The Credibility Funnel + FridAI

Business Brain Episode 651 for Casual Friday, May 23rd National Road Trip Day 2025. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain. Or welcome back to Business Brain if it's not your first time here. The show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to tune our business brains and keep on living those charmed lives. Our sponsors for this episode include shopify.com businessbrain, where you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period, and nordlayer.com brain, where you get 22% off of Nord layer, which is a network security for modern businesses. It's a whole suite of things, and Codebrain actually gets you an extra 10% off. We'll talk more about both of those in a little bit. For now, here's here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

Casual Friday we got a review. Shannon Von Compton from the United States sent in a review at BusinessBrain show review and five stars. I like it. These dudes are obviously smart and super willing to share all their ideas about business and all kinds of other stuff. Thank you for that, Von Compton. I appreciate it. And make sure we know who you are so that we can add you to our giveaway that we are doing this year for a MacBook. So leave a review. We'll read it on the show. We're reading 100% of the reviews that come in on the show, so you'll definitely be read on the show. If you leave a review and then, then you're.

You're like they say, like they say in the movies, the, the odds are ever in your favor because this is a, you know, it'll be a small batch of people that will leave us reviews and we' to choose that new MacBook from that. So Business Brain show reviews.

It's true.

Hey, I want to. So it's Friday I yes, yes. One of our most popular segments. Everybody's talking about it. I hear when anybody mentions a show, they're like, I love that Friday I.

And it wouldn't surprise me if six months from now, the show is Friday I. Let us know what you think about that feedback at Business Brain Show. Do you like the rest of the stuff or is it Friday I yeah.

And the what I A topic that I've been working on or discussing with people lately is this concept of, you know, everybody has a sales funnel idea, right? Oh, we got to get our these people in the sales funnel and get them in and get them into there. And I think it's great. But I, And I have that same. You know, I use the same exercises, but I think that before, or maybe at the same time in parallel, you. You're thinking about your sales funnel. You should be thinking about your credibility funnel. And I would argue, man, that there's nothing AI and the tools that are at your fingertips now allow you to at least have the appearance. Your actions are what truly create your credibility. But the tools that you can use is. Yeah, look at that credibility funnel.

There is a post from three, four years ago, July of 2021, about the credibility funnel. I was like, I know we've done this before.

That's. I'm so glad you found that. Yeah, man, I'm gonna go find that too and repurpose the content. Like, there you go.

I'll link to it in the show. In fact, it's already linked in the show. Notes. Yeah, it's Perfect. From Business Brain259 is when we talk about that.

Yep, that is great.

Yep.

And so it's, you know, there's just so many ways you can make yourself look better, more professional things that I, I have spent my life hiring people to do for me or just trying to put it together myself. And now I can. Those people that I would normally hire, I can get to a higher level of things, you know, that, that other. Other opportunities. And so I, if, if it's okay with you, Dave, I wanted to share this. I've talked about Napkin AI before, but I talked about it in the context of numbers and data.

Okay.

And I wanted to show an example of how to use it for just even simple concept like this credibility funnel. I, I called it. I could. That's just not really fun.

Well, I will ask you. We will share it on the, on the video stream, of course. But, but, but you need to describe it because it needs to work with people who have their eyes closed. I always forget because most of our audience is not going to watch this.

Yeah. So yes, I'll put a PDF up in there or some snapshots of it up in the post so you can look at as well at Businessbrain show. But what Napkin does is it takes data, words, whatever, and helps create visualizations of them, which is something I've tried to do my whole life. And I love it. And in this case, it was. Here's an example of this. I was talking about credibility funnels and I call this recommerce support system. The context doesn't Matter. I just wanted to use your example. And what makes this system or what makes up this system is your story, why you're doing these things, your credibility, what your unfair advantages. We talked about what tools are resources, sources you use, how you present it, and how your customer service is. So in Napkin, you can go click into. Create these visualizations for anything. Just a paragraph, a sentence. And when you click this little lightning bolt, the AI sits there and thinks about it and says, okay, what do you want it to look like? Do you want this circular thing?

