Updated January 13, 2026

Lauren Esposito: 0:00

You know, your human SDR doesn't perform on day one. So why would you, you know, kind of expect your agent to as well? We're all worried about like what is human oversight? What is governance? How do we reduce bias? How do we increase accuracy? So we gave Teddy a human manager and our CRO meets with Teddy weekly and reviews, right? What is he putting out there? Where is he getting stuck? What knowledge do I need to update and reflect? So the more that we coach Teddy, the more successful he gets. And it's a time commitment up front, right? We we have to build all of this, we have to take the energy and time just like you would a new employee. And that the ramp sometimes an enterprise for a new employee is a year, right? It's small business, it's six months. So I think getting our expectations right. And personally, I think you're about to see a lot more stories of success coming because we've all been playing with the technology now for a year that we're starting to learn that this is really a critical step.Kevin Kerner: 0:52

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Tech Marketing Rewired. In this episode, I talked to Lauren Esposito, who's the CMO of Assemble. Lauren has a really interesting background in that she comes from 13 years at Salesforce, where she ran marketing with a team of about 40 people. And when she moved to the CMO role at Assemble, she had two direct reports, at least initially. And so she went from an environment where there was scale and systems and sort of structure around everything, support everywhere, to an environment where she really had to do it all herself. And um, what her story that we talk about on the podcast leads to is her use of AI and agents to really take a team of three and scale it to about what could be done by a team of 40. It's really an amazing conversation where she goes into the very specific tactics on how she decides what she's going to automate and use agents for, how she trains agents like humans, and how then the results that she's used that have been really phenomenal. I think it's a fascinating conversation for anyone that is interested in leveraging AI for their small team or large team. I'm really excited to get it out there. But before I get started, I wanted to mention that uh this podcast is sponsored by my company, Mighty and True. Mighty and True is a tech marketing agency that works with CMOs to help them accelerate strategies that might be stuck or stalled because of bandwidth or resource constraints or any other reason. So if you're interested in um checking us out, you can go to www.mightyandrue.com. Okay, that's it. I'm really excited to get into the conversation with Lauren. Let's get to it. This is tech marketing rewired. Okay, Lauren, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.

Lauren Esposito: 2:34

Yeah, really excited to be here. Thanks for having me on today, Kevin.

Kevin Kerner: 2:37

My pleasure. Yeah. Before we get started, I'd love for you to give a little uh background on yourself, where you've been, and a little bit about Assemble. It's a really interesting company.

Lauren Esposito: 2:45

Yeah, thank you. Um Lauren Esposito, I've been a marketer for the last 17 years. I recently joined Asymbl as their chief marketing officer just a few months ago. Prior to that, I spent 13 years in the Salesforce marketing department, um, doing a span of pretty much everything. And Assemble, I was really excited for this company. They are carving a new path in the marketplace. So we call ourselves a workforce orchestration company. And what we're really focused on is helping businesses attract, build, design, and manage hybrid workforces of digital and human employees so that they can drive more meaningful business impact faster. Um, and with the craze of AI, this has kind of been a new way of thinking of to include AI as really like an employee in the workhorse and not just another piece of technology or tool you're implementing.

Kevin Kerner: 3:41

Yeah, what a timely product. Unbelievable. Like the need for uh an easy way to employ these digital workflows is really great. So I love what you guys are doing. I want to start by um when we talked on the pre-call that we did a couple weeks ago or so, you made this massive pivot. You were at this giant and there can't be many enterprises as big as Salesforce to this smaller team in marketing. I'm sure that was fun, but take me back to the to the to the point where you made that transition. Was there like a moment of panic in your mind where you realized, like, oh, wait a second, I don't have all this stuff.

Lauren Esposito: 4:21

Yeah. Um, you know, you don't know what you don't know until you kind of jump off the edge. So it was um it was exciting. I think, you know, when I was at Salesforce, you're operating with these incredible budgets, global teams, so much speciality, right? I would say I got like the best marketing education, got to work with some of the best marketers and really people across right every department in their field. Um, we had specialized roles for everything, and everything also had a process and a gatekeeper, right? And so um when I joined and thought about leaving Salesforce and kind of what I wanted to do, I wanted to get closer to the business. Um, I wanted a bigger remit, right? And when Assemble came, it was the way that they were approaching bringing technology into the workforce, you know, they kind of started um their careers in, you know, recruiting and helping with um candidate and talent acquisition engagement. And when AI came to the table, said, hey, you really have to think about this in a new way. And their vision was to have every employee to have 30% of their productivity delivered by digital workers and AI. And I think that's the hook that got me because just getting my hands on those tools inside of Salesforce was actually quite difficult, right? You have a lot of governance, trust. They're not just like rolling out licensing for everyone. So I couldn't play around, right? And and kind of augment in the same way that I've now experienced, right? Joining the smaller company. I walked in, I'm a team with two individuals and me. Um, so you know, scarcity actually became clarity in this. Uh, I had to just start by starting and figuring it out, right? I didn't have um, you know, the resources. There was no, it was a blank page. And so we want to feel like a company um with a brand that's a hundred times bigger, right, than we really are to kind of make waves and show up in this marketplace. Um and so I just dove in. And now I've been spending so much time in these different tools, understanding how they perform, what information um is valuable, which one, you know, their difference, there's nuances, but also understanding the parallels between them of how AI, right, thinks and operates. So now I really can figure out what do I need and why, and then think about how to, you know, orchestrate that into kind of the flow of work for me so that I can do smart marketing, right, at scale with limited budget, you know, and we're all trying to do more with less, I think.

