Maximizing Startup Success with AI

Welcome to Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. Today we’re, today we’re talking about AI Hacks to Accelerate Growth. And this is I think our 140th episode or we’re getting pretty close. We really, really enjoy doing these programs. Michelle and I, my co host, just came on right now.

Michelle Van Tilburg, and I’m Colin C. Campbell. And you’re listening to Start, Scale, Exit, Repeats. Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed. It’s a, naturally, it’s a live audience. It’s not a live studio audience. It’s a live virtual audience. And you can come on Clubhouse every Friday at two o’clock. And come, come and listen to the show.

But also if you want to interact. We really enjoy when people come on stage and help us out. In fact, we’re actually looking for moderators to help us out with more shows. We have 954, 000 members on Clubhouse. We’ve probably got about 000 outside of Clubhouse. And so we’re approaching that million member mark.

And we’re looking for people who can help us moderate these shows. Uh, and it’s, it’s just a lot of fun just to come here, interact and be on stage and be part of a community that can help you with your business. It can actually have some real impact. Um, Shadow just joined us here. Nice to see you again, Shadow.

Always great to have, um, regulars back on the show. Again, we’re a live show and if you’re listening to some podcasts, you might not realize that. In any case, today we’re talking about 13 ways AI can help accelerate your startup. Now, I think we can come up with a lot more. We came up with 13 ways for the article that we published on Forbes.

And Mimi, if you’re able to put that on the On the, uh, the link on the top, that might be a good starting point. And I thought if you’re in the audience and you want to talk about AI and how it has helped you, uh, whether it’s helping you with your startup or helping you, uh, as in your career, we would love to hear from you.

We’d love for you to come on stage and share with us what you’ve learned from AI, because this has been an incredible year of change. And I have no doubt that 2024 is going to Eclipse, it’s going to eclipse what we’ve, what we’ve experienced in 2023. The, um, AI is, has become and is becoming the greatest technological shift in our lifetime.

And we’ve seen a lot, at least I have, I’m getting up there. You know, we saw the advent of the internet itself in the nineties and then broadband in 2000, social media in 2010s, uh, apps in 2010s and then 2020. The 2020s will be defined by AI and I’m going to make the statement that there will be more millionaires minted from this technological shift than any in the history of our lifetime or in the planet.

So it’s not just our lifetime. I guess it would be the entire planet. Michelle, I’m curious, what are your thoughts today about 13 ways AI can help accelerate a startup? Oh my gosh. I mean, there’s so many. From the, you know, just like making ourselves more productive to literally, like, I’m not kidding, like saving lives and improving, you know, lifespan.

I, I, I, for myself personally, I’ve never seen anything that really was so far reaching, uh, you know, I’m super excited, but honestly, I wish I knew more Colin. I’m using it, you know, for the most basic cases right now, let’s just be honest with each other. Cause there are people doing huge. You know, life saving things, but for me, just the copy alone and the instant research and just like, I, I love prompts that are like, here’s something I’m thinking about, like, where am I missing out?

Like, I love that because that actually is something that I’ve never seen other than obviously interacting. You know, with real people, which I still intend to do, but it really is far reaching. And it is from the very simplest use case to the extremely most, you know, sufficient use case, like spotting early cancer cells.

Like, I don’t know. Honestly, I, if people are saying, Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s not happening. I’m going to say they they’re an ostrich and their head is in the sand calling. Yeah. And I know you’re talking about some advanced applications. I was, I was listening. I was reading the wall street journal this morning.

And one of the, another one of these advanced applications was they have a, a site in LA called the vault and actors and actresses now can go into the vault and recreate the digital self of a digital version of themselves. And then now you’re talking about using that for stunt doubles and all that kind of stuff.

This is sort of like out there for most of us to be quite frank. Uh, what I’m talking about, I think what we’re talking about today is, in this audience, how can anyone on the stage, anyone listening to this podcast, actually Use tangible ideas to help accelerate their growth and I am going to tell you right now.

I feel like Tony Stark an average person who straps on a This awesome uniform and can do so many more things I think it can accelerate the genius in all of us all all the all everyone around us I believe we can actually do so much more by embracing the technology. And that’s where the genesis of this article for Forbes came out.

You know, it’s 13 ways. And the first one, I’ll throw it out right now. Uh, but if this, hey, if this is resonating with you in the audience, please raise your hand. This is not just Shadow, Mimi, and Michelle, and Colin. This is, this is, this is an open conversation. It’s an, it’s a It’s Niche Radio, whatever you want to call it, it’s Clubhouse, and we do love having live conversations and really would love to have your thoughts on how AI can impact you as a startup.

Let me kick it off. Number one in the article was customer service. We have a company called po.com. We have six or seven people in, uh, the Philippines who write emails and yes, they can chat GPT and, and actually there’s a, a Zendesk is the, is the software we use and they’ve embraced some ai and yeah, it can clean up the language, but I think what excited me more about this was that it can actually institutionalize positive communication between your offshore labor and your, um, and your customers, and.

