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Episode 482: Kevin Surace – Artificial Intelligence for Small Business

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Episode Transcript:

Henry Lopez (00:11):

This is Henry Lopez, and welcome to this episode of the How of Business Podcast. I am naming this episode Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals for Small Business Owners. I have recently been focusing on AI from a business owner’s perspective, learning how it’s currently being used and what the future applications may be. I have definitely bought into the hype about AI, but I think it’s more than just the latest hot thing. I do believe AI will continue to change how we do business, and mostly I see it as a hugely powerful and positive thing, whether on purpose or not, you are likely already using AI to help you run your small business. As I was typing these sentences into a Word document to create my outline for this episode, Microsoft Word was improving my productivity and grammar by suggesting what I might want to type next. That’s a simple example of AI embedded into a tool that I already use every day.

Henry Lopez (01:03):

And as you will be able to tell fairly quickly, I am not an expert on AI. I’m just learning as much as I can about it as a business owner, applying these technologies in my businesses and helping my clients and you by sharing what I know and how others are using AI to improve their small businesses. Similar to the financial activities in your business, perhaps as the owner, you don’t need to know all of the technical details of how AI works. You just need, in my opinion, to know how to leverage AI to help you stay competitive and to grow your business. To receive more information about the How a business, including the show notes page for this episode and how you can continue supporting my show and receive workshop discounts and join my monthly group coaching session, all of this through a Patreon membership visit, the How a business.com.

Henry Lopez (01:50):

I also encourage you to please subscribe to my show anywhere you might be listening so you don’t miss any episodes. Now for this episode, I’m doing something unique as well. I’m gonna do a contest I, I would love for you to submit if you’re comfortable doing so, example, an example of how you are using AI in your business today. So you can just submit your example briefly of how you’re using artificial intelligence in your business and you’ll get a chance to win a special prize that I’m going to award to the winner of this contest. So just submit in the comments either in the comments on the show notes page for this episode, or you can go to the contact us [email protected]. I’m going to put the link to the show notes page in the notes for this episode. So wherever you’re listening, just look at the notes, the detailed notes for the episode, and in there you’ll find the direct link to the show notes page for this episode.

Henry Lopez (02:41):

So I’m excited to hear, and I want to learn from how you are using AI in your business. So please share some of that information if you would. So what is AI? Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that’s focused on creating systems that are capable of performing tasks that would normally require some of human intelligence. These tasks include learning from experience, which referred to as machine learning, recognizing patterns similar to what large companies have been doing with data mining, for example, for many years, understanding natural language, the language that we speak and write and helping to make decisions. AI has the potential to revolutionize the way small businesses operate, offering opportunities for increased efficiency, improved customer service for example, and of course supporting decision making. You’ve likely already been using AI, as I mentioned already in in other tools that you may use in your small business like your current software tools.

Henry Lopez (03:37):

Software companies have been leveraging AI for some time now, but we are now seeing a proliferation of AI features across all types of software solutions. Some examples might include spam filters, voice to text features and applications such as Siri or Cortana or Google. Now. Now let’s talk for a moment about generative AI. Generative AI or gen AI for short is a type of artificial intelligence that creates new content based on what it has learned from existing content. A lot of existing content when given a prompt gen AI uses a statistical model to predict what an expected response might be. And this generates new content and this has been developed to a point now where it’s incredibly effective. Even human-like large language models, LLMs are a type of gen AI and ChatGPT or Google Bard or examples of LLMs, large language models, chat, G P T or Google Bard.

Henry Lopez (04:34):

I’m gonna focus on ChatGPT here in this conversation because that’s what I have the most experience with and what I’ve studied the most, but it’s applicable to both and other platforms that are emerging. So I’m just using ChatGPT as my primary example, but ChatGPT, which stands for chat generative Pre-Trained Transformer. I know that’s quite a mouthful, that’s why ChatGPT is a lot easier, but it’s a large language model. An L o M based chat bot developed by OpenAI and OpenAI launched ChatGPT back in November of 2022. It’s highly functional in part for enabling us as users to refine and steer a conversation to generate content, but a conversation where we can dictate parameters like the length, the format, the style, the level of detail, and even the language used for the content we wanted to create.