Kevin Kerner: 6:54

Yeah, for sure. Do you think if you would have stayed in the enterprise world, do you think you ever would have discovered this digital labor model? Or is this something that only this sort of scarcity could have unfolded for you?

Speaker 1: 7:07

Yeah, I honestly I I don't think I it would have clicked as a user and as a manager. It, you know, it it smaller businesses are s where change, right? Management is kind of spurred and happening for sure. I am seeing Salesforce in general start to talk about digital labor as a component now rather than just agent force and AI. So I do, and quite frankly, so is McKinsey, right? Accenture. I mean, a lot of the marketplace is starting to realize that um this isn't just a an age-old, you know, IT implementation. Um, but I think it would have taken a lot longer to see like results. Um, and I don't know that I would have had as much influence in building it for me, right? As uh, you know, like every individual at Assemble is really empowered to think about this. Is it and we're gonna talk, I think, more about right, that this digital worker is really supporting me as an individual rather than you know, rolled out for a function or a team or a task.

Kevin Kerner: 8:07

Yeah, yeah, right on. Yeah, I don't want to bum people out that are at big companies, but I do think you can think more broadly when you're in a smaller environment, right? You're just because you have to at to some degree. You get more access. Um, I want to define digital labor a bit because it's a really cool concept. Um uh I think there's the there's the using AI tools and there's the employing digital labor, two different concepts, Larry. What's what do you think the functional difference between like me using Chat GPT to write something myself or you employing an agent to do it in a digital labor environment? Like what's the difference?

Lauren Esposito: 8:45

Yeah, um, I think digital labor, what we're really talking about is the summarization, right, of all of the kind of AI tools out there. So the predictive, the generative, right, the agentic. Um, and then the realization that, you know, different tools perform different tasks right for you more with different value. Um, but you still as an individual don't want to have to be logging in, right, to all of these pieces and and functions to be getting different tasks done, right? Where I think scale and operational success comes from is the idea of orchestrating these different tools as a digital worker. Um, and so, you know, it's really thinking about, you know, how can I get um the outcomes right that I'm trying to drive from these tool sets and do it in the most simple way. So I'm not in the swivel chair logging into things and copy pasting and and having to quite frankly manage, you know, in chat versus Claude versus Perplex, all the same knowledge sense sent into these custom agents, right? And then now I'm having to maintain and govern, right, from from all these different applications. And so how can I do that at scale, right? Um, and and really have it, and the benefit of this is the technology and the tools are changing so rapidly, right? So as you orchestrate it and think about how you can give knowledge and context um, you know, collectively into that flow of work, it doesn't matter if the tools change. It doesn't matter if you want to switch them out, right? Because you're kind of building this with intentionality that says, the tools I can plug and play. It's the it's the orchestration, the strategy of how and when and what they have access to that's really gonna unlock right the value in the ROI for me.

Kevin Kerner: 10:38

Okay, take me back to when you so you get there at Assemble, you know you need to like do something with in a different way because you have got such a small team. How did you assess what the environment looked like and where you were going to place a bet first, let's say in your first like what do you what do you do first when you get there in terms of employing a digital worker?

Lauren Esposito: 10:59

Yeah, that's great. Um like every small business, um, you know, we we jumped right in and realized when I walked in, we had hired a new leadership team. Um, my chief revenue officer joined just a few weeks before me. And so uh we kind of focused in and said, like, what's what the most important job to be done? We have got to unlock our sales capacity. Um, and I think a lot of marketers, right, can identify that. Um we just had one human SDR, one human BDR, and two AEs. Um, and then we had thousands of leads that were coming in, you know, and we just couldn't work them. Um so I'll kind of talk you through right the the process, which was now a methodology for us, right? We have three phases it's design, onboard, and coach. So what I learned is um stay focused, right? What is that job to be done? We want to unlock right that sales capacity. And so when you kind of step into the first phase, you start thinking about, well, the design, right? How do I how do I design a digital worker to do that? And just like you would hire a human employee, we said, well, let's write it a job description, right? Like let's think about like what skills does an SDR have? Um, what kind of output, right, and actions is it going to be responsible for? And how are we gonna measure it? Like, what is success and KPIs, right, that you would give that individual and their you know, annual reviews, if you will, right, that we want to assign to the digital worker. Um, and in this, we decided to also name our uh sales development representative digital worker. So we called him Theodore Frank and we call him Teddy for short now.

Kevin Kerner: 12:35

There's a lot of that going on too, the the naming of the worker. Yeah, the persona, it's good.

