Ep. 138 - High Tech Requires High Touch: Bridging the Human AI Gap with Dr. Noah St. John - Part 2

General Description

AI is transforming every aspect of sales, but technology alone isn’t enough to drive better performance. In Part 2 of this conversation, Dr. Noah St. John returns to Selling Intelligence to explore why organizations investing heavily in AI, automation, and coaching still struggle to achieve meaningful results.

Building on the Human AI Gap introduced in Part 1, Noah explains why trust has become the most valuable currency in business. He discusses the growing trust recession created by AI-generated content, the importance of authentic expertise over polished marketing, and why buyers must look beyond promises to evaluate real outcomes and proven results.

The conversation also shifts to revenue leadership, where Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson explore how CROs and CEOs can help teams embrace AI without losing the human judgment, experience, and tribal knowledge that drive long-term success. Through practical examples, including Ford Motor Company’s AI missteps, Noah demonstrates why AI should amplify human capability instead of replacing it.

What You’ll Learn

• Why AI is creating a trust recession across sales, coaching, and advisory businesses
• How to evaluate expertise by focusing on client outcomes instead of marketing claims
• What “high tech requires high touch” means for modern sales organizations
• Why the Human AI Gap continues to limit AI adoption inside companies
• How revenue leaders can coach both the inner game and the outer game
• Why investment creates commitment and accelerates behavior change
• The hidden cost of replacing institutional knowledge with AI
• Why tribal knowledge remains one of the biggest competitive advantages in business
• How AI should augment human expertise instead of replacing experienced professionals
• Practical leadership lessons for navigating AI transformation under board and quota pressure

Key Topics

• The trust recession
• Authenticity versus AI-generated credibility
• Client outcomes as proof of expertise
• High tech and high touch leadership
• The Human AI Gap
• The inner game versus the outer game
• Revenue leadership under AI pressure
• Organizational AI adoption
• Ford Motor Company AI case study
• Tribal knowledge and institutional experience
• Human judgment versus automation
• Coaching sales teams through change
• AI implementation strategy
• Leadership during digital transformation
• Investment and accountability
• Behavioral change
• AI-assisted business growth
• Dale Carnegie and timeless leadership principles

Guest

Dr. Noah St. John is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, performance coach, and founder of SuccessClinic.com. Over nearly 30 years, he has helped entrepreneurs, executives, and revenue leaders overcome the hidden mental barriers that limit performance. As the creator of the Human AI Gap framework, Noah combines neuroscience, psychology, and business strategy to help organizations successfully bridge the gap between human behavior and rapidly evolving AI technology.

Resources Mentioned

• SuccessClinic.com
• The Human AI Gap
• The Caveman Calculator
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Alex Hormozi
• Dale Carnegie
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Ford Motor Company
• AGS Two Millimeter Club

#SellingIntelligence #AIforSales #SalesLeadership #HumanAIGap #RevenueLeadership

Mark Petruzzi (00:38)

Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (00:42)

And I'm KK Anderson. This is part two with Dr. Noah St. John. Be sure to go back and listen to part one. But if you want to start here, let us bring you up to speed. Noah has spent close to 30 years studying why capable people underperform. He has written 27 books and coined the term human AI gap, the distance between 200,000 year old brains, the caveman, as he calls it.

And the fastest technology ever built, which of course is AI. In part one, he drew the line between mindset, which the industry has worn out, and what he calls the inner game, the unconscious programming that decides whether skill and technology ever get used.

Mark Petruzzi (01:24)

In part two, we get to the operator level. What Noah's highest growth clients do differently and what the inner game looks like under real quota and board pressure. Noah, welcome back.

Dr. Noah St. John (01:35)

Thank you, great to be here.

Mark Petruzzi (01:36)

So let's go to to our first topic of our second episode with Noah, and that is high tech requires high touch. The trust recession. You guys all know out there we talk about that trust recession often, and we really want to get some perspective from Noah on this as well. So, Noah, you also have talked about a trust recession in this space.

Where there's too many people with strong marketing skills and weak t teaching ability, or c or strong sales skills and weak coaching ability, how does that dynamic show up for a B2B buyer who is evaluating a coaching or advisory investment right now?

