Episode 209: Fireside Chat - ChatGPT, Onboarding, and ERTC

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital. This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member. And the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your CareerPlug, send out assessments, do pre-screen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Chris Ferretti back for a part 2. He and I cover a lot of different things. This is truly a fireside chat, but I think we'll cover some items that will be helpful along your journey in small business ownership and hopefully give you some ideas around productivity and some of the tools that we enjoy using. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Chris Ferretti.

Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee. Or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.

Yeah, I mean, I really love Notion. Notion, I, I mean, I moved everything from Evernote. Evernote, I was an Evernote person for a long time. I still got a bunch of notes in there, but just the flexibility of Notion is, is unbelievable to, to have it as a, the project management system. And then, you know, Ali and the team, we have Lester's really tight system now on it's, it's like a system, like a workflow, you know, the, the workflow is just really, really tight for how we do things at Notion. It just makes it good. And, and I think that there's something for, you know, to be said for when things are easy to read and like, it's just organized and it makes sense and everybody is able to look at it and be on the same page. And, you know, we, I mean, we were on Asana, we moved to Google Sheets, and then we moved it to Notion, which, you know, you typically wouldn't recommend that, but that made the most sense. It was the best thing for me because I was able to like move everything into one, into one place. Because previously it was like, okay, wait, the podcast is all over here on this tech stack. You know, and then this company is on this tech stack and this company is on this tech stack. And it's just like it was, it was too much switching versus being able to get it into one place. It's been a game changer.

Yeah, I saw that you had pretty much everything that has to do with your life, both personal and business, in Notion, which I found shocking. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Asana and I've been since day one. That being said, I had never seen anybody used Notion to the level that you're using it right now. So I'm, I'm very blown away. Uh, one thing that interested me actually, and I don't know if you wanna dive into it, but I did see that, that you had a tab for, I believe it's called Energy and Focus Audit or something like that.

Oh yeah.

Time and Energy Audit. Time and Energy Audit. Sorry about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Time and Energy Audit. Yeah, I did. So, uh, I really, I'm trying to get this guy to come on the pod. But if you have not read the book written by Dan Martell, he's— I don't call him like a coach or mentor, but I mean, like, I've been in a couple groups with him. But he wrote— he just recently came out with a book called Buy Back Your Time. And so he— it's his formula, okay, is a game changer. Now, I've heard him speak about this for a little while, and so he's just now kind of codified all of this. All of his thoughts into this book called Buy Back Your Time. And so his formula is, is audit, transfer, fill. And so he has this formula where you talk about what is your buyback rate. Okay. So like, this is actually cool. I actually don't get to talk about this very much. This is kind of cool. So he says, okay, take your salary plus your distributions, plus any— now he doesn't call it this, I'm calling it this— personal yaya, like all the stuff you run through your business because you can as a business owner. So think about like your vehicle, so your truck payment, think about your gas, think about your cell phone, and think about all the other stuff that you run through your business. So let's just say, okay, that in 2022 your business was really worth to you $300,000. Okay. $300,000. All right. So take $300,000. You do this math with me if you want to. $300,000 and divide it by 2,000. Look, I know most people will use 2080 for the number of hours in a year, but like, just to make the math simple, just divide it by 2,000. So you get $150,000. Then take that number and divide it by 4, and you'll get $37.50. So the idea is that any task $37.50 an hour or less, you need to be outsourcing that. You need to be transferring that to someone else because you'll get at least a 4x return on your time and on your money. Well, $37 an hour is like a $75,000 job. Like, you know that. So, and so what you do is you go through this first process, which is called audit. And so you audit your time and your energy. So I went through this process and of course I'm a Notion freak. And so I was like, I'm going to put it in Notion. So I did the exercise myself and I went through for about 2 weeks. And audited everything I was spending my time doing and looking at, oh my gosh, what am I doing? Why am I doing that task? I shouldn't be doing that task. And so that's what I did. That's what I put in Notion. And then from that, the next step is you transfer that right to someone else. And then here's the key. You fill it back with only $150 an hour task or more. Does this make sense? Yeah, figure out what your buyback rate is, and then you go through audit, transfer, fill. That's it.

Question: when you read this book— because when I hear you— as you were speaking, by the way, I actually purchased the audiobook version. No joke. I love it.

Chris is like action taker.