By doing that, that can actually increase your satisfaction ratings and actually get you higher reviews and it can have even more impact than that. And, of course, yes, it can do the basic language clean up. Which, by the way, is a leveler, right? You no longer have to be the best speaker, or by the way, even the best writer.

Because here’s an admission, I’m not the best writer. Even though I have a best selling book, eight, eight, eight number one best selling positions on Amazon for Um, for the book, Start, Scale, Ease, Repeat. Although, in that particular case, it was all human editors, like Mimi and others, who helped us put this book together.

But, uh, when I do a blog, or I do something like that, I just sort of lay it all down real quickly, and It just comes out like I put down all the concepts and it just sort of writes the blog and the manner and the way I want it to write. It really can make you so much more efficient and increase who, you know, you as a human being, you as a startup, you as a founder.

You can 10 X yourself simply by strapping on the uniform of AI. I’ll just start kicking off with that, Michelle. And then we can, you’re moderating Michelle. I’ll let you moderate. Yeah, let’s do it. Already. I see we have several members here on the stage and I think we should do this session where, you know, everyone’s contributing so that we can help each other out and, um, you know, get a bunch of ideas together.

So on that note, shadow. I see you actually have a new, um, icon. I love it. Santa with a kitten. So shadow, we’re dying to hear what you have to say. I know you’ve been studying AI a lot and looking at, um, you know, how startups Excel, what are your thoughts? So that’s Santa meditating. We’ve got to keep the stress out of Christmas.

I was playing around with the new version of mid journey. Oh, that’s cool. I, I know they came out with that. So that’s, that’s awesome. Tell us more about what you’re thinking for, um, AI, uh, without AI, I wouldn’t have a model to go into 2024 with, uh, I used it to put the model together and I’ll be using it to make the model work.

So yeah, I use it a lot, not only mid journey, but also chat GPT. A few weeks ago, I asked at GPT, what percentage of the earth’s population are using, uh, AI and its response back to me was 75 percent of the people on earth are using AI, but there’s about 40 percent that actually know they’re using it. So we’re not going to be able to escape it.

We might as well embrace it. I totally agree with you. And, um, you know, I, I. I’m just, I know this is going to be kind of AI geek, but I love that you’re building a model. I noticed that on new mid journey that you can actually very easily build a model. Like, I was like, oh, my gosh, I’m so glad that somebody is finally doing that because it is such a big barrier, but you’re thinking of the tuner.

Yes, I haven’t played with that much yet, but there was a new one in version six. So I’ll catch that one. Super cool. But getting back to your point about people do not even realize they’re using it, like I’m with you because, uh, you know, I have a friend that keeps saying, Oh my gosh, no one knows about it and they’re not using it, but that’s, I keep saying, but they actually are.

And they don’t, you know, realize it, call it a large language model, whatever it is. But, um, you know, what are your thoughts on that? Like, I mean, that seems like amazing opportunity for companies and entrepreneurs and individuals alike. What are your thoughts? I really think that it’s going to be a game changer.

You know, I agree completely with what Colin says. You know, I’ve got a sister that, um, she’s been kind of thinking along the lines of I want to do something. But she hasn’t moved on it because she’s seen it as a big mountain and I’ve introduced her to AI and the stuff that I’m doing she’s finally moving because she’s got basically an assistant in her pocket and I think there’ll be a lot of people that do the same thing.

Yeah, absolutely. Colin, any thoughts on that? An assistant in your pocket. Oh my gosh, like that’s amazing, isn’t it? It is. There is, you know, it is just too eerie in the sense that it’s like that movie Her but In any case, yeah, I, I, I think you’re right about the assistant in your pocket and, um, and it’s more than your assistant, it’s also your virtual CMO.

So, here’s a confession. Again, I talked about this book and how it’s never used AI one bit. We used, uh, um, six full time employees. We interviewed over 200 people. And we were able to get the book published, uh, in, and we submitted it to Forbes last November. It’s ironic that we talked a lot about AI in the book, and this was just as ChatGPT was breaking.

We talked a lot about in chapter three about how do you catch a wave and how you can succeed in an environment where you have a tornado and we had the opportunity to interview Jeffrey Moore for the book and he actually wrote the book Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado in the 90s and they became iconic books selling millions of copies and uh, it was just very interesting the timing and how it all came together but we captured AI in the book in chapter three of the book.

But come February, the Forbes team asked us to help them write the inside cover of the book to describe why people might want to read this book, and so I went on to ChatGPT and actually wrote A prompt that said, you know, tell me, give me, uh, the inside cover of a best selling book, uh, and why somebody would want to read this book, and here’s the introduction to the book.

So I, I, I fed it the introduction, and it came out with something that was near perfect. Something that would have taken me hours, maybe even days, right? Maybe I don’t even have the capability to deliver that kind of, uh, that kind of script. Uh, in any case, I know it was good because two weeks later Oh, no, sorry.

Two months later, Forbes was using it for the Amazon listing and I asked them, why are you using the same language? Like, don’t you, like, is this, and they said, we know it’s perfect. They said it’s perfect. And so we’re talking about tasks, not only as your assistant, which I like, by the way, I like your, your, your pocket assistant, but also your pocket CMO.

