 Today, we’re talking about AI again. And we’re, we really liked the conversation that we had last week. So we wanted to extend it and do a 2. 0 open mic discussion on AI. You’re listening to Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed, which happens to be, by the way, the name of the book as well.
If you’re listening, listening to this in podcast. ─ You might not know this, but we’re actually a little bit different. We do a live show every Friday, two o’clock Eastern, on Clubhouse, the app called Clubhouse, on Startup Club, ─ and you can join us on stage. We love it when people come and join us on stage.
Here’s my co moderator, Michele Van Tilburg. We’re extending that conversation on AI again, and trying to figure out ways we can use AI to help us take over the world. What do you think, Michele? ─ Take over the world and get rich, maybe? Yeah, I’ll take it. I don’t need to take over the world, Colin, but I know a lot of us have startups or businesses already going that are successful, or maybe not.
And we really could use AI. To help us move to the next level of our businesses, and I’m super excited today to continue this conversation. We had a great session last week. Um, it’s already posted, I believe, on the website, this transcripts as well as a blog post. So if you’re in the audience or you’re listening to the recording, you know, don’t forget, you can always go to ww dot startup club.
We have, oh my gosh, probably almost 200 episodes of this show and other shows that have been done that are completely free and, um, available for anyone to learn and read and, you know, pass on to your friends and family or coworkers. So Colin, um, you know, we’re going to talk about AI today. ────── Do you have, I’m curious, what are the newest tools?
Like I kind of want to start there. What are some of the newer tools? Cause there’s some really cool new tools that have just emerged within the last couple of weeks. So maybe we could talk about a couple of our favorite tools first and then jump right into the conversation. About how we’re successfully using them, Colin. ─
Absolutely. And, and, uh, welcome back, Shadow. We appreciate you coming on stage. We always appreciate your support, uh, especially when it comes to this topic. Uh, but it was two, two, two things I think we should start with. One is like, let’s talk about those new tools. And if anyone here has any thoughts about which tools to use or not, you know, please feel free to jump in.
And the second is I want to talk a little bit about Startup Club ─ with Mimi here about AI and what we’re doing with StartupClubAI. ─── com. ─ And it’s pretty exciting. So we’ll start with the tools since you asked the question, Michele. Uh, I wrote an article for ───── Forbes that came out, uh, near Valentine’s Day. ──
Why I cheated on my A. I. And what I discovered was that there was another A. I. called Pi. P. I. dot A. I. ─ And I discovered that she’s a little bit more conversational. ─── And ─ we actually decided to, to have her interview me for the book on Clubhouse. Similar to how we had ChatGPT do that. ─ And she did, I think, a much better job.
I’ve been using Py. ai, ─ almost like a bar trick, we’ll call it. I don’t know what you call it. I’m at the, uh, right now I’m talking on a Starlink connection on North Captiva Island. ── And, uh, every, every day or every night I’ve been adding Py to our conversation and everybody’s making jokes with her and she’s making jokes back and she’s laughing. ─
It’s absolutely hilarious how, how it works, but I tried to give her some work, some heavy duty work, and that did not turn out well. Also, her database is not as, not as complete as the database that you can get with ChatGPT. ── Look, ChatGPT is still by far the workhorse for me. I have used it to write contracts.
I’ve used it to interpret contracts. I have used it for, um, coming up with titles for an article. Uh, recommendation letters. I can’t tell you how many things I’ve used it for. Uh, and we continue to use it. ─ However, its database is, is, is, is from April 2023. Okay, and I may have been updated. This is, this is about a couple weeks ago when I checked last. ────
And sometimes I’m looking for information that’s a little bit newer. And we discovered perplexity. ai. ──── And I know it uses ChatGPT, but it also uses other sources. And it’s very up to date. It has the most recent stock quotes, you know, it’s, it’s got very up to date information and sometimes when you’re searching for things, ─ uh, or you’re using, you know, you’re asking it to create something, ── you want to have very up to date information.
I, I think, uh, I had asked it to do a review of the book, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, ─ and it went to Amazon and it took ─ listings from Amazon, cut the quotes from those listings, the most powerful quotes. ── Put that into the document. Actually, sorry, it wasn’t a review, it was a press release for ─ StartScaleXRP because we had hit a hundred and we just put it out to our local like group or whatever, but I just asked it to write a press release and we had hit a hundred reviews at five stars and so ───── it went and just got that information and that’s recent ─ reviews that had been written.
It got some really good quotes and we actually took some of those quotes and put them on the website and it took us, what, a few seconds? A minute or two to To do that. That’s the other thing about perplexity versus chat ─── GPT is perplexities. A lot was a lot faster, but I’ve noticed recently they’ve sped up chat GPT as well. ─
So let’s let’s stick with this topic. We’ll come back to what Startup Club AI is doing, ─ but I’d love to hear from people on the stage if they’ve used any other AI tools. To help them with their startup. ──────────────────────────
Well, let’s go. Let’s go to shadow 1st ─ shadow. I, I know you’re using lots of different tools. What are your thoughts on some of the newer tools or even older ones that you are finding still are the best. ── I’m getting to learn more and more that about Gemini’s abilities lately, uh, in regards to writing and feedback, uh, by Gemini on what I’m writing, ─ uh, definitely does better than ChatGPT.
I’ve used Perplexity occasionally to get feedback, but it doesn’t seem to give it to me as, as well as Gemini does. So I think I end up going back to Gemini. ── Gemini will go through it and it’ll tell me this is the strengths, this is what it says and this is what you could do to add to it to, to build on, on what you’re writing even more, ─ which is really good because a lot of times it’s stuff that I hadn’t even thought of that, you know, to consider. ───
And I hear that mid journey is looking at coming out with a video, ─ um, feature ─ possibly in, in this current version, version six, if not in version seven. ── So that’s going to get interesting because that’s a tool I use a lot. ────────────────────
So let me ask you a question about Gemini. I have not actually played with that. I played with, ─ um, the Elon Musk’s one. Um, Grok, I think it was called. I was so disappointed. Like, I really love what Elon Musk does in the world, and I’m not certain he’ll get there, but ─ I was pretty disappointed. Maybe he’s made some improvements, but tell me, Gemini, like, ─ how does that compare with ChatGPT?
