The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Unlocking AI: Transforming Small Business Marketing with Innovative Tools and Strategies
Curious about how AI can transform your small business? Join us for an intriguing conversation with Stephanie Davinskas from Sizzle Force Marketing, as she uncovers the practical applications of AI tools tailored for small-scale operations. Celebrating three incredible years of podcasting, we reflect on our journey and growing guest roster. Stephanie introduces us to innovative tools like Fathom, an AI note-taker, and shares strategies to harness AI without falling victim to convoluted jargon or ineffective, costly solutions.
Dive into the world of AI-powered efficiency with tools like Fathom and ChatGPT! Learn how Fathom can revolutionize your Zoom meetings by recording, summarizing, and providing actionable insights. For those who prefer in-person gatherings, alternatives like Otter are discussed with a touch of humor about potential AI interjections. We examine ChatGPT's strengths in ideation, strategy development, and research, while cautioning against over-reliance for content creation to avoid repetitive, homogenized posts. Get insights on generating engaging social media content and our personal experiences with various AI subscriptions.
Unlock the full potential of AI in your marketing strategy! We discuss the art of training ChatGPT to understand your brand voice and customer insights, akin to onboarding a new employee. Stephanie sheds light on TikTok's geo-targeting capabilities, strategic AI use in small business marketing, and the importance of AI marketing assistants. Learn about managing Google reviews and the ethical use of AI-generated content on LinkedIn. As we wrap up, discover how AI Matchmaker services can help identify and implement the perfect AI solutions for your business, making everyday tasks more efficient and effective.
That it's not. I can't distill what safe is in one or two sentences.
Speaker 2:Well, and I can give you an example, I went to an AI seminar. Actually, whoa, look at you, yeah, and somebody brought up a great question. So if I use AI let's say customer complaints, and I use AI to write the response which includes the customer's information, is suddenly that customer's information out in cyberspace? It is.
Speaker 3:Well, yes, in fact, glad you brought this up because I said, hey, I got this lady coming on my podcast with a local radio personality that we have here in Atlanta. Her name is Belinda Skelton. Well, her husband works for Habitat for Humanity Worldwide. His whole thing about AI is exactly what you just said. If we put our customers and our donation donors into that database in AI, that the rules in there say that AI gets to use those and use those people to learn better about your, so they basically own your data.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop.
Speaker 3:Remember when we were kids, alan, it was is it live or is it Memorex? And now, is it real or is it AI, and so this is getting really crazy. But here's the thing with the whole AI world. Right, I've been playing games with my head going. You know what you can't spell AI without Train, like no, it doesn't work. So you got to work on that one a little bit, I know, but everybody keeps talking about this AI thing and it reminds me of when I started my whole thing. It's recording.
Speaker 2:Is it my whole thing? It's recording, is it? It is? I'm I see it right there. It says recording.
Speaker 3:Oh, I didn't hear the voice, I know, because it's so spooky. It is spooky, it's spooky. So can we get back to this?
Speaker 2:hey, I think no yeah, I'm just a little nervous it's gonna take over the world. I just watched mission impossible and that the entity, do you not remember? No, oh, you need to watch it. The mission impossible yeah, the last one, it's a two-parter Right. No, the one with Tom Cruise. I saw him on the Olympics. Have you taken your meds today? No, all right.
Speaker 3:Man, we got to get back after this. So we've been at this for three years. Alan, how about that? That's amazing. Congratulations, cheers, cheers. For three years we've been doing this. Somebody said, well, how many episodes? I said I guess that's 154 we've got out. So that's pretty cool. And I was doing that. Thank God I could do the math, because 52 times three is not 154. So, anyway, close enough. We have never skipped. We actually did some double episodes in the beginning and did some shorts, but it has been a long run to get to these three years. And when I felt really proud about all that and I say, hey, now we'll look at us. We're in the top 5%. We got people. I actually I'm. I'm now getting a request a day for people who want to come on the show. Just say no, no, no.
Speaker 2:I'm like well that's right.
Speaker 3:I know I need people to turn people on to other people.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we can make artificial people.
Speaker 3:Well, that's who our guest is. We brought Stephanie Davinskas back from Sizzle Force Marketing, but she reached out to me and said hey, chris, just listen to your episode about bourbon. I'm like thank you, thank you, steve. We had some of Steve's bourbon last week on the episode. But she said wow, you know, since I've been last been on, I've really dove deep into this whole AI world and I'm like great, I want you to come on and talk practical.
Speaker 3:How do we do it in small business? Because right now, I feel like everybody talking AI is going like SEO was. When I first had my website was like oh, it's seo. I can't explain seo to you, but you have to go with me. You spend me, spend five thousand dollars with me and you, magically, will be number one on google, hey, and I feel like ai, like hey, you need to use ai. Well, I have ai tools. I'm like all right, what the hell is ai? I can only spell ai ai, thank you. Oh, both letters, thank you. I got both thank you, so I do it. So, stephanie, welcome back to the small business Safari. We are dying to get into what you've learned and what you're doing with AI for small businesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so glad to be back with you too.