Lauren Esposito: 12:40

Exactly. I find a little bit that you know, human behavior, um, we don't change that often. So again, the uh what you'll see in this digital worker is it's like it's operating where you operate and and you're getting the expectations as if it were another employee. And so being able to reference like Teddy versus SDR agent, it actually just yeah, it levels everything. Um, so once we've got this job description, the next phase was like, okay, we got an onboard, right? Just like uh what systems does Teddy? We want him to be working leads out of, right? R CRM. We want him to be able to email, he needs an email account, those accounts. We want him to be able to personalize, right? He's gonna email these guys a lot. What are the information and inputs that we can pull in so that he can tailor uh what he knows about the lead, but also like what we have at marketing, what resources and information, right, are are important. And then we said, well, if he closes, right, he's able to get us a meeting with one of these contacts, how is he gonna inform us? So he's got a Slack account. And so he just actually, in our you know, joint channel for GoToMarket tells us that he's landed a new meeting, right, for one of our human BDRs or SDRs to take. Um, so it's just happening naturally in the flow of work. So it was really thinking about all of the summarization of all of those things and kind of building out that process and flow chart that says, okay, so that's what we desire. And then we layered in, well, now what technology and tools are needed, you know what I mean, to support that. Um, we used Agent Force for the actual agentic SDR, right? But we've got Google Docs of like our voice and our tone and right where all of our marketing resources are stored. We use Google's notebook LM, right? Kind of as a knowledge center to be pulling from. And then um we even have, right, like canvases and Slack and you know, lead scoring and marketing cloud engagement. So all of those things, right, are tied together for Teddy to kind of be the best performer. And then the last step is what we call coaching. And I think that this is a big difference that I don't see a lot of people, you know, actually thinking about today. And it's, you know, your human SDR doesn't perform on day one. So why would you know kind of expect your agent to as well? Um, we're all worried about like what is human oversight? What is governance? How do we reduce bias? How do we increase accuracy? So we gave Teddy a human manager and our CRO meets with Teddy weekly and reviews, right? What is he putting out there? Where is he getting stuck? What knowledge do I need to write, update and reflect? Yeah. And so the longer, right, the more that we coach Teddy, the more successful he gets. And it's a time commitment up front, right? We we have to we have to build all of this, we have to take the energy and time just like you would a new employee. And that the ramp sometimes an enterprise for a new employee is a year, right? It's small business, it's six months. So I think getting our expectations right, and personally, I think you're about to see a lot more uh stories of success coming because we've all been playing with the technology now for a year that we're starting to learn that this is really a critical step in the process to see success.

Kevin Kerner: 15:40

How they're so smart. I don't think many people are thinking about training, hiring, coaching, and training the the the AI SDR like you are. It's just really an interesting way because you're you're uh humanizing it to some degree, but you're treat you're going through the same process you would of the human, only you have this thing. I wonder, do you uh did you have most of the most of the raw materials that you needed to train Teddy? Were they were they already existing and you just gave those to the the AI? Or did you have to create bespoke?

Lauren Esposito: 16:13

Um I will there's kind of two sides to that quite one one is where I think it just depends on how good you are at your documentation, right? Um so sure, do we have brand guidelines? Yes, right? Do we have our elite scoring right defined? Yes. But um a lot of nuance, right? Like how we actually wanted to um, how would our thought leadership, subject matter experts, right, respond in calls, um, you know, and questions? How do we pull those insights from call recording and transcripts, summarize that strategy and feed it right to the AI? Um, but even more so, where do you host it? How do you connect it, right? We now have our digital workers have a brain. Um, and where this kind of this all has been birthed from, right? Because Assemble actually hired a chief digital labor officer, um, which is the first time we've ever heard this role. And we realized that, you know, we actually, just as much as humans need a workforce strategy and a chief people officer, right? We needed someone who was thinking about how are we going to orchestrate these digital workers at scale and memorialize this knowledge and information for the business. Um, so our chief digital labor operator shifted, he is a human. Um, and he, you know, thinks about the architecture, right, and the security and the deployment of that and and where scale and foundations can be, you know, leveraged. Because a lot of knowledge that marketing has around um voice, tone, guidelines, style breast practices, resources is relevant for a lot of individuals' work, not just sales, not just marketing, right? So you don't want to have to repeat all these steps all the time and be updating them, as I mentioned, you know, in in different places. Um, so I would say I credit a lot of our um success to being able to, you know, kind of operationalize this to Shiv. Um, and today he's helped us launch, I think we're at 93 digital workers across 10 business functions. And that's driving five million um in operational savings of folks we didn't have to go hire in just four months. So it's pretty, uh, it's pretty crazy.

Kevin Kerner: 18:27

What's that chief uh for people that don't have a chief digital labor officer, which not many people do at this point, they probably have IT. Yep. What is that? Where does that person come from? What do they look like?

Lauren Esposito: 18:36

Great question. I I mean, he is such a unicorn, someone that I, you know, haven't um ever seen before. And I don't know that every company needs one of these, but Shiv, I mean, first he ran his own, he's a Salesforce MVP, right? So incredibly knowledgeable. Um, a lot of our technology, right, as a Salesforce partner, we're built in that. It's not exclusive where we focus, but he's an innovator. So he's passionate. He's constantly learning and playing with all the new technology. And he's a previous CEO. So he actually, you know, what I think IT and CIOs can lack exactly, business acumen, right? So the the flow of work, the importance of, you know, how things get done, how teams come together, what each department needs and the nuances. He has enough understanding in the business acumen for that to meet us as stakeholders where we're at. Um, and I think the pivot here is, you know, in organizations that probably aren't going to hire a chief digital labor officer. I mean, that's why you can have partners like us, but it is about coming together with your IT team and not just saying, yeah, you know, here's my business requirements, go launch me an agent and then be frustrated that it's not performing the way you want it to. You as the business stakeholder have to take accountability, right, for that agent's performance as a as you would an employee. And if you don't, IT is probably never gonna, you know what I mean? Know what you know. The the institutional knowledge of where why you think the way you think, where you're you know, pulling information, you know, what your best practices are, um, just lives with you, right, and your team and your department over IT.