Henry Lopez (05:26):

And so why has AI become so hyped and why should I care as a small business owner? Well, I’m gonna give you three reasons why it has become so popular and, and we’ll begin to talk about how we can apply it as business owners. Number one, of course, as I mentioned now is the emergence of chat, G P T and other tools chat. ChatGPT is a chat bot capable of very human seeming interactions. And if you’re not familiar with ChatGPT, I’ll share some more details about it later in this episode. But some of the benefits of generative AI for small business include faster product development, enhanced customer service experiences, and improved employee productivity. So one of the ways that this tool, this technology, that AI is going to help us is to make us all much more productive so that we can continue to grow our small businesses and not necessarily have to disproportionately hire new people.

Henry Lopez (06:18):

But it’s also the reason for the hype and the accessibility is what they call the democratization of AI for all business owners. It’s leveled the playing field just like the internet did, not just something that’s available to large corporations with large budgets. So those are some of the reasons why it has become so popular, why you’re hearing about it everywhere and hopefully and likely maybe you’re using it already in your small business. But let’s talk more about some ways that small business owners can use AI even to start and certainly definitely to grow a small business. Artificial intelligence is increasingly being incorporated, as I mentioned, into software tools that are used by small businesses to enhance functionality and improve efficiency. And so I’m going to share here just some common examples of AI for small business and I’m going to add links to all of these different tools.

Henry Lopez (07:07):

The examples that I share, there’ll be links on the show notes page for all of these. And so you can go there at the how of business.com. Go to the show notes page for this episode. I’ll have a link directly to the show notes page in the notes, wherever it is that you’re listening to this episode. And I’ll link it to all of these different either software tools or other platforms that are leveraging AI and helping small business owners apply the benefits of AI in their small businesses. So these are in no particular order, but I’ll start with customer service. So you’re already probably experiencing this either as a user or maybe in your business already, but chatbots, which have been around for quite some time, but they’re getting better and better, but they’re a great example of AI in business. Chatbots can handle customer inquiries, for example, and they can do so 24 7 and provide instant responses, at least those first level responses very effectively allowing your staff to focus on more complex tasks or requests.

Henry Lopez (08:00):

Chat bots can be programmed to answer frequently asked questions, for example, process orders, and even provide personalized product recommendations. Let’s talk about sales and marketing applications. AI can automate tasks such as email marketing and social media postings, as well as provide specific insights into campaign performance. For example, MailChimp, which I use for email management, uses AI to optimize emails, send times, and provide product recommendations. Hootsuite, which is another tool that helps us manage our social media posts, suggests the best time to post on social media. Well, those are examples of those two tools. Embedding AI technologies to provide that functionality. Content creation, this is a big one, this is where I’m using chat, G P T. Creating content is often such a huge challenge for us as small business owners because it’s so time consuming in. So AI software can generate content for your blogs, social media posts, newsletters, and any of those types of things.

Henry Lopez (09:02):

It’s important however that you take that content and that you give it a human touch as you produce the final piece. Because as purely AI generated content, it can still have factual errors or seem too mechanical, but I’ll tell you, it’s so efficient and it’ll increase your productivity so much to at least create a draft. As I said, I’m using ChatGPT daily to help me create content from my website and to even help me prepare for a podcast episode. Another AI tool example is a tool called or platform called Booth AI. Booth.AI, which is a software platform that instantly produces photography. So photographic images for furniture, fashion, and packaged goods. If you’re in that business, check out Booth AI. How about point of sales or payment systems? P o s systems. So AI can help to streamline inventory management and predict sales trends. For example, Shopify as an example, uses AI to provide product recommendations based on customer behavior.

Henry Lopez (10:03):

You’ve probably seen that of course for years on Amazon Square. A payment collection platform uses AI to help its users analyze sales data and provide insights into customer spending habits. Customer relationship management. CRM is another example of where AI can analyze, for example, client data to provide insights into client behavior and preferences, which can help a small business to then personalize marketing and sales efforts. For example, Salesforce Einstein AI, the component of Salesforce called Einstein AI uses machine learning to predict customer behavior and then as a result, automate specific sales tasks. Zoho, CRM and other CRM platform uses AI to provide sales predictions and suggestions. For the best time to contact a customer might seem like magic, but it really is the application of AI to help us make these decisions and to help us be more effective and productive in running our small business.