Speaker 3:Awesome. All right, when do we start? So first one we'll start with is Stephanie comes on. We're doing this via Zoom, not here in studio, but we're doing it on our Zoom, and up pops this thing called Fathom. I'm like is it Stephanie or is it not Stephanie? She goes no, this is my note taker and it is awesome. So should we start with what the heck Fathom is and then we'll start diving into what you do with AI.
Speaker 1:Sure, all right. So Fathom is an AI note taker. What it does is it automatically pops up and will record your meetings. It will summarize your meetings. It will dissect pretty much every component of the meeting for you. So, for example, if if I wanted a summary of the meeting for you so, for example, if I wanted a summary of the meeting, I could get a summary. If I wanted the full transcript, I could get the full transcript. If I wanted to just review the questions that were asked, it would tell me the questions that were asked. If I wanted to know the action steps that were discussed, it would pull that out. It does everything, okay. So Fathom just shows up. You set it up so it shows up on all your Zoom meetings and it also records the video of the Zoom call.
Speaker 2:And so then, when it's all set and done, you can go back into Fathom whenever you want and you can pull up all these different elements and find exactly what you're looking for is there an application of this that you can use for, you know, an old-fashioned person like me who just wants to have a meeting in person and not over zoom, can you have an ai in the room recording your meeting and give you the notes and make them you know chris's words extra big, yeah, and like emphasize good job yes, yeah, yeah there are options for that.
Speaker 1:I believe otter does that o-t-t-e-r. I have not actually tried to do that myself, but I'm pretty sure otter does that and actually it's possible that fathom might at this point. I just haven't used it in that capacity.
Speaker 2:I'm surprised Fathom hasn't joined the conversation and told us. I know.
Speaker 3:I know, hey, ellen, nice question. And then, like I would put the um in there, because I found out that they can put ums in those AI voices back. Oh boy, that scares me. So so, stephanie, how much is Fathom a month? Or for whatever you use it for, what's the subscription deal on that?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, what's the price? I don't know it off the top of my head, but all of these things are really affordable. It's probably. I mean, I have so many different tools that I use so I don't have it memorized but a lot of these tools there. They hover around 15, 20 bucks a month right Some of them, but even less than 10.
Speaker 3:Wow, all right, so that's bad. Then we jump right into the practical applications Instead of trying to say what is AI? What do they find it? We're talking real practical applications. Way to start with a steak.
Speaker 2:How'd I do? Yeah, it was good. No veggies, no salad, no.
Speaker 3:Just boom, we're going full on carnivore. That's right. All right, stephanie, what is you said? I got a number of different tools. What are some?
Speaker 1:of your favorite tools, which which one right off the top of your head and say, oh, I love that tool. Okay, so everyone everyone and their brother talks about chat GPT. Right, and that's because chat GPT was the first one to get a ton of press. And ChatGPT is really good at some things and really bad at other things. Okay so ChatGPT, my my, uh, let's see, if I were trying to review ChatGPT, I would say you know what? It's great for ideation. If you're trying to think about something that you want to do. And you're trying to think about something that you want to do and you're trying to expand your line of thinking, see it from different perspectives. Chatgpt is great for that, right. If you, let's say, in your small business, you want to create a new revenue stream and you've got kind of a rough idea about what you'll do, but you just haven't fleshed it all out, it's great. It's great at ideating for that purpose.
Speaker 2:Hey, Chris, I want you to see if you can spell ideation I mean you struggled, you struggled, spelling AI.
Speaker 3:A-I hey, Chet T-P-T, Tell me ideation.
Speaker 2:Ideation.
Speaker 3:You said that word, I was like, oh, what a cool word. I'm using that tomorrow. And then she used it in another form ideate, I know, but I agree with her. I actually subscribed to the $20 a month chat GPT and I'll put an idea in there and say you know, give me some social media posts for handymen showing us an action. And then I'll say, okay, give me four more action. And then I'll say, okay, give me four more, give me. And then I'll send them to my social media guy. I'll doctor it up a little bit and send it over to him and say, hey, all these, all these photos I'm giving you, use some of these lines, but yeah, it gives you ideas, it gets you out of writer's block in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2:She's talking about not just coming up with social media posts, but I'm thinking about a different business strategy or vertical, and it can help you flesh that out.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, it's really good at strategizing. It's very, very good in that, and actually there is a different AI that I like better for social media, so I'll tell you about that, okay. But back to chat GPT. Great at strategizing stuff. It's great for researching stuff. Okay, if you've got some ideas you want to flesh those out, great, get some additional fodder. Chatgpt is good there when it comes to content development. Everyone is using it for content development. Everyone shouldn't be using it for content development, and I'll tell you why. Okay, if you have not already noticed this, you will in the very near future. Everyone's posts are starting to sound the same.
Speaker 3:Yes, they are, yes, they are.
Speaker 2:Was that Chris, or was that? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think it's fathom all right so it's a trained language model, right? And there are certain words that it uses over and over, and, over and over again, right? If I read the word um, let's see if I read the word delve one more time in a social media post, I'm going to jump off a cliff or a tapestry of something.
