[Emerging Tech] Human Stories Triumph Over AI With Dan Lievens
- Quik! News Team
- 15 minutes ago
- 27 min read
Dan Lievens is the Founder and CEO of Share One, a platform that helps businesses capture authentic customer stories through scalable video testimonials. He is a serial entrepreneur who has founded more than a dozen companies across technology, marketing, and other industries. With decades of experience, Dan focuses on helping businesses build trust, increase conversions, and grow through real customer experiences rather than traditional marketing. He is also known for his work in trust-based or testimonial-driven marketing, emphasizing human connection in an AI-driven world.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[02:31] Dan Lievens discusses Share One’s focus on customer video testimonials
[04:17] Customer reactions and surprising willingness to record testimonials
[06:30] How Share One delivers low-cost, scalable video testimonials using tech
[08:57] Human-to-human interviews versus failed AI avatar experiments
[11:18] Dan shares the impact of AI on marketing and the need for differentiation
[16:43] Structuring content and FAQs for LLM-driven search visibility
[20:39] Building a full SaaS platform in 30 days using AI and reducing costs
[28:12] Future of AI, human value, and redefining business relevance
In this episode…
Businesses are drowning in AI-generated content, making it harder than ever to stand out and build trust with customers. Traditional marketing methods are losing effectiveness as audiences grow skeptical of polished messaging and fake reviews. In a world where anyone can create content at scale, how can companies differentiate themselves and prove real value?
Dan Lievens, a marketing innovator focused on authentic storytelling and customer experience, explains that the answer lies in capturing genuine human experiences. He emphasizes using video testimonials to showcase real customer transformations, prioritizing human-to-human interviews over automation. Dan also highlights structuring content for AI discoverability, such as adding FAQs and clear answers, while focusing on what AI cannot replicate — real stories. Additionally, he shares how strategically leveraging AI tools can streamline operations, reduce costs, and enable rapid innovation without sacrificing authenticity.
In this episode of The Customer Wins podcast, Richard Walker interviews Dan Lievens, Founder and CEO of Share One, about building trust through authentic customer storytelling in an AI-driven world. Dan discusses AI’s impact on marketing, scalable video testimonials, and rapid software development, along with insights on customer loyalty, human connection, and future digital experiences.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Quotable Moments:
“Trust will become the most valuable currency in business through Share One.”
“Video is such a powerful tool to use, and during a pandemic, people were turning on their cameras.”
“I personally believe that AI is not as advanced today because of the limitations of human imagination.”
“Anything AI can do, anybody can do, so what are some things that AI cannot do?”
“At the end of the day, AI cannot generate a true human story.”
Action Steps:
Capture authentic customer video testimonials: Real customer stories build trust in ways polished marketing cannot and provide compelling social proof that improves conversions.
Prioritize human-to-human interactions over automation: Genuine conversations create stronger emotional connections and increase customer loyalty by making people feel heard and valued.
Structure content for AI and search visibility: Organizing content with clear answers and FAQs helps AI systems surface your business and keeps you discoverable as search evolves.
Focus on what AI cannot replicate: Differentiating through human experiences and storytelling prevents commoditization and helps your brand stand out in a crowded market.
Leverage AI to streamline operations, not replace value: Using AI to reduce costs and improve efficiency frees up time for higher-impact work while preserving trust-building human elements.
Sponsor for this episode...
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Episode Transcript:
Intro: 00:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and, in turn, grow their business.
Richard Walker: 00:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Kara Hartl of the Rural Health Hub, Michael Jeanfreau of Mariner Wealth Advisors and Paul Osterberg of Security Basecamp. Today is a special episode of my series on new and emerging solutions, and today's guest is Dan Lievens, founder of Share One. Today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms.
Instead, get Quik!. Using Quik!, you'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. All right. Honestly, Dan's one of my friends, so I'm really excited to have him on the show.
Dan Lievens is the founder of Share One, a platform focused on capturing authentic customer stories through video testimonials. He believes that in a world increasingly shaped by AI and automated content, trust will become the most valuable currency in business through Share One. Dan helps companies systematically capture the voices of their happiest customers and turn those real experiences into powerful marketing assets. Dan, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Dan Lievens: 01:44
Rich. Thank you so much. And I thank you for reading that bio too. It kind of reminds me and anchors into what we truly are here to do. And especially in the age of AI, I think human connection, human stories.