I love it. So as you were speaking, I purchased the audiobook. But then, like, the more and more that like that you spoke about it, I actually realized like, okay, there are exercises that this book has. Like maybe audio is not the best way to consume this book. So when you were going through it, how did you consume it?

This, when you were going through that, the answer to this question, the answer to this question make, should be just like a whole episode itself, but I'll answer it. Okay. Cause I'm actually thinking about doing this. So I used to change how I consumed, I, I've changed how I consume books. So I used to be— I would purchase the physical book and then if I liked it, I would get the, like, the audiobook and then I would get the Kindle book. Okay. That was kind of like my order. And there was really like no method or madness to it. Now I actually have a method to do it. So if somebody sends me a book, like you said, hey Bradley, you gotta check this book out. The first place I would go is I'd buy it on Audible. The second place I would buy it on Kindle, and then I might get it on physical book because here's why. I now listen to pretty much all the books, all my books on 2.5x speed, and I can get 95% of the goodness of a book, and I can finish a book in an hour, hour and a half, or something like that. Now, for somebody that's not gotten accustomed to that, you've got to maybe like build into it. But I've listened to things on 1x speed for so long, 1.5x speed for so long that I just kind of built up to it. In an Audible, you know this, you know, it goes 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9. Um, so I've got— I like that book so much that I actually have all three versions. I have the physical book, I have the, the Kindle, and I have the, um, Audible version too. And the reason is because I just love the highlights. I love the highlights in Kindle and I've got the highlights synced from Kindle through an app called Readwise. And guess where it syncs to?

Audible?

Notion.

Notion? Oh no way.

Yes, it does. Yes. Somebody is listening to this and going, wait, that is like too complicated. It's really not. It's really not. I, uh, Chris, you'll obviously see this. You'll see this. I'm gonna share my screen. So if somebody's watching this on YouTube, you'll be able to see it. But like, there it is. Like there, that's, do you see this?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I see it 100%.

So, so that, so this is Readwise. Readwise is like, I think the charge just actually came through on my credit card a few minutes ago, but like, it's like $9 a month. Readwise is an incredible app. I love it so much, but it syncs. So Readwise is picking up all of my highlights from the book. And so Chris, like, I could actually send you— look, I've got 112 highlights from Buy Back Your Time. And what's cool, Chris, is I could literally hit share and I could copy this link and I could share it with you or anybody else. Now you couldn't edit my highlights, but you could literally have my highlights from that book.

That's incredible. Um, primarily because of the fact that the only reason why I ever buy either a physical book or a Kindle book is because of this, actually, because of highlights. And I cannot tell you how many highlights I've made in any— on a book and never ever ever look back at them because of the fact that I just simply never want— like, I just didn't want to go through the entire book to find those highlights, or to I wasn't carrying that book physically. So it's cool to see how this integrates with Notion. And then you can just, by the way, this sounds like, this sounds like a, like a paid advertising, a paid advertisement for Notion. It's not like I'm generally getting to know Notion as Bradley showed this to me.

If anybody knows somebody at Notion and they want to be a paid sponsor, Notion, if you're listening, you're happy to be a sponsor because I love, I love, I love Notion. Yeah. I just put it in the chat. You can see the, my book notes.

Nice.

I back your time.

It's an awesome— Yeah, sorry, sorry.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I hope to be able to get him on to come on the podcast. He would be, he'd be a really awesome guest. But anyway, that's, that's, that's an awesome book. So, but yeah, we kind of talked about a few different things, but that's my order of buying books now is Audible, Kindle, and then the physical book. But I really love that flow. It takes a little bit of setup initially, but really it was not that hard. And so it automatically syncs all of those highlights. And so if I was able to like— so actually I told you I just interviewed Cameron, right? And so we've got a book club going on for his book, Second in Command. Well, guess what I've done? I've just taken my— I just take that link, shared it with the community. And so everybody that's in the book club is seeing my highlights of the Second in Command book, and I don't have to do anything except read the book and highlight.

Pretty sick, pretty sick, man.

Yeah.