Dr. Noah St. John (02:17)

Well, I mean, this is a huge topic, and I do talk about it a lot, as you mentioned. so very simply, it's exactly what you were saying is that there are a lot of great marketers, great self promoters, great salesmen, who suck at teaching. They suck at coaching, they just there's no there

Mark Petruzzi (02:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (02:32)

there, as I like to say. There's no there there. and so the problem is that is the very problem because they're so good at self promotion and marketing.

Just lots and lots of people bought their stuff. They gave them money and they found out there's nothing here. Hello? What the heck is going on here? They promised the sun, moon, and the stars, and they gave me a pile of dirt, So it's it's really, really bad. I have my own spreadsheet. I call it the spreadsheet of death, you know, because I paid all these clowns tons of money. I mean, much more money than I'd like to admit, only to find out they can't teach every way out of a paper bag.

So it's it's really bad. Now, obviously, I'm not alone in that. I spent a lot more than most people, probably, But the point is that, unfortunately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have experienced the same thing that I have, which is hello, you didn't tell me anything. So it's incredibly annoying and it's and it's and it's frustrating and it's painful and it's costly. And so I think one of the things that we have to do as leaders, if you are evaluating a B2B or a B2C.

program, you know, and when I say life changing, I know that sounds like a cliche again, but that is what it really is because that has always been my focus is

Taking care of the three pounds of gray matter that really is just ignored for the most part. And so one of the things that I think people need to do is look at the case studies. Look at the case studies, the real people who have gone through program including Gary Vaynerchuk.

Jenny McCarthy, Stephen Covey, Jack Canfield, John Assarath, Neil Donald Walsh. I mean, you know, the luminaries go on and on. And then, of course, just the regular, everyday CEO, CMO, CRO, entrepreneur I have always said, I've always said this, that it's much more important that people have gotten results rather than.

I say how much money I've made. Because when you look at those gurus out there, that's what they're always talking about. I made all this money. Look at my yacht. Look at my boat. Look at my helicopter. Now, nothing wrong with that. We all want nice things, right? We all want yachts and boats and helicopters. Nothing wrong with that. But my question always is: well, have you helped anyone else? And usually the answer to that question is, what? so

That's the problem. And so I and maybe I went overboard the other way. Maybe I've gone too far the other way. I don't know. But I'd rather brag about my clients than me. You'll notice I talk way more about my clients than myself for that precise reason. Because we live in a trust recession, I'm always like, Well, don't believe what I say. And I'll just have to say this because everybody knows it's there right now. You also have to make sure that those are actual human beings, on a video. Like

because of course we all know that AI can create AI user generated content now. And it's pretty easy to spot still today at the time of this recording. I mean, I can tell in one second, and I think most people can too. I mean, but you just gotta be careful, because hell, it's the greatest thing in the world. Wait a minute, is that a human or not a human? Hmm. We just might want to check that.

KK Anderson (05:21)

Yeah. And you know, you could even ask, like, hey, are you human or are you not? Even when you're chatting with a website, is this an AI agent or is this a human that's named Linda? Right.

Dr. Noah St. John (05:30)

Right. Exactly.

Well, I was talking about just the videos, you know, the actual videos that I mean we s

KK Anderson (05:35)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (05:35)

we see AI UGC all over the place now. And again, as I said, it's it's relatively easy to spot now, but is it always gonna be easy to spot? Probably not. I mean, it's just gonna keep getting better and better. So you you you know, you better get in now before it gets worse.

KK Anderson (05:48)

So w when you think about what high touch actually looks like in practice for you at this point in your business, like what talk to me a little bit about how, thanks to AI, and creating the trust recession and then you're having to we have to go back now and accommodate for that. Like what does that look like for you and your business and for your clients? What's caused what's what's been successful, I suppose.

Dr. Noah St. John (06:08)

Well, I mean, it

we it doesn't have to be complicated. At least in my case, you know, what we do is a is a very simple intake form and we see where you are. We get a baseline of where you are over the last twelve months. By the way, when you go to

KK Anderson (06:20)

Right. But to get but

to even get to that point where they're interested. Like that marketing

Dr. Noah St. John (06:24)

So I talked about the caveman

but there's also a caveman calculator So that's one of the things that I love is the caveman calculator. And you can actually see how much the caveman is costing you right now. So that's a really important point of if you are not if you haven't learned how to tame the caveman in your brain, you're gonna be paying the caveman. You're gonna be paying, as I call it, the caveman tax.