And that’s scary. I know there’s a lot of CMOs who are like, Ooh, wait, wait, slow down here. Don’t, don’t throw me out just yet. We’ve got some value. And by the way, I believe those CMOs, those lawyers, those architects, those everyone who’s in those programmers will em, who they embrace technology, who embrace ai, will actually accelerate their growth and, and produce at a much higher level and a higher productivity.

And those who say, you know, ah, I don’t need. It’s like, yeah, you’re not using a calculator. Okay, you’re going to be left behind.

Yeah, I, I think, um, as Shadow said, like, you know, you can choose not to embrace it. You can choose to, quote, not believe. I don’t know how you can’t believe it’s there, but if you don’t, you know, you do severely risk, you know, being left behind, losing opportunities, losing jobs. I know it’s not popular to hear that, but it is the truth.

There’s no technology change that hasn’t brought about loss of, of jobs, but it’s also brought about new jobs, you know, like when cars came in, horses went out, but it doesn’t mean that there weren’t new jobs there. And it’s the same sort of thing going on.

All right. I see we have several people on the stage and we really appreciate all of our members that come up and, you know, raise your hand right now. This is like a no judgment zone. We’re all just trying to help each other out. No one’s an expert in this subject. It’s so new and it’s so evolving so quickly.

So raise your hand, but I want to get to 4G. 4G, thank you for coming back to us and we’d love to hear what you have to say.

Hey, happy Friday all. Thanks for this space. Um, always enjoy your, your insights, your content. So thank you as always for this opportunity. Um, I jumped into AI pretty late, um, cause I got overwhelmed because even as it was, even as Chad GPT was coming onto the scene, um, I followed quite a bit of these, um, toxic Twitter bros.

You know, who are knee deep into AI. So, um, I got overwhelmed, unfortunately for me. And, but I got, I caught the wave just in time still that, um, I used it for positioning, um, um, Gen X. So, um, I’ve been helping fellow Gen Xers, you know, stay in the loop. So that way, you know, they won’t be overtaken. And, you know, um, if their jobs are compromised, I can help them, you know, see how new doors can open for them.

So, you know, just being a copywriter, I use it for content. Been getting into mid journey. Mid journey is really, has really been super helpful. Because I’m not, you know, a graphics person. I’m no illustrator, not by any stretch of any imagination, but it’s been pretty cool to help the aesthetic of my brand.

So I, I, I’m, um, I’m grateful for that. So I just take everything I learn and I share, I share it with other, um, entrepreneurs, other Gen Xers to help keep them in the loop. And, you know, you know, um, it helps us all, uh, reach others, you know. Whether it’s writing, writing has been, I don’t want to say played out, you know, with the whole prompt craze because everyone was a prompt engineer as it was coming onto the scene.

Everyone was a prompt engineer. So it’s just always every day a new platform’s coming out. Just keeping abreast of those. Watch who you follow, um, to see what kind of, um, audience they have. And that’s what I do. I tune into Twitter a lot. To see who knows what, to see how their content washes out, um, and how their content reaches people.

How it resonate, how it resonates with people. Um, because we’re always told time and again, stop recreating the wheel. So just find what works, tap into, um, what you have going on with your own brand, A B test everything and see how, and take it to your people. And your people will appreciate that because your people know people, so on and so forth.

And that’s how I’m going to keep rolling.

Wow, I like it. Yep. And, um, it’s interesting to see, like, just how many applications that you can use on with AI that you never envisioned like six months ago. And by the way, you’re not late. I don’t buy that one bit. I think everybody’s still early on. We’re all, all early on, and we’re all trying to figure this out.

Uh, this is, it really can take an entrepreneur who’s got a little bit of skills or someone who has a little bit of knowledge and you can, your brain, I think you can 5X yourself. I think you can 10X yourself. You know, I was working on, last week, I was working on multiple companies and different issues and whatnot.

So I wrote out a document and I went to chat GPT and I asked, can you please turn this into a legal memo? And it was just absolutely phenomenal. I don’t know if you noticed too, by the way, that the, the version four is much quicker now. So it’s not, it’s coming in much faster and it, it, anyway, it produced a very good legal memo.

Uh, I did another document and I said, can you write the board motions based on the actions in this document? And it wrote the board motions. Uh, I’ve done other documents, contracts, I’ve done like three contracts now. Which, by the way, I think, I think, and by the way, I’m just using ChatGPT. I’m not even using a firm that’s Later on other technology on top of that and I I think that you know, we could be looking at the end of corporate lawyers We might be closer to that than self driving vehicles I’m telling you like this is like when you get something highly defined by the way Somebody says, Oh, what about plagiarism?

You probably don’t know this, but

We lost you, Colin. Oh, what happened? You said plagiarism, and then you blanked out. Am I alive still or no? Yes, we can hear you now. Alright, so the vast majority of law is on the concept of plagiarism. That all, uh, precedents that have been set in the past, all words and documents In fact, if you look at the, uh, the, we took an, did an IPO back in 2006, and we did an S 1.