And if I could wave a magic wand, I would really rebrand your podcast to humans always win.
Richard Walker: 02:07
Yeah. There we go. You're so right. Okay. Hey, your audience, if you haven't heard my podcast before, I talk with humans, business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges of growing their own company.
And to Dan's point, maybe even make better human connections. So, Dan, let's understand your business a lot better. How does your company help people?
Dan Lievens: 02:31
So we just give you a little bit of background on me. I ran incubators, accelerators, and in the startup world for different government agencies as well, helping people go from 0 to 10. Right? And what I noticed during helping startups is that the failure was their inability to communicate their value proposition. And that was the number one reason why people failed.
So I got into marketing. I especially liked the video. Video is such a powerful tool to use, and during a pandemic, I. What I realized was, wow, people were turning on their cameras and at the end of the day, what is a business truly need to be able to convince somebody or to tell their story and one of their clients on videos, generally speaking about the transformation that they received, I think is, is more powerful than any other piece of marketing. And that's why, and that's how Share One began.
Share One. The concept behind it is every single human being could share one experience that they had that changed their lives. And we flooded our channels with that type of videos and content. We may be living in a slightly more elevated world.
Richard Walker: 03:40
It's true. Oh my gosh, it's true. Because, I mean, don't we look at the videos of customer reviews more than we read the words they write? Don't we look at, you know, people talking about things more than just listening to it. And look, to be honest, we've been a customer of Share One.
And when we did the initial outreach to people, ask, hey, would you do a testimonial video? I was literally blown away by what people said. I had no anticipation of how good the quality would be in how they came across and the things that they were saying to us. Am I alone in seeing that kind of result, Dan? Or is everybody kind of blown away with this?
Dan Lievens: 04:17
I think companies that are doing good in the world, and if they have a good product or a good service, they usually get pretty surprised at how willing their clients are to do these interviews. And it's kind of like a case in point for us. It's like, hey, if you've got Share One videos on your website, it means you must be doing something great, right? And so yes, our clients are constantly surprised because I think, I think most founders and most businesses that are really so focused on providing a good service aren't the ones that like gloating about themselves, right? They're more focused on delivery.
They're not as focused on marketing and, and getting praises. And so when Sharon comes in as a third party to come in and invite your clients, they're typically like, wow, I never thought that about me. And they will actually change the way that their website communicates to the outside world based on what their existing clients are saying about them. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 05:14
No, that's so true. I look, we have been focused on delivering our NPS score off the charts 84 to 100 consistently for years. Our Csat scores 99 100% all the time. Wow. And we just focus on delivery, delivery, delivery.
And so I was shocked because I sent out the invitation to ten people asking, would you do a testimonial review? We got eight, not eight yeses. Eight. Who did the recording? I was astounded.
I was like, wow, people will talk about us.
Dan Lievens: 05:42
And that proves yeah, that proves that you have a good service. That's above average. We typically see probably about, you know, four out of ten. So you've doubled that, which means you're doing some amazing work. Congratulations.
Richard Walker: 05:55
Well, you guys are doing amazing work. Look, one of the things I want to kind of reveal is that you guys are doing this at a price point that is just unmatched. When we did a testimonial in the past, it cost us thousands and thousands of dollars. Get a camera person in there, do the editing. I even flew out to the location of the client and sat with them in person.
That was a major investment for one video. I'm not asking you to tell your price unless you want to talk about price, but how are you guys able to do things so efficiently to bring the price point down? So this is just a no brainer. Sorry, I sound like I'm selling you.
Dan Lievens: 06:30
So back in the late back in the late 90s, early 2000, I was a database architect and a software engineer. So I have a strong, strong technical background and did some amazing software development, and one of which sold to Bank of New York Mellon. And I decided to not want to be behind a computer monitor all day. So I quit coding, went back to school, got my master's and started a dozen companies. So there is a strong tech background to Share One.
We've trademarked humans for humans. We believe in human stories. We certify every single one of our stories as being real human transformation. However, behind the scenes, there is a slew of technology from global CDN video hosting to being able to take one video interview, automatically get reviews, send it to the editors, and back to QA, and then back to delivery. So the systems behind the scenes are so efficient that we're able to conduct these interviews for less than $200 per delivered video.