Because it's absolutely one million percent is going to be holding you back. like Adam, that story I mentioned earlier. it takes longer to close a client typically now than it ever did for that precise reason. So, you know, as a business owner, you you want to make sure that you're putting out correct content, both in terms of video and

And articles, blog posts, books, et cetera. Right.

So that's the point, is that is why we do operate with high tech high touch. And that's one of the ways that we do it is making sure that everybody is accounted for at the level they're at at the time.

KK Anderson (07:17)

Okay. That's super interesting. and Noah, we're gonna jump to the next topic and we're gonna touch back on the inner game a little bit, but specifically as it re relates to a revenue operator. And I know you've worked with, CEOs and and leaders of all different, you know, types of businesses.

And so and kind of thinking about that experience, like when you s when you strip away the tactics and the tools, what is the inner game pattern that separates those, client that has the exponential six hundred percent growth from one that's kind of stalls at thirty percent?

Dr. Noah St. John (07:52)

Well, as I mentioned earlier, you know, when when people listen to me, they get enormous growth. If they don't, then they won't.

KK Anderson (07:58)

Well they listen to you, which means they do the work.

Dr. Noah St. John (08:01)

exactly, And see, well, nobody's when you pay me money, you listen. That's the beautiful

KK Anderson (08:03)

Why would they not listen? Like what are the reasons that you come across why they don't? Right.

Dr. Noah St. John (08:08)

The people who invest, right? When they invest, they're invested, and that means boom, I want my ROI.

I want my return on investment. Boom, I'm to take action. One of the things that I've known for is helping people to take action where they had been stalled previously. Right. I'll give you another example. I mean, I was talking with another client of mine, and he is has a very big biodiesel fuel.

You know, a nine-figure business. And he is not a very loquacious person, very soft spoken, very hard close to the vest and so forth. and one of the times that we were talking in one of our earlier sessions, he said to me, Noah, I have

A Bachelor of Science from a major university. I'm not going to say the name of the university. Now, I almost fell off my chair when he said that, because this is not a man known for being, loquacious and being, big with his words. And I was like, wow, no kidding. Okay. And, now he has gone on to actually sell that company and make a very nice exit.

My point of that is that when you are when you invest, you're invested. So for those of you listening and thinking that whether it's yourself or your team, so if you are a CRO who is pulling your hair out because you're saying, But Noah, I've given my team everything. I've given them all the tools, all the training, all of the things that they should be, they should just be exploding. I will always ask you, but have you helped them with their inner game?

Or is that all outer game stuff? That's why I started this conversation with that Venn diagram I talked about. I mean, inner game, outer game. Ninety nine percent of people are spending all their time, money, and effort on outer game. It's not wrong, you to do it. But have you spent any time on the inner game?

KK Anderson (09:36)

And so are you te are you teaching the leaders so you're teaching

the leaders then how to coach their teams on the inter game or are you coaching the teams directly?

Dr. Noah St. John (09:45)

Well, both. It depends on what they want. Like I talked about, it was it's all bespoke and customized and personalized. So that goes back to the licensing that I was talking about.

There's no more guesswork.

Mark Petruzzi (09:54)

So Noah revenue leaders are under enormous pressure right now, a special

Dr. Noah St. John (09:58)

Yes, yes.

Mark Petruzzi (09:59)

amount of pressure that we really haven't seen throughout at least my career. They're dealing with this AI transition process, their their overall team capacity, quota, quota, quota, and then the boards have gotten a lot more direct and vocal, going after sales leaders as well. So

What does the inner game look like when the stakes are as high as they are and the timelines are as short as they are?

Dr. Noah St. John (10:24)

Well, it's an incredibly stressful situation. You're absolutely right. And this is something that I help people with every single day. But the point is that AI has really changed the perspective of a lot of people in this way. They believe, mostly incorrectly, that if I just toss AI at this, then I'll just it'll solve all my problems. I'll make all this money. I'll give you an example of how this didn't work. and by the way, this was not a company that I was involved with.

But Ford Motor Company, we all well know Ford Motor Company, they recently made big headlines because they fired all their what's called the gray beards, right? All the guys that had been on the front lines, you know, the engineers had been there for 30, 40 years, right? So Ford got all excited about AI and said, we don't need these gray beards, right? It's those annoying humans I was talking about earlier. we're paying them all this money. We don't need them. Hey, all right, we'll let them go and we'll let the AI run the whole schlumiel.