Um, well, let's dive into the reason why we're on the podcast today. So we started talking about project management tools, one, because we're nerds, and two, because we were talking about— yeah, and two, because of the fact that we were talking about, uh, employee onboarding and how important it is to have a repeatable process every single time that you onboard— I'm sorry, onboard a new team member. Um, so I, at the position that I now have at Club Capital, I interview people almost every week. Uh, and you being the owner of your agency as well as many other businesses, you're constantly interviewing people. And one quote that I came across, I forgot if it was either in a podcast or in a book, was that Culture starts at the interview. Um, so if culture starts at the interview, it 1000% starts on day one. And that is exactly why you wanna make sure that your employee onboarding process is incredibly fine-tuned, incredibly set up. And mind you, it's constantly going to be iterating because you're constantly going to find things that you can improve, but you have to be conscious about it. I cannot tell you how many times I've, uh, either spoken to people that because of the fact that they only think of themselves as a small business, which they are— but just because you are a small business, by the way, doesn't mean that you have to carry yourself like one. Uh, in fact, there are individuals like Haim 500, for example, which is a person that I definitely like recommend following on social media. He is, uh, just a serial entrepreneur But he talks about the concept of carrying yourself as a Fortune 500 company, hence the nickname him 500. Um, and bottom line, Fortune 500 companies don't, don't leave anything up to guessing, you know, like the employee onboarding process among many other processes are that they're processes, they're repeatable tasks that, that you can follow that will improve the likelihood of somebody getting up to speed in a short amount of time and be able to be proficient and efficient for you, for your organization, as quickly as possible.

So you don't think we should do— we should be willy-nilly? We should be willy-nilly?

I don't think we should be willy-nilly. I mean, think about it, like, you, you wanna, you wanna make sure that when somebody joins your organization, they're like Wow. Like, I am genuinely surprised at how easy they made this onboarding for me. Um, once again, culture starts from the interview.

So I, I do like that. I do. I really like that a lot. Actually, I was just pulling up, um, I'll share. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see it. Like, there's one. I'll share this. Like, here's our team onboarding.

Oh, wow.

So anyway, yeah, like we have this onboarding playbook and like, do you see down here? It's got like Bradley's backstory on there. So, you know, you and I are gonna get—

You should sell this.

Some people, but, but like I was, you know, in Google Docs, I was looking on the left-hand side. To say, okay, Bradley's backstory, current businesses, overview of the company, core, core, core values, core 4, right? Vision, systems we use, meet the team. Okay, well, here's the thing. That document took a little bit of time to put together, at least initially. But once you then record the video, You've done it, you've done it one time. And so like, I don't know if you, you guys, I, I, I know you used Loom, but like that's all those videos are in Loom. You actually probably saw the link, right? The link right there that it was, you know, so then you can send, we actually just did this with Lauren, is you send the link out to one document. It's like, watch every one of these videos, read over this document. And then they just are like, oh, okay, cool. I mean, they kind of get to know everything. Your thoughts on that? Like, is that kind of what you're talking about? Because I'm saying this is because I was like, years ago, I would hear this and say like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a good idea. That's a good idea, Chris. I need to, I need to create an onboarding process. That's a good idea.

And then I'd never do it.

I mean, I just never do it. I just was like, I don't have time. To do this bullcrap. I have got things to sell, people to talk to, emails to respond to, Chris. I ain't got time for this bullcrap. Yet that was the kind of the— an example of the stuff that was holding me back. Does this make sense? Like, I think that's where somebody might be listening to us saying, yeah, I need to do that, but like, I ain't got time for it.

If I can just say this: as an entrepreneur, if you don't have time today, you'll never have time. And what I mean by that is that you can keep telling yourself and fooling yourself into being busy all the time and, and think that you're being productive, but what you're really not being is actually effective. You're really robbing from the success of the company by telling yourself that, like, that you don't have time. And because of that, like you actually never sit down to do these things that can free up so much of your time. Because at the end of the day, typically, typically the people who are listening to this are gonna wanna hire people to grow.

Mm-hmm.

And just in general, you know, like people are, are constantly, you know, coming in and out of companies. How much more time would you free up if you didn't have to spend, you know, 10 hours, for example, and 10 hours is me being modest. 10 hours training a, like just training a new team member.

Mm-hmm.

You, mm-hmm.