Speaker 2:That's another, oh, I see, I'm seeing crap like this in real estate listings. In commercial, I can see it. In residential, you need the puffery to just talk about how wonderful everything. But in commercial, big boy real estate, you just need the nuts and bolts. And every once in a while you get this really long, flowery, tapestry type of description. I'm like, oh god, the ai bet, oh wow unleash.
Speaker 1:Unleash is a huge one that eases all and harness the word harness, harness the power of blah, blah, blah. Right, there are entire Reddit threads that are absolutely hysterical, that list out the biggest offending words in ChatGPT's vocabulary, right, and these are words that it uses over and over and over again. So number one the problem is the vocabulary gets very redundant, not just for your own posts, but for other people reading the posts, because they're like wow, that kind of sounds like the post that I put up last week, right, Can you ask it to swear for you, because it would be really authentic, right, you know?
Speaker 1:what? At one point it did swear. I don't know if it's still swearing, because I don't ask it to swear, but at one point it did swear.
Speaker 3:If it's still swearing because I don't ask it to swear, but at one point it did swear. I'll let you know after the show because I do, I get, I don't. I totally don't act like myself when I'm trying to type into chat GPT, I'm just. I automatically just shut down any creativity whatsoever and say I want to write a termination letter. I did that, by the way.
Speaker 2:We are going to unleash you so you can delve into your next career and and help you weave your tapestry of your best thing.
Speaker 3:Oh, I love that shit. Oh well, there you go. Now I know I'm, I'm real.
Speaker 1:Can I tell you another problem with chat GPT.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go.
Speaker 1:Okay, most people are just getting in there and they're just experimenting, right. They just go in there, they start typing a couple of things. Maybe they bought 70,000 prompts for $7 because they saw an ad for someone selling it right, or they watched one YouTube video and they started to explore. You're going to get very subpar content as a result of that, right.
Speaker 2:So you're saying Chris should have watched two YouTube videos?
Speaker 3:That is three minutes too long.
Speaker 2:right there Can you watch YouTube videos fast.
Speaker 3:Huh, no, you can't speed them up. Oh, that sucks for you, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Not like listening to our podcast.
Speaker 3:Oh, I know Because I ripped through our podcast at one and a half, 1.25.
Speaker 2:You miss the nuance when you do that, whatever.
Speaker 3:Back to chat GPT, all right. So what's happening is it's learning from people who are dumb. That's what I heard.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that's some of it, but the thing is that you need to train it right. I treat chat GPT. I treat pretty much every AI, but definitely chat GPT. I train it before I ask it to do anything for me.
Speaker 1:And you know, I was a copywriter for 30 years, so there's a way that I write, copy or develop content, and I have a staff of people that work for me, and whenever I've hired a copywriter or a content writer, I take them through a training process. I do the same thing with the AI. I train it the same way I would train a human being to do it, and that is the difference between very mediocre output and exceptional output.
Speaker 2:I did not know you could do that. So you can customize your own AI to how you want it to sound.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can train it in your brand voice. You can train it to deeply understand your company and all of the intricacies of it. You can train it to understand everything about your customers. You can train it to understand marketplace insights, trends that are coming down the pike. There are so many things you can train it in, and the more you train it, the better results you're going to get, because what people are doing right now is they're basically like if you made ChatGPT into a person, right, it's kind of like going to a very crowded airport and walking up to some random stranger and saying I need to write a post about why I like ice cream. Can you help me?
Speaker 3:Right, Right and yeah right, You've not. This person doesn't know you, doesn't know your voice, doesn't know what you would say.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, there's no context at all right so chpbg guesses. It guesses. It's like well, okay, a lot of people like this, right. And then it writes some of the flowery stuff. We call it purple prose when it uses those flowery words and, um, it will write some of that stuff because that's been accepted by other people. But but then the worst part is when someone reads it and they're like, oh, a tapestry of blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3:They're like oh, I sound so smart, I sound so poetic not knowing that everybody else is saying the same thing I thought it was cool when I used tapestry.
Speaker 2:We can come and that's not the word that came to my mind, but anyway, yeah.
Speaker 3:So all right, so chat GPT good, because if you can train it in your voice so it knows when you log in, it gives you more customized responses. Is that what I heard?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll give me totally customized responses because I've trained it. I spent three hours training it, wow.
Speaker 2:So what is that process like?
Speaker 1:So what is the process like? Well, that's a little bit of my secret sauce.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, Well look at me backing into the content of this podcast.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll tell you the secret sauce for my spaghetti sauce, if you want that. It's a Sicilian. We use tomatoes, all right, so continue.
Speaker 1:Okay, very good, it really is. Okay, here's a big thing. A lot of people are hung up on prompts that's the word that's gotten very popular and people say I just need to have the right prompts and if I have the right prompt, I'll get the right results. Okay, no, you need prompts. Yes, but what's more important is what we call data sets. Okay, data sets are something are. Are data? Okay, sets of data that you can upload to an AI so that it has context about what you're asking it to do? Okay, so, yeah, and most people have no idea that this is something that you can do or should do.
