning, we’re doing it within the context of channel enablement. if we could step back and whether it’s AI, we kind of pull back to 10,000 foot. When we’re here like IFA, you’re talking to franchisors and they want to build their network, and the same thing happens with folks trying to build their reseller network, their VAR network, et cetera. What do you see as their largest challenge? Is it training, is it?

 

finding new resellers, new franchisees. Like what do you see as just the larger challenge? Because one of the things that we’re doing from a training perspective is we’re helping our organizations meet those challenges in the context of the environment that we’re operating in. So one of the things I like to do is kind of zoom beyond that. Here’s how we do the training to the environment. So as a growth accelerator, where is the…

 

Where’s the first place, the low hanging fruit? Well, the low hanging fruit is really to diagnose before you prescribe, right? It’s not about the technology, like I said. It’s so it’s stepping back. And it starts by asking better questions. If you’re asking the wrong question, the answers don’t matter. And so often organizations are asking the wrong question. And so the questions that they should be asking should be economic and emotional and the mindset piece. They should really look at

 

What does success look like? What are the conditions of satisfaction? How are they going to measure success? Start there first. And then they have to make sure that they’re open-minded and coachable and proactive. And they need to make sure that the content they develop is timely, topical, and relevant. So that mindset piece cannot be overlooked. Again, too many people go straight to tactic. And I would say,

 

make sure you have a clear vision of what success looks like, and you’re asking better questions, because that’s gonna formulate what the training looks like, and what is the training? Does it need to be AI? Is it just content on demand? Is it self-paced? Is it small group? Is it a cocoon? Is it a membership area? Or is it an online platform like what you have? So it really depends on that mindset piece first. What does success look like? And then, in what format,

 

Do people want to consume the content in? So for example, you know, I’m a keynote speaker. I speak at brands all across the world. And you know, people say, well, why would I hire a keynote speaker at your fee when I can buy a book for 20 bucks? Well, it’s not the content. It’s the experience, right? And so the reason people pay me my fees, which are not cheap, is because I make an impact. And sometimes the planner will say, well, I’ve got a speaker that’s less money. And I say that I’m sure that other speaker.

 

would like to charge what I charge, but they don’t make the impact I have. And so while this isn’t about marketing or sales, this is about channel and content development, you’ve got to look at what problem you’re trying to solve that your users need and how do they want to consume that content. Because how they consume that content is a lot different. Executives are going to do it different than managers. mean, if you think about it, Jeff, if you look at a company or organization, there’s culture at the top. Then there’s the leadership level. Then there’s management.

 

Then there’s team building, teamwork. And all of those things are impacted by communication and change. Well, the real power of an LMS system that’s properly configured and deployed is it creates consistency and discipline to help make a real change in the organization. So going back to the first part of that, and I think that was great.

 

I think a lot of people out there would say, okay, yes. So when I think, you where do I want to go? The answer that’s coming from top or, or, someone’s giving the objectives is sell more or, you know, lower my warranty costs or my, or my, all right. let’s pick one of those. So let’s say sell more, right? Right. Like it, don’t we need to go deep? Like how do you go deeper? Okay. If someone wanted to sell anything, the first thing I would do is I would look at the magic three.

 

which is the message, what’s a benefit message that’ll make them pay attention, who are they sending that message to, and what method are they using. So it’s the message, the market, and the method, that formula. And so the companies that have figured that out, whether it’s with training or deployment of anything, end up having more success. If they’re not successful, if you’re not successful in your organization, and maybe you have a system or whatever, it comes back to those three things, the message, method. But if they want to increase sales, they need to look at

 

What’s the customer experience like? What’s the buying journey from a suspect to a prospect to a qualified lead to a customer or client to an advocate? And then looking at where does my team or my channel need training? What is the one piece that’s been overlooked? And so often organizations don’t know what they don’t know. So they develop, just model what’s been used and the old playbook won’t work anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s what I’m trying to help folks understand because a lot of times

 

you go right to the tactics. You go right to, well, I just need another module on this. Right, I want a module to help me do X, Y, and Z. Or like somebody, you know, my biggest blocker is this, right? Or on the service side, well, you know, the biggest point we get from customers is X. And so let’s just do a module on X. it, going back to your culture and leadership, to me, I think it’s much bigger than those tactical things. You got to start from the top and work your way. Yeah, mindset first, then strategy.

