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Hey Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much for joining me. How
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are you doing today? I'm doing great.
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Thank you so much for having me on this.
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Yeah, I'm really excited. AI is kind of
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exploding all over the world. It's the
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to-do topic. I've not really chatted
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about it with anybody. So, I'm really
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excited to dive into into this topic
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with you. So, with that, let's just get
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right into it. Um, what are some simple
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ways entrepreneurs can use AI to
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automate parts of their business? Cuz I
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know that as a small business person and
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a lot of people out there, there's a lot
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of fears of like there's so many tools.
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You don't want to pick the wrong one,
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but you also know that it can help you.
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And so, what h how can you help us
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navigate that a little bit? Yeah. A lot
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of people assume AI is this complicated,
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expensive thing, but you can actually
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start really small and still see a big
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impact. For example, uh one of the
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easiest wins is setting up a chatbot on
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your website to answer frequently asked
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questions or capture leads 24/7. I mean,
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that alone can replace hours of
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repetitive work. Another great starting
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point is automating appointment
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scheduling. connecting an AI assistant
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to your calendar, it helps so much with
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booking instead of going back and forth
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with emails. Um, and for folks doing a
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lot of outreach or marketing, Howard
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Consulting specifically builds voice
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bots that can answer calls, qualify
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leads, or even send follow-up emails
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after a conversation. So, we don't look
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at it as replacing people. It's about
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freeing up your time to focus on what
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actually grows your business. Yeah.
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Making things a little bit more
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efficient so you're not doing so much of
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that groundwork that you're just getting
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straight to the point. I want to jump in
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a little bit more with that chatbot. How
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could somebody implement that on like
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they're not they don't have a crazy
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website. They just need something simple
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to kind of get the the juices flowing.
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Somebody might be thinking, "Well, this
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chatbot has no idea really who I am or
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what I'm about or how to answer these
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questions." And a lot of these small
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businesses hold them so preciously that
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they're afraid to hand that over. So,
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how might that actually look at the
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beginning? Yeah. You know, so many of
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the chatbots that are out there on the
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market right now are what we call
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rules-based, which means that when
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you're coming in to have a conversation
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with the chatbot, it's expecting certain
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questions to be asked and it's able to
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answer those questions. That's a really
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old way of doing things that doesn't
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incorporate AI. Ours incorporates AI. So
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we have you can almost kind of think of
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it as like you know I don't know two
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balls in the air right and one of them
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is the large language model and usually
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that would be like perplexity or would
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be uh chat GPT or something like that
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and then in the other you know globe or
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ball whatever you want to call it is
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this knowledge brain right and we fill
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that knowledge brain with everything
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about the company. We scrape the website
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so we understand the content that's on
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the website. We ask for any any
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documentation, maybe your business plan,
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maybe your marketing plan, strategies,
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uh you know what your you know any kind
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of press releases, anything about that
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company. So that on a very simple
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lowcost loweffort chatbot that that does
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not capture lead genen or do calendar
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integration. So just on a very very
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purely I'm a chatbot and I know about
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this business you can get a lot of
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answers a lot of questions answered
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because the chatbot understands that
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business. Okay. So how would you
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implement like an email capture into
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that chatbot if somebody were to put
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that on their website? Because I know
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usually you'd have like a oh join my
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newsletter here or the this there. How
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could that be implemented in that
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chatbot? Yeah. So what so then we kind
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of go up a level in the ability of the
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AI chatbot which is lead genen right
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lead genen and calendar integration. So
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that means that at some point in the
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conversation with the chatbot and you
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can see this on our website
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howard.conulting you can go in and ask
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it a question. It's going to be able to
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answer that. If you ask it a second
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question we've triggered it to then ask
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you if you'd like to schedule an
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appointment. If you'd like to schedule
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an appointment, the first thing that it
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asks you is what is your name? What is
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your email? What is your phone number?
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And what company do you work with? Well,
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now we've captured all that data. Plus,
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we're capturing all of the conversation
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in the chatbot going back to the client
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so they can see it. And then it
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integrates into that client calendar.
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So, let's say that somebody wanted to
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have a meeting with me tomorrow at two
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o'clock. the calendar, the API
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connection to the calendar would check
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to see what my availability would be for
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that moment, for that two o'clock
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meeting, and come back and either I'm
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available for it or it would suggest
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several other days or times. Okay. So,
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it seems like it's it's fairly simple
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and straightforward and easy for
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somebody to do this then to build it or
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to deploy it to to deploy it onto their
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website. Yeah. cuz I'm thinking about a
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lot of small business owners not aren't
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necessarily tech forward people or
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techsavvy folks. They you know a lot of
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them are creatives or this that and the
5:36
other and this can you know make them
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very nervous to implement this onto
5:41
their systems and so it sounds like it
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is quite fairly straightforward
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currently to do that. Yeah, there are
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two things that the client has to be
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involved with in addition to providing
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us the knowledge for the knowledge base.
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They have to connect their calendar to
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our systems which is not difficult. Um,
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and just kind of goes through a form,
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asks you a couple of email questions.
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What is your email? Blah blah blah. Who
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are you what are you using? Google Meet?
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Are you using Google calendar? Are you
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using uh Calendarly? Whatever it is. And
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then it connects to that. Once that's
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done and we have the knowledge base,
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within a 48 hour period, that client is
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then going to get a little snippet of
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code that they're going to have to put
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onto their HTML. Now, I realize and we
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realize that this is definitely a
6:32
blocker for some companies. And so for
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those companies, we do a free service.
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We will come in, we will connect into
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your backend, and we will put that code
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into the header of that homepage. And
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then it replicates across all pages.
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