And we do everything virtually. So of course, if we were to fly in a team and do all the things and be in person, that's going to be a much bigger expense. But as I mentioned to you that during Covid and how all this became an inspiration, at the end of the day, it's like if you see somebody sitting on our kitchen table and saying, like, my health is transformed because of the doctor so and so, or my business has changed. Sitting at her desk, it's so much more believable than having, you know, two camera angles, beautiful lighting, and like a reporter asking the questions. You almost have to ask who paid who to be where?
Kind of a thing, right? So I believe in the genuineness of being able to capture something like, like you and I are talking, right? So being able to use these virtual platforms allows us to drive the cost. Even, even, even lower.
Richard Walker: 08:19
Well, ironically, lower production quality is more acceptable. It's more authentic. Right? And we've all become so accustomed to Zoom and online video meetings that seeing somebody recorded via Zoom on your platform is just normal. And therefore it's more authentic and, and keeps your costs much, much lower.
Forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but you actually have people interviewing the people who are giving the testimony. So it is a human to human interaction. It's not just a bot, it's not AI. When you invite somebody to be a guest to give a testimonial, they're talking to a real human. Correct.
Dan Lievens: 08:57
So we have a team of reporters across the US that are trained on the specifics of each business, each one of our clients, and each client has a very specific set of questions and outcomes. So our reporters, when we meet their clients already kind of know and they're editing in their heads in terms of what the outcome needs to be. So yes, they are meeting real human beings to have this conversation. And as a matter of fact, last year we filed a provisional patent on creating an AI avatar to not replace the reporters, but as an added functionality 24 over seven. You know, imagine in any language being able to use an avatar to conduct the interviews.
And we threw that out there to test. And unfortunately, no matter how animated the avatar was, it just was unusable. So when you're approaching an avatar and the avatar says, so how were you feeling before? Meeting doctors so and so. Good.
Right. That's what you do with an avatar, right? Meanwhile, if it's a human being, it's like, okay, you're accustomed to having these conversations. And so we kind of put that whole AI avatar on the back burners and are strictly focusing on the human. Human to human interviews.
And at the end of the day, there's something about getting your clients on one of these interviews. They feel heard, they feel like their voice matters. And as a result, these people that we interview actually become more loyal clients to that business because they feel important. Right. And then have that human human connection as well.
So that was an expensive lesson for us.
Richard Walker: 10:37
Well, but look, this is a really good one.
Richard Walker: 10:39
And I didn't even know this about what you were doing. You know, you started this business because you're thinking about how AI is transforming the world and it's creating false trust, fake reviews, fake testimony, etc.. And I've talked to various people who run review companies to mitigate that problem. You're doing it in the human to human connection way. And given your tech background and what you're already saying about AI, let's go deeper on AI.
Like how are you seeing it transform your business in the right ways? I mean, you've already tried things that didn't work. So what is it doing to change your experiences or how you've run your company?
Dan Lievens: 11:18
Yeah. So having a tech background, I've got these, these visions and understanding of the power of, of AI. I personally believe that AI is not as advanced today, not because of the capabilities of AI, but because of the limitation of the way human beings can use their imagination and trust to let go. So, so many things are changing. And when it comes to marketing, let's say we're talking about testimonials, right?
When it comes to marketing, AI can generate 10,000 blogs overnight. You know, my teenager, you know, or a teenager in the basement of their mom. You know, a house can generate 20,000 blogs, put it up. And back in the day when the internet first started, that was huge for SEO. Right now, it doesn't matter. So all this data that can be created via AI, all the different landing pages and all the things that are becoming like an ocean of, of nothingness, right?
LLMs are smart. They recognize, well, anybody can generate that. So it doesn't matter anymore. And so what we're, what we're teaching our clients is, hey, when you become a marketer, you have to start thinking about what is it that I can do that AI cannot do? Because anything AI can do, anybody can do so.
So your competitors, everybody can do that. And maybe not today or tomorrow, but very soon everybody will be doing exactly what you're doing. If you're just leveraging AI to do your marketing for you. So what are some things that AI can do well? Capturing your true human experiences is a differentiator.
So a lot of our clients have dozens and dozens of pages on their website, and each page features one of their clients, their videos, talking about their experience and the transcript below it. And we formulate these case studies in a way that that lens can understand, right? So you and I have talked about this before. It's like LMS are looking for the cheapest, fastest way to get an answer to a question, right? Right.