S 1 is the most expensive document you will ever produce on any company in the history of documents. It is your IPO document. They, if you put in original language into that document, they will actually Have to go to committee to review it. So you’re slowing down the process Everybody copies everything a lot of the legal documents come from databases National databases, etc, etc, etc.

So it is something that It’s quite common that it’s not original work. Now, of course is original legal drafts of certain particular things and I’m not saying lawyers will 100 percent will all lose their jobs But I am going to make the case that they are on the chopping block and you will see a radically different legal, uh, workforce.

Going forward over the next five to ten years and I believe that, uh, that it’s, it’s, it’s scary, but that’s not our problem. Our, our, we’re startups. We’re here to make money and we’re here to accelerate our growth and literally I’ve, I, I think, I feel like right now at this point, again, you got to get your own legal advice, okay?

And everybody’s gonna be an amateur lawyer, dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, but I’ve produced multiple contracts, board resolutions. Legal memos all on on using the AI and it’s just absolutely phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal Alright, so we have some other folks up here I want to make sure our other members have an opportunity to weigh in Sean Sean, lay it on us.

What are your thoughts about AI’s and how we can accelerate our startup? Sean,

Sean, you’re on mute. All right, let’s go to Andrea. Andrea, I’d love to hear what your thoughts are. Hi, everyone. Uh, nice to meet you all. This is my first time up here and I just came across your house yesterday. So thank you for having me on and Michelle, I connected with you earlier. Well, yes, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah. Um, so let’s see, in terms of startups for using AI to accelerate growth, um, I’ll just give you some of my personal experience and then maybe we can dialogue more about at, um, I guess in the past, I guess year, year and a half, we’ve all been like really just focused on how AI impacts are like workflow for startups, you know, how we can just be better or faster.

Um, I spent maybe at Rocket Hub when we first launched it about like the tail end of 2022 and 2023 like building out the infrastructure in terms of like content marketing, right? And typically that takes a lot of time and energy logistically just to produce content, hundreds of articles, hundreds of social media posts, things like that.

Um, and so during that time, I experimented a lot with AI. Um, And how we can just use simple prompts, even in chat GPT to, and of course. What year was that? I’m just curious. Tell us that again. I’m so intrigued. Yeah, the tail end of 2022. Um, we basically, our startup team acquired the Rocket Hub domain, which was like the first crowdfunding, um, site.

I don’t know if anyone remembers that. That was many years ago. Um, it helped basically outline legislation for crowdfunding online. So we acquired that domain and then we built an LTD platform for startup founders in like technology, primarily SaaS. Um, and it’s a lot of fun, so I spent a lot of my time evaluating, not only like building like content infrastructure, but I spent a lot of time playing with software because people submit software for exclusive LTE campaigns and a lot of them integrate AI now, right?

Um, My big goal is to eliminate the waste between basically the production or the ideation base for content and the production base, like when we can actually hit publish. And I can tell you that just from my experience, when we say, for example, we have a new niche that we, or keyword phrase, right, or high level topic pillar content that we want to rank for on search engines.

Typically, we’ll produce 50 to 100 pieces of content, and then from there, you know, we’ll disperse it across the internet first, primarily our foundation being the actual website. But to do that, you have to do the research, you have to, like, um, outline all the articles, then you have to send it to a writer, editor, there’s so many things, right, in between, so we’re all familiar with that.

AI helped us incredibly just speed up that entire process. So within a simple spreadsheet, um, even starting off in chat GPT, I can start the ideation phase and then in a simple spreadsheet I can outline like, um, requirements for the editor or writer and then also like sample references in a spreadsheet.

So I don’t even have to leave the spreadsheet. I can use an add on, uh, to create prompts within the spreadsheet. So it was really cool. And then from that point. We started developing like internal, um, software so that we can basically mass produce content. I am, from what it, right, what I, from my experience, what it used to take about like two to three hours to create, create a really good article, right, that will rank long form content, and now it takes me like five minutes, honestly.

And, um, so, and we’re talking about cutting that in, like, basically 80 percent of our time. We can spend that 80 percent somewhere that just requires like deeper thoughts, you know That’s that’s where I’m at. And I think that if there’s so much potential Yeah, it’s interesting. I my wife and I own a school and I noticed her blog was not updated since And I’m like So I like okay, let me write you some articles in in 10 minutes I wrote her eight articles all very specific and one of the likes things I like to do in the prompt engineering is I’m doing these blog articles for, again, when I do Forbes, like in, in some of the bigger magazines, articles, we’re not allowed to use any AI.

So just so you know, so it’s, we have human editors who edit, I sometimes will cheat a little bit and use AI to give me some ideas of how I can approach an article, but I’m not allowed to use it. But when you’re talking about a small business for a school, uh, it’s, it’s a Montessori school. It’s an AMI Montessori school.

And I literally would put it in. I would always like to say things like, eight, way, eight reasons why Montessori teachers at AMI, uh, or eight reasons why your child should take Montessori, or twelve reasons why this, or six, fifteen, whatever. I like to put a number to it, because it really does break it down nicely and makes it more palatable.