 

And that’s one of the great things about franchising is they’ve got strategies. So, you know, I’m a third party endorsement to help them follow their systems and then tactics. What do they do on a regular basis? You know, too often, you know, people can produce a result or they can produce an excuse, but they can’t do both. Right. And I don’t own that comment that’s been used for decades, but it really does remind me when someone has a challenge and they say, well, you know, Jeff, I’ve tried everything and nothing works.

 

And they use these wide brush strokes. Well, you tried everything. What exactly did you try? Or someone in sales will say, I’ve called everybody and they all say that their price is too high. Okay, how many people did you call? I called everybody. Well, how many? Over what period of time? actually talk to? Yeah. And you know, it’s like, yeah, not how many didn’t get voicemail or ghost or bounce, but how many did you actually get on the phone? And I tell people if they were to start a stopwatch every time they were face to face or ear to ear or mouth to mouth to a client and stop it.

 

at the end of week, how much time did they really spend learning about that and understanding what the problem is? Too often, initiatives come down from the top and other people are tasked with implementation without really understanding what the outcome is. You know, so yeah. Well, I’m a believer in what you said earlier, was start with the end in mind. Yeah, really, it’s simple, but it’s true. Because, you know, it’s kind of like, if you don’t know that, then any road takes you there. Well, and how are going to measure success? You know, how are you going to…

 

You know, you can have training on anything, but if it’s a sales training, well, are you trying to close more leads? So, I mean, if it comes to selling, right, how are you gonna expand your influence? How are you gonna get more high quality leads? How do get them to take action more often? What’s your percentage of conversion on the first sale? What’s the lifetime value of the customer? You know, at the end of the day, you know, and I know this is about, you know, LMSs and training and nothing else, but if you wanna grow a business,

 

If you and I or me or anybody watching this wants to grow in any company, there’s only four things. How do you get more high value clients? Because you and I both don’t, you don’t want more clients, you want high value clients. You don’t want the pitas. You know what the pitas are? The pain in the beep, beep, in the ass. Or excuse me, I said it live, but don’t get mad at the podcast, it’s me, right? But they’re pitas. And so sometimes there’s business that’s worth passing on, right? But at end of the day to grow, get more high value clients.

 

Number two, how do you add more value so they spend more with you? In your case, how do you keep the training so interesting that they wouldn’t want to go anywhere else and their people are getting great results? Number three, how do you get repeat or referral sales? How do you get it to where other people are talking about you and how are you getting that referral? And then number four, how are you improving operational performance? Well, that’s what an LMS is designed to do, right? It’s to solve those gaps in

 

marketing and sales and operations, HR, finance, accounting, the customer experience, it’s to help them solve those challenges through training. You know, you’re touching on something that near and dear to my heart. And again, if I speak to we as an industry, we tend to measure our success based on butts and seats, number of courses completed, which has nothing to do with the impact we’re having. That’s right.

 

The coolest thing is that some clients have gone the other route and brought in performance metrics. they’re able to tell you that, for example, a certified salesperson will sell twice as many units as an uncertified. A certified tech by this better quality of service. And then they can translate that into numbers. And that means, therefore, that salesperson is selling another half a million dollars worth of business.

 

Those guys that, or my clients that have done that, like, budget’s not a problem. No, it’s not. Because the execs know a dollar spent on the training is $2 in return. Yeah, it’s all about return investment. I my keynote fees, you guys can Google them. My keynote fees start at 25 grand. Now I’ve got clients that are put a zero on that. So it’s not about the money. But if someone’s going to pay me 25 grand to speak for an hour, like, I mean, just even saying that out loud sounds absurd, right? But it’s not about the hour.

 

They’re paying for the decades of experience, those nuances, those insights, that when those people leave that training or that keynote or that breakout or whatever the system is, on screen, on demand, or on stage, what it does is it moves the needle. And that’s the reason that I can say, look, it’s not a cost, it’s an investment. And it’s the same thing with an LMS system. It’s not cost. If you’re looking solely through cost, that’s a perspective. You do need to consider it, of course, but it needs to look at what would it be worth if they

 

Performed better did better and of course it comes down to hiring, you know only quality people Sometimes you have to you know hire slow and fire fast and you got to free people up for new opportunities because they’re not a good fit But now if you quit or get fired from this podcast this I should tell you that we didn’t say that that this episode and all the episodes by Jeff and me Ford Saeks for information and Educational purposes only we are not giving you a legal advice. This is a podcast. So if you love it