Kevin Kerner: 20:14

The other thing that you said that was really interesting is that your sales or your CRO, your revenue officer has to review the work. That I mean, so you've gotten the whole organization to help this new employee, which is the digital worker, which I don't think I think such an interesting concept because most people are thinking building agents. I'm gonna build this agent at my desk. It's gonna do things for me. It might do things for my organization, but I'm not thinking of it like whole holistically, like this and like an employee, let's say. New employee would have a mentor, they'd have training, you would see how they're doing, you'd see where they're weak, you'd help them with it. It's just really a cool approach. I love it. How did the um how did the how is the SDR performing? Like when you look at a human and then you look at your Teddy, how are they how do you compare the the performance?

Lauren Esposito: 21:01

Yeah, um, the same, right? So, you know, uh the difference being so Teddy today operates at the capacity of five SDRs, um, which is which is pretty incredible. Now, of course, there are um compliance and governance standards that are, you know, you you don't want to just be emailing every contact and spamming, right? So there are some limitations to Teddy's capacity, but he is he is operating at scale. And um what we saw was okay, how right high of a quality of a lead is he bringing in and helping us right meet and drive those bookings. Um, our human SDR Mitch actually has now gone on in just nine months and become an AE. And that's because Teddy is working over a thousand leads a week, and the quality he's driving has allowed Mitch to now focus on the human relationship instead of spending all of his time right in analyzing if it's the right fit, you know, trying to dig up personalization. What am I gonna say in this email? It's like Teddy's like, nope, this this lead is ready for you. And Mitch is closing them in record time, right? And and elevating his understanding now of the business, you know, his sales strategy and process. So um we're kind of seeing in tandem that, you know, Teddy's getting smarter and better and quality is going up. And we keep thinking about what other information, right, can we connect into him to um increase that personalization and just monitoring um, you know, do we need another SDR? You know, where where does that look like? Um, but then I think being that that oversight also says his performance. Sometimes humans want to talk to a human. And how do we make sure that there's an option for that, right? That that the human's not cut out of the loop. And so um, because there's that weekly review, Mitch is also able to go in and maybe pick up, write some um opportunities where Teddy dead it out and and wasn't getting engagement and um trying to read for signals there where maybe humans want, you know, uh a more relational opportunity.

Kevin Kerner: 23:01

Yeah, it's really cool. So the part of the RO ROI story is your human SDR, both making them more effective, but also they may be able to move up into an ARAE faster because they're getting more at bats with the actual live humans. They're not on the they're not just leading messages and stuff.

Lauren Esposito: 23:17

And we've now increased his job satisfaction, right? Yeah, and hopefully retaining top talent, right? Which is also huge.

Kevin Kerner: 23:25

Yeah. Um, you were pretty adamant when we talked before about uh the agents need to live in in not necessarily in the browser tab, but in the places where people actually work. Why is that flow of work so important regarding adoption from your perspective?

Lauren Esposito: 23:43

Yeah, it's kind of back to that swivel chair, right? Um I, you know, if I wanted to figure out um how to engage with Teddy, I would want to be able to engage with it just like I would Mitch. Um and so I would open up my Slack. That's where our entire business operates, right, today. And so I can do that. I can open up Slack and Teddy's there along with a lot of other agents. And I can fire off a message and ask kind of any range of questions. You know, what leads is he working this week? How is he feeling about the quality? It's not even just a dashboard, right, of Teddy's performance. It's it's it's actual integration into the flow of work. Um and that removes barriers for me. I don't have to remember where to go, right, to get information. I don't have to have a different login. Um, and it same thing with the rest of the sales teams, right? So when Teddy books a meeting, it goes to our group channel and someone can right pick up that lead based on the ICP. Um, and it's immediately, you know what I mean, like we're we're engaging directly. And I think that adoption um comes when human behavior doesn't have to right change and and and pivot dramatically. Um, so figuring out again that that's why that this orchestration is so important. We joke that like Shiv is even helping, you know, as a conductor in the orchestra, right? All these components and pieces come together so that you can have harmonization and you want your humans, right, to engage and be faster and feel confident in what they're getting and not be slowed down.

Kevin Kerner: 25:16

Can you um actually DM? Is it like is Teddy like an employee or you can DM? So I can have a DM conversation, Slack chat going on with exactly.

Lauren Esposito: 25:25

And I have like, for example, I we've got Casey the Content Guardian too. And so any employee that wants to write on behalf of the company, you know, can plug their copy into a DM and say, hey, Casey, like I want to publish this exactly. And Casey will score it. This is good, it's bad, change this, this is our language. That stat's not externally approved, but you can do this, suggest, oh, for this audience, maybe tweak it this way. So, and I just keep feeding it. Here's good examples, here's bad, you know, and she's great idea. She just, yeah, keeps iterating.

