Agent-Powered Growth Fireside Chat with David Brier & Stu Sjouwerman

Julia Nimchinski:
We’ll share. Thank you so much, and we are transitioning to our next panel. Welcome to the show, David Breyer, Chief Gravity Defire. Yes.
David Brier:
Achieve Gravity to fire. Thank you so much.
Julia Nimchinski:
Huge honor, and co-founder and CEO of Reading Minds.
David Brier:
Stu Showerman.
Julia Nimchinski:
How have you been? How’s agent poverty corrupt?
Stu Sjouwerman:
Exciting times!
Julia Nimchinski:
Tell us more. Just one question from me, and and then, David, this stage is yours.
David Brier:
Okay.
Julia Nimchinski:
What’s your top prediction for GDM and AI for the next year? Both of you.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Thought prediction is… Agents will be… Taking the stage. Which, in our particular case, means that… CMOs and growth leaders. are going to… They’ve truly wrapped their wits around how to create… And instead of a pipeline, they will create a loop. A self-reinforcing loop. Which ultimately means way more productivity, Faster execution. And, and that’s what we’re going to talk about!
Julia Nimchinski:
So excited to begin again. David. How about yourself?
David Brier:
Well, since I come from the branding side, what I see is gonna be happening is that there’s… There’s gonna be, I think, a big shaking out. I think there’s a lot of attraction and a lot of what’s happening with regard to the potentials of AI. But there’s also a lot of… I would say, in my observation, looking at the messaging and what’s happening in the marketing, there’s a lot of echo chamber, stuff going on. And as a result. there’s gonna be a real fleshing out of the tools that help dial in, and that’s one of the things that Stu and I have been working on with Stu’s new company, you know, really moving things from Artificial intelligence to actually emotional intelligence, and making that advance so that Thing, so that the actual… message points and the way that stuff comes to life that we all digest, doesn’t feel like… like we’ve walked into a Baskin-Robbins where it’s, you know, 31 flavors, you know, of, like, the same basic thing, right? So, I think that that’s where there’s the great opportunity. So, it’s more… so I come from a qualitative standpoint, I think it’s gonna be a big shaking out. I think there’s gonna be a lot of debris on the side, and there’s gonna be a few key winners that will… that will really be remarkable tools at the end of the day.
Julia Nimchinski:
And can’t wait to get into it. And huge honor to host you here. Stu, thank you so much for being generous and offering to send your book to everyone who’s watching. We will make sure to send the link in Slack as This Fireside chat is going on, and we already sent it on an email, so make sure to just click the link and, register. Yeah. David, the stage is yours.
David Brier:
All right, beautiful, beautiful. So, here’s, here’s basically a little introduction. So, with regard to… Stu and I, we’ve worked together for over 3 decades, and we’ve built some remarkable, remarkable brands, and… Stu is one of my favorite people to work with. Smart, intelligent, and just… a real smart, smart, good leader. Now, at the top of the brands we’ve actually built together. You know, the top of that is the $4.6 billion empire know before. A cybersecurity technology company that became a unicorn within 8 years of its launch. It’s really amazing. Now, basically what’s happening is, is Stu has dug really deep and embraced the AI world with the new company, ReadingMinds.ai. And as part of this. you know, Stu has brought his hard-won expertise and knowledge to write what I consider, and I think what we both consider, to be the missing playbook. Agent-powered growth. And, as Julia had just mentioned, that’s gonna be available. Anybody that has a U.S.-based address. Fill it out, and we will make sure that you get an actual copy, that you’ll be on that first wave. It’s gonna be an… it’s an incredible book, and Stu can elaborate why that is, but what it basically does is… We discover that today’s growth leaders truly need an antidote to AI overwhelm. There’s not a day… we all wake up tomorrow morning, the morning after, the morning after, and there’s a gazillion ways that AI has advanced and shifted, and this and that and the other, and this is going to eliminate the overwhelm that we experience as a result of that. Now, in the next 28 minutes or so. We’re gonna cover 7 key areas, and then we’re gonna tackle these. And here’s what they are, and then we’re gonna dive into each, just so you know what you’re gonna look forward to. What separates an AI user from an agentic architect in 2026? Next is, what is the first mindset shift you must make to govern an agentic ecosystem instead of micromanaging tasks? Thirdly, What early signals tell you an organization is ready, or absolutely not ready, for autonomous agents? Next, how do CMOs reclaim control of their message when LLMs are the ones retelling their story across all channels? Next, what does healthy agentic optimization look like compared to AI-induced trash? And then the last two points are, where should organizations pour their human creativity, and where should they let agents take over entirely? I have some definite opinions about that. And lastly, how does a company build a brand that agents amplify instead of accidentally homogenize. So, with that being said. And… this is where I want to lean into Stu’s great insight. And… and intellect. First question. What separates an AI user from an agentic architect in 2026?