 

Thank him. If you don’t, you can complain to me on social media. I got thick skin. So I’m just going to get the disclaimer out of the way. But it really comes down to, yeah. Do not complain to him. Yeah, I’m thick skin. I’ve been doing it too long. But I am coachable. I mean, that’s one of the things that I think is really important. I said that’s top of the episode. You know, as much as I know, the more I learn, the more I know I don’t know. So I’m very opinionated. I’m very sharp at what I do and I get paid high fees. But I’m also

 

coachable let the marketplace tell me what works. You know, I’m not a big fan of focus groups and I’ve run an incubator in the past and I do a lot of market testing, but the real test is in that performance metric. If they’re going to have an LMS system, is it designed and is it producing behavioral change? And that’s really what the point is, is to create consistency, discipline, and move the needles, whatever those needles are, in your key performance indicators.

 

I think that’s such an important thing because again, we as an industry tend not to do that and then therefore, you know, the training tends to be first to be cut. Right. Because it’s treated as a cost center. And you know, the way I think of it, I got a pea brain. You know, I think executives only do one thing, allocate money. And there’s somethings you gotta spend money on, like keeping the books. Yeah.

 

Those are cost of doing business and then they look at everything else as strategic investments and there that’s where they get their money back. too often training is on the cost of doing business. It’s something you have to do. Or they’ve done it poorly in the past so they don’t believe in it. Right and so yeah that dollar just disappears instead of saying oh I can get this back. So what do you see coming? We’re here at IFA, we’ve got all these franchisors. One of the things I love about the franchise industry

 

is it’s so dynamic. There’s always a new set of emerging franchisers and new brands coming out. It’s so interesting. And you’ve been very generous. No, great. Enjoying talking to you. I could stay here for hours. No problem. But for the emerging franchisers, they’re sitting there, they’re kind of breaking out of that onesie, twosie, getting into the 10, 20, to accelerate that growth.

 

Where should they be looking? Well, I would say it’s a two-part answer. Part one is they should be documenting everything. They should be recording everything and encouraging all their team members, whether they’re large or small, to record lessons learned and best practices. Start creating that knowledge base of information because that knowledge base of information is what’s going to help create the best training, the best training modules, the best narratives, and the best experiences, and the best role plays.

 

So you got to start recording everything and capturing those best practices. And then creating a culture of open-mindedness where you’re asking the better questions. What’s acceptable behavior for a brand? Because when they are an emerging brand, whether they’re one or two units or 10 units, there’s those magic numbers, right? 10, 25, 50, 100, and then 500, and it goes from there. And at each level, the training and the systems change. So often, organizations only provide training

 

on one modality. Maybe it’s just their products and services. And they don’t train on local marketing like what I do. They don’t train on business success or success mindset. Or they don’t teach them how to manage their money or how to run their finances as a small business. And to be in compliant, you know, they bought a system for a reason to follow their systems. And the biggest rub in franchising, Jeff, is the franchisor wants the franchisees to follow their system. And the franchisees like, I spent all this money on this business. Why aren’t you bringing more people to me?

 

And so it’s a great model and it definitely involves training. And if you’re an emerging franchise and you definitely need to check out what you guys are doing here because everybody needs a training system, but start small and get complicated later. I think that’s a great advice is to start small, start simple, keep it simple. Start simple and let the marketplace tell you what works. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Success leaves clues. There’s experts like me and experts like your company and others that have gone before you.

 

And the great thing about IFA is you’re surrounded by other organizations that have solved the biggest problems that you’re dealing with. And so that’s why I’m here. I’m also here because I meet my clients that I speak at their conferences. And then there’s always new clients and even vendors like you who would bring me in to speak to their marketplace like we’re doing here on the podcast. Yeah. And this is a, I love this because I’m learning so much. Well, good. No, I appreciate being here as a guest at IFA in Las Vegas. And thank you for inviting us to your hometown.

 

Thank you for coming and being a guest here. Absolutely. And if folks out there want to get a hold of you, where would they go? They can just Google my name or go to ProfitRichResults.com. And this has been another episode with Jeff Walton, CEO of Let us in Learning, where we’re all about accelerating your success. So until next time, keep learning and subscribing. And I need you to share this episode with everybody you know. And then also go to my LinkedIn profile, look at my name in the show notes, and connect with me and let me know what you thought.

 

Thank you, and thank you everybody out there for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.