Speaker 1:Right, but when I am training in AI, I am building a data set that's appropriate. So, for example, for social media, I'm going to teach it all about my company. I'm going to teach it all about the people who work for me. I'm going to teach it all about the customers I serve, and so on and so forth. I'm also going to show it data of the best performing posts that I've ever published so that it knows what gets results for me. I'm probably going to go over to some of my competitors posts and I'm going to look at what's performing really well for them, and I'm going to train it on that as well so it's like cyber warfare a little bit I think I'm, I'm, I'm in man guerrilla warfare, I love that idea.
Speaker 3:No more slashing tires, chris, it's all about the cyber yeah, you know, that'll probably save me a little bit of gas money.
Speaker 2:It's not as satisfying, though you don't hear the hiss.
Speaker 3:I know it's a tiger flat and it's lighting things on fire walking away, or the sparks from the electrical when you cut the power to the house. Yeah, it's just not the same, but still this is all a modern age we live in. Yes, so cyber warfare, it is All right. So we upload data sets and then we figure out posts that have been trending. Well, you go ahead and feed that to them, and what?
Speaker 1:do you say?
Speaker 3:Do you ask the question or say here's a post that trended well for me, and then do something else?
Speaker 1:I would say I wouldn't just do one post, I would collect a whole bunch of them, right, and I would upload that and I would. The first thing I would say is analyze these posts and tell me why they perform so well.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:This is cool.
Speaker 2:Do you buy a business?
Speaker 1:question Little off the rails here absolutely, and here's why copywriters take the grunt work that ai does and they bring the magic, they add the magic to it yeah, take away the bland, take away, get the edge, get out there, be a little bit more unique.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could see that. That's. The one thing I did notice is that some of the stuff came back really just like bland.
Speaker 1:I was like when you get really good stuff, which you can if you train your AI right, you can get really really top level stuff that would compete with a professional copywriter. But you still want the copywriter because the copywriter knows the questions and the prompts and the data that the AI needs in order to perform at its highest level.
Speaker 2:So at this point, we're not losing jobs, but we're making the people that have the jobs a lot more efficient, a lot more effective. I mean, their time isn't wasted. They can, instead of wondering what to write, they start with a basic thing and then make it better.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, and they are responsible for operating at more of a strategic level than you know. Let me get my hands dirty and get it done.
Speaker 1:Level right, they are strategizing and training the AI. Like you guys could train an AI in what you know super well, anybody could. Okay, there's a whole. Obviously there's a whole process that you have to learn on how to do it, but you know your craft like the back of your hand. A copywriter that's been around for any amount of time knows their craft like the back of the hand. Anyone that's a copywriter with their salt understands. It's all about the questions that you ask. Okay, when you ask the right questions, you get the right answers, and that creates the right copy oh, wow, yeah, obviously, this is uh very mind expanding for me.
Speaker 3:I'm um, I'm definitely digging this stuff. All right. So we've been talking about chat, gpt, um, you talked about training other AIs. So you, what did? What did we say that's not the best for content creation. That's a great strategy ideation. So what's the? What's the next one you would talk about?
Speaker 1:Okay, I am absolutely in love with Claude C-L-A-U-D-E, claude Claude, ai, cloud, ai. It is a product of Anthropic. Okay, anthropic is the parent company and Anthropic exists because they want to make AI safe. So I really like kind of their vantage point, their mission, and they created Cloud. Now, cloud is incredible at content development.
Speaker 2:Again, you got to train it, though. You got to give it the data sets. When you do that, you get incredible results out of cloud. So define safe. What are they trying to do? Because I'm terrified of AI. So I have a definition of don't say, don't take over the world.
Speaker 1:You have a safe word yeah, don't bring my bank account and honestly, I don't think I could speak on behalf of anthropic. I think that's something that I would say you guys should go look at the anthropic website. Um, it's. There's so much to. Ai is such a massive thing that it's not. I can't distill what safe is in one or two sentences.
Speaker 2:Well, and I can give you an example, I went to an AI seminar. Actually, whoa, look at you, yeah, and somebody brought up a great question. So if I use AI let's say customer complaints, and I use AI to write the response which includes the customer's information, is suddenly that customer's information out in cyberspace? It is.
Speaker 3:Well, yes, in fact, glad you brought this up because I said, hey, I got this lady coming on my podcast with a local radio personality that we have here in Atlanta. Her name is Belinda Skelton. Well, her husband works for Habitat for Humanity worldwide. His whole thing about AI is exactly what you just said. If we put our customers and our donation donors into that database in AI, that the rules in there say that AI gets to use those people to learn better about your, so they basically own your data. And he said, and we can't do that, so we, I said I, he spent, I spent, I spend most of my day telling people they can't use this AI with our customer information in it.
Speaker 1:Now here's the thing that a lot of people don't know there are different levels that you can pay for, where your data does not train the LLM, okay. So there are options where your data becomes more private, or so they say, but do any of us really know? No, right.