And, uh, I, we produced, oh my gosh, ten, eight articles in ten minutes. And, I’m like, just, and she looked them over and she said, these are good. These are good. I understood the nuances. Montessori is made up like she’s like, yeah, expert. Yeah. Is Montessori is made up of like AMI, which is the association Montessori international, which is been founded by Maria Montessori and her and her heirs.

And my wife actually was tested under Rinaldo Montessori to give you an idea how Like Montessori and it is and then you have AMS American Montessori Society Which is completely different different qualifications and all that kind of stuff. Nobody knows any of this kind of stuff But when we asked the question in the blog like I’ve chat GPT it was able to produce the nuances the differences between those organizations and The qualifications that you need an actual master’s degree to teach at AMI and you don’t need it was just unbelievable Then that the information that it knew so there is no reason why Today, you have a startup that you cannot position yourself as an expert and launch a blog in your industry and use AI to help do that.

And by the way, I am not the best writer. Like when it came to writing those articles on that blog, all I did was just give it a prompt. So if you, if all you’re capable of just saying, give me eight reasons why, uh, this particular business is good or whatever, whatever it is, then that is something you can do.

But I do believe. If you actually try to pre write an article, and you’re not a great writer, but you can still, you can still put the content, you can still put the juice into it, then you put that into ChatGPT and have it rewrite it for you, that itself is also another, uh, uh, uh, achievement. And, uh, and again, sometimes you’ll take back in the old day, only a year ago, uh, we’d, you know, we’d try to get an article and we’d work for hours trying to perfect every word, every language, every email.

Oh my gosh. Now it’s like pop it in, pop it back, do a little more editing, send it on its way. I love that. It gets calling. Can I Um, did, does your wife have a WordPress site? Is it on wordpress. org? It used to be on WordPress. Uh, I think we went to a portal, uh, or someone who specializes in managing, uh, websites for Montessori schools.

So I don’t really have the answer. You might be able to tell it fast. It’s, it’s littleflowermontessori. org. Uh, in Fort Lauderdale and, uh, littleflowermontessori. org. And it’s actually just, it’s the number one rated school in Fort Lauderdale, which is pretty cool. And we are on the front page of Google when you search for, for Montessori Fort Lauderdale, or at least best Montessori Fort Lauderdale.

And, uh, but in any case, we don’t want to get, we don’t want to digress here, but you can see how a school, you can see how any business that is not embracing this, you know, it’s never been an easier time in the history of your business to become an expert. In your field and expertise, you know, whether you’re doing a webinar, whether you’re doing a PowerPoint, oh my gosh I’ve done so many keynote speeches And powerpoints since the book launched on october 3rd Uh, and we’ve been very happy about the results number one bestseller in eight categories on amazon I’ve done so many keynote speeches and powerpoints.

I now use Because they implemented dally they brought it into chat gbt. So I now when I do my powerpoint presentations I go into And I, and I ask it to render an image that does this. It was one, like, for instance, we were talking about the challenges of scaling. So I said, put two entrepreneurs, a woman and a man who have, who are buried in boxes and make it an illustration.

I didn’t want an actual picture and it came up with a perfect. Picture for that presentation and I did that over and over again and I’m telling you I’m making a powerpoint presentation right now I mean, I know we’re probably talking about idea number nine or ten right now, but even doing a powerpoint presentation is absolutely Incredible that you can deliver these kind of presentations and the kind of photos and illustrations Without spending like with the book itself that we did That we published last year.

We had an illustrator who did, I think, 30 to 33 illustrations throughout the entire book, all hand drawn. And I’m not saying that Chachi B. T. could have done a better job, because the, she did a phenomenal job. And I know Michelle was working on the art direction for the book as well. But, uh, it’s just incredible that you can produce these.

Presentations now and use the images generated from A. I. I can tell the image image up here in the article. That’s one that we produced using A. I. You can see that top of the screen. We just did another article for Michelle. Remember that when this came out for built in dot com? It was on entrepreneurial optimism, optimism and goal setting.

And they actually were the ones who put the illustration together. Now, in their particular case, they did a photo. But there’s something about it. You can tell it was AI generated. I think that’s going to be part of A lot of blogs now and whatnot, they’re going to have AI generated images, you know, what making us look better row.

I, I’m okay with that. But anyways, um, let’s get to Richard Richard. I know you’re always attending the sessions. We’re so appreciative and love to hear your thoughts. Richard. Colin, I have to ask, what is your dog’s name? Oh, you can hear the dogs in the background. I have my daughter’s dogs, Pepper, and my dog is Ginger.

I call her Gigi. Gigi. I call her G Force. She’s this little King Charles. He’s a, uh, what is it? Cavapoo, Cavapoo, uh, King Charles. mixture with a miniature poodle and she does these zoomies like I’ve never seen a dog do zoomies in my life before. I mean, it’s unbelievable. So she’s also one of our models at paw.

com at the big company that we have in our incubator. No, that’s awesome. No, I heard her, I heard her barking in the background. So I’m going to use a little different spin on AI here. So hope everybody has their seatbelt on. And one of the things I do in my business, when I advise business owners, I tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

So with AI, like any tool, you’ve got to make sure that it complements your business and not complicate your business. So, that’s the main thing. It’s not a cure all, and you still have to use that human element. And I would be curious to A B test something. So, A B testing, simply put is, um, you have A test you use, let’s use an example, you sent out, um, a font, Arial font email for 100 emails, and you sent the same email out, and all you did is change the font, and that would be your B test, and then you send that out, and you kind of compare the examples.