Like, how does it, like, why would you use Gemini over ChatGPT? So, for example, when I do my echoes in the morning, I create a quote that relates to an image. ── I’ll take that quote and drop it into ChatGPT and say, your thoughts on this quote, and it’ll give me, you know, usually glowing type comments. ─ Which, you know, it’s fine.
It’s good for my ego. But if I go over to Gemini and I say your thoughts on this quote, it’ll come back and it’ll say to me, this is the strengths that’s in those quotes, this quote, this is what I believe it says, this is how it could be interpreted. You might want to consider changing this. That’s the feedback I’m looking for. ──────
Okay, I’m going to ask you a technical support question. Oh, okay. I’m actually there right now. And I clicked on chat with Gemini and it says, Gemini isn’t supported for this account. ──── Oh, I see. Enable access to Gemini. Okay, so let it go. Keep going. Sorry. Okay, ────── I was going to say, what country are you in? They finally, I know. ───
There you go. Exactly. ───────────────────
So that answer your question. I did. Very good. Very good. All right, Justin, you’re up next. ────────────────────
So, Justin, if you wanted to, to share with us what your thoughts on the AI and what you’ve used it for, or what you’ve If you have any tools that you’ve used that, uh, have helped you, uh, that we haven’t talked about yet. ─────── And if not, Justin, we’ll jump over to Sheba. ──────────────
Oh, my sound’s coming in. No, I can hear you. Um, yes. Um, the, you’re, you have to press the mic on the bottom right hand corner if you want to talk. So Justin knows that. Hear, ─ hear We hear Yeshiva now. He knows. There we go. ─ Yeah. Thank you. ─ I think, you know, my early introduction to AI was with the computer vision, uh, where we were trying to figure out a lot of, uh, learning models based on images.
Right? That’s where we started off. But my ── understanding of AI to what it is transformed today based on the ─── LLM models or the kind of interpretation we have of lms, right? ─ I think that’s a great story. Um, my thought process for my level of understanding, it helped me in two things, right? ─ Especially on ─── creating context to ─ people who don’t understand English as a language and want to represent themselves in English.
So, we were able to use the LLM models to ─ interpret data or whatever the conversation was in the local language. ─ But actually convert it into English and represent themselves. And LinkedIn is a great example of that. So we were able to convert people who want to communicate or be part of that ecosystem ──── to express themselves in their local language.
But ── the conversation was in English. I don’t know if you understand what I’m, where I’m coming from. So that was one experimentation. ─ Uh, we did with the LLM models and the outcome was really great, but the subtlety of ───── what has to be represented, that was not very clear. When I go back to Shadow’s statement, that ── there was a GPT, which was trying to ────── represent as an ecosystem of these models, but I think Gemini does a better job of it and Gemini Pro and the new version of it, ─ uh, it kind of understands personality conversation much better than, you know, ──────── I leave it at that, but I don’t know if I was able to express myself, but that’s my two cents.
Sure. So, so how are you using AI ─ in your business or your workplace, ── Shiva? Yeah. So we come from a very, uh, ─── technology driven, underrated model, so to speak. So we’ve used it in multiple shapes and forms. ───── Especially when it comes to vision, when we started off leveraging AI, ─ uh, computer vision and really figuring out what a photograph can do for you. ─
Uh, we’ve implemented in agriculture, which is very interesting where ─ we can take a picture of a plant ─── and send that to an AI model. And that would determine what kind of disease the plant can really have and what kind of pesticide you can deploy to solve the problem. So ─ we were more like a graphical ─── user interface, ─ figuring things out. ─
And now it is translated to a language model. ── Uh, which is very interesting. So, ─ uh, the way I would look at it is applications can be multiples of AI, right? ─ Uh, it’s probably the way you interpret it and the way you deploy it. ─ Uh, but from us, you know, the, the way we leveraged it, it was very small placeholder of figuring out what AI can do. ───
Versus what a human can do, right? So that’s all a lot of problems for us. Yeah. I don’t know if I give you the right example. ───────── Figuring out that that’s great. Like we’re trying to figure out and I hadn’t thought of that. If I understood you, you’re programming, but you’re using AI to help you do the, ─ like you said, the interfaces, the screens, the design.
Is that right? Correct. Correct. Just by feeding in some information, which we cannot conceive. ───── Was able to do it based on ──────── . Yeah, you actually just gave me an idea. We’re working on one of our, um, big consumer sites, a new navigation. I, I think I’m gonna put in there, ’cause I’m kind of struggling with the way it’s worded.
I think I might try it this weekend to put in what we have there to see if it could gimme some better suggestions. Uh, I, I like that as a use case. I think that’s the first time we’ve heard it as a actual software user interface, uh, aid. ──────── Absolutely. ── We’d be glad to help and give you more feedback. ──── Very cool. ──────
No, we appreciate that. Um, Justin, if you’re online, if you could flash your mic, if not, we will, oh, there you are. Perfect. Love to hear from you, Justin. ───── Well, I’m glad to be heard from, um, the question seems to be, how are you using AI at work and business? And I’m. I’ve built an A. I. That does the cold calls for you.
Uh, it is currently running for a payment processing sales rep. Uh, It’s one of those things that is super effective, but I do use chat GPT, uh, assistance that are geared towards content marketing to create the content for my marketing campaigns. Um, I use chat GPT to review some of my contractor agreements, my service agreements.
Um, I use whisper actually, I actually use my BDR tool and there’s a video of me doing it. Um, basically I use it to interact with. The chat GPT so that I can talk to it and it will answer me back instead of having to type things in and do it that way. So it’s, it’s a almost all the time throughout the day.
I am using this for my work, including ─ the thing that I’m selling is an AI cold calling tool that uses chat GPT, whisper 11 labs, et cetera. ── Yes. Let’s dig into that a little bit more. So you’re telling us about this chat. This cold call AI. So I don’t understand what you’re saying. Like, uh, ─ does it figure out the leads somehow and then makes a phone call?