Rome wasn't built in one day. And this document, this process doesn't have to be either. Um, you can simply start by, by automating your, you know, like creating a video to like, to tell your backstory. Like how did you get to where you are today? As opposed to you spending that 1 hour or that like that 30 minutes of your time and the new team member's time. That's 2 hours pretty much that you can save yourself by simply, um, by simply just making that video one time. It doesn't have to be pretty or anything like that. Just get the video done one time and share that, and then just keep adding and adding and adding to that over time. I mean, you like, like you use a Google Doc, like we use something called Trainual here at Club Capital.

Bottom line, you know, we interviewed him on the podcast. The, the CEO of Trainual?

I do know that. I do know that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So bottom line, it's like, like, you don't have to use some, some fancy system or anything like that. Just use anything where a process is, is written down. Heck, use sticky notes if you want. Like, just anything that, uh, a team member can just follow steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. to get onboarded.

Yeah, I think— have you ever heard this, um, a guy that I follow on, um, well, I mean, he's all over social media, but, um, oh gosh, Jack Butcher, Visualize Value. Have you seen this guy?

I don't think so. What's, what's, uh, what's he about?

Go to his website, Visualize Value. He's got some— I've ordered some of his, like, pictures and stuff. He's just got some really cool visual, visual things that you can put on like screensaver on your desktop or on your phone. But I ended up ordering actually some of them and putting them up in my office because I just liked them so much. But anyway, reason I'm saying that is not because of that, but because he's got this idea of build once, ship twice. I just love that. It was one shit twice. Yeah. I love that. I love simple frameworks. And so like, I think onboarding is kind of that way. Like, I'm gonna do this one time. I'm gonna do this one time. I'm gonna do it right. But well, I say that, I say it's one time. It's like build the structure out and then just improve upon it as you go. Like I, as, as we were talking, I was looking at that Google document I was just showing you. A minute ago, and I was like, oh, wait a minute, actually, that needs to be— we need to add this. I literally just did it as we were on this, on this podcast. I just updated one thing because I needed to put a link in there to our Vivid Vision because we had just updated it. So anyway, but yeah, well, like, what are a few things that you think— I mean, I gave some of mine— your, your, your core values, Your backstory as the owner, founder, agency owner, business owner. Like, I think that's important. Like, you could be like, hey, here's my story. Here's how I got started in business.

Yep.

So you could even put that in the recruiting process. Like, here you go, here's the link. You know, I don't have— you don't have to tell the same story all the time, but some people, people like to know that. Like, how did you decide to get, you know, started in this business? And you can, you can do that. Um, if you own multiple businesses, so like, what are the other businesses you're involved with? Um, get to know you a little bit, your family, etc. What are some other things that you think that would be important? Vision of the company is, is big. So, you know, what's the, the vision, direction of the company? What, what else do you think should be in that onboarding?

I think some expectations that, like, that you have for them is like, hey, like, by week 3, for example, I expect you— I like This is what success looks like for your position, and these are the milestones that I have for you. So like, by week 2, I, like, I expect you to be able to do XYZ by week 3, week 4, etc. Week 5 is when we're gonna have like your sign-off call where we're gonna see, you know, how effective we've been at, uh, at onboarding you and training you. And we're gonna do a test to test you on— for example, if they're doing, um, if they're doing sales for you, then they might do like a sales cold call, sales, um, sales closing call, et cetera, um, with you, just whatever it is that their job duties are going to be, just have milestones broken down for them and then a sign-off, just like make it incredibly easy. Like the less confusion that you can cause for anybody that you deal with, be it a client or a new employee, the better the relationship is going to be. So I would say that's something.

Yeah, that's good. So I have that. So I guess I kind of saw mine as a couple of different things. So we're basically saying the same thing. I just haven't phrased a little bit different. So, um, I think of, uh, the onboarding as like the template for any position at, you know, just an overview of everything. This is the tech we use. This is like all of those things. Then in their job description, I then lay out, here's your rollout with your milestones and your timelines of how we're going to get you in your particular position up to speed. Does that make sense? So it's almost like the, the onboarding is universal for any position, but then for that particular position, it's their job description with the milestones that they've got to be able to hit along the way. Does that make sense?

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Love that.

Cool. Um, so you and I were also talking beforehand about, uh, you were saying ERC. So what, what's up with some ERC stuff?