Very simplification of an A B test. So do an A B test, do something with A I, then do something written without A I, and compare the results. And that, because that’s the key, is when you have those numbers, it removes any subjectivity from it. So that would be my take on A I. Don’t, don’t let it be the end all answer, the perfect answer, but just use it as a tool.

Make sure it complements your business and not complicates it. And also, as more people start to use it, people will get a trained eye to tell it even, even more apart from the human writing. So, hope that adds some clarity. I know it’s a little bit different spin, but I’m here anytime. I love these rooms.

No, I like that Richard. Uh, we have In our book called something called the four sticky note business plan and I encourage every entrepreneur to do it without any AI because you cannot outsource the entrepreneur. AI is a great tool. It’s a great something to add on to what you’re doing. So if you are designing a business plan in your mind as an entrepreneur, you want to figure out the purpose you want to figure.

Yeah, you could probably get something from AI, but you want to be unique and different. And I think. AI in general will probably be thinking along the lines of how the majority might think about a particular topic or issue or business plan. Now this is not to say once you’ve completed your four sticky note business plan is what that’s what we call it.

It takes about 30 minutes to complete. Uh, once you complete it, you can’t, you can put that into the AI and it can develop more of an investor business plan. In fact, we even registered at the startup club. We registered the domain name businessplanai. com because we want to Find a way to help startups get a, you know, a professional looking business plan.

So, I mean, that’s another application, but you’re right. You cannot outsource the entrepreneur. You’ve got to be able to figure out your secret sauce. You know, what is your X factor? What is it that makes you different and unique than any other company out there? And that is something you cannot outsource.

You’re totally correct about that. Any thoughts? I love the idea of what he said. Actually, just to get a little more detailed, is to A B test variations, um, that are maybe human, maybe not, with, um, those that are Chad GTP or whatever it is. Like, that’s a great idea, Richard. Really good idea. All right, let’s not forget about Sean.

We’re coming back to you, Sean. Do you have anything to say anything to add? Um, you’re on mute. Let us know happy Friday to everyone. Yes, ma’am. Um, yeah, I, I, I’m very intrigued with the as well. I generally use the chat as well. It is definitely helped, uh, in various situations. Uh, and has enhanced the knowledge of a lot of topics and has written like, uh, and I agree with Mr Collins say that written a few speeches, uh, and different things.

I just think it’s a powerful source in the business community and just in the community in general. And I do agree that it’s going to be a. a huge wave of the future. I have four Children and they utilize it very well. Um, they, uh, I try to kind of keep them off of it because I don’t want them to be too, you know, uh, indulged with it and that, you know, be able to be creative in their mind as well.

But they, they use it so well and it just blows my mind as well. Okay. All right. So you’re reminding me of something, Sean, that I’m a little afraid of. Okay. Like, are we, you know, whatever, maybe not me, because I’m older and whatnot, but are we at risk of not developing our creative potential? Abilities are we at risk of, um, you know, not developing and diminishing, quite honestly, our writing skills like I’m curious about what folks here on the stage.

Think about that. Like, I, I’m a little nervous about that. I’m sorry. You guys are nervous about that. What are your thoughts? Well, my thoughts was I thought it was creative because to see the children so enthused in it and their ability to kind of be a little bit more advanced. I think, like I said, with the prior, you know, with the right assistance, I think it adds.

To their dimensions, because my son utilizes it, not for purposes of actually doing the work, but to get a general idea. So I think it assists, you know, the teachers as well. So I think it’s like a powerful instrument if utilized in the proper manner. So I. Sorry, Aaron Carr right here. I just got pulled up on the stage.

I actually have a response to that. Um, the question that actually should be asked is kind of why does it matter? Uh, and the reason why I say that is because our ability to carve was diminished when we invented writing utensils, the amount of handwritten letters was diminished when we created computers and email our ability to run.

Uh, was diminished whenever we invented cars because suddenly we’re not walking everywhere. Um, like our desire to, I’m staring at my fence right now. You know, our ability to hammer things in was diminished whenever pneumatic hammers were invented. Uh, you know, breaking concrete. Where I don’t think that necessarily you’d be decreasing a student’s ability to be creative.

I think that you would be enhancing their capability of being creative in many different directions. Okay, you’re gonna have kids that are gonna be able to design sophisticated software. Because all they would need to have is a basic grasp on how to write the software to begin with. And then with the assistance of things like ChatGPT and other generative AI capabilities, that would be able to supplement their creativity to the point where they needed to know just the base level of knowledge and were able to accomplish so much more in so very little time.