Can you explain it a little better? So we actually have, I, I use, I’m a professional cold caller, like that’s my whole business, it has been for years, is I just do straight, uh, dials, um, hold on, I’m going to have to switch off of Bluetooth. ──────────────
Can you hear me? ───────── Yeah, yeah, we hear you. Okay, so I used, uh, a database that I’ve used many times to generate the lead data, the phone numbers, the names, all of that stuff. Um, that’s all done by me, and then I pull the leads, and the bot goes through the list. It makes the calls, it engages with the prospect, it gets through the gatekeepers.
Okay, but how does it engage with the prospects? I’m sorry. ── So, essentially, it’s a listen, think, respond. So, when It picks up an audio feed coming in. So when the person answers the phone, it hears that that is transcribed and then put into the GPT with the, with the context and run instructions for the account that it’s calling for, ──── it generates an answer.
And then it says that through the 11 labs clones. That, uh, we’ve actually figured out a way to get the 11 labs clones to be more human like in their inflection and pacing, um, so it sounds like a human, but it announces itself as an AI, and, uh, you know, it even says, hey, we’re still a little slow on the uptake because we’re a new technology.
Uh, so please be patient. That seems to be helping with, uh, dealing with the latency issue as well. Well, I think because you’re the first doing it, if I received a call like that, if I received a call from somebody who’s human, I’d probably just, like, take me on the list, you know, and hang up. If I receive a call like that, I might actually be intrigued and say, uh, what’s going on here?
And I like the fact you’re up front about the AI. ─── Uh, definitely, you know, we may have, uh, some companies that could use your technology and be awesome to make certain that we, uh, we have your contact information. I think I’m following you. Yes. Yeah, we’re following each other. We’re friends. And I know, I know I get a lot of friend requests and I apologize.
The stupid app does not allow us to go more than 2500 friends. So every time I get one, I have to delete one and it takes a while to delete and whatnot. But I know a few of you in the audience have been. Um, that’s just amazing, but Michele, you’re, you’ve been in this space for a long time, could you see it being effective?
And I understand the latency to Justin, right? Because the latency, you know, if you use chat, GPT or pie, and what pie does nicely, by the way, if you haven’t played with that one, Justin, is it makes a dinging noise, like, like, you know, it’s thinking noise. So I don’t know if, if you’ve got something like that for latency as well, but Michele, ─ yeah, I’m just curious.
So ─── it’s, it’s calling and it’s like, is it trying to, this is so intriguing to me. Is it trying to 1st qualify or get a response and then transfer to human? Yeah. ───── So the majority of the initial qualification is done through the lead generation, the list creation. So I use a tool called seamless Uh, if Brandon Mornanson’s the creator, uh it Basically, it lets me target based on a bunch of different criteria.
So we do that for the initial qualifiers We’re making sure we’re in the right niche Uh the right target market the right level decision maker, uh revenue size Uh, employee size, what have you, and then it’s really just doing that call for, uh, to set an appointment for the initial discovery, which is the qualifying. ────
Yeah. Well, well, ──── I I mean it’s ─ Listen if you can like get that perfect or even near perfect like that’s a game changer, right? So you’re calling up a call, you know qualified leads list and you’re just they’re trying to be the appointment setter To move you to the next stage, if I understand you correctly.
Yeah. I mean, I’ve spent, uh, you know, 22 years in B2B sales in the last 11 or 12, uh, solely focused and specializing in prospecting, making the cold calls, uh, cold outreach through email and LinkedIn. And I basically am building the bot out to do all of those things. But I started with the hardest, most labor intensive part, which is ───────── And the most desirable thing, right?
To get like appointments. So, yeah, that was kind of my next question. Um, so basically you’re saying that you’re training the model on your own content, the bot on your own content. So, if I said, oh, tell me a little bit more about this. ──── or something like that. It’s going against your own content. The AI is giving an answering to me.
If I, if I understand you correctly. ── So it’s, it’s actually given the context of the, the systems and processes. That was always how I sold my cold calling services is that I’m systems and processes based and oriented. So they would pay me 80 an hour to come into a company that needed to expand their lead generation.
And do the dials, but I’d also build out the script, the targeting, the follow ups, all of that stuff. And then they could turn that over with a followable successful process for, you know, a 20, 25 an hour dialer. Um, but basically I’ve built the bot to do the same thing. I’ve got half a million plus personal cold calls in my career.
And then with teams that I’ve built and tracked, uh, data from, we’re talking about 1. 2 million cold calls made. So I have a bunch of data on how this system works and what the numbers and conversions are. And I’ll be honest with you, one of the biggest keys to, I think, us getting, because the bot is getting from the gatekeeper to the right department more than some of my early level dialers, uh, ever did.
And I think the part of it is that we don’t do the standard approach of, Hi, we’re this and this. We’re like, uh, Hi, I don’t know if you can help me, but ─ And that little bit of humility that the bot is capable of expressing is actually getting us further as it would a human than ─ our competitors like Air, AI, et cetera, et cetera. ───────
It’s just fascinating. Sorry, Michele, I have a question here. ─ Sorry. ─ Can I ask a question to Justin? Yeah, absolutely. Go for it. ── Justin, where’s the AI component in the whole thing? I’m not talking about robotic processing, but ── Where does AI fit in, in what you said as a journey for somebody to make a call or receive a call? ───────
I, I was having a little trouble understanding where, where you were, where is the AI component of the whole thing. Right. ─ Where does AI fit into the whole journey? ── What you said, where, yeah. So how does the AI connect to the journey? Like what’s the. AI actually doing right? Well, right now the AI is just doing the, the prospecting, just calling the leads and trying to get them onto the calendar for, uh, the 80 or whoever our client happens to be.
Um, we’re going to expand and of course we’re going to try and create an AE that can do discovery calls using like deep fake technology, but right now the AI only fits into the journey as, Hey, we can open the doors because it’s a hell of a lot more consistent than a human. And it’s gonna work consistently throughout the entire business day nonstop.
