An Interview With Chad Silverstein
AI also powers our other internal, proprietary tools such as Recon. This software understands the structure of a specific search result and crafts prompts for SuperPrompt to then create content that offsets negative or unfavorable search results. This proactive approach helped clients maintain a positive online reputation and improve their search engine rankings, which is crucial for staying competitive.
In the ever evolving and never-ending landscape of business, staying ahead of the curve is a prerequisite for success. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gone from being a futuristic concept to a daily business tool that executives can’t ignore. In this interview series, we would like to talk with business leaders who’ve successfully integrated A.I. into their operations, transforming their companies in the process. I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Sitarzewski.
Michael Sitarzewski is Vice President of Innovation and Technology at Tandem Theory, a Dallas-based firm specializing in data-driven customer insights and custom marketing solutions for leading consumer brands such as Rent-A-Center, CAVA, and Purina. Backed by over two decades of building internet tools and resources that matter, Sitarzewski is an innovator when it comes to developing digital products for agencies and clients alike. In his role at Tandem Theory, Sitarzewski is passionate about finding new and unique ways to leverage AI, AR, and VR (XR) for customers and clients.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! To set the stage, tell us briefly about your childhood and background.
I was always a curious kid, disassembling the living room TV and many other electronics just to see how they worked. I secured my GED and started my first company at age 17, doing “Desktop Publishing” in the late ’80s. From there, I found BBSes, then the internet in 1993. A friend and I created several websites starting in 1994, including an apartment search site, a coupon site, a classifieds site, and a dating site, which we sold in 1999. We then built a website building tool in 2001, similar to Wix or Squarespace, and sold that in 2007.
In 2009, some friends and I built a podcast discovery platform, raised about $1 million, and went through Techstars Cloud in 2012, though we had pivoted to real-time audio and video analytics by then. I took those ideas and built a geolocation-to-direct mail platform, which lasted about 10 years. Throughout these different business ventures, I had gotten to know the senior leadership at Tandem Theory and seen how they were building a new kind of data-driven marketing agency that puts people and culture first. When they asked me a few years ago to lead innovation, it was a simple answer, really.
What were the early challenges you faced in your career, and how did they shape your approach to leadership?
My first and last full-time job before Tandem was with a banking consulting firm in the early ’90s. I was hired as a support tech for 70 Macs and quickly became the Director of Information Technology at 23. A key lesson I learned was that college degrees are one thing, but what truly mattered was showing up, doing your job, and excelling beyond expectations. This experience shaped my approach to leadership: I seek out people who have passion and perform exceptionally, even if it falls outside conventional expectations.
We often learn the most from our mistakes. Could you share one mistake that turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned?
I hired someone to help grow a brand within the media space solely because this person had strong ties to the media industry. The idea of leveraging someone with industry connections was solid and logical, but the mistake was not recognizing that when you’re trying to disrupt an industry, the last people to see it coming are often those in senior positions. The valuable lesson I learned was to build with passion and quality in the open, and trust that customers will find you.
A.I. is a big leap for many businesses. When and what first sparked your interest in incorporating it into your operations?
A lot of what I do at Tandem stems from my passion for technology. I keep an eye on emerging trends and how they evolve. When the first generation of AI models hit Twitter (now X) and were able to create passable text, I anticipated rapid change. Jasper (Jarvis.ai) was one of the first tools we used extensively at Tandem Theory to help clients generate strategic, on-brand SEO content at scale. Once APIs became available, it made sense to craft a more Tandem-specific experience around these tools. Building a solid message and use case was essential for success. We now use our proprietary AI-enabled tools across multiple clients to manage their online presence and produce a variety of human-engineered content types at a pace previously unthinkable.
AI can be a game-changer for individuals and their responsibilities. Could you share how you personally use AI and what are your go-to resources or tools?
AI is not for everyone, especially those trying to learn the basics. AI still makes mistakes, but with over 30 years in the space, it’s usually pretty easy for me to debug. Since the AI boom, I rarely ever use search engines directly. I ask ChatGPT to “Please use the web to find xyz,” and let it sift through pages for the most relevant results. If you use Meta.ai, it will produce results from both Bing and Google. Between the models, my ability to write code has been accelerated allowing me to be at least 50% more productive.
On the flip side, what challenges or setbacks have you encountered while implementing A.I. into your company?