So any content that you put out there, you have to structure it in a way where LMS can very quickly get to that answer. So for each case study page, there's an FAQ in the bottom right. And these are the FAQs that were designed that hey, maybe somebody somewhere will type into an LLM and ask that question. So once AI sees that, it's like, oh, this is the quickest way for me to get the answer. Boom.
Now you're relevant in LMS because we both know that everybody's customer in the very, very near future, if not already, is AI, LMS. And what I mean by that is you go to the GPT cloud, whatever it is today, say, hey, you know, my stomach isn't feeling well. What are my options? Or, hey, give me some dinner options or whatever that is. LMS is presenting all the choices for you to make.
Therefore, LMS is your customer. So all of your marketing needs to be directed at efficiency for LMS to pick up. Do you agree with that?
Richard Walker: 14:16
I do. I haven't phrased it as LM as being the customer, but last summer when I decided to start figuring out how genetic coding can work, my main problem I wanted to solve with the genetic coding was how do I show up in search results with LMS? So Dan, I'll expose something. I find that there's two distinct ways to do it. The one way is what we've always been doing since time started with businesses.
It's PR, it's marketing, it's being sourced in magazines and other things. Like Reddit is the most popular thing for LM. But the second thing is, how does it read your information that you're putting out there and know what it means? And what we don't do is we don't write our websites as a bunch of questions with answers, but that's what LLMs are. A bunch of questions with answers.
So you're right to say, put an FAQ at the bottom of the transcript of your call or sorry, your, your, your testimonial or whatever it is. Build that into the process. So you see the kind of questions somebody is expected to ask, how do I get the best form solution should be a question on my website that is easy to answer so an LLM can find it. By the way, we're behind on this stuff. There's so much to do.
So yeah, I do agree with that. You need to think about it in that term, but it is interesting to kind of phrase it as LLM is your customer. I don't fully agree with that because you still have people going to your website once the LLM redirects them to it. So you still have to have the presence of mind to say, how does a customer want to interact with me and get the information they need? Can I make a prediction?
Dan Lievens: 15:47
Yes, please.
Richard Walker: 15:48
I predict that websites are going to transform dramatically. Today. You end up at a static website that everybody sees the same way. I think tomorrow you're going to show up at a website and there's some piece of information. Maybe it's your LinkedIn profile, maybe it's something else that tells AI, oh, this is Dan Lievens.
He likes the color red. Contrasted with, you know, orange or something, I don't know. He likes this type of information. He's more technical. Let me redraft the whole website for him.
And your experience will be different than my experience, different than somebody else's experience because it figured this out about us. I think that's going to happen.
Dan Lievens: 16:26
So I'd love to get into this philosophical debate with you. As I've built some other platforms for some different organizations, what I keep hitting up against is privacy and trust.
Richard Walker: 16:42
Yeah.
Dan Lievens: 16:43
To me, if AI knows everything about me, my history, what I like, what I don't like, and I put it out there into the world, then all my experiences will be so customized and so great for me. But then there are people like, oh, I would never put that out there. I would never give my birth date out there. I would never share that. There's this like humans.
Richard Walker: 17:07
Already out there.
Dan Lievens: 17:08
It is already out there. Right. And then what you just said about, hey, if I want to visit, you know, a quick website and it's customized to me, some people would say like, oh, that's freaky. Like, how dare you take my privacy and take my information. How do you feel about that?
Richard Walker: 17:26
It's been happening for 25 years. I mean, look, when did you start marketing? You know, the demographic information has been out there by zip code, by street address, by all sorts of things. It's crazy how much is out there before AI. And really all AI is going to do is tap into that existing knowledge in special ways and then just redraft the website accordingly.
Look, I do think it's kind of scary. Here's actually my biggest fear about this. I like blue and green. The whole world on the internet, it's going to be blue and green. When do I get diversity?
When do I get to see something different? How do I hit a reset button on my for you page so I don't see the same stuff all the time? Well.
Dan Lievens: 18:11
So one prediction that I have too is, I feel like everybody is eventually going to have this new, like real ID or a chat, a chat, their own version of a chatbot, right? So for example, if you and I were planning on doing business together, I would say, here we go talk to this, this, this entity, this chatbot, and you do the same. And the two of them are going to figure everything out. Look at historical, you know, offers or whatever and say, okay, there's a 87% chance that if we did this, this will succeed. And you and I say, yes, let's do it and move forward.