It’s gonna keep that funnel full, that, that top end of the funnel, that that top end of the pipeline completely full. ─ So, Shiva, why would you need the A for that? You know? Yeah. I, I think Shiva, ── what Justin, ── this is, so AE is an account executive, right? The AI is trying to schedule a, an appointment, and then the sales person gets on and talks to the person. ─────
You see, ─ but, but that’s a robotic process, right? It’s, it’s an RPA. Why would you need an AI to do that for you? ─── There’s no outcomes of ─ curating the data, right? So the AI doing the cold calls, is that what you’re asking? And not a human, or not the ae? ─ Yeah. It is more like a robotic process, right? You have a database, you pick the number and you make a call. ──
So what’s AI actually adding value? You know, ── so it’s adding value by freeing up the time of the AE or the BDR team or replacing the BDR, uh, because when you hire somebody like me to do the cold calls, to set appointments, you’re gonna get appointments, but it’s gonna cost you, whereas the AI can do it.
cheaper than I could hire. It does it as low cost as a Philippines or Sri Lankan outsourcer for about three to six dollars an hour, but the benefit here is that it’s not calling with a heavy accent that’s hard to understand and puts up, uh, you know, defenses right away. It’s calling with an approach that puts down defenses and gets results.
As somebody who has built out cold calling teams with American based dialers and also used outsourcers, they can have a great delivery. They can follow the exact method and do everything right. And Philippines, they speak English as a native language. So it’s not that she can’t, she couldn’t speak English.
It’s just that she had an accent. My dialer from the Philippines and it worked against her. She set the lowest number of appointments per call out of the entire team. And it wasn’t because of her delivery. It was because of something she couldn’t help. So right now there’s a trend or, well, a little while back, there was a trend.
They laid off a bunch of BDR teams and went outsourcing to offshore and they saw their appointments drop, but they also saw their cost drop. So if you could combine the cost of offshore. Uh, cold calling centers with the effectiveness of a U. S. Based call center. You have the best of both worlds, and that’s essentially what the A.
I allows because I don’t have to pay the A. I 30 an hour to do the dials. It runs for about 3 to 6 total. ─── So what’s the conversion ratio? Compared to what you had historically seen. Sorry, Michele, please. ─ What’s the conversion so far? We just started, we don’t have enough data to determine a conversion right now.
I’ll be honest with you. It has not made it beyond, uh, the first decision maker conversation. It has not set any appointments in about. Two days of being run full time. But every time that we end a day, we go back, check the data on the ones where it got through past the gatekeeper. As I said, it’s getting past the gatekeepers a lot more than even early humans can, and we find where the glitch was, where the flaw is, where the bottleneck is, and we make those improvements.
So I would expect next week we should start seeing appointments get set and probably by the end of the week, we should see the bot setting a hat trick, which is three appointments in a day. ──── Hey, Justin, can you share with us your, your, your, um, name of your company and website so that listeners can, can, can check it out.
Absolutely know that the website’s still being worked on. My, uh, developer decided to build it and he’s not really the best at marketing. Um, I love him dearly. He is an incredibly talented coder, but he doesn’t speak human so well. Um, so I’m going to put my website, uh, into the chat because. ───────────────
And as I said, the website is still fairly, uh, rudimentary and not well done. I’ve actually got my new CMO working on that, uh, this week over the weekend. And the combo is an AI, of course. ───── What’s that? Your CMO is in the AI, of course, right? No, my CMO is an amazing human because I find ── talking to her better.
Um, no, but it’s, it’s Edge Staffing. Edge AI Staffing is the name of the company. Our website is edgestaff. ai. Uh, I put dot com because I’m an idiot sometimes. ─ Edgestaff ─ dot, God bless it. I think it’s fascinating. And it’s just, you know, this is the kind of stuff and the, the, ─ The innovation that’s going to come, it’s a, it’s a billion dollar idea and ──── I will mint more millionaires than any other technology shift in the history, or at least in our lifetime.
And I’m probably the history of the planet. Um, like, this is just incredible to hear that story and to really. And thank you for sharing with us in your early on in the technology and, you know, inspires all of us to think about, you know, how can we use AI in our respective fields to create these kind of applications and build our startup?
Uh, and also because I begin to think about how can I, if I’m a startup, how can I use AI? ─ How can I use his company? To accelerate my growth because he’s going to be able to do it. And I’m presumably Justin or I don’t, if I’m correct, you’ll be able to do it at a much, much lower cost than human, human operators.
I can’t see any reason why you wouldn’t probably a fraction of the cost. And and that gives you the advantage as if we use your technology, is that correct? Uh, absolutely it does and we actually were looking at if we were to go into like an enterprise solution Uh, you know and replace their bdr team they’re paying 2, 000 BDRs, 25 to 30 an hour, and we can come in and do the same number of volume, replace each, uh, BDR for about 800 ─ a month and still be profitable, but we actually revised our go to market strategy, so there’s 750, 000 professional cold callers in this country, BDRs, SDRs, and we’re going after them because the BDRs, Pitch is instead of, Hey, replace your BDRs.
It’s actually replace yourself, triple or quadruple the number of client load you can handle while reducing your labor. Cause the bots doing the dials, you just have to onboard clients. Um, and yeah, this is, this is definitely something we see as a billion dollar industry, but also it’s something that if we take it to market the way that we’re going to, we’re actually helping other people make more money.
With less time and energy spend so they can live the life that I have, where I can take a two hour lunch with my mom on a work day, because, you know, I don’t know how much time I get with her, but at the same time, I know that the two hours I’m not getting paid for that’s 160 bucks I’m missing out on that day.
If the bot’s still doing the work, I’m not missing out on the income and I get to have that two hour lunch, if that makes sense. Yeah, you know, one thing I hate about cold calling is rejection, and I’m just curious how your A. I. Handles rejection. Uh, you know, we haven’t found out yet because, uh, the stop at the decision maker conversation.
It’s usually about, uh, you know, one or two exchanges in where it just becomes a hang up. Um, which is so that’s something that I’m working on fixing actively because Yeah. I, as a telemarketer for, you know, half a million plus cold calls in my career, I got very few, hang up very few times to somebody hang up on me.
Cause as much as people hate telemarketers, they actually hate crappy telemarketers. If you’re good at the job, they don’t hang up on you. The thank you. Even when they’re telling you a no, they’ll thank you for calling. So we got to get the bot past that where it’s getting hung up on. But I don’t suspect that’ll be a challenge.
Once I have the data that we gather from today, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I, and I assume that the AI could actually learn and you could. A P test or whatever, like you could have it. Okay, let’s try with this line or that line and or it could begin to learn what’s working, what’s working and then lean more towards what’s working and cut what doesn’t work and and all that kind of stuff.