Kevin Kerner: 25:54

That's a great idea. And most people, I I think we would use like GPTs or gems or something to do that. But Slack is the place where we work or teams or whatever for other customers.

Speaker 1: 26:03

Yep. And it's polling from that GPT. So instead of everyone having GPT licenses, right? We kind of got one, I'm building that knowledge center, right? Again, through all the with Shift's help. And then every employee gets the access of that, you know, uh information without having to log into the GPT or the gem.

Kevin Kerner: 26:23

You kind of mentioned, you kind of alluded to the kind of the content side, the uh the concept of digital twinning, you know, and I think you were trying to do it with content and maybe some of your engineers. How do you how do you actually what type of digital twins do you have now? And how do you actually extract the kind of thumbprint of a subject matter expert and get it into a model so it thinks like a human? Because you can you can do it where it thinks you seems like a robot, but how do you get it to where it's like really human-like?

Lauren Esposito: 26:51

Yeah. Um it's this reverse psychology on your own brain process, right? Which is kind of an interesting, right? I'm going, I'm going through it right now, right? Casey's great. Here's the brand, voice and tone, wonderful, right? But what our engineers are doing, what I'm right kind of going through is saying, like, okay, how can I create a digital worker twin who um can think like me, like who can judge right like me, who who knows what sources to trust and where to get information and why, not just the what decision I would make, but like the reasoning and the why right behind that decision. Um, why did I choose this example or rephrase that subject line, you know what I mean? Or why is this metric important? Um, and so I have to actually figure out how to document that, right? It's the reasoning behind it. Um, but it it it's simple natural language. That's not complex code. That's me saying, right, I trust these sources, right, because they are tier one publications, right, that are proven. And if if if things aren't coming from these sources, you know what I mean? I'm not uh believing right that the data is quality. I write this way for this audience because this audience cares about this, and I know that these are the best practices and so on. And so it is a bit of um an investment to document such level of thinking because this is what's in your brain. So again, we're we're trying to create a digital worker brain. The the benefit to that is once it's there, I don't have to do it again.

Speaker 2: 28:29

Right.

Lauren Esposito: 28:29

So I'm I'm building that institutional knowledge, and now I can just add to it. Um, and then now I can deploy this digital worker. I mean, it's a team of two. Every question that comes in with like, can you help me with this, or what does marketing think about that? You know, or hey, can we, you know, this is a project and a new request, like, how's my brief, right? I can have my digital twin review those things, provide suggestions, right? Augment and just use me as a checkpoint, or I can tell it, if you don't know, it's okay, right? Come and come and check in with me first and don't, you know, just just go off rogue. Um, and the benefit for businesses in that, you know, is institutional knowledge just used to walk out the door, right? When when you lost your employees. And um, now that's your competitive edge, right? And so um I think there's a balance of like, you know, we want to build these brains and and these digital twins. Um, and they're never gonna be perfect. They're never gonna be an exact replica of me. I'm just trying to get enough of a foundation so that my unique value, which is my strategic thinking, my creative right approach, um, my just experience in general of knowing, you know, how I want to approach things, that's where I can go focus. Let me go solve a complex problem. Let me go think about, you know, this new opportunity and not be bogged down in the reviews or the approvals or the briefs or, you know, just the general stuff. That's super important. Um, but how can I get my digital twin to offload some of that too?

Kevin Kerner: 30:01

It's like urgent but important urgent and important trying to get those two things right. How much time do you have to put into a new digital twin before you get it working? Because it seems like some people might say, I just don't want to put all this time into this thing. But then there's the payoff on the back end. And then how much what's the payoff on the back end in terms of time savings? Could you tell someone, look, if you just spend this much time, just spend it. I promise you this is gonna happen on the back end.

Lauren Esposito: 30:26

Yeah. Um, I think that like anything, MVP approach first, right? Like I just right, I just need what's the task, maybe, right? Or the specific job that I really want to offload for me that was reviewing everyone's content, you know, and giving feedback. Okay, great. So how do I give it the information right to do that? Now it wasn't just reviewing if it was right or wrong. I actually wanted it to improve the quality, right? Make sure that people were writing with audience in mind and commenting on tension and reference. So now that was another layer. So I did that later, right? And and so it's an evolution based on the time you have. Um, I do think that, you know, I personally, Casey, the more people that can that worked with her, you know, or the more people that work with Teddy, the more insights come of like, you know, you know, Teddy's not responding exactly correctly here. Casey kind of flagged this. I think it's right. Okay, cool. So there's there is about, I would say, a good 60 or 90-day onboarding period that I'm feeling where you can feel confident in the accuracy, right, of what's coming out, just as people are adopting and using. Um, the time saver that on me, man, I'm probably already saving 20% of my time, if you imagine, right? All of the content that people are are writing and putting out there. I actually had someone just ask me recently, how many digital workers can one human manage? And I thought, well, that's an insightful question, right? Um, and I right now I'm kind of feeling like in this early stage, it is taking the same amount of time as it would with a human. Now, I think that that's gonna decrease because I'm not dealing with personality and emotions and right. So I I don't yeah, right. I don't have to spend, but but up front, I am focused on skill, right, quality and context. So um I do envision that, you know, just me with a team of two and all the things that I'm doing, it's this constant trade-off. Do I put the time into building the digital worker? Yeah. Do I put the time in just getting stuff out there and moving fast? I'm slowly migrating into like build the worker, right? And and and iterate. Um, so I do think that, you know, I I bet it's unlimited the the value back we get, you know. You spend 90 days, I'm already saving 20%. And that is like scratching the surface, right, of where we're at.

