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AI Strategist Cliff Worley Breaks Down What Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know About AI Right Now · The Breakfast Club

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: AI is changing everything, your job, your business and your money.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: But most small business owners still do not know where
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to start, what tools matter, what is hype and how
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  Speaker 1: to use any of it without needing a tech degree.
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  Speaker 1: So today I'm sitting down with a person who breaks
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  Speaker 1: it all down for a living.
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  Speaker 2: You can literally have AI search your inbox every single morning,
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  Speaker 2: go through your emails, figure out which ones are important,
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  Speaker 2: which ones you haven't responded to.
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  Speaker 3: It's Tuesday, September 8th.
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  Speaker 1: From the Black Effect Podcast Network, I'm Mimi Brown. This
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  Speaker 1: is Front Page.
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  Speaker 3: Stay with me. Well, everyone is talking about AI right now.
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  Speaker 4: And for a lot of small business owners, the conversation
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  Speaker 4: still feels confusing, a little overwhelming, and honestly, a little intimidating.
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  Speaker 4: So people are hearing that AI is changing everything from
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  Speaker 4: marketing to customer service to hiring to content creation. And
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  Speaker 4: a lot of entrepreneurs are still trying to figure out
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  Speaker 4: what that actually looks like.
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  Speaker 3: Is it all hype or how AI.
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  Speaker 4: Can actually save them time for their business without actually
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  Speaker 4: needing a tech degree? So joining me today is Cliff Worley, entrepreneur,
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  Speaker 4: AI strategist, and speaker who's helping businesses understand how they
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  Speaker 4: actually can use AI in the real world, in this
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  Speaker 4: ever-changing world. So Cliff, thank you so much for joining
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  Speaker 4: us today.
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  Speaker 3: How are you?
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  Speaker 5: Thanks for having me, Mimi. Everything's great. Just trying to
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  Speaker 5: keep up with AI as it's changing every single day.
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  Speaker 3: Every single day.
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  Speaker 4: So you are the perfect person for this because, you know,
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  Speaker 4: everyone is talking about AI and they're talking about it
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  Speaker 4: in these huge, scary terms, right? But I want to
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  Speaker 4: bring it down to, you know, for real life, to
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  Speaker 4: everyday users, to small business owners. So let's just say
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  Speaker 4: if I own a small business right now, maybe a restaurant,
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  Speaker 4: even a podcast, a marketing company, what should I even
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  Speaker 4: start with when it comes to AI?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, great question.
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  Speaker 2: I think AI has actually gotten really, really good over
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  Speaker 2: the last four or five months.
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  Speaker 5: I think if you picked up AI about.
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  Speaker 2: A year ago, it was a little messy, but now
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  Speaker 2: it has gotten a whole lot better, especially for small
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  Speaker 2: business owners. And one thing I would do first is
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  Speaker 2: buy the paid version of either a ChatGPT, a Claude, Copilot,
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  Speaker 2: or Google's Gemini. Because when you pay for the $ 20
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  Speaker 2: version of these AI tools, they have a lot of
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  Speaker 2: features that just don't come with the free version. And
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  Speaker 2: so you're going to want to be able to have
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  Speaker 2: things that can analyze your business, you know, create images
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  Speaker 2: and marketing assets for your business, analyze all your financials,
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  Speaker 2: give you ideas, etc. And so you're only really going
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  Speaker 2: to get that on the $ 20 version. And so I
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  Speaker 2: would say, you know, your first thing to do is
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  Speaker 2: to buy a $ 20 version of any of the tools.
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  Speaker 2: And I think all of them are really good. In fact,
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  Speaker 2: they're copying each other every single week for all the features.
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  Speaker 2: So you can't really go wrong.
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  Speaker 5: With a tool.
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  Speaker 3: I love that.
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  Speaker 4: I love that. So if someone were to implement something
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  Speaker 4: like that, and they're just a one man band, perhaps,
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  Speaker 4: how many hours would you say something like that could
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  Speaker 4: save them?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think every single task that you do in
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  Speaker 2: your business can be augmented by AI. So for example,
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  Speaker 2: if you spend a lot of time in going through
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  Speaker 2: emails every single day and writing responses, You can literally
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  Speaker 2: have AI search your inbox every single morning, go through
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  Speaker 2: your emails, figure out which ones are important, which ones
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  Speaker 2: you haven't responded to, and actually write those responses for
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  Speaker 2: you so that when you wake up in the morning...