Sort of wish I had this when I was dating back 20 years ago. So the AI that we’re using today, like chat GPT, it’s not technically capable of learning. It’s capable of gathering data, but it’s not really capable of making analysis of that data and putting it into new routine. Um, however, if you guys have heard the, uh, whatever OpenAI came out with for a video editor, I can’t remember the name of it, Solara or something, um, it is, it is predictive of ─ AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, which actually will learn, uh, that was put off, that was predicted to be down the pipe in like 2030, 2040, but it looks like it’s closer to 7 to 12 months.
So when AGI actually hits the scene and is real, we’re going to start implementing that. And it will be able to learn from its own calls and, uh, successfully improve even beyond what I could probably do. ── It’s AGI. ── What does that stand for again? Artificial general intelligence. There’s, um, there’s artificial intelligence, which is our current generation, which isn’t really learning.
Machine learning is teaching the machine, but you have to make, you have to teach it specifically. It cannot learn freely. AGI is going to be able to learn freely and process the information and figure things out. And like I said, with the open AI’s advancements in just the last couple of months, it’s sped up that timeline where AGI is looking more realistic.
And then there’s ASI, artificial super intelligence, which is the, you know, super bots that we see from fiction. Um, those may be a possibility within the decade, actually, if AGI is seven to 12 months, it seems possible that ASI will be out in, you know, 2030s, early 2030s. Let’s just hope that these bots leave a place on the planet for humans as well.
I mean, it’s not a lot like starting to sound a lot like science fiction movie, but this is reality. We’re actually facing it and hopefully the guardrails will be in place. I know I’m joking, but this is pretty serious. It’s pretty serious stuff. Shadow. I’m going to come back to you on this. Like, because you have a lot of.
Thoughts on A. I. And I was just curious what you’re thinking about. Um, the other, uh, artificial general ───── intelligence, uh, shadow and could it be very dangerous? ─── I’m kind of with you on that. Hoping that there’s guardrails in place. It’s kind of one of those things where it’s exciting. The possibility that the A.
I. Could actually be learning just ahead of you. ─ But at the same time, if it’s learning just ahead of you, it can accelerate that learning and just Yeah. How far ahead is it gonna go? ───── So it’s, there was a rumor back around the time that Altman got ditched and brought back that they had actually hit AGI ── and were holding it back. ──
So it’s gonna be interesting to see when it does actually quote what it’s got. And I got company in the background. ── What did you say, the cat? Someone’s happy, that’s my young cat. Okay, yeah. ───── All right. That’s, that’s very cute. Uh, Michele, what are your thoughts on this? This ─ a GII. This is the first I’ve heard about.
I don’t know why I’m, you know, what I, I’m, I’m so outta it. I feel right now, this is the first I’m hearing of that specific term, so I, I’m just soaking it all in right now. Trying to learn about it. And I guess, is there any softwares out there that we could, or apps that we could try right now that uses this technology? ───
No, ──── well, no, AGI is not like even if even if open AI and have come up with it they are still keeping it under the vest but ─ Video their text to video software that they just launched in the last week or so It is showing the the precursor technology for AGI ─── SORA, that’s the one. Yeah, SORA. ────── S O R A, SORA.
Okay, I didn’t realize that is what SORA was. So interesting. It’s ─ not AGI, it’s just technology that looks like it’s headed towards AGI. I see. I have a question to our expert here, um, panel. ─ I’m looking for an app and I, gosh, I just can’t find it. And I need it so desperately for one of my businesses. One of my businesses, meowingtens.
com, we have a massive amount of content. Massive. We do these comic strips and have been doing them every day, virtually, for many, many years. I want to take Those images, they’re all our proprietary images and somehow load it up and have it be like a little video, maybe like a video, but also maybe even, you know, do some slight animation of each panel.
Does anybody, like, here have any ideas about, like, how I might go about that? Because I want to be able to post them all up to YouTube and, you know, share them. More openly, you know, on social media ── in a more interactive kind of interesting way. ──── Does anybody know anything that would help me with that? ── So I don’t know anything that would help with that specifically.
I’m actually looking at something for that too because I want to use our little logo robot in some animated commercials. There are some animation tools, but getting them like the majority of the AI Oriented tools that create video or animation are text to a graphic. And so getting it to pick up the information of the graphic that I want it to pick up as a little trickier.
And it hasn’t worked out with anything I’ve tried so far. If that makes sense. ── Yeah. I think, yeah, yeah, go for it, Shiva. No, I think, you know, I think you’ve got the right. ───── And, uh, definitely I’ll connect back with you and I can definitely do that. ───────────────────────────────
Probably collaborate and do something out of it. ──── So your microphone cut out or it could have been my Starlink? I’m really, I don’t know if it’s Starlink or not, but I’m definitely not on Starlink. ───── Michele, I can definitely help you in building that narrative on your proprietary content. ─── Let’s disconnect back channel and we can send me a message.
I love to hear. I think I know where you’re coming from, Michele. So you’re thinking like you’ve got thousands of cartoons. ─ You could literally take them, put AI. ── Ask him to create a minute, you know, based on the content of that cartoon, create a little funny 10 second video. ──── And if it could go cartoon to even script and then script to cartoon, ─ uh, and then you could post those on Tik TOK and make it exactly thousands of dollars.
And you can have them running tens of thousands, whatever. I’m just like, I think there’s something to that. And I think we’re getting closer to that moment where we can. Take a static cartoon and make something more of it. ── And it’s just amazing. Every, if you keep turning over rocks and finding gold, it’s insane.
So it doesn’t directly answer your question, but have you ever looked at the site future tools dot IO? Um, I have not specifically looked at that. Is that a listing ─ listings? It’s a, it’s a website that a guy by the name of Matt Wolf maintains. And that’s what he lists on. There is tools, AI tools. That are available.
Okay. I, I just, uh, when ── future, future tools. ai, ── I’m sorry, or IO, ────── IO. Okay. I’m going to check that out. I do follow a lot of people on Instagram and I, you know, that are experts doing lists, but I have not yet. You know, found anything, but this, this looks very interesting. Um, shadows. I just channel that he does.