Oh, interesting.

Do you want a triangle? Looks like it's not going to reload on your screen?

No, but what Shannon had created, or what Napkin had created with Shannon's ideas was this. It was a. It looked like a. An interesting Venn diagram scenario where you have a circle in the middle of your business success. And then you have all of the things he just mentioned, your customer service, your unfair advantage, your credibility, all on the outside of this, contributing to that. But it's one of those things that. We can talk about it here. And we did, and we have, and we will again. But it sometimes really helps to see it out in front of you.

Oh, absolutely.

And, And. And really. And then you can. You can mess with it and, and rearrange it if you like, and all that stuff. So. Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, it's. It's great. And it allowed me to, you know, further down, there's just each of these things it broke out, like, why you're doing it. Is it just the money or what are your goals? You know, all these kind of aspirations. And so it brought this. And I use these in. In. And it just brought the visualization of each of these concepts that I wanted to share with my subscribers into a unique a. You know, the tools. It breaks down a visual. It has like, bolts and, you know, hey, what do you need to succeed? And it labeled each thing, and it's very versatile, and it's not just for numbers. And the last time I talked about it, I was just using it to break out numbers and create. Create charts and all this kind of stuff.

But.

It'S super useful. Napkin AI, I just use the free version, which just has their brand on it. They do have some other premium services, but it just. Anything you put together, if you're looking to have a visual representation of it, you can go here. And I think it adds to your credibility tremendously.