So I don’t think it’s necessarily going to Drop it. But at the same point in time, what if it does? Like, how do, how do we lose? I know it’s, I don’t know. I, I actually obviously don’t know what the answer is, but I’m intrigued by it. Aaron and Sean. I just wanted to jump in here and say this, because I think this is a really interesting question.

And I thought mid journeys philosophy when I first read mid journeys philosophy about how people are not as they were. In this day and age, you know, the goal is to be creative, right, to create something different, um, and the, and the philosophy for Midjourney was to help people imagine better and more, you know, and so I think, I don’t think that AI inhibits us is depending on how we use it, right?

So if we’re using it to be productive, then the goal is You know, to get things done faster, but then if we’re using it from a different perspective, like to create things that we necessarily couldn’t create before, um, then we have like a greater, like, breadth that we can actually tackle, like, I’ll just give you, like, actual example, um, my son, Uh, he’s in high school.

This is his last year, but in when he was a junior last year, he created a science project and we used, um, Google spreadsheets and, uh, chat GPT, um, the extension or add on to create college GPT, which essentially we scraped the database for colleges and then entered like formula, the formula, and then ask chat GPT, analyze the best You know, um, colleges based on this, you know, these parameters, right?

And it gave you spits, spits out like colleges based on what you’re inputting. So, um, we can be creative, whereas we could never have done that in a couple of weeks. Right. Um, but. TrapGPT made it a lot easier to do, so. Well, if I could, if I could be the resident, you know, hard ass. Um, this is something that, this is something that was, um, done quite well in, in the book, um, StartScale.

Talking to people, people read our content, we are trying to reach people, so we can’t get around. Can’t hear you. I’m sorry, is this better, can you hear me? Much. Okay, I’m sorry. Now, um, something that was done quite well in the book, uh, Start, Scale, Exit, Repeat, is that, um, all of the case studies, all of the interviews, we need people.

We’re trying to reach people. We need to write for people. And we just can’t get around that. And, and what’s cool about AI, well, what’s cool about being human is we are spirit. No matter what your belief is, we are spirit. And that cannot be duplicated. And people are getting pretty weary of all the fear mongering and they’re getting weary of all the fake and insincere and inauthentic content.

So, AI can’t stop us from reading. Read, and read a lot. And read what matters. Read what matters to you, and you will find like people. So read, and talk to people. And AI can’t stop, and AI can’t stop either one of those instances. But just remember, you know, we’re trying to reach people. We’re writing for people, we want to reach people.

We’re looking to serve people. And people are smart. We have to give people way more credit than we give them, and they’re going to know something is AI, and they’re, they are, people are overall forgiving for the use of AI, you know, there were slide rulers, and then the calculator came along. People are not so turned off by AI that they don’t expect it.

It’s here. The genie’s out the bottle. It’s not going anywhere. People get that. People understand that. But what’s unforgivable is when you hand them 100 percent AI. Not for the sake of time, but just out of pure laziness, out of pure greed. Give people credit. People know authentic content. People know authentic intent.

If your intentions are to reach people, it’s going to come out in your content. If your intentions are, you know, here, let me just spit this out so I can, you know, get my, my readership up. That’s going to come out. And the proof is always going to be in the puddings. I love that 4G. I’m just going to say, I know I started this, uh, you know, side conversation here.

You know, when people are like, Oh God, just put it in, you know, in ChatGTP and you’re done. Like, why, why is it taking so long? Like, I’m sorry, like, I really like to think about what I’m saying. I really want to make Yeah, it’s adding value and it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s what I’m trying to articulate. Does it help me be a better writer?

Absolutely. Do I have to do it 10 different times refining the, uh, the, the prompt? Absolutely. I do. Am I massively more productive and it actually makes me think more? Yes. And I totally agree with you if you’re just using it like a machine. I don’t know, man. Chances are it’s not going to work. At least not for now, because I can’t read my mind, you know?

Amen. I, I feed Chad, GBT, Poe, and other AI platforms, my old articles, and I ask it, okay, take it. Now just sit on it. Don’t do anything with it. Just analyze it. And then I’ll ask it through nuance prompts, feedback on my former work, so it can learn my tone, my snark, my cadence, my intent. And it will provide me, if I so, if I ask, it will provide me with insights of what I missed before and what I can ask during, you know, current times now and I write accordingly, but it’s all from me.

I make sure because I’m, I’m a type A personality, it has to come from me. I use, I use AI. I’m thankful for AI. It gets me. Where I need to go, but it’s gonna be from me. It’s gonna be from my heart, my intentions. Yeah, and let’s go back to that example with my wife’s school and how I said, oh, it did eight blogs in ten minutes.

You’re so right, because if you put a little bit of effort into it as well, and both of our kids grew up in the Montessori system, and if we actually get authentic and talk about a real story, and then thank you for calling out the book, and The, you know, the number of interviews that went into that book, and every one of those stories is real and authentic, actually happened, was not AI generated.

Um, if we do that in our writing, but then we combine the AI to accelerate our production of an end product. So, I actually believe that talent in our society, uh, there are a lot of people who are very, very talented. Maybe someone is very talented, but they just simply can’t write in the English language as well as others.