Okay. I’m going to follow him. Yeah. And I see he’s yeah, I see he’s been featured on product hunt and has a free newsletter. Uh, this looks like a really good resource. Thanks for sharing that with, uh, the club shadows. My pleasure. Yeah. And I just pinned the link on the top there. Again, another reason if you’re listening to this podcast, uh, to come, come to the live shows. ─
You know, we, we post links. We, we do it, we, you know, we do, we have a lot of fun and you can come on stage and interact and it’s, uh, it’s, it can be very interesting. Uh, obviously we appreciate you listening to us in podcasts or on YouTube, but, uh, but we also really, really, really enjoy real human beings.
And even sometimes a eyes come in here and talk with us for once in a while, but, uh, but anyway, we’ll keep moving on here. Uh, I wanted to talk a little bit about startup club AI ──── and what we’re doing there. So we have sort of 3 projects and we’re being totally open here with what we’re doing and people other people do it.
You know, we don’t, we don’t really care. I mean, we’re just doing, we were in startup club here to give back, give back and give back, and we’re just going to keep giving back ─ and we think the AI can help, uh, the, the reason why we wrote the book, start scale, exit, repeat a 10 year mission, by the way, 200 people interviewed, uh, 50 of those interviews in the book, uh, we wrote that we wrote that and it was published on October 3rd, 2023, been a number one bestseller in 14 categories. ──
It was all to give back, and we could not have put that book together without this show and without, um, without, uh, Startup Club. So we really appreciate the community and today like this, just those on stage, like, we can’t tell you how much we thank you for participating and helping us learn and uncover the gold that is under each rock.
It’s absolutely incredible. So Startup Club AI, the first ─ project we’re working on is an AI to take. The contents of the book and that, that’s sort of up already. It’s a little bit rudimentary. If you go to startup club, ai. com, you can ask it a question, you know, like, we don’t want to sell my company or I want to scale my company or I want to.
Start. And what are some, how do I come up with the idea to start my business? Right. And it’ll pull from the book and give you a nice answer. But what we’ve also done is I’ve done about 90 videos, miniature videos, short videos, you know, the old fashioned way. I didn’t have any, I do it. I did them myself and so, uh, based on each chapter in the book.
And so those videos will pop up. And then also what’s interesting is the content of over 145 ── episodes that we’ve done so far on clubhouse on startup club, even this episode can be used if someone were to ask a question like, you know, tell me about different ways we can use AI. This podcast will pop up as well.
And we it may be down the road. We might even be able to parse the podcast and, you know, give snippets of different conversations. So that’s that project’s being worked on right now. I know Mimi, you had a meeting today. 1130. Do you have any thoughts about that? Before I talk about the other 2 projects we’re working on? ────
Yes, it’s really, as you were saying, he’s, um, really going in depth with the data and stuff that he’s adding. So I think it will be really exciting and. I think it should come to life in the next few weeks, so I’m excited to see what that can do and kind of all the capabilities we can add to it. ─── Yeah, and so the next project is business plan AI, and ─ I’ve made a, I did an article on this one once for Forbes that I talk about, uh, you know, ways you can use AI to help you start your business, and I said, the first thing I said is, ─ don’t use AI for your business plan, because we don’t want conventional thinking, group thinking, we want to think out of the box.
We want. Use your entrepreneurial mind to create and design that business idea or concept. But then once we do that, ─ we want to use AI to write our business plan and write a very sophisticated business plan for investors and whatnot that has risk factors and has SWOT analysis and has all those fun things that you see in a business plan.
And, uh, and so that’s what we’re working on. Uh, there’s a few others out there right now we’ve already. Found one other one other company, at least that has been doing this, but we want to make this a free service and where anything we can do to help a startup get off the ground. That’s what this community is all about and the people who come on stage.
They don’t get paid to do this. They’re offering their free advice. Shadow comes on regularly. We appreciate that. And there’s just it’s just Volunteers coming together in the community to help out. And that’s what that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to take it to the next level. The third we will. The third project is press release.
A. I ─ where again what we’re doing with business plan. A. I am press release. A. I is really prompt engineering. And so you don’t have to spend the time to or necessary to. Go to ─ no, not everybody’s a prompt engineer. Not everybody’s an expert at that. But if we can offer a free solution for for those services and for people who have questions about how to start scale, exit, repeat, uh, we’d be happy to help out.
So any thoughts on that, Michele, about all these AI projects we’re working on here at Startup Clubs. ─── You know, I, I’m just continuing to learn and gosh, I wish there were more hours in the day for me to, you know, test and play around with some of these new tools, but, um, I think I’m going to set some time side this weekend and look at this website that you referred us to shadow future tools.
I, oh, that sounds really interesting. To see if I can find something that would work for the use case that I mentioned about taking, you know, this library, this massive, uh, library of proprietary art that, um, I have and see if I can do something with it. Um, that would just be a real win, I think, for our business and, um, you know.
It just keeps getting better, Colin, I just like every turn, like, how can a person keep up with this, but it really just keeps getting better and I think, uh, we need to like all just continue to just try to keep ourselves so, you know, educated here. ─────────────────────────
Absolutely. Um, ──── yeah, so let’s just go popcorn style. Anyone want to. Pop something out there about, uh, where they think, and we already touched upon this, ─── uh, but where they think, ── like, ideas like we just came up with, around taking a static cartoon and turning it into an actual. ── You know, video, like a video cartoon.
Where do you think A. I. Is going to go? Like where? Let’s talk about this year. We want we want to understand this year. Where do you think A. I. Is going to go this year? Anybody wants to volunteer answering that question? ───────────────
Justin, go for it. Uh, I think one A. G. I. Is going to be a reality before the end of the year. Um, I And that’s going to change the game more than the chat GPT has already. Uh, I also think that we’re going to see a lot of growth in AI firms, as well as growth in human firms and human activities that are amplified with AI.
Because, ─ for example, when I started using chat GPT, I would actually use it to write my cold calling scripts. And giving it the context, this is the way I create the script. It can do 20 minutes worth of work in about 45 seconds. That is a huge time savings for me. Uh, once I’ve got the context in and the assistant built, then all I have to do is say, this is what we’re selling and it will do the thing that takes me 20 minutes and 45 seconds.
