Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 97 - AI Revolution in Business

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Ep. 97 - AI Revolution in Business · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: As a business owner over the years.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Who's hired, let's say, people to develop software?
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: For me it's a black hole.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: We never know as much as they know.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: My brother, john, was the WPP.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: There was $17 billion.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: He's freaking consulting.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: They tell you it's going to be six months and then it's going to be another six months and it's just a a black hole.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I guess I feel like it could be the same way with AI, except the difference is that AI is gonna give you a product real fast.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It just may not be a good one.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Here we are.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: We're back with another episode of the Big Talk About Small Business, and we've got a couple guests with us here Darrell Bock Impromptu guests.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Steve Trang Impromptu Eric just invited him in from the lobby.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Darrell Bock- that is not a lie, steve Trang.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: That's very true, darrell Bock, that's 100% accurate, steve.
• 1:00
  Speaker 4: Trang, well, we know these guys, though.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: Darrell Bock, well, I know them.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: Steve Trang, you know, I don't know these guys, you don't know who they are.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: No, I just met these guys five minutes ago In the lobby, yeah, and they're like let's go, yeah, talking about wives and stuff.
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: I see these guys Give us some advice.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: No, I just saw these two hipsters with their ball caps and their mustaches Speaking of.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: Ron Burgundy Right, there you go.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: Now it's a child of day, at night, yeah, another role, another real feral role.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is it with the mustaches, with these and the four day beard growths?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I mean they all do it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: That's the first question of the podcast.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: That's a good point Josiah here, Is this Josiah?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Josiah.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's Connor.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Tell these guys who you are.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm Josiah Ripplemeyer.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I work for Eric over at AdFury.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: My title, which I think is going to get picked apart a little bit, is an AI architect.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: He doesn't know any of our rules, yet I don't know the rules.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: This is what happens when you pull someone in from the lobby.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: We try to avoid excessive cursing.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: There will be some cursing, but we stay away from certain curse words.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: We don't talk about politics, we don't talk about religion, we don't talk about contentious social topics, and we wait for the other person to finish before we speak.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: You don't always do a good job with that.
• 2:30
  Speaker 6: No no.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: That one's.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: That's a little bit of a loose rule.
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: Anyway, that's one of our rules.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Sorry, so you do work with Ed Fury.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: You're an AI architect.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, you know the architects.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: The real architects hate that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: In fact, they're su.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Real architects hate that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: In fact, they're suing software people over that.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because to be an architect, you have to be to call yourself an architect.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: You can have a five-year degree, but you're not licensed.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: You can't call yourself an architect.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: You're an intern or you're a designer.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So here we got these guys that don't even have an architectural education.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Right, okay, they're computer jocks or whatever.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: That's a boomer term, isn't it, computer jocks?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've heard that one.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: I like it.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: But anyway, okay.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So he's an AI architect.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: We'll let him go with that, for right now we're going to come back to you.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Not licensed.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: AI architect.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: We'll let him go with that.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: For right now we're going to come back to you.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Not licensed AI architect.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: I am comfortable with AI computer jock.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I know he didn't really want to use that term, architect.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You forced him into it, I did.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're trying to make it sound more esoteric than it is.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: It's my fault.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know a damn thing about AI, but we're going to get into that in a minute.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Connor over here.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, tell us about yourself.
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: My name is Connor Callison.
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: I also work for Eric over at AdFury.
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: Josiah is my direct boss, okay, dang, and Eric is over everyone Except.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: JS.
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: Except JS.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: So what do you do, connor, at the?
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: I mean, what's your practice?
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: What do you do?
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: so I'm a prompt engineer, so I do a lot of um, talking with ai to get the desired result that we're trying to achieve, which I will not talk about what we're doing over there at the moment.
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: Okay, um, but yeah, basically just continually prompting it, or telling it different things to get a desired result is the most simple explanation.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you're doing all the work.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: What the heck is josiah architecting?
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: What do we need him for?