Speaker 2:Well, the answer that this guy and he was a professor from Mercer University, I mean mean it's a fascinating conversation. He goes okay, technically they have ai, has the information, but it's not a storage facility. I mean, all the information they have use it. They use it to learn the language better, but they're not actually keeping a database or anything. So technically they have it, but they it's not really designed to use it.
Speaker 3:But I'll put yet yeah, I mean, but you can't take that chance if your habitat for humanity and doing all the things they do, by the way is not just building houses. They are doing humanitarian efforts all over the world, international, including not just building but, you know, water source purification, all kinds of things. It was fascinating, but he said, um, he said we can't take that chance that people get access to our donor information to amounts to credit cards. So we have to be very careful because a lot of the AI terms and conditions say we own your data to use for helping us. And you used a term, stephanie, that we all need to understand. What does LLM stand for?
Speaker 1:That's a language learning model.
Speaker 2:That's it. Okay. Yeah, the whole. That's it. Okay. Yeah, the whole thing's kind of wild. I heard a conversation about oh you know, tiktok. For example, chris is a big TikTok user and but the people who have TikTok and we know who they are they not only see your content, but there's like geo targeting on there. So if you were somebody that somebody wanted to find, they could possibly pinpoint you from. You know where you're doing your tiktok videos and when you did the videos and things like that.
Speaker 3:So yeah, 100. Actually I saw a guy on tiktok he gives away watches doing that. He said I here's the part.
Speaker 2:But if you're a political dissident, you know you may not want that. Oh yeah, we'll stay up tiktok then, and don't be a political dissident, you know you may not want that.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, we'll stay up tiktok then and don't be a political dissident. Well, just just conform, please. Thank you, that's what we're about, all right, especially here in the us yeah, yeah, we are let me pour a little more bourbon on that one. Oh, we need to. All right, stephanie. So, claude, uh for I, uh for content, get, give us the, the most obscure one that you think would help small business people if they invested the time in it.
Speaker 1:The most obscure AI that would help small business people. I don't think you need an obscure AI. Can I be honest?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, actually-, stephanie, are you saying that's not a good question?
Speaker 3:Well, hang on. Here's where I was going for it, because I wanted to get a leg up on somebody and I wanted to figure out if there's something I could download on my phone. And I'm just going to kick the crap out of everybody and be the best handyman remodeler in the world because I have this AI thing.
Speaker 2:My guess is, a lot of your competition isn't using this. What I want to know is what so, stephanie, we hire you to do what with AI?
Speaker 1:Okay, a few different things. Some people will hire us to create what we call an AI marketing assistance. Okay, this is when we train the AI for you, because there is a whole process and the way that I learned to. I think a bug just flew up my nose, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Here, get really close to the camera so we can see you know, what.
Speaker 3:Sorry. Okay, hang on On that note. I got to go, I paused it. All right, we're good.
Speaker 1:Okay, are we going to edit that out?
Speaker 3:No, we always say that we will but we won't. Yeah, I keep telling Michael. So my intern, he got a big boy job and so he's kind of mailing in a little bit of the stuff. Now he has not been cutting out a thing. I listened to what I was like, dude, I sat there for two minutes saying cut that out, cut that out.
Speaker 2:And that's all you hear on the pod. That makes us authentic.
Speaker 1:That in fact. That's funny. He said that All right, you're ready to go back. Sorry, bugs do fly.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm ready. Okay, dude, that just happened to me two days ago. I'm walking into my garage, coming to the house, and, bam, this sucker goes like all the way up and I've got a big surface area to work with and he takes me out. I'm like, really, and I'm like walking to the house going. I was like, how did that happen? So I know, but I mean, it took me like 30 minutes to get over it too. I was down, I'm on the foot. No, I'm kidding A little bit of a drama king, a little bit Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm going to need you to repeat the question. I got sidetracked.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, let's talk about how we use your company.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, you know the marketing part All right, three, two, one of our previous guests on the podcast you're not supposed to use AI on LinkedIn. Is that a thing?
Speaker 1:You can post.
Speaker 2:Great question. Hey, wait, wait. Can you say that one more time?
Speaker 3:Great question, Alan Whatever.
Speaker 1:You can definitely post content that has been created by AI on LinkedIn. Linkedin gets real fussy when you're using AI tools to do certain things within the network. Okay, that's what LinkedIn gets ticked off about. But if you're creating content using cloud or chat, gpt or whatever, and then you're copying and pasting it into LinkedIn, that's fine.
Speaker 2:They just don't want you to use AI to just solicit connections and things like that.
Speaker 1:They don't want you to use AI to mine data right. They don't want you to use AI to pull things off of the network that truly don't belong to you right Gotcha. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I love the pivot you guys are doing here. To go back to what we were just talking about, so you can come in, you provide your marketing services and your AI and you'll train them on how to do themselves, and that frees them up from having to be shackled to you, as it were, for just one thing in marketing agency. It helps them actually take control of some of this stuff, but it builds right, it makes them more strategic and you obviously, in turn, are looking more strategic and are more strategic for a lot of us business owners. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know some people like a little bit later today. Actually, I have a client that hired me because she gets so many Google reviews. It obnoxious right. So many google reviews and managing that, staying on top of those google reviews and responding to them is like it has become just a job that takes hours and hours and hours of time. So I trained.