Henry Lopez (12:33):

So how about just generally in operations operating a business, AI can automate routine tasks such as scheduling appointments or managing inventory, helping us manage inventory or processing invoices or saving time and reducing the risk of human error across all of those different tasks, many tasks, routine tasks, repetitive tasks in particular can be accomplished entirely by AI. So me geek, you can bring into your Zoom sessions and it will capture, it will listen to that audio and capture and create very organized meeting notes and summaries of the conversation that you had. Think about how productive that is, not just to have to rely on your handwritten notes or typing in notes, but this actually listens to the conversation and of course it gets better and better as it learns how you’re communicating and the structure of your meetings. So you can only imagine here are the productivity boosted that will give you to the effectiveness and the follow-up of a meeting.

Henry Lopez (13:28):

Let’s talk about accounting software. So AI can automate tasks such as invoice processing and expense tracking, as well as provide insights into financial data, help you analyze it. For example, QuickBooks. Quickbooks uses AI to categorize expenses and automate invoice creation. You’ve probably seen some of that maybe when you download your bank transactions where QuickBook is applying that intelligence that it’s developing over time to auto categorize your expenses zero. Another platform uses AI to automate those bank reconciliations and just coding for transactions. That’s what I’m talking about there. Quickbooks does the same thing, but these platforms are using AI to automate a lot that a lot of that for us and help us do these things faster and more efficiently. Of course, generally in data analysis, as I’ve mentioned, AI can analyze and help us analyze large amounts of data to uncover trends and insights that would be difficult for humans to identify at least, and not in any in any realistic period of time.

Henry Lopez (14:26):

And it does it incredibly fast. This can inform you in your strategic decision making and in helping small businesses identify opportunities for growth or areas for improvement. As I mentioned earlier, this is a great example of the democratization of AI. This is a type of data analysis that has been beforehand reserved for large corporations with lots of resources and money, but now it’s available to us as small business owners. And the last example I’ll share here today is related to human resources, HR tools. AI can help you streamline, for example, the recruitment process by automating tasks such as resume screening and interview scheduling. For example, bamboo HR uses AI to provide insights into employee performance and engagement while Workday uses AI to predict employee retention and succession planning. So let me share a bit more about ChatGPT. And there’s a great article that I will put a link to in the show notes page for this episode.

Henry Lopez (15:22):

In PC magazine, they now go by PC Mag online entitled, what is ChatGPT A Basic Explainer. And I think it does a great job of summarizing what this is, and it was written by Ben Dickinson. So take a read of that. It’s an easy read short article, but again, ChatGPT, which stands for chat generative Pre-TrAIned Transformer is a large language model chat bot that was again developed by open AI and it’s a really productive and functional chat bot that helps us make decisions and create content. I’m summarizing it here. Of course there’s more that it can do. There is a free version, which I encourage all of you to begin using if you haven’t already. And a paid version. I’m on the paid version now because it gets you access to the most recent data model chat, G P T version four.

Henry Lopez (16:11):

But start with the free version and you can find [email protected] and ChatGPT As you will learn or probably already know, it’s all about the prompts. And the prompts means the, the questions and the information that you give ChatGPT or Google Bard to help you arrive at a conclusion, at a decision or to generate content, really is about the quality of the input, of course determines the quality of the output which you’re going to get from chat, G P T or any other similar platform. So there is a proliferation online of what are called prompt guides. Search on Google, search on YouTube, and you’ll find plenty of examples, especially specific to your industry or a segment of your business. So if you search for example, for ChatGPT, prompt guides for marketing, for small business marketing, you’ll find all kinds of free information on how to get the most out of ChatGPT for that purpose by helping you share the right context information and ask it the right questions.

Henry Lopez (17:12):

That’s really what it’s about. And really you’re going to learn this as you start to use it. You know, when I first started using it, I was, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I was just asked it simple questions. And now as I’m learning more and more, either from my usage or from learning from others that, that I am following that, then that’s how I’ve gotten better at improving what I give it as far as input and of course then the value that I’m getting out of it. So to summarize here, what are some of the business applications for ChatGPT? So here are a few that that myself and other business owners and perhaps including yourself, are using ChatGPT for and Google as well. Written content creation is the big one. So producing what I call a draft of text in whatever desired style and length I want on any topic.