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: he's architecting mark.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that means in this context Planning, organizing, master planning.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: It is, it is a very big picture.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: It's a more traditional term.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: It's closer like a back-end engineer for a software company, but specifically within the realm of AI.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: So a lot of new roles, but it's really kind of let's tap into really the discussion today, right, which is what is AI doing to the entrepreneurial, the business landscape, like it's a it's a pretty significant thing.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of in.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of intimidation out there, a lot of unknown, a lot of and it's not a certain industry in of itself.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: You know, I like and honestly like.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: One of the best things I can attach it to as an analogy is something similar to the Industrial Revolution, right, I mean you know we're automating stuff, automating Dyeing up shoes, a pair at a time Exactly, and I think it's really scary for a lot of folks because it's, you know, the Industrial Revolution really automated a lot of the kind of more blue collar manual labor work.
• 5:41
  Speaker 6: Yeah, right.
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: AI is revolutionizing a lot of the white-collar strategic work.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're a marketing consultant, you might want to start thinking about going and getting your plumbing license.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: So that's one decision, but the other one that I think that we're going to try to encourage folks right is adaptation evolution.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: Sure, you know again similar to that revolution.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: Try to encourage folks right is is adaptation evolution?
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, like you can share, you know, again similar to that revolution.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: Like you can either bounce out and do something completely different or you can start learning the machines and how to work those things, because there is a lot of practicality that you can apply to those things.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: Like you know what works and doesn't work right, because we see a lot of times in the news of letting ai do its own thing and it doesn't work right, because we see a lot of times in the news of letting a yacht do its own thing, and it doesn't really turn out very well, well, yeah, yeah.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: well.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: On the point, though, of just marketing, people should be worried.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: I actually, just yesterday, met with a recent college grad who studied marketing, and he was picking my brain about what.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: What can he do to market himself, as he's looking for work in this changing landscape around AI?
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: So it was basically like how can I be utilizing AI to show that I'm not behind the curve here?
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: But that's exactly what you're saying, yeah, yeah, you've got to adapt.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: Here's what I've found Like.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: I feel like that everybody an all entrepreneur, anybody listening to the show, anybody really on the earth right now needs to recognize that this is not something that's impacting one sector or another or one person or whatever.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: Because I mean, I have 30 years, 20 something years in experience in marketing.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: This whole thing is like making me completely change my all my presumptions and all the you know, I've spent a lot of time in this arena, so, like in 20 plus years, right, I'd like I have to go.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: Okay, wait a minute, everything's being reinvented.
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: Now, however, there's a lot of comfort in and where I'm sitting to say, oh, I can apply all these learnings and this experience.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: I have to help navigate and set up these workflows and what's going on and become attuned to that and to the recent grad.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: We're in the same scenario, but with different places, where we start out with right, the recent grad.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: The good news for them is that they can really start fresh and they can really apply that energy and all this time into what's going on with AI and starting to use those tools and making sure they understand.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: But I think the answer on both sides is you either jump in or you fight change, which is opposite of entrepreneurship in a lot of ways, right, I mean, like you have to.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Some businesses make it just by not changing anything, but it's rare.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It is rare I mean that is a strategy you can follow.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I actually wrote an article on that once.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: It's called the Strategy of Changing Absolutely Nothing.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I mean there's a 200-year-old company in England that makes shoes a pair at a time and, like you know, they got like 40 workers and the king of England wears their shoes and stuff.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's a rarity okay, that's a rarity.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: That is fair.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: But what I like about that though, mark, and what I'm kind of, I'll let you guys talk a little bit.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: But I get excited about this because I do believe that, in spite of all this mass change going on with AI and how everything's being impacted, there is going to be this artisan side.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: Yes, there is Right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: The buy local, the artisan, you still have the painter, that's the genius that comes out.
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, all those things will live on.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: I think they might be even more valuable as time goes on.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: I agree, I completely agree.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: But back on this young guy, though, I just want to say something.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I read an article recently on LinkedIn where somebody writes in it's like I don't know, you know, what should I encourage my kid to do in college?
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Yada, yada, yada with AI and all these changes and everything.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And the answer somebody gave it, but you know, was basically and I totally agree with this focus on the things that are not impacted by AI, like your verbal communication skills, your ability to maintain relationships, your interpersonal skills.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Those things aren't going to go away.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Those are always going to be valued, and you can learn the technologies that you need and adapt.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Adapt, it's not like go into geotechnical engineering, right, suzy?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: That's going to be a hot career for the next 20 years, and that's I mean.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Who says college education should be vocational training?
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: you know, it's.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: It teaches you how to think and act and communicate.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: I love how you say that my original background was actually in education and I taught during COVID.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: And do you see the soft skills just deteriorating in?