Didn't not work out so well. So what did they have? They had billions of dollars. They save they saved millions, yes, and maybe tens of millions, but they had billions of dollars in recalls because the AI didn't understand all the things the gray beards knew. They and the graybeards just know this without even thinking, right? So it's not like a gray beard, and you understand the term that I'm using there, right? That someone who's just been on the front lines doing this. They they do it without thinking. They're literally

KK Anderson (11:36)

Tribal knowledge. Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (11:38)

unconscious. So they don't even know.

They just do things because they know how to do things. But if they even were to sit down and say, try start start to or try to train an AI in what they know, they couldn't even do it anyway. Because they might be able to tell them, say, 80%, but there's 20% that they don't even know they know. Does that make sense? They're unconsciously competent. And so the point is Ford had to, it was very embarrassing, egg on the face. We got to hire all the graybeards back. And oops, sorry about all those recalls. Do you see what I mean? So that's an example of how it.

It's it's AI is not a magic solution. It's not a magic pill. But it does, as you mentioned earlier, it accelerates what's already there. Okay. So what we wanna do is we wanna bridge that human AI gap. We want humans and AI working together. And I think that is the future.

Mark Petruzzi (12:22)

Excellent.

KK Anderson (12:22)

Love it.

Mark Petruzzi (12:23)

really good stuff, Noah.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:25)

I was very excited to get money you know on the internet. Remember internet, yay, internet from literally countries I never even heard of. And it was it was

KK Anderson (12:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:33)

very exciting.

KK Anderson (12:33)

Okay. Favorite CRO or CEO that you follow?

Dr. Noah St. John (12:37)

gosh. my favorite CEO, I guess, you know, today is a name that is a somewhat controversial, but Alex Hormozy. Some people know him, some people don't. But he's I think he's he's pretty good. He he does a nice job. And of course Gary Vee, my good friend Gary Vee is always good for a great story and great motivation.

KK Anderson (12:55)

Yes. I enjoy Alex's content as well and Gary's content.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:59)

that is surveys. Surveys are useless. Sorry. but and the reason is very simple because human beings will tell you what you they think you want to hear, and we'll do something totally different. So pre-market or go-to-market surveys are essentially useless. The best thing to do is just put up an ad, put up a quick sales page, run some traffic to it, see if anybody buys it.

Boom, we're done.

KK Anderson (13:20)

Okay, Noah, my favorite question advice you would give your twenty one year old self.

Dr. Noah St. John (13:25)

Don't buy from those friggin' idiots. Get away from that spreadsheet of death. Do your homework, son. Go past the headlines, go past the marketing speak. Don't don't believe them until you do your homework. That's what I wish I would have known.

Mark Petruzzi (13:37)

Nice. Okay.

KK Anderson (13:37)

You've been burned. You've been burned.

Mark Petruzzi (13:39)

Our

Dr. Noah St. John (13:39)

yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (13:40)

our last one is your favorite sales or marketing book?

Dr. Noah St. John (13:43)

you know what? It always goes back to the classics for me. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I just don't see how you can go wrong with that one.

Mark Petruzzi (13:50)

I love it. Noah, this has been a great conversation and exactly the kind of cave con conversation we have built this show for. So thank you for the clarity you bring to this. Thank you for the inner game and your your knowledge transfer there, the human AI gap, and the pac practical path through it. Where should people go to to find your work?

Dr. Noah St. John (14:14)

Go to noahn.com. That's my name, noasaintjohn.com. Easy to remember.

Mark Petruzzi (14:18)

Ha ha ha.

KK Anderson (14:19)

I love it.

You've said that a time or two, huh? Okay.

Dr. Noah St. John (14:21)

Indeed.

KK Anderson (14:22)

We will put all of that in the show notes. And if what Noah said about the inner game is sitting with you, again, that's the work we do inside the two millimeter club, which is our small group data-driven coaching program for frontline sales managers. They learn to identify and coach the small shifts in seller behavior that add up to exponential movement and pipeline.

cohorts launch monthly and we'd love to have your sales managers join us. You can apply at www.get-ags.com forward slash two mm clubs.

Mark Petruzzi (14:58)

And if this conversation was useful, please send it to the leader or team member that you know who you think needs it most. I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (15:07)

And I'm KK Anderson and this is Selling Intelligence. We will see you next time.

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