If I do that eight, nine times a month, that’s a lot of time savings. ──────────────────
Yeah, I’m with you on that. We have, um, Shiva. Do you want to go for it? And then we got to go down perfectly. Yeah, I just wanted to say something. ─ What we have experienced with, uh, generative AI or Augmented AI, right? It repeats itself too many times. So even if you’re good at prompt engineering and you see a prompt, ─ uh, the models are not built for responding based on context.
So they would repeat themselves and they would say the same thing again and again. Irrespective of what, you know, you ask for it, right? So I think going back to what Michele has asked, there is proprietary data, there is proprietary information. How can we contextually build something out of it ─ to monetize it for the customer, whether it is an enterprise or a consumer, right?
How do we deliver on that promise? That means a lot of human intelligence, ─── irrespective of what AI can do or cannot do, right? So it’s a combination or a hybrid of Putting human intelligence and what I can solve for it. It has to be a hybrid ─ model. So to speak to Deliver on that promise and really get the best outcome.
I leave it at that for you. ──────────────────
Appreciate that. We’ll drop down a perfectly. Perfectly? I love that. Perfectly flawless? Is that, or ─────── I love the name. Can everyone hear me? Yes we do. ─────── Uh, yeah, it’s an oxymoron. Perfectly flawed. ───── So, um, I use AI in my professional life and it’s certainly helped me become more efficient. Uh, one of my predictions for AI in the coming year will be that it will be less about the buzzword AI and the technology will be baked into a lot of apps and, um, A lot of services because as things currently stand, you’ve got many people jumping on this AI bandwagon who don’t really provide any meaningful service using AI.
And that’s kind of diluting the, the immense capability and value that AI actually has to offer. So I’m seeing a wave of, um, companies that are using AI in a meaningful way, but they’re not. Promoting it as heavily and I think that that’s going to be uh, the trajectory going forward just to Uh to avoid the buzzword and the hype as opposed to delivering rule Uh, rule value. ──────
Like that’s so interesting. I’m glad you brought that up because ─ we’re seeing it already in our companies. We use a map called Zen towel for paw. com, ─ PAW. com. It’s a ─ dog, uh, furniture products company, and we have six, uh, support staff, ─ and we implemented the AI elements of an AI bot. ── It already moved. Uh, it already took a third of the phone calls, or were, ── a third of the questions were able to be answered by an AI bot.
Um, but that was an app that was part of an app that we currently have. It’s Zendesk Zen Desks. Zendesk. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you. I thought it was Zen. Okay. Zendesk, ─ you can tell I don’t do this. Is that a chat bot or is it a voice? It’s a, uh, it’s a customer service management tool for, for live agents.
Okay. But now they’re adding AI into it. And but you have to look for it. You have to actually turn it on. You have to work with it. You have to actually spend some time doing it. And if you’re running a startup, you’d be surprised how many apps that you might use that you can now implement AI with. We have ano, we use another app called Rhythm Systems.
We do goal setting at all of our companies. Red, yellow, green, weekly meetings, goal setting. It’s part of the, it’s actually in the book start scale, legs repeat, but it, it really increases your chances of, of success dramatically in a business if you implement goal setting for all your employees. And that particular app implemented in AI to help you write out your goal setting.
And so when we were doing it, and I was doing it last week or two weeks ago, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so easy. I just simply put this in and I put that and I wrote them for me and it didn’t have to be perfect and ── because, you know, you want your goals to be smart, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound.
And when you want that, you know, want something like that. Sometimes it takes a bit of work to think about how to put that in place. But here’s an AI. ─ That actually did that and actually created that smart goal based on a little bit of a description that you enter in. Uh, we’re seeing it populate throughout all a lot of apps.
I think Microsoft, ─── this was on the news a couple days ago, and I think it’s called Copilot, but ─ it was just announced that they were killing it. The stock went through the roof because a lot of people were adding it to their this particular technology to the Microsoft Word and other. ───── Applications that Microsoft has.
So we’re going to see it percolate and populate through so many applications. And if we don’t turn them on, if you don’t enable them, then you might not get the benefit. So definitely, definitely keep an eye on that, because that can really help your startup as well. We have, uh, we were almost out of time.
We have eight minutes left with two more people we want to get to on stage. Um, perfectly any any last thought before we move on to shams? ─ Yeah, I just wanted to emphasize the importance of kind of integrating AI in a subtle way. I think that’s certainly, uh, the, the direction that we’re heading in as consumers, because we all love using AI, whether it’s chat GPT to make things more efficient for ourselves and what have you.
But equally, we all find it so irritating when we receive a long, lengthy, wordy document or email, which is clearly, which is clearly being you, uh, made. Using AI. So, you know, the human interaction is such that we prefer to be interacting with someone else as opposed to a computer. And so I think it’s, it’s really important for us to keep this in mind when moving forward with any AI business ideas.
That we may have. I, I certainly have one that’s close to my chest at the moment and it’s work in progress. Um, work in process. And so one thing that I’m very much aware of is the importance of giving a very organic and natural uh, interaction between consumer and um, the AI powered product or service.
And you know where I’m seeing that, it’s driving me freaking nuts, is on the reviews for the book on Amazon. You’ll go there and there’s like These long multi paragraph reviews and you know, it just sounds like AI and then someone does a review and it’s like six words and you know, it’s real. ── So when you’re doing reviews on Amazon, just don’t, don’t cut and paste an AI into it.
I think, I think that’s gonna, you’re right. We’re already starting to see a backlash. ──── Some of the uses of AI, we, we, we want humans to do the review. We don’t want the, you know what, we don’t want the bot to do the review. Um, and by the way, I would appreciate if you have, if I’ve read the book, I would, I would appreciate a review.
It really does make a big difference. Um, and then there’s a lovely ad, if you don’t mind calling that, you know, we shouldn’t get lazy as entrepreneurs who are looking for an avenue to capitalize from AI. By way of, um, you know, ─ using the, the, the buzzword as a unique selling point. But really, we should look for a meaningful way of delivering a AI powered solution to a consumer in a natural and organic, uh, exchange. ───────
Absolutely. All right, well, let’s move on to Shams. Shams, we thank you for being patient. We’d love to hear from you and your thoughts on AI. ───────── And Shams, if you’re not quite available, we’ll jump to Niles. ─ Niles, you’re, oh, here we go. Shams got, yeah, you’re back. Yeah. Uh, hi everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Uh, my English is not very well, I’m sorry. Uh, just I am here and. Listening to your, uh, to you, uh, toe because I joined clubhouse to improve my English and I know about the I know from all of you and, uh, I, uh, because my English is not very well, uh, so I want to, ─ uh, mouth my mic. Thank you so much. ─ No, I appreciate that.