Kevin Kerner: 32:48

I think they say span of control, you know, but for good managers, like six to eight people for span. Um I bet you could do more with that with agents, with digital workers. Once you got them working correctly, because they're gonna be more consistent and you're not gonna have the you know, any number of HR issues out out of out one day, you know, issues with relationships and all those type of things. Not saying that the you not say that to completely replace humans, of course, but it does come with a you might be able to get a bigger span of control just because of those things. Uh Right.

Lauren Esposito: 33:22

And and I'm with you on the replace human side.

Kevin Kerner: 33:25

Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Esposito: 33:27

It's it's I don't it's our human, we want human connection, right? That it that like that is very important to us as beings. Um, it might not be as important to capitalism, but I think we're gonna find the balance, right, in those things. And uh, you know, technology has always created churn, right, for a workforce, right? And growth and and and it's not unusual to see downsizing and layoffs and that. But I do think small and medium-sized businesses are gonna see the opportunity that says you're actually gonna be able to hire more humans to do more strategic work in more meaningful ways because you've right saved these operations. It's not that you don't need sales reps or that you don't need marketers or or engineers or you do, right? But um, it's just in the capacity of which we're gonna show up in that that workforce that that's gonna be.

Kevin Kerner: 34:24

For sure. Um, I don't know if you said it, but um, what type of agents do you have running now? Give me a few examples. You have the SDR, you've got a content agent. What other agents are you have deployed?

Lauren Esposito: 34:36

I love it. Um, our engineers, right? Almost all of them have digital twin agents, right, that are up and running. I love our people polyops agents. Um, we have uh an agent who helps with our recruiting, right? Workflow and onboarding and hiring. When we were going through this growth this last year with our technology and our recruiter agent, we actually were able to hire a hundred people in a hundred days, which is just wild because that agent was helping with right finding candidates, raising the top one, scheduling, summarizing, you know, feedback reviews, helping propose, you know, packages, you know, putting out offers. But then as an employee, because I went through that, then I got hired. My first touch on my day one was actually from PolypeopleOps. I signed right into Slack and bam, you know, here is your onboarding, here's, you know, set up your directly.

Kevin Kerner: 35:32

Plus your mindset, your mindset going into the company was wow, this place is systems driven and you know, automation driven. And so you you had that as the brand for the company, a new employee coming in. It just, it's like you would be able to find really good employees that understand what your vi what your mission is as a company. Exactly. So you foresee that some of those uh well there maybe the question is what's your wish of things that you can do that you're not doing now uh with these agents, like different types of roles. Do you see them taking on more responsibility or actually transacting more than they are now? What do you think? What do you think?

Lauren Esposito: 36:08

I mean, the I think the opportunity is limitless. Like every time I talk with Shiv, he blows my mind with he's like, Do you need it? We'll build it. And I'm like, okay, wow. Like, you know, I haven't, we haven't hit a roadblock yet. Of who says that that's not possible. Um, so that's a fun space to be in. Yeah. And I for sure, right? For me, I'm I I just keep every day thinking about like, where am I spending my time? And what is that the right way for me in my, you know, I mean, role to is that what the company should be paying me for? Is that the best use? Some of it I just need as I'm building a foundation. Um, I do think that, you know, I mean, you're probably using it for podcast talk tracks and follow-ups and even right. So it is this great tool of like summarizing insights and recordings and things of that nature where I uh struggle is, you know, it's not my first place. I think if you just pop in like write me X, um, you get a lot of the AI thumbprints, right, all over it and the formatting the way it write. And so I think um the the digital twinning aspect as I as I give it more of my knowledge that I am starting to see um it's writing is is more of my voice or the brand voice and tone. Um and I and I'm getting to that output faster. And now I want it to do the whole workflow. I want you to let's write write me the book, the ebook, the blog post, design me right, the infographic, um, run it through my SEO and AEO right strategy and optimizations, put it on the landing page, launch it, make sure the technical right infrastructure is there to be crawled, and now help me propose, right, what I'm gonna do from a paid side to uh in all of that. Um, so I could really see it becoming a campaign manager, right? Almost in that orchestration, where again, certain humans are are overseeing, yeah, we agree with that. Okay, that's right. Know that targeting, you know, and and training the different componentry that's making up that digital workers process.

Kevin Kerner: 38:11

I I I agree. I mean, it's really kind of what I see right now is I can use it for content, I can use it to transact a bit. But when I try to get, like I'll use the podcast, for example, I use it for a lot of prep stuff. Of course, the the Riverside tool allows me to edit the thing real easy. I put it into Wondershare, which is another platform that has AI in it. But when it comes to like transacting in other channels, I really want it to write the YouTube uh title and description and um actually go through the the process of posting it or have maybe show it to me and then actually posting it or going into LinkedIn and doing the LinkedIn post and showing me. I haven't gotten that yet, like in those platforms. So I I I wish I think it will be able to go farther, but it's the transaction piece where I think it's just missing a bit. You just it's I don't trust it enough.