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: students Yep.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Especially within COVID, and then the prevalence of just communicating online only and then even just using chat.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Gpt is your best friend.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Yes it's just, those soft skills are just deteriorating really quickly and they're going to be even more important and easier to just set yourself apart.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: This you can't.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Just you know, know.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: I've joked and said like prompt engineering is a good title, but it's quickly becoming like equivalent to just being able to use Microsoft Word, like everyone should be able to do that.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: But just because you can use Microsoft Word doesn't make you a good writer does it Right, yes or if you can use a graphic design program.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you're a good graphic designer.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I mean it's like I could see, like what Connor does over here is super valuable, and if you do have like a really good communication skill set, it will help you phrase these queries, or whatever we want to call them, properly to get what you really want, don't?
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: you think, yeah, as a guy with some education background, yeah, I mean, but you're going to need to be able to show that you can do it.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: And you know, just saying I'm a prompt engineer is going to lose a lot of value.
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: Sure, I understand.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: It's going to become completely saturated.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: So it's more like show me what you've built.
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: You know that kind of thing.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Well, we get that with graphic design.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, eric, you know, I mean we've been hiring graphic designers for 40 years.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: It's like I'm a graphic artist.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Whenever I see that, I'm like okay, okay.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And then you look at their stuff and it looks like shit, yeah, okay, yeah, I mean no, you're not.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: You know how to use PageMaker or whatever is used today.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, but you suck yeah.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: Well, I think the thing is it's kind of parallel to what has always happened.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: Right, you can be a graphic designer, but then can you be a creative director.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah Right, there's another level to that.
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: You know the soft skill thing.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: You know it's like how do you communicate, how do you lead other people, how do you lead projects, how do you lead business, how do you, you know, build that infrastructure and be able to actually have those types of relationships to make things actually happen?
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: And I see, like I think this is a really good point those soft skills right, like I guess one statement might be with AI coming in, do not forsake the soft skills Right.
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: And actually you need to study self-learn.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: This is an opportunity for you to graduate and take those things to a higher level, while everything else is kind of being levelized in a lot of ways.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Well, you two guys are in the heat of the battle out there.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Just tell us, like, what are some applications that people are really using AI for today?
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, we all know, like customer service, there's a million applications for it there.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: You don't even know who the hell you're talking to.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I was talking to AI the other day with American Airlines.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: In fact, I asked it if it was AI and I didn't get a response which told me it was AI.
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: But so what are some applications that you all are seeing and where it's really getting rapidly adopted?
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean one that you all have heard of and everyone has heard of is ChatGPT, and within ChatGPT there's a lot of different capabilities, and I think one within the last couple of months that has been used a lot professionally and also maybe just for entertainment, is their image generation, and it can generate incredibly detailed, high quality images just based off your prompt and how detailed your prompt is, of course but I think people are.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've all seen those online.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's interesting the and videos too.
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: I don't know chat.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: Gpt does videos, but they have a video feature is a little bit behind in comparison to, like, google has a really good video feature right now, and so I guess just my point is, with all of these a lot of people, I think, talking about marketing or like using this tool specifically, for social media blog posts.
• 15:02
  Speaker 5: I mean they're saving time on having to go out and take photos or videos for whatever they're posting.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: That's a practical application, thank you.
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: What else?
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Social media is inundated.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know how Webster always adds a word of the year or a phrase.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: I could see AI slop being added very soon so you call that slop.
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: These fake videos and pictures of things.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Well, people are making quite a bit of money doing it.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: They'll set up automated workflows that are just pumping out automated, ai-generated videos and publishing them.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: One of the most popular ones is a Yeti that's vlogging through the woods or the mountains.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: But those are obviously more silly.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: But, it is kind of funny, right it is.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It's hilarious.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Are the babies talking?
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: We've all seen a million of those, right?
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: But more practical.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: More practical Within sales lead generations is rapidly becoming an automated process.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: How would AI help with that?
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: So, through a combination of crawling, scraping using LinkedIn connections, and then you already mentioned AI voice, that could be very rapidly becoming a first touchpoint Like a prospecting tool basically yeah, but maybe it's qualifying the leads Right.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Connor tells it what to do properly, yeah.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: Cold calling with AI to get a first touchpoint, or at least emails written by AI.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: That's just blasting out like expanding this casting a huge net for lead generation.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: It's definitely more quantity over quality at that point.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Well, when you got people sitting there on the phone spinning the dial a hundred times, a day that's a quantity over quality deal too, I mean that ain't always great, we all know right.