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  Speaker 2: you can just press send, right? So it's not necessarily
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  Speaker 2: going to take email response away from you, but at
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  Speaker 2: least it'll get you through all of the mundane kind
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  Speaker 2: of going back and forth through which emails are important.
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  Speaker 5: I got to sort through all these things.
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  Speaker 2: And that same thing applies to, you know, analyzing, you know,
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  Speaker 2: your sales data. You might say, hey, every day, you know,
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  Speaker 2: check my sales data, figure out what their trends are,
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  Speaker 2: what can I do differently today. And I think that's
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  Speaker 2: what's happened over the past few months is like, AI
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  Speaker 2: can actually augment any type of work that you're doing
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  Speaker 2: to help you become more efficient. And I think it's
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  Speaker 2: more about applying those things daily. And over time, you
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  Speaker 2: might look up months later and say, I've pretty much
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  Speaker 2: automated a lot of parts of my business.
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  Speaker 5: I'll kind of give you a rundown on what happened.
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  Speaker 2: So there's like a, when you think about using ChatGPT
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  Speaker 2: or Cloud, you are putting in a question and then
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  Speaker 2: you're getting back an answer. And that was kind of
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  Speaker 2: like phase one of AI. But we're in phase two
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  Speaker 2: of AI, which is like the AI actually going off
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  Speaker 2: and doing work for you. So you can have a
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  Speaker 2: conversation with AI and say, hey, I am bombarded with
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  Speaker 2: doing email. I would like you to build me something
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  Speaker 2: where you can go look at my email every single
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  Speaker 2: day and then you can sort it by what's the
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  Speaker 2: most urgent email. And now AI will actually not only
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  Speaker 2: go build that, but schedule it and do it every
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  Speaker 2: single day where you don't have to do it. And
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  Speaker 2: I think that's the new phase that we're entering. You
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  Speaker 2: talk about a lot of people are talking about AI agents,
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  Speaker 2: and that's kind of what the agent phase looks like
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  Speaker 2: is like an agent will actually go and do, whereas
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  Speaker 2: a chat bot just kind of answers and stops.
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  Speaker 5: So do you think that.
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  Speaker 4: Businesses, though, who are ignoring AI right now in the
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  Speaker 4: next few years, you think that they're going.
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  Speaker 3: To fall behind?
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  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: I think it's kind of like, it reminds me of
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  Speaker 2: like when the internet came out. So it's almost like
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  Speaker 2: people saying, well, I don't really trust the internet. I
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  Speaker 2: don't think it's going to be, I don't really trust
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  Speaker 2: my data there. And now we're all kind of using it.
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  Speaker 2: We're seeing the same thing with AI where people are
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  Speaker 2: a little nervous about using it. But at the end
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  Speaker 2: of the day, it's going to be here. It's not
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  Speaker 2: going anywhere. It'll be here for a long time. And
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  Speaker 2: so I think The people that I know that are
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  Speaker 2: using AI are not sleep because they're getting so much
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  Speaker 2: value out of that. And I think it's just about,
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  Speaker 2: you know, getting to a point where it starts to
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  Speaker 2: click for you to go, oh, wait a minute.
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  Speaker 5: Now I actually get this. I can apply this to
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  Speaker 5: all things.
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  Speaker 2: And just using it as a thought partner of just saying, hey,
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  Speaker 2: here is my problem in my business. What can you
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  Speaker 2: help me with is like a great place to start.
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  Speaker 4: What is one AI tool that you use though, Cliff,
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  Speaker 4: that has genuinely changed how you work each and every day?
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  Speaker 5: Oh, so many.
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  Speaker 2: I would say for my meetings, I use this tool
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  Speaker 2: called Quill Meetings. And what it does is it records
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  Speaker 2: every single one of my meetings. It tells me all
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  Speaker 2: the things that I said that I was going to
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  Speaker 2: do in those meetings. But the cool thing is every Sunday,
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  Speaker 2: it goes back and it listens to all of my
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  Speaker 2: meetings from the previous week. And then it sends me
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  Speaker 2: an email saying, hey, here are all the things that
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  Speaker 2: you said that you were going to do in those meetings.