I've just been really concerned lately because of the fact that I'm seeing Everybody start talking about this out of nowhere. Um, every single person, whether it's people looking to qualify for ERC or random marketers, not even, you know, CPAs, enrolled agents, tax specialists, etc. You're talking about media personalities that I've seen on social media suddenly talk about ERC and say like, hey, you qualify for up to $26,000 per employee. You know, DM me to, to get you like this money today. And bottom line, there's no such thing as a free lunch is what I want to say. So whoever is coming to you with a carrot, and that carrot sounds, you know, especially if that carrot is related to the IRS, my advice to you would simply be to ask a lot of questions. How are you? And The, the overall theme of the questions that I would ask them is, how are you qualifying me for this? That's one. I mean, that would be— if they are not able to give you a straight answer, run 100%. Run. Because guess what? The way that you even obtain this tax credit is not because of the fact that you fill out an application. Absolutely not. I wish that— I wish that was the case because that would That, like, that would mean that there's somebody on the IRS's side that's reviewing the application and tells you, yes, this makes sense, no, this does not make sense. The way they— like, the way that you obtain this credit is actually by filing an amendment. So it might be years until somebody catches the fact that you shouldn't have gotten the money that you might have gotten, you know, 4 or 5 years ago. And who knows, you might have already spent that money. So bottom line is, before you sign any paperwork, before you submit anything, just ask the person that you're working with, how are you qualifying me for this? That's one thing. Number two, check how long they've been around in business. Like, I've seen so many businesses which I'm not gonna name because I don't want to throw anybody like under the bus, but they literally spawn up only to do ERC. And I guarantee you that, that the second that ERC is done, they're like, they're gonna close their doors and ciao. Like, right now they're promising people, of course, like, we're going to represent you in the event that, like, that you ordered it, etc. But at the end of the day, like, it's just, like, it's just a business entity. Like, I can shut down a business entity, disappear, ciao ciao, you know. Like, you did business with that, with that business entity, not, like, not with Chris Frati. Don't talk to me, you know. So I would just be very careful And don't just— if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And with ERC, just be careful is what I want to say.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. I mean, if you think you're gonna get $30,000 per employee free and the government's just gonna hand that out and they're like, here, no problem, here's $100 grand.

Yeah, it's like, wait, what's that? You had the— like, it's like, what's that? Like, you you know, typically like the people listening to this are insurance agents. It's like, what's that? It's like, you, an insurance agent, made more money than ever in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and you still expect me to give you a, like, a credit on top of that? It's kind of like how the, uh, like this, like the sniff test that I would run through. Yeah, like, I feel like that's how the IRS is going to look at it eventually. It's like, it's like Okay, all these people that claimed that they were affected because they, they closed their doors, somehow they still were able to work remotely and make more money and make more money than ever. And they still like expect us to give them tax dollars for whatever reason. Absolutely not. Give me that money back plus fines, you know, plus fees, plus whatever.

So yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't even think about it until right now, or a minute ago, somebody was just telling me that they're like a family member, like a distant family member, had just had a trial. Now, what they did was certainly illegal, so, um, but they had applied for a PPP loan. Not a business owner, not a business owner, but got a PPP loan, got like $150,000 And, you know, of course didn't have a legitimate business or whatever. So, you know, like obviously have a legitimate business, you applied for it, be fine, like whatever. But they didn't. And they're going to jail. They're going to jail for a period of time for it. And I think they've done some other stuff. But anyway, that's not to scare somebody. It's just like, you know, I mean, if you think that you're just going to get, you know, apply, throw some stuff out there and this company is going to take 20% off the top and they're going to defend— exactly how to defend you. They're going to shut that company down in 2 seconds. They get that. They, they got, they got their bag and they, they moved on, buddy.

Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, the, the last date that people can apply for ERTC is March 15th of 2024. So, so basically, like, once again, what I hope doesn't happen, but like, I'm not going to be surprised if it happens, is like right after that day, companies, boom, just liquidate. And the owners, like I said, they go away scot-free because of the fact that— they walk away scot-free because of the fact that you're not doing business with the individuals, like you're doing business with the business entity. So if that business entity has been dissolved, sayonara, you know, ciao.

Yeah, yeah.