Stu Sjouwerman:
I would start with… you go… there’s basically 3 major, Themes, and you will find me come back to 3 major themes throughout this. You go from tools to teammates. You go from pipeline to a loop, which essentially means a computational workflow. And then you… Go to strategic governance. And let me go into those in just a little more detail. Sure. AI users automate tasks. But agentic architects design ecosystems that basically think and act. the… S-R-A… That actually comes from robotics, which stands for Sense, Reason, and Act. Is now applicable in marketing. Where agent teams or agent swarms Analyze both narrative and emotion in real time. Far beyond human capacity. And that goes into… computational workflows, Marketing stops being a sequence of tasks. And becomes a continuous revenue engine. Where agents are sensing, reasoning, and acting without waiting for prompts. They’ve been trained. And then the human… Gets to… basically goes… up stack and does strategic governance. So, the architects, CMOs, growth leaders govern goals, the ethics, the creative intent. They define the purpose. While the swarm kind of executes and optimizes continuously underneath.
David Brier:
Good. I think that that was… that was a well, well… laid-out blueprint of how to structure this. So then. That leads us perfectly into the second point, which is, what is the first mindset shift Companies must make to govern an agentic ecosystem instead of micromanaging tasks.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Right. The very first one is you are now governing outcomes, not activities. You, you, traditionally, the last, mmm, 17 years, We’ve been dealing with deterministic IT. It’s code. It does this, or it does that. We’re now dealing with non-deterministic LLMs. So, you govern outcomes. You move from managing people and prompts to governing goals and feedback loops. You said the why. You don’t script the how. Which means, basically, step two is you have creative and computational convergence. So, human creative direction is where this all begins. It fuses with genetic optimization, you can differentiate sharper And your brand becomes more a living, learning organism, but definitely within guardrails that you set. Which… Basically gives you stewardship of your narrative If you live in a world of 24-7 autonomous execution. Leadership means that you curate the ongoing story. And you… you… but you maintain the narrative, and you maintain emotional coherence Through the iterations that those agents are running 24-7.
David Brier:
Yeah. Now, the interesting thing, though, we’ve all seen this, we’ve all… we’ve seen… Some of us have probably seen this done well. Probably many more of us have seen this done horribly, where the experience has not been great. So, what are… what are the early signals that tell us that an organization is ready, or absolutely not ready at all, for autonomous agents, because I mean… any technology, any tool is only as great as the one running it, right? And so there’s gotta be, obviously, early signals that say, yes, we are ripe, or ugh, we’re not.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Yes. Well, let’s start with not ready. If you have 120 marketing tools sitting in your RevOps stack. You have tons of manual workflows, you have lots of sequential funnels, you’re not ready. If you are still… Focused on tools. And if your organization is still focused on automation, you’re also not ready. When you are ready, you’re focusing on a unified data foundation. You have more… you’re more comfortable with You know, giving hands off to agents you’re able to show trust in human-AI collaboration. You are willing to work on a marketing loop, which is also called a computational pipeline, which self-optimized And if you are able to focus on outcomes and learning loops. You are ready for an agentic. Enterprise.

David Brier:
So, then… then the next thing… Is where the rubber meets the road. Which is… so, how would CMOs and growth leaders, how would they reclaim control of their message when LLMs are the ones retelling their story across channels? I mean, it’s like… because I deal with this all the time, with any of the brands that I’m building, it’s like, you know, there’s some useful data, but there’s got to be the ability to interpret that. Utilize that, and have the judgment. It’s because the greatest companies in the world are the ones that say no to a lot more than what they say yes to, and that’s a skill set, having that judgment. So. How do CMOs reclaim control of their message when LLMs are the ones retelling their story across channels?
Stu Sjouwerman:
Super important. I started out with, you will hear me say 3 things. Here are, again, 3 things.
