Press Videos
Ethical AI for Small Businesses — Jonathan Goodman (The Business Gay Podcast)
Publisher: The Business Gay Podcast •
Duration: 29:09 •
Published: June 4, 2025
Jonathan covers practical, ethical AI adoption for small businesses—from lead-capturing chatbots and scheduling to voicebots, inclusive design, and getting started safely without heavy lift.
Show full transcript
0:01
Hey Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.
0:04
Thank you so much for joining me. How
0:05
are you doing today? I'm doing great.
0:08
Thank you so much for having me on this.
0:09
Yeah, I'm really excited. AI is kind of
0:12
exploding all over the world. It's the
0:13
to-do topic. I've not really chatted
0:15
about it with anybody. So, I'm really
0:18
excited to dive into into this topic
0:20
with you. So, with that, let's just get
0:22
right into it. Um, what are some simple
0:26
ways entrepreneurs can use AI to
0:28
automate parts of their business? Cuz I
0:30
know that as a small business person and
0:33
a lot of people out there, there's a lot
0:35
of fears of like there's so many tools.
0:38
You don't want to pick the wrong one,
0:40
but you also know that it can help you.
0:42
And so, what h how can you help us
0:44
navigate that a little bit? Yeah. A lot
0:46
of people assume AI is this complicated,
0:49
expensive thing, but you can actually
0:51
start really small and still see a big
0:54
impact. For example, uh one of the
0:56
easiest wins is setting up a chatbot on
0:59
your website to answer frequently asked
1:01
questions or capture leads 24/7. I mean,
1:04
that alone can replace hours of
1:07
repetitive work. Another great starting
1:09
point is automating appointment
1:12
scheduling. connecting an AI assistant
1:14
to your calendar, it helps so much with
1:18
booking instead of going back and forth
1:21
with emails. Um, and for folks doing a
1:24
lot of outreach or marketing, Howard
1:27
Consulting specifically builds voice
1:29
bots that can answer calls, qualify
1:31
leads, or even send follow-up emails
1:34
after a conversation. So, we don't look
1:37
at it as replacing people. It's about
1:40
freeing up your time to focus on what
1:43
actually grows your business. Yeah.
1:45
Making things a little bit more
1:46
efficient so you're not doing so much of
1:48
that groundwork that you're just getting
1:50
straight to the point. I want to jump in
1:52
a little bit more with that chatbot. How
1:55
could somebody implement that on like
1:57
they're not they don't have a crazy
1:58
website. They just need something simple
2:01
to kind of get the the juices flowing.
2:03
Somebody might be thinking, "Well, this
2:05
chatbot has no idea really who I am or
2:07
what I'm about or how to answer these
2:09
questions." And a lot of these small
2:11
businesses hold them so preciously that
2:14
they're afraid to hand that over. So,
2:16
how might that actually look at the
2:17
beginning? Yeah. You know, so many of
2:21
the chatbots that are out there on the
2:23
market right now are what we call
2:25
rules-based, which means that when
2:28
you're coming in to have a conversation
2:30
with the chatbot, it's expecting certain
2:33
questions to be asked and it's able to
2:36
answer those questions. That's a really
2:38
old way of doing things that doesn't
2:40
incorporate AI. Ours incorporates AI. So
2:44
we have you can almost kind of think of
2:46
it as like you know I don't know two
2:48
balls in the air right and one of them
2:51
is the large language model and usually
2:54
that would be like perplexity or would
2:57
be uh chat GPT or something like that
3:00
and then in the other you know globe or
3:03
ball whatever you want to call it is
3:05
this knowledge brain right and we fill
3:08
that knowledge brain with everything
3:11
about the company. We scrape the website
3:14
so we understand the content that's on
3:15
the website. We ask for any any
3:18
documentation, maybe your business plan,
3:20
maybe your marketing plan, strategies,
3:23
uh you know what your you know any kind
3:25
of press releases, anything about that
3:28
company. So that on a very simple
3:31
lowcost loweffort chatbot that that does
3:35
not capture lead genen or do calendar
3:37
integration. So just on a very very
3:40
purely I'm a chatbot and I know about
3:43
this business you can get a lot of
3:46
answers a lot of questions answered
3:49
because the chatbot understands that
3:51
business. Okay. So how would you
3:54
implement like an email capture into
3:56
that chatbot if somebody were to put
3:59
that on their website? Because I know
4:00
usually you'd have like a oh join my
4:02
newsletter here or the this there. How
4:04
could that be implemented in that
4:05
chatbot? Yeah. So what so then we kind
4:08
of go up a level in the ability of the
4:11
AI chatbot which is lead genen right
4:14
lead genen and calendar integration. So
4:17
that means that at some point in the
4:20
conversation with the chatbot and you
4:22
can see this on our website
4:24
howard.conulting you can go in and ask
4:26
it a question. It's going to be able to
4:28
answer that. If you ask it a second
4:30
question we've triggered it to then ask
4:33
you if you'd like to schedule an
4:35
appointment. If you'd like to schedule
4:36
an appointment, the first thing that it
4:38
asks you is what is your name? What is
4:40
your email? What is your phone number?
4:43
And what company do you work with? Well,
4:45
now we've captured all that data. Plus,
4:47
we're capturing all of the conversation
4:49
in the chatbot going back to the client
4:52
so they can see it. And then it
4:54
integrates into that client calendar.
4:56
So, let's say that somebody wanted to
4:58
have a meeting with me tomorrow at two
5:00
o'clock. the calendar, the API
5:04
connection to the calendar would check
5:06
to see what my availability would be for
5:08
that moment, for that two o'clock
5:10
meeting, and come back and either I'm
5:12
available for it or it would suggest
5:15
several other days or times. Okay. So,
5:18
it seems like it's it's fairly simple
5:20
and straightforward and easy for
5:21
somebody to do this then to build it or
5:24
to deploy it to to deploy it onto their
5:26
website. Yeah. cuz I'm thinking about a
5:28
lot of small business owners not aren't
5:30
necessarily tech forward people or
5:32
techsavvy folks. They you know a lot of
5:35
them are creatives or this that and the
5:36
other and this can you know make them
5:39
very nervous to implement this onto
5:41
their systems and so it sounds like it
5:43
is quite fairly straightforward
5:45
currently to do that. Yeah, there are
5:48
two things that the client has to be
5:51
involved with in addition to providing
5:53
us the knowledge for the knowledge base.
5:55
They have to connect their calendar to
5:58
our systems which is not difficult. Um,
6:02
and just kind of goes through a form,
6:04
asks you a couple of email questions.
6:06
What is your email? Blah blah blah. Who
6:09
are you what are you using? Google Meet?
6:11
Are you using Google calendar? Are you
6:13
using uh Calendarly? Whatever it is. And
6:15
then it connects to that. Once that's
6:17
done and we have the knowledge base,
6:19
within a 48 hour period, that client is
6:22
then going to get a little snippet of
6:24
code that they're going to have to put
6:26
onto their HTML. Now, I realize and we
6:29
realize that this is definitely a
6:32
blocker for some companies. And so for
6:35
those companies, we do a free service.
6:37
We will come in, we will connect into
6:39
your backend, and we will put that code
6:41
into the header of that homepage. And
6:44
then it replicates across all pages.
... (Transcript continues exactly as provided in your message)