Speaker 2:I wish I had that. I'm like I don't really feel sorry for this person. I know what is?
Speaker 3:she must be killing it. What business is this?
Speaker 2:people love me.
Speaker 3:I hate it I hate all the attention I know she loves it.
Speaker 1:What does she do?
Speaker 3:what's her business?
Speaker 1:she, she owns a chain of retail stores beautiful, I own um, you two links are a chain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I own, I own two. I own links of the handyman. The trust we're up to you would not even hit empire, I do. But we're up at 900 reviews after 16 years. Really, all of them came because google has not been around for 16 years either. So we're trying to get to a thousand by the end of the year. But I'm telling you, man, I got 15 guys out there and then two up in athens and I'll get one or two a day. Right now we're averaging, I'm like, but you guys, there's 15 of you out there, man, get these reviews, bro, come on. So one of them complained to me and says but Chris, how do I get reviews if I go to the same person all the time? Because we have a lot of repeat customers. I said so, get their kids, you know. Grab their phones, you know. Steal them. That's not AI, that's back to good old, that's guerrilla tactics, right there, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like in that case, right Asking someone to write a review, great, okay, but you can automate all of that where they automatically get an invitation to leave you a review and then, once they do leave you the review, it automatically replies to them in your brand voice, with a unique response, and you didn't have to lift a finger.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm presenting to this client later this afternoon funny enough, I actually you guys can't see this in the pod, but I actually had my finger up. You lifted your finger, I did as soon as she said that I'm like, oh my god, I'm over here lifting too many fingers.
Speaker 2:Hey, I kind of made you do that no, but you know what?
Speaker 3:I think stephanie's already hacked us. I think she's reprogramming us. She's been treating us. Sit alan, sit chris, scratch my ear. What more bourbon? I love that. All right, so you're going to help her automate her review response in her brand voice. I think that's. That's the. Uh. That's a big aha for me. I actually hadn't thought about this, and this is where she is unlocking the mysterious, mysterioso. I'm trying to think of a bigger word than ideation. You can't, I can't, uh, so all right, so, um, how else have you helped a client? Uh, give us some examples, because I love the examples, because the examples unlock ideas for us, and I and I, a, I, a, I it's only two letters, buddy, come on, I can't I need my cheat sheets.
Speaker 3:Where are my post-it notes?
Speaker 1:okay. So another thing that we've done is, um, training chatbots. Okay, so anybody that's in the service business well, I could work in products too um, but anybody who has a business that, uh, has customers that might have questions when the doors are not open right for the business needs a chatbot, because a chatbot can respond to your customers questions 24 seven. Who is, you know, thinking about hiring you? But it's 1030 at night and they go to your website and there's a chat bot that's trained to answer questions about what you do. They can get a lot of the preliminary information that they need when it works for them, as opposed to waiting until the next day when you're open and hoping that they have time in their busy day to connect and get the answers they need.
Speaker 1:So I have a chat bot that I set up on my website that can answer all kinds of basic questions, but it is programmed to lead people to make an appointment with me, and so when someone's interacting with the bot, they're getting their questions answered, but they're also being persuaded to make an appointment with me so that I can get on a discovery call with them, talk to them about some higher level services and make a sale chatbots are pretty cool, but, uh, they kind of drive me crazy.
Speaker 2:I would. I would so be into a chatbot that goes hey, it's 10 o'clock at night, all the real people are asleep, you know. But I give me a whirl, what the hell I like that idea.
Speaker 3:Now, that would be authentic because, uh, that reminds me of uh years ago, when we put call centers in uh 1990s, uh 90s. I was doing consulting and call centers and a guy said you know, the coolest call center whenever is press seven to hear a duck, quack. You press seven and it goes quack. I literally I think we called it like 10 times just to do that. So, to your point, I think that'd be awesome. Hey, I'm a chat bot, get real, I don't even exist. So you're at 10 o'clock. You must be lonely. What do you want to?
Speaker 2:talk about. What kind of movies do you like you?
Speaker 1:can do that you can actually do that, dude.
Speaker 3:Oh my god. Oh my god. Clearly you don't have anything better to do. What happened to the friends reruns spread out? Did you finish? Did you roll out? They like us, whatever. Oh my god, that's hilarious. Yeah, all right. So, chatbots, you put those, you can put those on websites, right, and then, uh, you train those to work and hit the, uh, your chatbot behind the scenes. Right the widget right, right.
Speaker 1:Another thing is uh, we had one client who they get. They're in the arts industry and they sell a bajillion products and their customer service team often gets a million very, very intricate niche questions about different products. So we train the AI so that when people write in and ask a question that's a niche question, the customer service agent can search the database very quickly and get an answer, as opposed to having to go to the person who created the product, or the owner or whoever a higher up, or the owner or whoever a higher up. Now they can use the AI that we trained to get the answer and it formulates the email response and sends it directly to the customer.