Lauren Esposito: 39:03

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kevin Kerner: 39:04

If you see the same thing.

Lauren Esposito: 39:06

Absolutely. I mean, I think that that's the misconception, like, oh, I'm gonna prompt it and it's going to perform. And and it's not, and now everyone's like, well, AA, you know, the bubble popped, didn't work, right? Not not happening. And in the in in that capacity, right, it's true. So I do think that, you know, we're underestimating the initial lift um to drive the quality, right, that we want. And you don't know what that lift is until you actually sit down and try to, like I said, go to that like psychological reverse engineering process. And then you have to decide, well, now structurally, where do I put that information? You know, how do I not lose track of it? How do I make it accessible? And and so it's a it's a constant like back and forth. And i i I think that um Those that are people managers and have had that experience, have you go through that learning, right? Of how to like build a team and create clarity and roles and process. And so that has been something that when I've seen, oh, individuals who maybe haven't been people leaders yet, right? Haven't had to think about, you know, the way to orchestrate some of that. Um, and I think that that's an evolution, right? We are all now managing the the digital world. So we all need these like management skills, yeah. Um, which is different um than maybe what you would have thought in the past, you know?

Kevin Kerner: 40:37

It's very smart. I mean, I even what I just said about um trying to get the podcast produced and then launched, that job description for that person, if it was just create the content, would be different if than if it was just create the whole pipeline. So I was thinking through like as you were saying that, I was like, I wonder what type of person I would hire to do what I just said to do. And then once that got in my head, I'd be, oh, well, if I was gonna build an agent to do that or technology to to do that, I would think about the that job description first, and then I would build the stuff. So it's real, that's a really good way to frame it. Um if you are a well, go ahead. You're gonna say something like that.

Lauren Esposito: 41:16

You're good.

Kevin Kerner: 41:17

Um if you were a um, because I know a lot of CMOs or marketing leaders listening to this are like, wow, this sounds great. Uh if you were to tell them where to start from from like what they hear here, where would you and they don't have all the, they don't have the digital uh they don't have a digital worker, they don't have a partner to help help them actually implement this stuff, where would you say they should start?

Lauren Esposito: 41:42

Yeah, um I if if wherever we if you have access and if you don't have access, just kind of get into the tools and play with them. Um I think just physically experiencing, you know, how Gemini versus Perplexity versus Claude and what have you, and then getting into, I mean, gamma is a presentation tool, and you've got Canva, right? For for create it's just understanding um the different capabilities. Um actually, my my pro tip right now, too, is there's a uh new platform I was just introduced called that you for free called Prompt Cowboy. And you that's great, right? It's so great. And so this was like, oh, I don't now that I can want so Prompt Cowboy allows you to go in and you say what you want, and then it asks you all these questions and helps you right output a much more strategic prompt that's gonna get you the output you want. So that that sped me up to now I can take the same prompt, throw them into the different right platforms and see what I like. Once you start to say, okay, I like the way that this one, you know, is performing, I create a custom version for yourself, right? Figure out what that task or that job to be done is and and make one and then just start feeding right all of your content into it or asking to do a research for you or asking for it to what whatever that task is, because um you'll you'll quickly see, right, how you can go in and give it feedback and coaching to correct it or increase its knowledge. Um, and that that to me was the unlock of like really understanding, oh, I can tell it to do this, right? I can um tell it not to do this, I can tell it that this is good and this is bad, and to to you know, create containers, um, I can tell it not to use the broad internet and only to use the information right that I that I gave it to to pull that strategy. So it's really a start by starting. Because once you, if you don't understand the capability of the tool and the intricacies of like what prompts and information you give it have in that relationship, it's much harder to now abstract right the orchestration of what you may or may not need. And you know, not to be too salesy here, I do think that there's a lot of value of figuring out as a business where are you already invested, right? Where what is your CRM? What tools and capabilities are there? Not getting lost in all these features and functionality conversations of like really focus about where your business is and and what tools are available to you in that ecosystem first, because now your data's there, you know, that's where action's gonna happen. And then you can explore, well, did I need something different, you know, or is it is this the right answer? Um, but I think a lot of people are getting distracted by so many options instead of actually focusing right where where they already are working and investing in there.

Kevin Kerner: 44:33

I get the question all the time. It's like, what, Kevin, what what do I what should I be using? And the first thing I say is what are you, what do you have? Because there's so much AI being built into the core tools now. Just use those and then also be using, you'll be out there testing other stuff, but the quickest way to make AI happen is use the stuff you have. Or I what I love what you said, integrate it with what you have, like a Slack. It's just a no-brainer. I'm gonna do that in my business. I can't wait to hear how it goes for you. I can't I cannot wait to uh have our team listen to this one because it's it's such a great idea. Okay, so um this has been fantastic, and I could talk to you for another hour, but uh I don't want to keep you, but I so I'm gonna uh uh go through a portion of this called AI roulette. It's just some a question that I'll have a gem in Gemini. I just transitioned all this to um to Gemini from perplexity not to be uh talking down to the city. So it's it's pretty good. Uh perplexity is good, but can you see my screen?

Lauren Esposito: 45:34

Yes, I can.