Yeah, right. I think even from a personal level or dating or, or human connections or all these things, there are so many things that are happening that can happen in the world if humans allow it. Yeah. So going back to your original question about human stories, I mean, look at the importance of stories and, and human history, right? That's, that's all of our knowledge, religion, everything was always passed down through stories.
So I do believe that we should not forget that at the end of the day, when AI can generate anything, AI, the one thing AI cannot generate is a true human story. Yeah. And so, I love to keep all of my focus around using technology to advance human connections or using technology to advance human purpose.
Richard Walker: 19:40
Yeah. I love that, Dan. I love that. Okay, I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. I tell me, if you don't want to talk about this, but you gave a presentation a couple of months ago to a group that we're part of that blew my mind because what you had built inside of, I think 30 days rivaled what took me the first five years of my company to build from how I manage customers interactions on the website, their accounts, things like that, to what the customers can do when they log in and manage their own account to what those customers clients can do when they're requested to come and do work with that customer.
To me, it was like this three tier web application system that was so phenomenal because it wasn't just simple. It was doing messaging and AI work and all sorts of cool stuff. You built all that in 30 days. How to tell that story, please, because I think people are going to be blown away with what you have done in such a short amount of time, and they won't see the whole picture. But let's try, if you don't mind.
Dan Lievens: 20:39
Sure, sure. So just at the very top level, Share One. We were using all sorts of platforms, third party platforms from Airtable to zapier.com. Fill out form software I o frame I o. You name it.
Just a ton of tons of platforms and our monthly cost for platforms was sitting at around $6,000 a month. So six grand a month just in just SaaS memberships for auto licenses and everything that we're doing. And in light of what was happening with agent encoding, I'm like, wow, I think the entire world of software development has changed. So my belief is that traditionally, like for me, when I'm back in the 90s and 2000, I was a developer. Developers were driving the BMW, the developers were holding founders hostage by what they can or, or couldn't or didn't want to do.
And there was always this weird relationship of like, well, I've got this vision for this. Oh, no, we can't do it. Because of the restrictions of whatever technical things, right? And, since agent coding has surfaced and looking at the power of it, I'm like, wow, this changes the entire infrastructure, right? So you used to have to have a database engineer, a UX UI, all these people.
Now it's truly like you can take the vision of the founder and you can take the outcome that they see for their clients. Like how do their clients win and redesign that entire structure using AI in a matter of days? And I tell my clients, I'm like, you can develop at this point at the speed of thought, as long as you can imagine it, it can happen. So I jumped into agent coding for Share One and redesigned our entire platform, our old systems. I felt like, hey, the functionality of this system is X.
I really kind of want Y. So I'm trying to pigeonhole myself into it, making exceptions or creating all these other outside automations to try and make everything work. And it became like Frankenstein, like a spaghetti mess, right? But now with agent encodings like, hey, this is what we want to build, and having a technical understanding of database structures and scalability and all that. Within 30 days, we redesigned the entire platform all the way from.
So we're no longer using Google Drive. Google Drive was, was, nothing against Google Drive, but it was a mess. Every single client had their Google Drive. When you have hundreds and hundreds of clients, it becomes unmanageable. So we're using, you know, CDN objects.
We have global replication of videos. We got rid of all the video player platforms and using Cloudflare custom custom streamers, we reinvented recorded Slack in our internal platform so we don't have to pay for Slack. We reinvented frame IO. We have our own way of our clients being able to review the videos, so on and so forth to where today our platform costs at around $600. And those are strictly just token costs of generating things and running things in the background.
So we went from 6000 to about 600 in 30 days and the functionality now is far superior. So when our team wants to implement a new offer or a new new whatever, it is literally at the speed of thought or however fast I can speak, these new integrations, new new functions can appear on a platform.
Richard Walker: 24:10
Man. Okay. So you have now avoided vendor lock in, right? I mean, because this is now your platform that you're running and hosting and managing. Do you have any fear that it's going to break down?
I mean, there's a lot of fear about a genetic code being sloppy, being bloated, not being correct, etc.. Do you have any of those kinds of concerns with what you've done? Or are you because you're skilled, like you may have already thwarted those problems?