So just like, just really— and by the way, like, I'm not telling you this just because you should be scared or anything like that. And there are 2 legitimate ways to qualify for this, which is showing a drop in revenue, um, or having opened your business, um, after February 15th, 2020. Um, the drop in revenue, I'm not going to dive too deep into it because of the fact that laws might change, but it would be pretty obvious. Like, this is really meant to be, uh, help for businesses that were affected. It's not meant to be for the people who are killing it. And yes, they survived a pandemic because of the fact that they might have gone remote and whatnot. But, um, and like, like, like once again, like, like your office may have been shut down, but if you were able to transition your team to work remotely and you still killed it, like, just, just make it make sense for me, you know? Like, and last thing that I wanna say is just, With the PPP loan, uh, that one did have an application, but it was not regulated at all. I mean, so many people are coming out today, just like you're saying, um, that are just going to jail because of the fact that they just got loans that didn't belong to them. And mind you, these loans were actually meant for like payroll protection loan. Like 80% of these loans were meant to be used for payroll purposes, and then the, and then the payroll and utility purposes, but the bulk of that 80% had to be used for payroll. Um, so bottom line is like, even that came with stipulations. And obviously most people just like— there was, there was a group of criminals that called themselves the PPP Boys, by the way. Um, really?

I'm dead serious.

I'm dead serious. And like, they would go to clubs and like get like the bottle signs, you know, like that, like that literally said like the PPP Boys. And guess what? Guess where they are now, you know?

Um, so they're, they're with their boys.

They're with their boys for sure, you could say that. Um, so I mean, so once again, this, this is not like— if you got ERC, uh, the right way, don't— this is not even meant for— like, this is not meant for you at all. If anything, this is for the business owners who are just learning about it right now in 2023, as opposed to when this was released, um, and you're being promised all these, you know, all these things that I like— that is basically free money. I would just be worried about the free money. That's all that I want to say.

Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I mean, if you've done it legit, there's nothing to— there's nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, all right, let's take, uh, we said we'd talk about it next time, and so it's Next time, ChatGPT-3. GPT-3. All right. So have you, have you played around with this? Are you a paying member?

I am a paying member. Yeah.

Me too.

Me too.

I'm paying the $20. I love this thing, man. All right. So like real practical, what have you actually used it for? So some people are seeing this, you know, like what have you actually, I'm gonna give a couple examples. We give a couple examples. It's going to be like, you know, I might incriminate myself here on a couple things, but it's all right. Uh, yeah, right now, right now when I'm recording this is you and I, it's not thousands of people listening to it, but you know, it's all right.

Exactly. So I mean, um, one very quick thing is actually, uh, about 2 weeks ago I had to do a presentation and I was just like stressing about it, right? And then because the research that's going to go into it and whatnot And lo and behold, I go into ChatGPT and I was like, hey, uh, create an outline for a presentation on blank. Like, the blank was just like some tech stuff. Uh, and guess what? It created the outline for me. Like, I'm staring at it right now. In fact, uh, it gave me 6 points in that outline. And then I simply— my next prompt was just elaborate on the points that you made. And then, you know, it did elaborate on every single point, which I can simply use as like as the content. Um, and then I asked it to give me some recommendations for some, for some, um, what do you call it? Um, AI like slides makers, just because I didn't want to feel like putting together, I didn't feel like putting together like the content and whatnot. And then it told me about Slides.ai. Where all I had to do was literally copy the content, uh, paste it into this, uh, add-on that Slides.ai is, and then boom, it created the entire presentation for me. Obviously, like, I went into, like, edit some pictures and, like, add some logos and things like that, but that was it right there. Like, I, like, I created a presentation probably in, without exaggeration, 45 minutes, and it would have taken me easily, I don't know, 3 to 4 hours of research, then putting it together, and I just did it in 45 minutes.