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  Speaker 2: And so there's so many times that I forget that. Oh, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I forgot that I said that I was going to
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  Speaker 2: do that. And now I've just built this new feature
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  Speaker 2: where it'll actually put those task lists on my calendar.
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  Speaker 2: So when I wake up in the morning, I'm like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: I have to send out that proposal. I totally forgot
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  Speaker 2: about that. And so it finds spaces on my calendar
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  Speaker 2: in order to do that. So that's probably one of
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  Speaker 2: one of my favorite tools right now that I'm using,
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  Speaker 2: especially with the amount of meetings that I have.
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  Speaker 4: When you look over the next five years, what careers
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  Speaker 4: or what businesses do you think are safe from AI
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  Speaker 4: right now?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think anything that is, you know, what you're
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  Speaker 2: doing with your hands. So like plumbers, electricians, any of
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  Speaker 2: the blue collar jobs are like completely safe until robots come,
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  Speaker 2: which I think is coming down the line.
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  Speaker 5: I don't think they're ready yet, but there's stuff that's there.
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  Speaker 2: And I do think, you know, every single job out there,
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  Speaker 2: AI is going to impact it in some sort of way.
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  Speaker 2: And what may happen is over time, you know, I
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  Speaker 2: think there will be in like maybe four or five
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  Speaker 2: years where we say, remember when we used to respond
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  Speaker 2: to email, every single email that we got, like we
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  Speaker 2: don't do that anymore. I think there's just be a
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  Speaker 2: behavior shift for us as as humans. And who wants
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  Speaker 2: to spend time in email anyway? It's kind of my thought.
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  Speaker 2: It goes back to like, I think when we used
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  Speaker 2: to drive around and print out MapQuest directions and that
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  Speaker 2: was the cool thing at the time.
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  Speaker 5: And then all of a sudden Google Maps.
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  Speaker 2: Comes out and now it's like a joke that we
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  Speaker 2: used to drive around with Google Maps.
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  Speaker 5: It was so dangerous at the time.
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  Speaker 2: And so I think there just will be a different
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  Speaker 2: way that we do work in four to five years.
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  Speaker 2: And it may be us looking at you know, the
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  Speaker 2: work that agents do just to make sure that it
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  Speaker 2: is actually correct versus us doing that work.
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  Speaker 3: And I know that you also have your cliff notes.
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  Speaker 3: Can you tell us about that?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So every single Monday, I drop a newsletter edition on
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  Speaker 2: what happened in AI for that previous week. It's basically
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  Speaker 2: the cliff notes of everything that is going on for
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  Speaker 2: that week. As you know, AI is moving fast and
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  Speaker 2: I can tell you being in it for the last
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  Speaker 2: three and a half years, it's moving faster.
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  Speaker 5: And so because I've.
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  Speaker 2: Been following it from day one, I'm able to tell
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  Speaker 2: what news is actually big and that you should pay
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  Speaker 2: attention to. And then I put a tool or two
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  Speaker 2: in there that you should actually play with every single
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  Speaker 2: week that I think you should try out.
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  Speaker 5: We love that.
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  Speaker 3: So how can we find that and subscribe to that, Cliff?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, Cliff.
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  Speaker 3: Cliffnotes.ai. Nice and simple. Well, thank you so much. Like,
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  Speaker 3: this was so helpful.
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  Speaker 4: I really feel like, you know, if we don't get
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  Speaker 4: on board, we're going to get left behind.
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  Speaker 3: And knowledge is power. So I really appreciate you taking
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  Speaker 3: the time.
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  Speaker 4: To inform our audience and to make sure that we
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  Speaker 4: have a starting place. Cause I just think that people
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  Speaker 4: don't know where to get started. Businesses don't know where
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  Speaker 4: to get started, you know? Yep.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: No. Yeah. I would say just dive in. Um, there's
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  Speaker 5: really there.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of people feel like they're behind, um, but
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  Speaker 2: it's moving so fast that we're all. So find some
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  Speaker 2: comfort in that, um, because there's no way you can
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  Speaker 2: catch up, uh, and, and stay up with it.
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  Speaker 5: It's just moving fast.
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  Speaker 3: That's your front page. I'm Mimi Brown.
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  Speaker 4: This podcast was brought to you by the Black Effect
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  Speaker 4: Podcast Network.