Well, that’s going to go away. Maybe you could write that movie script, but you don’t understand the, uh, the way the formats should go, but you got the idea in your head. That’s going to go away. I actually believe that whether it’s writing a legal contract, a movie script, a book, an article, that the genius does still come from the human and applying that and working with the AI.

AI will always be generic, even if you prompt it to not be generic. It’s going to pull from a particular set of data points, period. But AI is not going to pull from 4GI. She’s going to come out with her own angle, her own thing, and she’s going to make it authentic and real. And when you do that, there’s a human connection now, in your communication.

This is not to say you don’t work with them in tandem. I believe you can, and actually have a better product. But there are a lot of writers. A lot of people out there even including myself, but you know, I have thankfully I have Mimi who’s here on stage I think she’s here or she gone now. But anyway, she does the startup.

Oh, there she is She does the startup. club blog and we have an email list there By the way, you can sign up to it We’ll announce the speakers that are coming on to Startup Club. But she’s done a lot of writing and she does a lot of editing for me, uh, as well. And, and, but not everybody can afford editors to help them with their writing.

But I will definitely say I held myself back by putting out information. It took me 10 years to write that book, 4G. 10 years! Yeah, a lot of air, a lot of airline miles to get that book out there. And, and I know it’s very, it’s conversational style. I did Ask Chachi BTU, the kind of style of the book. It’s been received very well because it’s not a complicated academic report.

It’s simply a compilation of stories with, uh, some conclusions. All that came through, let me tell you. Well, thank you for that. And it really was something, uh, but I don’t, you know, I think if I didn’t have a series of six people around me, it took six people in the last two years to interview those 200 people, of which 50 made the book.

It took a lot of people to put this book together. Nowadays, I think that about diminishing the importance of the individuals, I actually believe that it’s a better product than what I could produce even today. But I do believe that there are tasks and There’s brilliance and genius within all of us and that AI will help us unleash that brilliance

people trust content That is that is thoughtfully and carefully researched people trust content with expert quotes

and just Everything is gonna come through your again, you know you want to reach people is gonna come through if you just want to just Slap some stuff out there that’s going to come through. So talking to people, having really smart source material in your content. Is a game changer because that’s how you become a trusted advisor, a trusted authority, because it shows you’re doing the legwork.

You’re not resting on AI’s laurels that you’re still actually putting some work in. People respect that. I

love about what Colin said was that it gives people like, especially with certain language barriers. It’s the idea that, you know, really, AI gives us the ability to unpack that. Um, like, I am not a graphic designer, but using Midjourney, I can prompt, create a prompt that describes what I’m imagining, and then because of that, now I have a great design.

Um, so the skills that I didn’t necessarily have. Now I have because I can think through it. Um, and that articulation is so important. Um, even for designers that, you know, we work with, some of them are from all across the world. Like going back to that point was there from Southeast Asia from Canada, like any, like some places where obviously there are colloquial distinctions, right?

Um, But they’re great designers, you know, and if we can give them a tool that puts them at the same level as everyone else because their only challenge is maybe they can’t communicate in the English language and that AI helps bridge the gap between those like current economic challenges or you know, personal challenges just from where we’re located to actually bring out, draw out their greatness.

Um, So I, I think there’s so much potential there. Awesome. This has been an amazing session. And Collin, can you believe it? An hour blew by so fast and, um, thank you for hanging in there, Colin. I know you’re a little bit under the weather, but this has been an amazing session. So any last words, Colin? No, I think, uh, I believe that we are at a historic moment in time and we can choose to go forward and embrace that and learn and adapt to the technology.

Or we could not, but I truly believe those startups that choose to embrace AI will find ways to accelerate themselves. And I used the example earlier in the last few weeks. I almost feel like I’m Tony Stark. I strapped on a uniform and that uniform was AI. And I’ve become, I’ve been able to deliver such great productivity.

It’s mind blowing and that’s it. Like if you, you can go one way or you can go the other. And, and, but lastly, I’ll say, I’m going to end with this is that you can still be your authentic self. And you can still leverage who you are and never outsource the entrepreneur always come up with those ideas on your own.

You can, you can use chat GPT. You can use any AI to help you accelerate that growth. But the growth starts from within. It starts from a core of the entrepreneur and every entrepreneur entrepreneurship is a trade. We need to learn how to master that trade. And learning is the key to doing that. And today I feel like I.

Elevated myself more with the community of clubhouse and the community of startup club. What a great great conversation. Thank you very much Been great and please we’re here every friday Every friday seriously at 2 p. m. Eastern time and we’re so grateful for all the members who Join us and contribute Your support is invaluable.

If you want to join the email list, please go to www. startup. club And we hope you have the most amazing holiday, whatever your religion or affiliation is with your friends and family. Please be well and we’ll see you next Friday at two, at 2 PM Eastern time. Thank you.

Yeah. And thank you for those, those who came on stage. I’m following all of you on stage. I love it. Really appreciate your participation. Always come on stage. Never feel like cause y’all have something to say and that’s what makes this community great. Thanks everyone. See you next week.