Dan Lievens: 24:37
Let me that's a really good question. And I believe that when you are using genetic coding, yes, as an inexperienced developer, you're just asking it to do things right. So for me, having the understanding of databases and scalability. I always say, hey, set this as a primary key. And for the relationship between the company and the person that we're interviewing, make sure that there's a foreign key establishment.
Like I would very typically say, hey, let's just create one column in a database for a Json file, right? Which is fine. But when you start searching through a lot of it, it becomes a little bloated. So I'm like, hey, don't use the Json file. Create another table and here's a relationship and here's what you're going to index on.
So having a little bit of understanding on database structures and then constantly saying, okay, so, so we've designed this. What happens when 100,000 people start using this, right? What happens when you have a million records in this table? Where do you see the bottleneck being? And then I'll give you an answer and say, okay, well, if that's the case, we should do X, Y, z.
Great. Let's do it.
Richard Walker: 25:48
Yeah.
Dan Lievens: 25:48
And, to answer your question about breaking things. I have a whole new respect for support and trouble tickets and issues. Right back in the day, developers used to hate problems, right? But today you just have to reframe it. When a problem comes up, when there's an error, it's an opportunity to make your code better and bulletproof.
And literally when somebody says, hey, I've got this error. I say, take a screenshot of it, right? And I literally take the screenshot and then drop it into my code and hit enter. And it fixes it. And that problem will never happen again.
Richard Walker: 26:28
Right? It's that speed in which it can fix it. That is amazing because the traditional engineering process is I've got to do a spike task. I've got to go figure out what's going on. Then I have to come up with a scope of work.
I have to register for a ticket. I have to put it into a sprint. I have to get a review. Oh my gosh, two weeks, four weeks, six weeks. And now what you're doing is like, here's the problem.
And in 10s 25 minutes. Whatever it took. It's done. I've experienced this too. Dan, it is unreal.
Dan Lievens: 26:55
Let me back up real quick. I do usually have AI come up with a plan of how it intends to fix it, and then I review it to make sure that there are any dependencies or if they're missing anything. So I kind of jump in there and make sure it's, I'm not just, you know, throwing a bunch of errors and expecting you to fix everything. But yeah, this one.
Richard Walker: 27:18
This is one of the problems I'm seeing. There's a couple different challenges I have with the approach that you're talking about. One, the one problem is if anybody sees what you've done, they're going to be like, this is unbelievable. It is so amazing how good it is. So anybody can do this, right?
No, I don't think anybody can do this. I think a technologist can do this really well. I think you have to have some background in technology to understand what's going on. Because, you know, one of the premises I've come up with is that your ability to succeed with AI is limited to your ability to ask questions. you asking the question of, hey, is this database secure?
Do we put row level security on this yet? That's a question that technologists understand. A security person understands, but the average person does not even know to ask it. So I have this kind of challenge of how well can people replicate what you do, how skilled do they have to be? And so you've done it.
So how skilled do you think they really need to be?
Dan Lievens: 28:12
That's a great question. And I believe that there is going to be a new sector of human beings that redefines genetic coding. And my son is 17 and he shadows me. He loves what we're doing with AI. And I forced him to go to Harvard, which has a bunch of free courses.
I forced him to do Python. It's like, dad, why are you? Why am I doing this? Nobody ever is going to have to code. No, go.
Go learn it. So you understand the root structures and Unix and all the basics because it's still there. And I forced him to watch an 11 hour video again through Harvard that talks about database structures. I was like, it's true. You never have to go in and write a single select statement, but you have to understand the fundamental structures of all that.
So I'm using him as a guinea pig of building a human being that can do that, can do all this. But to be honest with you, Rich, I think the biggest value that I feel like I provide when I, when I help other businesses isn't necessarily in creating the thing. It's helping them rethink about how you can be AI proof. And when I say AI proof, it's like, is your business still going to be relevant in 1 to 2 years? And I've outcoded to a high level.
I've outcoded, you know, any active campaigns, like all these things, all these SaaS platforms that do nothing but give you technology access, I think are all going to be dead. So, a SaaS company can survive if there is a specific piece of intellectual property that other people don't have, or if you're bringing something like a community or you're bringing something else to it. And, and that's, that's where this clarity kind of comes in. It's like when you come into a business and they're asking for something, you really have to think back and say, okay, AI has unlimited memory, right? AI can remember everything.