Henry Lopez (18:01):

That’s one really great way and certainly a fantastic place to start to use ChatGPT to increase your productivity, answering questions and discovery. So enabling you to locate answers based on the input that you provided. And of course, based on the data and the prompt information that you share with it. So you can tell it what type of tone or what type of spoken language you want, the content that it produces to be in. We can use it to summarize. So you might give it a long article or some other piece of content and ask a ChatGPT or Google Bar to shorten or summarize it to create a new version based on that content that you have shared with it. Simplification. So similarly, you might wanna break down titles, creating outlines or extracting key content from a piece of information or, or some data that you give it.

Henry Lopez (18:54):

Classification of content for specific use cases like sorting by sentiment, by topic, et cetera, and even software coding. So some additional tips for chat PT for small business owners. Again, go to the show notes page for this episode. And what I’m going to include in there is a little bit more lengthy guide to what I’m calling a, a high level business owner guide to using ChatGPT. I’m not gonna go through it here because it’s quite lengthy, but go to the show notes page for this episode and read through and leverage as much as you want. These additional tips on how to get the most from ChatGPT. And again, most of these, if not all of these will apply to whatever platform, whether it’s chat, G B T or Google Barge, but it includes also some of the components of an effective prompt.

Henry Lopez (19:41):

And I’ve created tips for how to do so. And by the way, I created this content to a large extent by asking ChatGPT. So let’s talk for just a moment from a small business owner’s perspective, what some of the potential risks of generative AI and ChatGPT or barred might include. But don’t let these cautions keep you from adopting AI or thinking that it’s all evil or it has these potentials to destroy the human race. That might be the case sometime in the future. I don’t know. That’s not what I’m focusing on here. What I’m looking for and what I wanna share with you is beginning to, you already are I, but beginning to leverage more and more ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms to help you be more productive and to grow your business. But let’s talk about some of the potential issues.

Henry Lopez (20:26):

Accuracy is one of them. As I’ve mentioned already. I use the word draft in in relation to content, but generative AI including chat, G P T, sometimes they might produce inaccurate or fabricated results depending on what was in that database of, of information that it’s using to produce the new content. So you need to assess all of the outputs, all of the outcomes, all of the content that it produces. You need to double check it for accuracy, appropriateness, and actual usefulness before you share it in any way or fashion or before you rely on it entirely. We also have to be careful about biases. You need perhaps policies and controls in place to detect biases on the outputs and deal with them in a manner that’s consistent with company policy or direction that you might have on these things if you have them. And any legal requirements that might apply as well.

Henry Lopez (21:18):

Intellectual property, IP, and copyright. There are currently no verifiable data governance and protection assurances regarding confidential enterprise information. So you should assume that any data or queries that you enter into ChatGPT and any other platform will become potentially could become now public information accessible to others. And so a businesses are advised to put in place controls to avoid inadvertently potentially exposing or sharing confidential information or highly protected IP of your business or just data points that you don’t want shared publicly that that others might gain access to. I think that that of all three of them is probably the most important one, in my opinion for small business owners. But to summarize accuracy, bias, potential and protecting of information, being careful what information you put into you, you put into in prompts into these platforms that then might be publicly available or available to others.

Henry Lopez (22:21):

We may have listened to an episode I record recently, episode 4 82, AI for Small Business with Kevin Ra. And Kevin is an expert and an authority on AI and his current venture app, vance.AI is applying AI technology to software testing tools. But had a great conversation with Kevin on episode 4 82 about AI. He shares some really insightful perspectives and tips on artificial intelligence for small business owners. So what are my key takeaways from you and action items for this episode? First and foremost is don’t be afraid of AI. If you have not embraced it already, do so. Learn about it, leverage it in your business. Start using it more than you’re even using it already in the tools you’re probably already using in your business. If you’re not comfortable with using chat chip PT or you don’t think it applies to you, then at least learn to leverage those AI components and features that are in those software tools that you’re using today.

Henry Lopez (23:15):

So how can you apply AI to help you grow and remain competitive? And perhaps even to help you start a business, start by using ChatGPT or Google Bard for content creation. Very simple. You’ll get better and better at it. You’ll start to understand how it can help you in the area of content creation. So that’s where I encourage you to start. And again, as I mentioned, I’m very curious. I would love for if you would share how you are using AI chat, G P t or any other AI components in your business today. I’m gonna run a a contest. So if you submit your example, you have a chance to win a special gift. So just do so by submitting a comment on the show notes page for this episode. Or you can submit it through the contact us [email protected] and look for the link in the notes for this episode, for that direct link to the show notes page for this episode. I wish you the best as you start and grow your successful and profitable small business.