David Brier:
First…
Stu Sjouwerman:
You need a brand architecture for an LLM era. You need transparent guardrails. And you need executive narrative control. So, what are those three things? So… you now have LLMs. But they need to be grounded. A CMO must design, architect a data-driven brand system that teaches the model what on-brand means before the first human touch. These models need to be trained. They need to be grounded, which means transparent guardrails. Every agent needs to have verified brand sources ethics filters. Maybe libraries with the correct tone, Which is… in some degree, RAG, which is Retrieval Augmented Generation. And you want sufficient guardrails to simply prevent brand hallucinations, or, in some cases, emotional manipulation. Now, that depends on the agents you’re using. And then, of course, you have the executive narrative control. The leader owns the meta story. They define the emotional and the ethical boundaries, and then you allow those autonomous agents to tell that story at machine speed.
David Brier:
No, yeah. And I’ll just interject this, because we’re talking quite a bit about brand. And with what we’ve done, And just with any, any of the, any companies that I work with, the… Foundational component of branding is The art of differentiation. that four-word definition. And so, when it comes to that, And we’re looking at branding. it’s really finding… it’s everything that Stu just went over. In the context of how do you put all these mechanisms and structures in place To serve the brand. Without diluting the differentiation factor, and having it not become this homogenized Buck. That, basically, people just… I mean, and you’ve probably seen this as well. At this point, people are starting to spot, oh, that’s AI, it doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t feel like it has a pulse, doesn’t feel like it has a soul, and they’re kind of spotting that, so it’s, how does one utilize these tools without Some of these elements that become red flags and actually Achieve the opposite of what we want to actually achieve.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Absolutely. There’s a term for this. I have recently learned that this is called gray content. Yes. That is Dr. Mehta Vook’s term, which is output divorced from emotion, narrative, or originality.
David Brier:
Yeah.
Stu Sjouwerman:
So, what healthy agentic optimization looked like Is that you need context-aware agents That actually can improve pipeline velocity Through reasoning, through… personalization, not repetition. So you have creative plus Computational performance, but it’s merging into something that communicates To the customer. So… Most of us by now recognize great content. And obviously, you want to train your agents to not go there, which you can. And then, if you have that creativity and optimization together in one feedback loop, Then your differentiation can compound. If they are siloed, you’re just scaling mediocrity, and… Lord knows there’s already too much of that.
David Brier:
What I find amusing is the fact that it’s called gray content, when in actual fact, it lacked the involvement of any gray matter. So… so, with that being said, that brings us perfectly to the fifth question, which is, what does healthy, agentic optimization look like compared to, quote-unquote, air quotes, for those that are just listening, AI-induced trash? So the question is. What does healthy, agentic optimization look like compared to AI-induced trash?
Stu Sjouwerman:
They need to be grounded. And there’s a couple of different ways that you can do the grounding. Prompt engineering is dead. You’re now context engineering. What we are doing at the moment, is, is, in real life. We are training agents in… actually, multiple agents in Salesforce. Agent Force. And there are a number of ways where you Can train these agents to be doing exactly what you want them to do, with still some call it… Tone, or flavor, or personality, so that it’s not robotic. And… The grounding is… is something you need to think about. And let’s keep it there, There’s a lot more, but I’m referring to the book in this particular case, and you can register for your free copy. That’s what I’m covering in the book. And how you do that is… there’s rules, it’s not hard, but it is a different world. You’re living in a different world. You are now managing a flock of agents.
David Brier:
Yeah. Yeah, and it’s… and it’s also… I’ll interject this point, which is that… you know, it’s… like, I wrote a… I wrote a particular… post just earlier, earlier today, and I’m actually talking about this, which is, you need to own a problem. This is the brand side of this whole equation, is that companies need to own a problem that they solve. They don’t need to own a prompt. Right? I mean, it’s like, that’s… that’s the shift. It’s like. you get the right thing, and, you know, there are certain levers to this machine, and you’re looking at the… you’re looking at it very holistically, which has been, and I will say this from my personal experience, this is Stu’s superpower. He is extremely, extremely… Very, very adept at… at really taking a holistic machine, a company, to serve that… to serve moving it forward in the way that he’s talking about, so it evolves it way down the line with, and there’s always going to be a learning curve. There’s always going to be a learning curve, and it’s gonna get refined and refined and refined, but not losing sight of the end game. So… Alright, then with that… Here’s the next question I have for you, Mr. Showerman. Where’s…
Stu Sjouwerman:
Yes, Mr. Breyer.