And, um It’s interesting. We have, uh, employees who are who don’t have the best English as well, and they use AI to clean up the language for emails and stuff like that. I wonder if AI can be a great equalizer in an ─ English dominated world. That’s an interesting thought there. All right, Niles, we’d love to hear from you.
Hey, everybody. Um, thanks for the space. Yeah, I’m having a blast with AI, especially with startups and as an entrepreneur. Um, The great thing, ─ I’m using this across the board for a lot of things, but, um, I was worried about critical thinking. I mean, when I’m helping a client with a brand, um, yes, I’m able to do stuff so much faster.
But something ran across my mind when I was just making something as simply as a brand slogan And like let me run to chat chat gbt. I’m like, well, i’m like god, where’s where’s my critical thinking at I can’t sit and ─ critically think about What what can make this brand stand out? Amongst his competitors, but you know, it was all good.
I put it in the chat gbt And usually when I put things in the chat, GBT, I take it to a step, um, a level above. So I don’t just take the first output it gives me. I try to push it to its limits and, um, see what else it can give me. So I’ll start breaking it down. Like, Hey, why did you tell me that? Give me the reasons why you chose that slogan and why this is the best slogan amongst anything else.
You know, those kinds of things, but I’m having a great time. I’m using it for, um, building brands. Um, startup companies, um, business plans, of course, needs more research. So it’s not quite there yet because you need a lot of metrics and stuff like that. But marketing, ad copy, um, helping out with store descriptions and whatnot.
And of course, you got to add a little human touch in there. So I’m not just taking the output. Like you guys were discussing about the reviews. I’m not just taking that output and copying pasting Nah, I want to put some human element into that So I like that. And I really dislike the campaign that AI is going to take a lot of, a lot of jobs.
Um, there’s been a lot of reports that jobs are being lost, like, uh, Spotify has reported cutting jobs. And then everybody speculates, oh, this is because of AI. Well, we don’t know that. And, um, people haven’t came out and said that because I believe That corporations should be giving their employees training to use these tools so they can be better at their job.
Um, Hey, I mean, we’re in a capitalist society and you got to compete and where you got to cut the fat, you got to cut the fat, you know? But, um, if more people can utilize these tools to help themselves as an entrepreneur or have their staff members use these tools as well or, and, or that’d be great. So yeah, I’m excited.
That’s how I’m using it. ─── And that’s my story. I know you guys are closing down, so I wanted to keep it quick. ─ No, that’s good. And, uh, there’s so many things I want to come back there. There’s so many different concepts, but, um, talk about breaking it down. I did that with a contract. And I put the contract into chat GPT, and I asked it a specific question around payment terms and whether they’re not that, that if they don’t request payment terms, and I asked all these, and I kept going deeper and deeper and deeper at, oh my gosh, it answered back everything perfectly. ─
And then it made me think ─ I normally would have sent this to a lawyer, ── to our lawyer, and they would have spent four to six hours reviewing it. ─ And an hour or half hour on the phone explaining our position in this particular situation. ─ And this did it within minutes and it was free or essentially free.
Right. 20 a month and chat GPT. Uh, so I think the lawyers, ─ I think they’re going to get whacked. ─ I think applying for trademarks, I think it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be too hard for an AI to figure out unique aspects of trademark applications and contract law. And you’ll always have litigators.
You know, I don’t think, uh, they’ll allow an AI litigator in court, you know, carry out a case think that, you know, humans will, will hopefully continue to be the ones defending, defending and prosecuting. But in any case, you’ve been listening to start scale, exit, repeat serial entrepreneur secrets revealed.
This is also the title of the book, the number one bestselling book, uh, been on Amazon 14. Uh, different categories, number one, bestselling. And, uh, if you haven’t already done so you can pick it up. It’s on sale Forbes books who published it is as left it on sale till the end of the month at two 99. Again, if you’re listening to this podcast, you got to come on the live show because you get.
We can we can tell you about things like that. If you haven’t already done. So go to startup dot club, sign up to the email list. We send out an email and a newsletter simply about the content that’s created on startup club and also ─── about up, up, up and coming speakers. We get a lot of really cool speakers on the show.
We’ve had on, uh, Mr. Wonderful, uh, we’ve had on startup club. He wasn’t on this show, but he was on startup club. Uh, that’s Kevin O’Leary. We’ve had on a Joe Foster who founded Reebok. We’ve had on Vern harness. You did scaling up. We had on Jeffrey Moore, who we interviewed for the book as well. Um, who wrote crossing the chasm inside the tornado.
And by the way, it is a really, really interesting chapter in the book. Chapter three, which is catching the wave. And that particular chapter addresses how you can win in, in, in a, in a paradigm shift or a technology shift in a specifically talk about AI in the book. It’s a relatively recent book. It was published on October 3rd, 2023.
Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next, next week. Uh, unless we do have a guest speaker already booked next week, I think we’ll keep the AI stuff rolling. And then I’d love to do a show Mimi. I’d love to do a show on ───── any anyone in startup club who is doing an AI business and wants to promote that business ─ and we’d have to do it like a month from now, like promote like to try to get 10 or 15 people who are on startup club who are doing an AI business because we really learned a lot from Justin today.
And from Shiva and just, and I think perfectly, you said you were working on something to like, I think we should do that because I’m telling you, the more technology that this community creates and the more customers, ─ you’ll get a lot of customers, but those customers will benefit from the AI technology.
Like I’m already thinking in the back of my head, how, how we can use Justin’s technology, Michele, like, how can we use Justin’s technology to accelerate. Pencila, which is our AI company that we’ve invested in, um, which is a, which is a E for e commerce companies. It’s your AI marketing staff for 99 a month.
All right. Thank you very much. We’ll see you all next week. ── Bye for now.