Okay, so that's a good example. That's really good. I like that. So, um, okay, I didn't realize this is really like a Notion— this is like a Notion ad. It's not intended to be at all, but all right. So Notion just came out with Notion AI, like they've embedded AI into Notion. All right. So I'm gonna share my, share my screen cuz like you saw, I was showing Chris earlier, like at the backend of Notion, but like on this one, so I had this idea and I actually recorded this episode. Like you can actually see, um, if again, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see like I'll put this episode's recorded and, you know, tag the team and edit and the whole, whole nine yards. Well, this idea, I'd heard about this before, and this is a solo episode coming out, uh, in a few weeks, uh, on a Friday called Rembrandt in the Attic. And the idea is that you've got these assets on your laptop or in the, in the business that you've kind of forgotten about. And so it's an analogy to literally people have like had Van Gogh pieces of art and even a Rembrandt literally in their attic. I mean, there's this one, like you can see it on here. Some research determined the painting was actually previously unknown by Vincent van Gogh, painted in 1888. It was valued over $60 million. It was in the, in an attic in Norway. And then there was this Rembrandt that was painted in 1634. Okay, so I'm showing these examples. That I had this idea and I could have spoke to it, but I went to Notion AI and I, you know, went to the place and I said, hey, tell the story of Rembrandt in the attic. So it gave me like, it gave it to me and I said, give me longer, give me more examples. And then I said, tie it to the analogy of having business assets. And so Anyway, it typed that out and it gave me the context that I was looking for to tell, give that analogy that you have some assets in your business. So anyway, that solo episode's coming out, but like, that's how I actually used it to help me to formulate. And I've done this actually a few other times with some of the solo episodes. And so like, I had the idea and then I just used Notion AI to put it right there in there. So there you go.

Yeah, I would say, uh, just to talk about AI in general, um, right now, yes, we're talking about all these cool applications, um, all these cool applications that are coming out with AI. And but at the end of the day, like, the way that I see AI for at least for the next, like, I don't know, 10 years, it truly is a tool. Like, like, I don't see it necessarily replacing jobs right away. Uh, if anything, I see it amplifying individuals that are knowledgeable in, you know, in an area. They're knowledgeable in an area, and, and they simply need something to gather their scattered thoughts, for example, and to put it together into like a very eloquent piece of like, like whether it's like an essay or like whatever the case may be. Prime example is ChatGPT can do just about anything, um, One engineer asked ChatGPT to build out like a, like a tic-tac-toe game. Um, and if I go ahead right now to ChatGPT and say build out tic-tac-toe, it'll build it, but it's gonna be like a very crappy tic-tac-toe game because of the fact that I don't know what instructions to give it for the actual tic-tac-toe game to look like incredible and have all this crazy graphics and cool rules and things like that. So it's like, whereas an engineer that understands how to build like an application can go ahead and create all these cool features. So all that I'm trying to say is that ChatGPT, you know, things like ChatGPT and AI in general can save people with skills time right now, but I don't think that it's going to replace people in the next 10 years. Mind you, beyond that, maybe So, but for the time being, um, for like the next 10 years, I think that we're gonna be pretty okay. If it, like, if anything, I would say skill, like, you know, get skilled at anything, not necessarily in artificial intelligence because it's so broad, but just like, just be, yeah, just get more knowledgeable in whatever industry you're in and learn how to leverage AI for your industry.

I totally, I totally agree. I, I, I, I think that like this is the mindset. And sometimes mindset stuff gets thrown around and it's like, oh, have a good mindset. But no, I actually think there's a mindset to this, is that you can either hear this and roll your eyes and say like, ah, whatever, I can't use that, or something. But like the mindset that I've adopted and then I've tried to impart on someone else, so hopefully this serves somebody. Is that I'm going to learn to surf. I'm not going to get dumped by the wave.

Yeah.

And so, like, I could say, oh, I'm worried about this or that, or how's that going to disrupt this industry? I don't know, but I am going to try to stay as much as possible on the cutting edge. And I've been around, you know, have been on some calls with some people. It's like, wow. They are really not afraid of what this AI is doing. And they're like, trying to figure out a way to incorporate it into their business and help them currently do things better, faster, easier. And I think there's just so much potential out there. But like, you have to embrace it and just be willing to go in and tinker with it, you know. And, you know, you don't have to pay the $20 for ChatGPT or whatever, but like, You know, but it's $20 just to go around and play around with it. And, you know, like, hey, you're about to make a social media post. You know, I'd like to make a social media post about— well, it's not a spring— tomorrow is going to be March 1st. So, you know, about spring coming. Can you help me put something together? You know, or you're going to do a post in your local neighborhood. Like, it can give you these prompts that will kind of help you and you'll get better. At those ChatGPT prompts. And so I would just encourage people, like, just learn to surf, don't get dumped by the wave.

Exactly. Um, just look at it as a tool. Like, and, and speaking of this, like, for example, I just told ChatGPT, write a short rap about spring in Eminem's, like, in Eminem's voice, and it's literally doing it right now. Like, for $20, like, for $20 a month, like, you get access to a super, like, I'm surprised that civilians have access to this at $20 a month. I mean, that's incredible. Like, if anything, I would say whether you're an employee, business owner, etc., but specifically if you are an employee, look at this as an amplifier. This is the tool or the tools that will help you be a super producer.