Kevin Kerner: 45:35

Cool. So I've loaded in, I have this little gem here. I put some custom instructions. This has never been tested alive before. This is a brand new one, so it's I don't know how it's gonna work. I did a couple tests this morning, but um so I just basically want it to give us a question. I just put your company name in and your LinkedIn profile, and I'm gonna hit send here. Let's see what it gives us. It does pretty quick. It goes pretty quick. I love this um in Gemini the how you can see it think. Right? It's pretty, it's and all the tools do this now, but it's pretty cool. When I did it earlier this morning, it thought you were you worked at Foursquare. I was like, what where'd that come from? What is that? What is happening? So I had to retrain.

Lauren Esposito: 46:19

Maybe one day I checked in on Foursquare, right? And I'm still crawling around on the internet.

Kevin Kerner: 46:24

Yeah, back in the whatever late early 2000s.

Lauren Esposito: 46:28

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Kerner: 46:30

Okay. You built your reputation with Salesforce Ohana, or you were part of, I guess, Ohana. Uh, you were in that culture, an ecosystem divided by an intense focus on human connection. Yet Assemble's core mission is to normalize a 40% digital workforce. At what point does the ruthless efficiency you're now selling inevitably cannibalize the community culture you made successful? Interesting. I don't tell me what you think of that.

Lauren Esposito: 46:56

Yeah, I I I mean, you tell me I'm the way I read this is um sort of that human versus agent, right, tension and that Ohana community, right? And and that we as human beings and quite frankly consumers, um, it's important, right, to have the right partners, you know, the right tools, but also the right customers and prospects and relationships and place. Um, and I think that that's you know probably where the Salesforce Ohana right style comes from versus now the cannibalization that's a community headed.

Kevin Kerner: 47:32

It was kind of hard. Ruthless efficiency? I mean, come on, Gemini. It's not we didn't there's nothing ruthless in anything you're saying. So it's great. I appreciate that. You know, no, it's not ruthless efficiency. In fact, it's empowering, you know, right? It's like you're empowering the human side of things. So I'm sorry, not to answer it for you.

Lauren Esposito: 47:49

Yeah, I well, and I don't know where we're headed, right? The tools today definitely aren't replacing us, but you know, I'm I'm defin you know, there's enough speculation about you know what happens when third certain things are unlocked, and and I can empathize with that. So I try just as a being, I'm I'm a pretty good, you know, um optimist and and realist balance. And I think that finding the excitement, I mean, I've got my father, you know what I mean, using AI tools, right? And just and he's having fun with it, you know, making illustrative photos of the family. So um it's here, you know, totally abandoning it. Like it's it's gonna stay, it's gonna evolve. And we have now the opportunity to say, well, how can it enhance and elevate us, right, to um do the things that are meaningful and important, you know, um, and the challenge of that. So I agree. I don't think it's um, I hope that it ends up being cannibalization in a way that we wanted it, you know, to offload and support us in those ways, but it actually is unlocking um us with the potential. And you just sometimes you're so focused on doing what, you know, is on your plate and trying to manage to get to the next task. And it's so hard to feel like you accomplished and you're checking things off the list that you can't actually think about what could this unlock. You know, it's not until you you do it, you know, and invest in it that you feel like, oh, I have breathing room now, and and where can I apply that? Um, and so I don't know if we have the answers, you know.

Kevin Kerner: 49:20

Yeah, I think it's actually gonna make us more human because if we can take a take all the other stuff out of the way, like you're like you and your company are doing, where you're helping people not do the stuff that that they didn't want to do, maybe to begin with, and make their current human life better, you know, thinking different ways, more creative, faster access to things. I just think it's gonna, it's actually gonna, it's gonna be a good future, not there's this. I I read in some one of the newsletters I get this, and I'll post it in the net show notes here. There's there's this um research organization that has two futures of AI, and it only goes out to like 2030, I think. I don't know if you know about this, but you can read either one of them, and one is a completely dystopic, horrible end to everything, and the other is uh is pretty good, it's pretty good for all of us. And everything they predicted up to this point, up to 2025, has been pretty accurate, like the exact timing of things. They've been doing this for, I guess, the last three or four years. But I read it and I was like, I chose the the right column, not the left column, because the left column is really not good. It's robotic uh future and you know, not yeah. So I I think it's a I think it's gonna be a good future, not a bad future.

Lauren Esposito: 50:36

Go ahead. I'm I'm on that bandwagon for sure.

Kevin Kerner: 50:40

So it's been great talking to you, Lauren. I I really uh think people will get a lot from this. Uh, how can people reach you if they want to talk more and learn more about Assemble too?

Lauren Esposito: 50:49

Yeah, absolutely. You can always reach out to me on my LinkedIn, Lauren Esposito, and you'll see me under Assemble. Um, and hit us up on our website. We've got a great contact us page, and you can easily schedule time with one of our experts or just let me know in the DMs. And you know, we'd be happy to kind of share what's going on. Our website has our playbook and some of the success stories and use cases that I shared today. So plenty of uh free information out there for anyone who's interested.

Kevin Kerner: 51:16

Thank you so much. People are gonna get a lot from this. I appreciate it, Lauren.

Speaker 1: 51:20

Thank you, Kevin. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate it.

Kevin Kerner: 51:22

Okay, take care. Bye.

unknown: 51:23

Bye.

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