David Brier:
Where should organizations pour their human creativity, or where should they let agents take over entirely? And I’m just gonna say this, I am passionate about this, but I certainly want you to chime in. There is…
Stu Sjouwerman:
We are. We’re very much on the same page, clearly.
David Brier:
Yeah.
Stu Sjouwerman:
The humans define meaning, emotion, and ethics. They create this narrative core that agents cannot invent. Humans decide what the brand feels like. Agents execute everything else. They are able to identify a particular micro-audience sentiment or flavor. They can adapt language, they can optimize creative delivery 24-7, But, ultimately, what the humans need to create is a unified flow Where pipeline creation becomes a computational storytelling system, where humans write the plot, but agents kind of direct the scene, if you will. And then… Once that story and that problem is owned by humans, The agents do the execution.
David Brier:
Yep. Yep. And, you know, and it is… It, to me, it’s also critically important AI in this context doesn’t become… A crutch, it becomes a tool. to forward. To forward human initiative, human ingenuity, human strategy. You know, and… and as long as we have that clear delineation, then… It all gets pretty exciting. Which then brings me to this point, which is…
Stu Sjouwerman:
Yeah.

David Brier:
So, how does a company build a brand that agents amplify instead of accidentally homogenize? And we’ve touched… I think the last, probably, 10 minutes, we’ve kind of been touching upon this. So, how does a company build a brand that agents amplify.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Sure.
David Brier:
Rather than… instead of accidentally homogenized.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Yup. Well, you want a dynamic brand system. you want… To have extremely clearly identified what your brand is, What you stand for. what hooks you have identified our… Exactly hitting the problem of your customer. Once you have that system. clearly on paper for yourself, now you can create interactive, multilingual, teachable agents, so they can replicate the empathy, not just the syntax. You want, ideally, emotion as architecture, agents can now run Narrative and emotional research 24-7, Giving the brand feedback on what the customer actually feels instead of what they say. And… Then you can differentiate. And get your brand Well above the noise. Because when you have your creative leadership. And your autonomous optimization operating together. That’s when your brand character scales faster than basically anybody else. Nobody can imitate that. And… You can turn those agents into amplifiers of uniqueness. And that, obviously, is exactly where Davis grandfather skills come in. Because he uniquely is able to identify that.
David Brier:
I like it. AOU. Amplifiers of uniqueness. I love it. Make sure to unleash your AOUs, your amplifiers of uniqueness.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Yes!
David Brier:
I love that. I love that. So… so that’s… that… that is great. I mean, I think that gives a very, very good overview and a… and a snapshot of what people will be able to learn From the new book. and also… and it just… it outlines it well, because it’s not chasing… one of the things that I’ve seen is there’s… everyone’s chasing, oh, the next… the next great thing, and there’s these, you know, people are trying to find a niche, or they’re trying to find this, or they’re trying to find that, or they’re trying to bring a whole suite of tools together and all this kind of stuff, but… this… Forms the foundational structure and a context that shifts how it all can be used in a way that’s responsible. That’s scalable, and that’s memorable, and not a whole bunch of AI-induced slop that’s the color of beige, and just… bleh.
Stu Sjouwerman:
Yeah, just register for the book, and we’ll get you from prompt to pipeline in 90 days.
David Brier:
There you go. From prompt to pipeline in 90 days. So there you go.
Julia Nimchinski:
Love it. Thank you so much, David and Stu. So many good insights, excited for the book, and excited to amplify it. And and yeah, David, how can we support you?
David Brier:
Well, for sure, you should follow… I’m really, really carving that line between the line between branding, which is the differentiation aspect, and AI, and how those things can actually… the synergy can be done in the right way, that results in the amplifiers of uniqueness. And so, it’s certainly go to risingaboveTheNoise.com, risingaboveTheNoise.com, and certainly, every week, I share a new article that really is helping navigate this landscape, and you can certainly reach out to me on LinkedIn. But go there, and you will find there’s a lot of great material, and a lot of case-by-case stuff happening in real time. So that would be a great.
Julia Nimchinski:
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you, Steph.