Yeah. Oh, that's good. Yeah, I like that. All right, man, I think that's the pod. What do you think?

That's the part, my friend. Thank you very much for your time, really appreciate it. And I always appreciate coming back and speaking with you.

I appreciate you. You bring, bring some cool topics. I like to— I don't get too many people I get to nerd out with, you know, so this is, this is good.

Yeah, let's chat about what the next topic should be, but, uh, I'm definitely excited. I'm definitely excited for sure.

Hey, big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital, Mr. Chris Ferretti for sponsoring the podcast, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, and DirectClicks. All awesome businesses. Go to club.capital, book a no-obligation demo. Make sure you don't request Mr. Chris Ferretti. Uh, if you're looking to bring on some A-players, go to Autopilot Recruiting, let Alex and the team know you've heard about them on the podcasts, wanting to get some of the best leads that you possibly can, SEO, PPC, go to DirectClicks. And if you of course are wanting to develop your team and also get some additional information on things like onboarding, I know David and his team talk about that quite a bit and how they've been able to onboard— I don't know how many team members he's got now, 20, 25, 30, something like that— go to Coach P Consulting. Till next episode.

Lead well.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Chris. We took a lot of different turns there. That's something we haven't done, but hopefully you've seen over the last few years, we're going to continue to try things and maybe some of you can give me some feedback. And if you like that style of conversation I had with Chris, shout out to our podcast sponsors. We're so thankful for them to be able to allow us to serve all of you. Autopilot Recruiting. DirectClicks, Club Capital, and Coach P Consulting. You know, I was just having a conversation in the last 24 hours or so with a business owner who's in the process of wanting to— starting to expand his team. He's got a growth plan he's wanting to be able to hit for the rest of this year, and he started to think about, you know, how's he going to attract A-players and what's that look like. And he's got a pretty good checklist, but one of the things that he was the most concerned with was how is he going to source really good clients, because You know, we've had a lot of guests on there that the pool of really good people is difficult to find. And some of the people that you're going to be really wanting to bring onto your team are simply just not available. Well, reach out to Autopilot Recruiting and talk to them about how they can help you to be able to find some of those A-players and put a, you know, pretty significant volume, but a volume that you can manage of A-players in front of you so that you can take them through your process. And be able to grow and expand your team. Autopilotrecruiting.com. Let's say you're hiring one of those positions is going to be a sales position, and you want to make sure that, you know, not only the dollars you're investing in them, but the dollars you're investing in your marketing is going to be able to help you to really get great quality leads that your sales team is able to convert. Visit directclicksinc.com. They can talk to you about how to be able to get really great leads from Google pay-per-click and also be able to work with you on your social media now, but also your SEO. So you have inbound leads, people reaching in, calling into you that are quality leads at a very good pay-per-click price, but also really great lead price that you know your team is going to be able to convert. Visit DirectClicks INC. .com. You know, I don't think that it's dropped yet, but I did a recent episode around proximity and the people that you're around, your network of people, how important that is. And sometimes just being able to kind of see how people are thinking about something, not just the playbook they have, the word track that they have, but just how they're thinking about something is really key. Well, that's exactly what you get with David and Coach P. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Let David know that you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast and you wanted to just kind of get an idea, a test run of what his coaching is and what the experience is like. For $250, you get twice a week coaching for you, and this game changer for your team. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Of course, you hear us talk about it so often, but financials are really the backbone. At the end of the day, all the sales, all the activities eventually make it down to your financials. You're investing the dollars, you're bringing home more of the profits to you and your family. You want to be able to use those financials. And some— for some people, it can be a little overwhelming to not know. Hey, don't understand the terminology, I'm not a numbers person. Hey, I get it, I was there, I was that person. I've detailed my story out before. But when you work with Club Capital, they're going to be able to help you to really begin to adopt and get the label of becoming your own CFO. Maybe you've not kind of seen yourself that way as the chief financial officer of your business, but a little bit over time, they're going to give you the tools, but they're also going to help you with the skill set and even the mindset to be able to help you to grow your business. Visit club.capital. You'll see the entire menu and suite of items that they offer. Go to club.capital. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.