Speaker 3:How could I manipulate the chat? Gpts of the world Watch this so that anytime somebody says I have a home repair question, they go to my website.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, I'd be a millionaire if I did that.
Speaker 3:I'm giving you that opportunity, Stephanie.
Speaker 1:I'll work on that for you. I'll work on that for you.
Speaker 3:See, I offer ideas to help.
Speaker 2:You're such a giver, I am All right, while you're taking All right.
Speaker 3:Here we are in the all right. Here we are in the middle of 2024, six months from now. What do you predict AI is going to be like compared to today? I mean where do you see people moving to and doing things with.
Speaker 1:I think that people are going to realize chat GPT is not the only AI on the planet. I think that people are going to be willing to experiment with other AIs and learn how they can be used in the proper ways. I think there's going to be a big percentage of people that plant their flag even more firmly than it is now and on the anti-AI train firmly than it is now and on the anti-ai train okay, and they'll do that out of fear.
Speaker 3:out of fear as well as, um, lack of knowledge right and and I agree with you because you- know, she just say I was scared and dumb no, but she said she's saying that the world's really not round, it's a flat earth.
Speaker 3:We knew that. I mean, this has all been a hoax. You know that. All right, so plant your flag there. Ellen, old and scared, okay, so you're gonna see more resistance. You're gonna see more people, uh, raising their hands saying hey, calling foul, hey, not, not right. Hey, ai is not the way to go. You're gonna see more of that resistance well, and I'm.
Speaker 2:The reason why I'm resisting it is is because I mean, just think of all the cyber criminals that we have out there. Now they have a new tool. You know there's just so many ways that you could use it for for bad and I mean, this is a great way to use it for good, and I heard that you know the future of ai is you can actually have a, an ai doctor or an ai lawyer that has the entire world's knowledge to to draw from. It's probably going to be really accurate. That's kind of wild to think about.
Speaker 1:Maybe somebody already do have that. You can already do that. I mean it's just not called your AI doctor. Well, there might be something called that, but you can go to. There's an AI called perplexity Amazing research tool. I don't even go on Google anymore. I don't use Google for any searches. I do everything on perplexity.
Speaker 3:All right, that's. That's actually one that I wanted to hit on because a leading question, but now let me follow up. Do you think, with the advent of AI, does this diminish Google's presence and authority over all of us?
Speaker 1:Oh, a hundred percent, it already has.
Speaker 3:I was reading something last week that said google has lost 10 of their traffic already to a I mean isn't, I didn't know that, but but I but I felt that too because, uh, back to what you said, I was getting better answers I'll chat tpt than I was on google searches on a couple things I was looking up interesting.
Speaker 1:You got to check out perplexity.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 1:You're going to love it. Perplexity is amazing. It cites the sources for the answers that it gives and the way that it leads the conversation to get deeper knowledge is just outstanding. So, if I can tell you, I even I have a medical condition and earlier this week I was having some new symptoms and I was like Hmm.
Speaker 1:I wonder if this is related to that. And I did not call my doctor. I went to perplexity and I said this is my medical condition, this is what my symptoms are. This is what's happening right now. Is there any link between the two? And it came back with this big old article and said yep, this, this, this, and here's the sources, here's the medical journals that talk about this. And I got my answer.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is amazing. Maybe you can get a second opinion on your doubt.
Speaker 3:Well, actually, because WebMD, every time I go to it, says and you die. I mean it's like question, question, answer, answer, answer and then you're dead. I'm like, come on, man, every time you go to WebMD, no-transcript men, what were you doing? I was too cheap to have one of my guys go install starlink in my rental house up in the mountains and, uh, I'm done with that. I'm now just gonna send them up there. I'll pay them for two days. I've spent the night up there because I'm not going on that roof ever again. Yeah, that was fun, but I didn't fall all the way. Well, you fell.
Speaker 2:Oh, I fell all right, but I, I, I mean, you look like you've been in a motorcycle wreck.
Speaker 3:I honestly, I, I, if I was in a motorcycle, I think I would have fared better. Yeah because I would have been able to roll.
Speaker 3:Oh God, it was brutal. Anyway, okay, back to. So perplexity, because we're coming to the end. We've got so many more things. We've got to talk about AI stuff, all right, so perplexity is a good one. So, last 10 minutes other tools you would recommend, other ways you would actually have people, because they're all going to find you on sizzle porch marketing anyway, when they can't figure out how to do it. They don't have anything more than but one YouTube in them to watch. Aka, one of them. Yeah, other tools you would recommend.
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you, one of the other services that we offer is called an AI matchmaker. Right, and this is when we sit down with you and we figure out where are the holes in your company, right, what are the things that are costing too much, taking too much time, just driving you crazy because they're tedious and annoying. Right, and then we will go and we will find the AI solutions that can relieve that pain for you, and we will train your team on how to use this solution internally. Okay, so that is something that is real hot, because a lot of people there we go A lot of problems that they need fixed and they don't know how to fix them.
