The Ledger is Open - The Signature Isn't (Love You Mum).

Ah, yet another big week in AI. This is The AI Exhale, hosted by Vibe CFO with Jez and Cam. Five minutes, one thing that matters, or maybe two. We ignore the rest so you can too.

Jez: Welcome to this week's episode of the AI Exhale. We're going to look at a bit of behavioural stuff happening, as we always like to, around adoption. We've talked in recent episodes about Australia being left behind a little bit, whether that's an overuse of Copilot, and that lagging behind the other, better frontier models in our opinion, or other reasons. Today, Cam, I'd just love you to speak your truths and opinions, and maybe nudge some people, whether we're going to be educational today or not.

It's always good to know where you're at for the listener, and know that you're not behind, or if you're ahead, keep going, that sort of thing. But there were two reports, basically two weeks apart. We had the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia. Basically they've reached out to the government saying that 14%, only 14% of small business owners have integrated AI into their operations.

And again, we're not here to say AI or die. But there is something here as a nation to stay up to par with what other countries are doing. So there's that report, and they're reaching out to the government for some help here. The other report, I guess the opposite to that, is Xero, at the recent Xerocon in Denver, released a stat that 20% of the marketplace and now custom connection builds, so people building their own using AI, are from small business owners and accountants. They're saying it's one in five, basically, of the apps, not the apps that you sell, but apps in the ecosystem. So that same audience is building it themselves. They've also passed a million API calls.

Cam: It's like the replacement to Zapier, right? This is like Zapier and what's the other one?

Jez: n8n? Open source.

Cam: n8n, yeah. I reckon that one is absolutely, the use case, I saw a recent showing that it's just fallen off a map, because it's a no-code automation tool and actually, people just go straight to Claude now.

Jez: The head of the Small Business Council, Capuccio, says that the barrier, so this is back where there's a bit of a laggard behaviour, the barrier is time poverty. So small business owners are time poor, not knowing where to start, rather than unwillingness, and he separates marketing use from process use. So they're having a dabble, but basically only 14% are putting it into process. There's 43% using it, but obviously not landing it anywhere valuable.

I mean, we know business owners are time poor. Any encouragement?

Cam: Yeah, but I mean, what percentage do you think of small business across Australia are tech illiterate? I don't know. I was literally just coming from a meeting with a baby boomer and I opened the app and he goes, what's my password? I'm like, I don't know what your password is. And he gets his book out, his handwritten book of his passwords. I've got a few problems with that to start with. And then he goes, it doesn't work.

And he's trying to type it. He keeps getting it wrong. I'm just like, we literally spent 15 minutes and we weren't even logged in yet. And he goes, yeah, and we're so time poor. Of course you're time poor. You can't even log in.

Jez: Just talking of the generational stuff, there is something interesting we spoke about this week, not on the podcast, just internally, around who is the main user of AI, who is going from being non-techie to being techie. It does seem to be the boomers and Gen X. Even though there's the AI natives, there's a bit of a move there to being, I guess, lo-fi and not being so AI obsessed, which is quite fun to watch. So you're getting those pretty funny behaviours by boomers, but they're giving it a go.

Cam: Do you reckon this is part of the problem? If you look back over the past 20 years, in my experience, we've always got that balance wrong. We need the old wise heads who are tech illiterate, right? But they know so much. They have the relationships with great businesses, and they should be mentoring the young. And then the young are so tech-enabled and ready to action things, but also full of sh*t and have no clients that they can actually implement anything for. And really this is just another step up with AI as well.

It's just bridging that gap between making sure that you know how to use AI, but you also need to have business acumen and experience and relationships that are trusted. I feel like it's just the same story with AI. We still need to bridge that gap where the old help the young and the young help the old. And we haven't quite got that model right yet.

Jez: I mean, culturally overall, we should be more like Japan and Mexico. They care for their elders. I mean, you and I do. You and I love our parents.

Cam: Absolutely. Love you, mum.

Jez: Love you, mum. Anyway, I just want a rogue opinion from you to finish. Where does the accountant sit?

You're right that it's the small business owner and the accountant, from Xero, in terms of that 20% creating their own connections, as we said. If the small business owner is cutting through there, where's the accountant? I've always talked about the accountant's opportunities, the digital advisor of the future, the gatekeeper of trust, but also access to software that's sustainable, serving the small business. But if there's creation happening by the small business owner, as we seem to see a little bit being spoken to here by Xero, is there something the accountant should do better? Is there an opportunity? What are your thoughts?

Cam: Well, just be the trust layer. The opportunity is the trust layer, is to say, great, keep playing. Do you trust it? Are you going to trust it ongoing? We're here to sign. We can help you sign off on that. We can use AI as well, by the way. Isn't that the piece that's missing? I keep pushing on this because the red wine AI user, they look and they think, AI creates something, and they go, how good am I?

I'm like, but you didn't do anything. You just prompted it. You didn't do anything. And so we've just got to park our egos when AI is creating it for us. That means that everyone can do this. Everyone can create. The baseline has changed. So when the small business comes to the accountant and says, I am so awesome, that's where you've got to have reasonable conversations. Yeah, we can do that too, because we've also got Claude and ChatGPT and Grok and whatever you're using. So cool the jets.

And that's your five-ish minutes back. Vibe CFO, Australian founded. An AI CFO for small and medium businesses, out of the box, governed and secure. vibecfo.ai. Now you know.