AI has access to everything. So if AI has all this information, then what, what value are we bringing to the table? And that's the thought that people have to think about, right? And I think that's more important because anybody can go there and start building something. And imagine if everybody went there and built something, then you again, you can have this ocean of stuff that nobody's going to use, right?
Richard Walker: 30:35
Yeah.
Dan Lievens: 30:36
But yeah, to go back to your original question, as of right now, the way AI works, yes, it does take somebody with technical skills, but look at what anthropology is doing, right? Competing with lovable and all the things that are happening today. And I always say, hey, what's not possible today is going to be possible tomorrow, right? Oh, yeah. So I'm curious to see where we end up in the near future.
Richard Walker: 30:58
Me too. I, and I agree with you. Through this podcast, I was asking people early on in 23 and 24, what's the differentiator with you, with AI? And what I've come to learn is we all have the same eyes. We can all use the cloud.
We can always use any LLM out there. So what is the difference? The difference is the data you uniquely own. I have unique data about form building that nobody in the world has. That gives us the ability to take ourselves to the next level.
But I think you're actually asking a smarter question. What is the unique value you bring? It's not just the data. The data is a part of that value. So what is that value uniquely yours?
I want to make a slightly different point because a mutual friend of ours also said, SaaS is dead and nobody wants another dashboard. What they want to do is pay for the outcome. And I believe that because my product is priced around the outcome. But I also think about bottled water. Why do we still have bottled water?
Why are we paying so much for water that just gets put into a bottle? And I think a lot of SaaS companies are going to become bottled water in this sense. Like if you're willing to go build your own filtering system, I have eight times filtered water in my house. I have so many water bottles I can fill and take with me on the road. In fact, if I go to an Airbnb that's a couple hours away, I bring jugs of water of my own with me.
I'm so crazy about this because I don't want to buy bottled water, why should I? But when you need it, it's there. So those who are not going to do what you're doing can still buy those products off the shelf and use them that way. But it's giving us this really amazing opportunity to grow and just augment how we think about what we do. Dan I, we should have like a four hour long Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
I'm out of time. So I gotta wrap this up quickly. I have another really big question I'd love to ask at the end of my show before I get to that, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Dan Lievens: 32:49
Absolutely. So I'm on LinkedIn. Maybe we can drop that in the bio. I'm also very active on Instagram and happy to share my email as well. I appreciate it.
Richard Walker: 32:57
That. And your website is share.one?
Dan Lievens: 32:59
Yep. Shared. Oh.
Richard Walker: 33:01
Okay. Cool. So my favorite question to ask is, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Dan Lievens: 33:11
Great. Great question. And just this year alone, I met an individual that has completely changed the way that I think and that I approach the world. His name is Heath Heath Dietrich, and he's been such a blessing, just as a friend to help me see things differently. So that would definitely be the person for sure.
Thank you for asking that.
Richard Walker: 33:38
I have to pry because I'm really curious. I mean, did he just shift your perception about things? How did this come about? Sorry if it's too much to ask.
Dan Lievens: 33:47
So we, we, we, we met on a personal level. And he was very intrigued about our company and just the deep conversations that we've had. And he poked around in our company and identified a few things. And I was just completely blown away at the way that he was thinking about, about business and, and outcomes and possibilities. So yeah, we can go another hour on that.
Richard Walker: 34:12
But I know, I know, but I love it. I love it when I meet people who show me something I hadn't seen before. They, they, they help me look in a direction I hadn't looked before. So I, that's one of the reasons I love asking this question is to hear how have you been impacted by others? All right.
Dan Lievens: 34:27
I certainly would not have been able to do that because it would have just come back. So no, I agree with you. You're doing a good job.
Richard Walker: 34:33
Dan. You're brilliant. You're absolutely right. Everything you said is perfect. Yes.
Yeah. All right. I want to give a big thank you to Dan Lievens, founder of Share One for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Dan's Dan's website at share.one, and don't forget to check out Quik! at quickforms.com where we make processing forms easy. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion.
We'll click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Dan, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dan Lievens: 35:04
Rich, thank you so much. Thank you Quik! for sponsoring these episodes. And always a pleasure to speak with you. And I think us humans need to continue having these types of conversations just to bring light to allowing people to feel comfortable about AI, right? And allowing people to feel comfortable about how AI can support us in our missions and all the things that we're doing.
So Rich, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure.
Outro: 35:30
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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