Speaker 3:That reminds me of the movie uh hero six. It was a Disney movie. It says hi, my name is hero. And I was thinking so. When they come in, they go hey, Chris, do you have a minute man? My check's too low. Uh, hang up, hero, go. Hi, my name is hero. What is your problem? My check's too low. How does that make you feel? And chris is over there sipping down his bourbon at nine o'clock in the morning. I mean, uh, again, allegedly it's a perplexity, says about that. Yeah, actually I'm going there, all right, so you can do an ai matchmaker service. So we're give us, give us a price point on that. Where does that start? Because I'm sure that's probably the ai matchmaker service yeah yeah, you're.
Speaker 1:You're probably going to be looking. It does depend on on some different things, but you're probably going to be looking at a starting point of 1997.
Speaker 3:Right, that's not. That's not 19,977 guys. That's the thing. Cause I've had people come up and go, oh, I can do this, I can do that. Yeah, well, it all starts with a $5,000 monthly investment in a 12 month contract. I'm like, yeah, that's a non-starter bro. I said marketing ring makes the uh makes the phone ring. But I am not going to sit there just because you say you know AI going to sign up for 12 months on a $5,000 contract. I've had some people do that. I'm like, no, so this is a absolutely. You want to get through it and ferret through it because again, early adopters, you're going to win, you're going to beat everybody else in business. You're doing this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so 1997 is what we call the essentials package. Yeah, so 1997 is what we call the essentials package, and that is how we help people confidently step into the AI marketing game. We create an integration plan, specific for your company, to create revenue generating content. Okay, then we have higher levels than that where we do more.
Speaker 3:Obviously, you can step up, and that's the thing I think what I found, especially in my, in my business. Uh, when people want a full house remodel and they want to have the best of the best, they're starting at a price point up high, but many of us are starting at the I just don't know, and any number you're about to throw at me it's going to shock me. And so what I talk about with, especially with my handy handyman, when you show up at a house and they say, well, I just want you to fix this door because the threshold ripped off, for whatever reason, probably did it himself and we say, no, I think you need a brand new door. You didn't want to hear that this is all hypothetical ai hypothetical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you should have lowered my threshold when you put my door in, but that was crap.
Speaker 3:Yes, we put Alan's door in and the threshold ripped within a year and I'm like that's the third door in two years that it done In the last three months. I'm sorry that it done this. And so I've gone and go back to my manufacturers and like, dude, did you guys change the install procedures? Because, anyway, I digress, but back to your point. So you start in at two grand, yeah, and if you guys feel it, obviously you're going to develop and you're going to deliver just hell of a service. We know that's going to happen. And then you go hey, now I can start stepping in, stepping up, and now you can help us with the strategic stuff. So I think, sizzle force marketing man, figuring out how to do this stuff and using AI to your advantage, Cause I think first movers are going to make a big difference in it. Oh yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, opportunity is ripe. I like to say the gold rush is here, so everybody needs a shovel. Let's go get one.
Speaker 3:Yeah and again. I am so ready for you to make a million dollars. That's my idea.
Speaker 1:I'm ready. I'm ready for that too, so let's go, all right.
Speaker 3:Stephanie, what else should we share with everybody before we get off this thing? Let's go All right, stephanie. What else should we share with everybody before we get off this thing? Because I'm so glad you reached out to me and we got you in there. I've learned so much the little stuff, but now the big stuff and I think that's just been ideal. So what else should we know? How can we?
Speaker 1:get ahold of you. All right Things that you should know. Please don't buy prompts from anybody ever because you're wasting your money. You don't need to do it. Okay, other things you should know. If you want some help, you'll find me at sizzleforcecom. Sizzle like bacon, force like. May the force be with you, sizzle force.
Speaker 2:I will never forget that now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Sizzle like bacon. May the force be with you. Two of my favorite things eating bacon and watching star Wars.
Speaker 1:And you tell I have boys, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you did good. That's awesome. All right, guys, sizzle force marketing figured out. I think this is a great gateway. You've got to at least talk to her, right? I mean, stephanie, you give our audience 30 minutes if they wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Right, Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to talk to anybody. There's a big old button on the website, sizzleforcecom. This is schedule a call. If you have any questions, happy to help you.
Speaker 2:And you can talk to a bot. You can chat bot.
Speaker 1:Actually talk to me. Talk to me, Amazingly, you will not talk to a bot. You will talk to me.
Speaker 3:All the way from San Diego, california. Stephanie, we loved having you on. Thank you so much. If you guys didn't learn something, man, that was on you, because this stuff, it truly is mystification. People are trying to pull games on us all the time. So go out there and find out people who can help you get through this. This episode definitely helped me. It's got to help you. Go out there and make it all happen.
Speaker 2:Let's get up that mountaintop and let's go find that million-dollar success number Mystification. You like that one? Yes, baby Cheers everybody, All right, ciao.
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