One major challenge I’ve encountered in the process of implementing AI into Tandem has been dealing with unpredictable results. Most people are familiar with a chat interface, where you ask a question, get a text response, and continue from there. However, on the backend, we deal with APIs and expect results to come back in a predictable format. Ensuring the language we use in the prompt was precise enough to yield consistent results was an interesting challenge.
Let’s dig into this further. Could you share the top 5 A.I. tools or different ways you’re integrating AI into your business? What specific functions do they serve and what kind of results have you seen so far? If you can, please share a story or example for each:
1.As an AI-enabled company, Tandem integrates the technology into our business in a handful of ways, including:
AI powers our internal, proprietary product that we call SuperPrompt. It’s a LLM-agnostic interface that considers brand direction and human-provided insights to generate feature-length articles, social media copy and how-to guides amongst other content. It has enabled our clients to produce high-quality, strategic content more efficiently, optimizing marketing efforts.
2. AI also powers our other internal, proprietary tools such as Recon. This software understands the structure of a specific search result and crafts prompts for SuperPrompt to then create content that offsets negative or unfavorable search results. This proactive approach helped clients maintain a positive online reputation and improve their search engine rankings, which is crucial for staying competitive.
3. In its most simplest form, AI is a great brainstorming tool that we use for both text and image ideation. Tandem has held image creation competitions amongst the entire company, not just our creatives, as a means to empower everyone to explore the artist in them that was destroyed by peer pressure and terrible teachers.
4. AI features are also part of the everyday marketing platforms that we manage for clients. We use these features to personalize email and SMS timing to specific customers or automate A/B testing for dynamic landing pages, to name a few.
5. We use AI tools to help clients understand how to operate them — i.e. hosting “intro to AI” web meetings, and sharing how we use the tools internally — and continue to explore ways to streamline our own internal administrative activities.
There’s concern about A.I. taking over jobs. How do you balance A.I. tools with your human workforce and have you already replaced any positions using technology?
We have not replaced anyone with AI at Tandem Theory. In fact, AI allows the people here, who we call Theorists, to perform better and more efficiently. AI’s output is only as good as its input, and that’s where our strategists and subject matter experts come in. Protecting the privacy of our clients and their consumers is also paramount, and we have strict guidelines at Tandem to make sure that anything going into AI is first edited to meet those privacy standards. The outputs of all of our products must also first pass through human editors before ever reaching the client. This allows us to meticulously tailor every output to our client’s specific needs, branding, and the insights we have about their customer.
Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon in the world of AI that people should know about? What do you see happening in the next 3–5 years? I would love to hear your best prediction.
My prediction is that language models, which are all the rage today, will become much smaller and more specialized. We’ve already seen this demonstrated by Apple at WWDC. The models will start to call for more complex makeups as time goes on. It’s a far more scalable approach and could be the foundation of what we know as AGI: Artificial General Intelligence. I also think that multimodal LLMs like ChatGPT 4o will blur the lines between our analog lives and digital. We can already voice chat with AI (if you haven’t tried, it’s an unbelievable experience), but soon it will be able to see it. Meta has done some amazing work here already with the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. I’d expect this level of tech to be built into other forms of eyewear in the not so distant future.
If you had to pick just one AI tool that you feel is essential, one that you haven’t mentioned yet, which would it be and why?
I encourage everyone with a remotely curious mind to explore on-device AI tools. Explore the Huggingface.ai website and understand that everything there is open source. What that means to humanity is incalculable.
For the uninitiated, what advice would you give someone looking to integrate AI into their business and doesn’t know where to start?
I recommend taking the time to research and learn from experts in the field. One way is to spend time on YouTube with Matt Wolfe, Matthew Berman, and “Prompt Engineering” the channel. At Tandem Theory, we also help clients do exactly this. We start with a strategic audit process that collaborates with all internal stakeholders to understand a business’ unique goals, customer, and current experience. From there, we deliver an innovation roadmap that helps businesses align internally on AI and other technology-driven priorities.
Where can our readers follow you to learn more about leveraging A.I. in the business world?
You can follow Tandem Theory’s latest insights and client work on our website https://tandemtheory.com and our LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/3361986. My personal site is https://friendmichael.com — it’s woefully out of date but it does have links to all of the other places to find me.
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com
Michael Sitarzewski Of Tandem Theory: How We Leveraged AI To Take Our Company To The Next Level was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.