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it has the same implications as everything that we practiced before.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, if you build out a huge call center and you're calling people and your lead gen ratio is one out of every 10 or 20 customers that you get through to.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: But you're still trying to make that happen in such a high volume way.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: But this is the same practice, right?
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: Except?
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: with one person, except with one person, except with one person.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very interesting.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So your cost is a lot lower, however it is, and their turnover is zero, right, because those people turn over all the time.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: They need a lot of training.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: But the thing is, is at the end of the day, does it really work?
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: That's the question, yeah, you know and so believe for a lot of small business owners is where do I start?
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: Like, what's the really because do?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: you want to start fruit right.
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: Well, do you want to start and build out a huge call center?
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: Is that really what you need to be doing?
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: Or do you really need to hone in on exactly who are your prospects, because you can use ai to really take a bunch of mass information, bring it down to a very direct, exact type of person and then personalize that outreach.
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: Going back to the soft skills thing, which it's going to be interesting, you know, and my belief is a little bit more about, bring all the information down into that and then still apply, because I want to have a human touch to it.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: I want to be the person to know who I'm reaching out to.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to be able to apply your experience and common sense and knowledge and my soft skills to it.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: And I feel like that's very powerful and it gets me where I'm trying to get to and I can also which to me is another big thing about AI I can sense my place, like I can feel the ground underneath my feet as I take steps Right when a lot of my experience has been with AI.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: It's like out in the A black box.
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: It's a black box.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a total mystery.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 18:55
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• 18:57
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• 19:05
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• 19:06
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• 19:10
  Speaker 1: That's a good point, but let's go back to this like automated prospecting thing just for the sake of discussion.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: As a small business owner, let's just say I've got a business, I sell storm windows or whatever, right.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: And I got like five guys back there chain smoking in this room, you know, dialing away, looking like they're in the boiler room of Glen Gary, glen Ross, right.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: Love it Raining outside.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: So you know I'm tired of these guys.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: They don't do a very good job.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I have constant turnover.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: We're not getting enough leads, so I want to use AI for my storm window company to do this.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Where do I go?
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Who do I go to?
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: What are the just?
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: What do I do?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: If I was a business owner wanting that.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: There's a whole industry that's growing rapidly.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: I guess you would just call it like AI consulting.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: There's one person, two person teams that are growing and a lot of times they're using these AI tools to gather leads, reach out to small businesses.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: For those purposes of, I want to build your workflow.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: I see you have this kind of business.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Here are the types of workflows I have experience building.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: I can build you an automated tool.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: It'll be an initial setup fee and then X amount a month to maintain it, and those are popping up all over the place and would you agree, like and so on, that, yeah, open ai I saw recently started a consulting arm of their business, right, yeah, but this same application, right, if I have a this, this, uh, this company, small company, I wouldn't want to try to reach out to openAI and use their service.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Right, that's like going to Omnicom or Publis' group and trying to use them as an ad agency for my small business.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: But I would reach out to a solo entrepreneur that's building a business.
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: It's probably a better step.
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: Yep, absolutely, because it's the same principle, though you get a little bit more attention.
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: Maybe they're a startup, they're being eager in an entrepreneurial sense and they're trying to get a client and build their business.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: Where am I going to find this person?
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: So, where would you find a person like that?
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: Like, is there a resource or do you just start?
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's still relatively new.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: So, especially in an area like northwest Arkansas where it's not necessarily a huge tech hub there's not a lot huge tech hub.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of dot AIs around here that needs a change.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: But right, I mean, it's getting better every day.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: We only got one thing we got, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: Where's the phone book for these?
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: for the other, where are these guys?
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: I mean you, there's reddit something or subreddits that people are dying to make money.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: There's great information on Reddit every time.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know right, it is becoming very saturated very quickly because people see a quick dollar.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: And they're self-proclaimed experts and they're self-proclaimed experts, and it's similar to web development, where, early on, if you needed a website built, your options were to go to school and learn to code or to hire someone to do it for you, right, yeah, there are countless tools Wix, squarespace, weebly all of these ones that can build sites for you and you don't have to know one line of code, and that is the direction AI automation is going as well.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: It's headed in that way, so like the canned sort of solutions or I hate that word, but applications.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: Well, I think a lot of the mystery here is that AI is in that start.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: It's literally in the startup sector, right the whole industry.
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: So you haven't?
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: I don't think you've.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: I've been seeing more entrepreneurs starting these consulting businesses, but they're right now.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: They're able to garner the business they need in a lot of the developers' black hole conversations, like in Reddit and other places.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Right these forums that no one else goes to except the dev folks.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: However, you're going to start seeing them exposing themselves into more mainstream, like the social media platforms, announcing their business.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: They're going to have bona fide top entities created, but that's just now starting to happen.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: Right Like to your point, northwest Arkansas no, there's not a lot of ai companies, but I can imagine here in the near future that you're going to start having folks that are starting their own business to do AI consulting.
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: And then I see it's going to start diversifying to specialists in certain sectors, everything from manufacturing to restaurants, to Right where they've found solutions that they then repeat or refine.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Go deep into the niche.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in that vertical industry, vertical Right.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: Makes sense.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of the good news to this is okay.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: So if you're listening and you have your own business and you're not leveraging AI right now, you don't know where to start.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: I think there's some comfort in knowing like for yourself like Mark is a good example there is some comfort in the upcoming next time period, within a short time period the next six months or a year that there'll be some resources.
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: There'll start being some resources that you know, that you can talk to, that can then consult, just like a website.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly like a website Interesting.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So can we go back to our earlier topic though?
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what other applications?
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: So the prospecting that's one.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Give us some other things that businesses are using the AI for.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's just overall strategy.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Ai is going to write strategy.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to be.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: I don't think you should do 100% written by AI.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: In all of these we talk about a human in the loop.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: It's an AI-assisted, whether that's building out a content strategy or a marketing strategy for a new product release.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Pricing strategy.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Pricing strategies.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: The pricing does make a lot of sense, though, because you can go out there and it gathers up a lot of information for you Instantly.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that I have seen.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: I like that, I think that there's a lot of like what my experience has been as an adopter.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: Right is like you start with one place and then you start seeing other uses yeah exactly.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: it starts kind of like, okay, and, but you do realize that you, as the prompter, like, you're the person that's coaching this and you're directing, you're the director of the movie, you know, and it's starting, and, but you keep going down in these, these, these channels, and then you start seeing how it can be useful and I do think that, as an entrepreneur or small business owner, right like, is it my job to build out an entire AI workflow, you know, for the call center back-end process?
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Probably not.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Like, my time is better spent to maybe be using it as strategy and research and then hire out for the execution of the workflow, right, right?
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it's very interesting.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned that pricing because I was talking with a friend of mine the other day who's very high level in one of our major retail companies, whose name I won't mention.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: But he was telling me they took a product that they sell and said compare our product to all other products that compete with it and it got amazing.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: He goes.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Normally this would take, like somebody, like 10 days to write this up and he goes just instantly.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Better information, all the pricing, the qualities, everything All in one place, one neat, tidy package.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: So that's a really cool idea.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: A small business owner could do that 100% Right With their offering.
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: That is case in point.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: That is, I think that when we talk like there's a very intimidating thing to say, okay, start adopting AI and using it.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there is.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: It's like what the hell do I even start?
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: But that, right, there is exactly where you start.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: That's how you start.
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: That's what it means to start adopting and using it.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Right, because if you don't, if you turn the cheek and you resist and you just keep doing what you're doing, that 10 days worth of work, somebody else that's right next to you, that's in the same position is doing it in 10 minutes.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly, and that is the breakthrough doing it in 10 minutes, right, exactly, and that is the breakthrough.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of you know.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Again, to go back to the analogies and speaking of architects, you know I was out there in the era when people did everything.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: They drew it all manually you know, ink on linen, you know that's freaking cool man.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: But and then, when CAD started coming into play, there were all those old guys who were like that's no good, you can't design anything on a computer.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: You've got to be able to draw.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, of course they're freaking total dinosaurs at this point.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: It's, you know, cad absolutely took over, and then we got into 3D, and then we got into 3D visualization and yada, yada, yada.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Today it's being used for things like you know, concept design.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I need a 40,000 square foot building, you know, on two levels on this site.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Give me a scheme.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's AI's doing it.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ai and 3d modeling is blowing up too.
• 28:35
  Speaker 6: It's crazy yeah, so but what you don't want to be, that you don't want to be that guy.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: That's the ink on linen, I guess, is what you're saying.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: Or you can be, but you need to know how to set that type of business up.
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: It's a very artisan type business.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that may not be an entrepreneurial venture.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: It's not that scalable, that's the difference.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: Right, yeah, now you might be able to make money I mean, you could be superbly valuable in some way but I think that you need to know what direction you're going, and if that's what you want to do, then so be it.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I work with another business where we've got somebody in marketing that uses AI extensively and honestly, I feel like the quality of the writing is deteriorated, that creativity is being reduced through a desire to basically automate everything.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: How do you combat that?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And yet this guy's got the keys to the marketing machine.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: That is a real big challenge.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: And going back to just the education background too, that's teachers still very in tune with that world.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: That's what they're worried about.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: A ton too.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: It's just are our students going to be able to think for themselves?
• 29:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: And so, yeah, I'm very against solely using AI and just like copying and pasting a result and submitting it Like it needs to be a partnership.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: It's the same thing in software engineering it needs to be paired programming, like if you're just automatically deploying AI code, you're going to run into a lot of problems.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Same thing for content creators.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: You know it's going to continue to get better, but it's still very recognizable and especially if you're paying attention to it, like this is definitely written by ai and it's.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have that human touch to it exactly, yeah, it starts to lose um yeah, it starts to lose um, a luster.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, and I think I think that that's you know.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, let's be honest, like if I had, if my life was just set up completely to be automated, I would be extremely bored, yes, and I would have no honor or integrity.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: You know, not talking about elon and all the things about him, but but I did watch a video of him and one of my favorite statements was he said there will be a time where everything is basically provided for you.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like food is going to be so inexpensive, housing is inexpensive, he goes, but the real problem is what are you going to do when you?
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: don't have to work, because work is an important part of our identity.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the truth to that.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: But I think that to hold on to that truth as you go through this evolution is important, because you need to know you're not trying to automate your life.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: You're trying to expedite your opportunities right, and it needs a coach.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: You need to give direction and you have to find your fitting into that your talent and your strategy, because that's where the genius comes in.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: You know it comes in when somebody has a vision, they can see something, they're excited about what they're doing, they're fitting a market need and using all the tools available for them.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like that that's going to be definitely at least the next ten years of what we're doing, right right yeah, and and and you know but.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: But participating in these tools that are available, like the chat, gpt is the Gemini's, you know the things are all out there for the consumer base is extremely important.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Like you have to start prompting, you have to start playing with yeah, well, just like what you know Connor's doing is so critical is learning how to query that thing, that's right.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Learning how to ask it what you want it to produce for you, because you know, I've experimented with it like we all have, you know and I found that things do improve when I refine it and give it additional inputs, but I prohibit my students from using it in their writing.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Now some people could say, well, that's dumb though.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm really torn there.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Do I not want my students to use the latest tools that are available to help them?
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's like I've had guest speakers come in and go.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I don't you know, get your pen and paper out, I don't want to see anybody on their phones or computers.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I keep all my notes in my phone, and I have for the last 20 years.
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, I go to board meetings, I'm on my phone.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I was on one board where the CEO kept saying Mark, you got to put your phone away.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I'm not going to put my phone away.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, I won't be on the board.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Then that's fine with me, Because that's a tool I use.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Why do I want to?
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I don't need a big excuse me.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I don't need a big computer.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I don't need a big computer to do it.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: I can write on my phone.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I'm fast.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: So am I doing that to my students?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: I guess by prohibiting them from using AI?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think Scott Cardani?
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: 16, I think, in an area of like writing educational papers.
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: To me, that's where it's like you shouldn't use, in my opinion, because what are they going to learn at all?
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly, they push a button From this subject.
• 34:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: They may not even read the final thing that it produces.
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: And we've talked about this before.
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: You can even prompt it to say write me something that's undetectable by AI detectors.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Wow, I did not know that.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: That is fascinating.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk about Small Business.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscom and click on the Ask the host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business and be sure to head over to our website to read articles, browse episodes and ask questions about upcoming shows.