I love that. That's great. Yeah, it's worth. We will put this out as its own little video and feel Free to please. In fact, go check it out. It'll be on YouTube. So you can just see the examples of what Shannon built with Napkin AI and you'll immediately understand how it can take these very heady ideas that you were talking about. It wasn't numbers, right? These are just things and concepts and relating them all together in a visual way to make it easier to cement that in our brain. So, yeah, please go check that out. We have some Friday AI stuff to talk about that I am excited to do. The next thing that I want to do is tell you about our sponsors because. All right, look, running our own businesses, it's awesome, right? And it's also like juggling flaming batons while being chased by, I don't know, a pack of, like, caffeinated squirrels, right? We've all been there. When I launched my first business, you know, it felt like I had to be the CEO, the cmo, CTO and the janitor and everything else all at once. Well, that's where our sponsor, Shopify steps in. Shopify is the built in business partner you didn't know you needed. It powers millions of businesses worldwide, including the ones that I run for. Like, we used Shopify for the merch for one of my other shows and one of my other websites, in fact. And it makes setting up a beautiful store online ridiculously easy. No coding, no chaos. They give you pro grade tools to manage your store, to run your marketing, to process your payments, to handle your shipping. All like a boss, right? And they've got AI tools. They are all in on AI. They write product descriptions, improve my images, and even help launch campaigns. Basically, Shopify shows up to work harder than half of the humans out there, right? It's great. If you're serious about building a brand and living that charmed entrepreneurial life, you're going to want Shopify in your corner. Turn your big business idea into Ka Ching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com shop. Go to shopify.com businessbrain again, shopify.com businessbrain and our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. All right, now let's talk cybersecurity. Most of the time it feels like either A, it's too complicated or B, it's slowing down your team. That's why I love Nord Layer, our sponsor. It gives you enterprise grade security, but it's built for the pace we actually work at. Whether you're onboarding a new hire from their laptop in Lisbon, or you're trying to prevent phishing attacks before your first coffee. Free sip of mint tea. Yeah, that's my vibe these days. NORD Layer lets you deploy secure access fast. It's vpn, threat detection, and device management all in one with zero hardware and actually easy setup. And it's also based on zero trust, so you can control who can access what, when, and from where. Because your growing team doesn't need to keep unlimited keys to the vault, right? Entrepreneurs don't have time to mess with outdated firewalls or security spaghetti. NORD Layer gives you clarity, control, and speed. The perfect combination for your charmed life in business. And here's a great part. You get up to 22% off, plus an extra 10% with code brain that@nord layer.com brain. So Nord layer.com brain gets you 22% off. Use code brain for an extra 10% off. That's where fast, secure, and sane actually coexist. And our thanks to NORD Layer for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, it's time for Friday here. And I had a. I was blown away. So I like, anytime we mention a product or service on this podcast or any of the other podcasts that I do, I like to make sure they are aware that we mention them. And unlike on the web, like when we published at Mac observer or whatever, people would just find. If we put out an article about somebody, they would often find it because they had like, Google searches that were automated and all that stuff that doesn't. That still doesn't happen with podcasts as easily as it could. So I go out of my way and I do this. Now I get behind on this because it's. It's a task that no one else is waiting for me to do. So it's something that I can. I can defer because it's me. And. And that happens sometimes. And so Saturday morning I was like, I have a bunch of business brains, you know, from probably the last six weeks, five weeks to send out. I got to do this because otherwise I get too stale and then it's not. It's not the best. So I sent out a bunch of these things. I have a filemaker database that I use to. To manage all of that, and it sends out all the things, but, you know, it's semi automated, right? You know, I have a whole thing that does it. And I went through and I did all this. And then when I'm finished sending out, especially for that long, the very first thing I do is I go to my inbox and find all While I still have the FileMaker database open, I go and look and make sure that, you know, I'm going to invariably have people in the database who have moved on and I'm going to get autoresponders or mail bounces or whatever. And so I'm going through processing those. And one of the companies that we mentioned last month was Gumroad. You mentioned it on the show. Yep. Love them. And Right. So I told them, you know, I sent a thing into them. Yep. And I had a response from Gumroad on Saturday morning and I read it now. It said, thanks for letting us know about the mention on your Business Brain podcast and for sharing the details. We appreciate the shout out and your interest in connecting. If you're interested in collaborating or learning more about how creators can work with Gumroad, you might want to check out our affiliates feature here. And they gave me a link, let us know if you have any Gumroad specific questions. And then in gray text it said, this response was created by our AI support agent. If you need human support, let us know in your reply. And they used Helper AI or Helper as their AI support agent. And that was also listed there. So I'll link to all of this in the show. So I replied and I said, this is amazing. I love it. It's a personalized, customized response that is subject matter appropriate. Like, you know, it was great. And so it was an autoresponder, but it was, it was, you know, intelligent, tailored. Yes. Right, yeah. And so I thought I wrote back and I said, this is great. We're going to feature this in an upcoming episode of Business Brain because we have a Friday I segment and you know, obviously. And I sent that off and I got a reply. That's awesome to hear, Dave. Thanks for sharing the love. We're excited to be a part of your Friday Eye segment. If you ever want to dive deeper into Gumroad or have questions for your audience, just let me know. Enjoy recording.

That's sweet.

Yeah, man. And that, that also was marked as being created by their AI support agent. Yeah, yeah. What? It's so Helper AI is the engine that they use and, and it is world class support can be effortless, powering support for millions on Gumroad. All right. They're already there. Better than human responses. Yeah.

That's very cool.

Huh? Start using Helper. It's not clear how much it costs, so I'm not gonna.

Yeah, right here it's per usage, so it's $0.20 per solution. So they're support tickets.

Got it.

So you just cost gumroad 40 cents.

Well, was it considered resolved, though? Like, I replied, I don't know. Same ticket, so it's a good question. My guess is I cost him 20 cents.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty wild. That's. I like that. I mean, the future is bright, man. I mean, you. The level of service that small businesses, entrepreneurs, creators are, are going to be able, are offering now and will continue to offer is unbelievable.

Unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Yeah.

And, and unattainable up until recently, you know, undoable. Unattainable. I mean, we have.

Impossible, perhaps.

Impossible, yes. And being able to build quickly and add in support features to your products and your services, I mean, it's, it, you just can't put too much, I mean, emphasis on how important it is. It's crucial.

Yeah.

And I love it. And I'm, I'm, I feel so fortunate to be in the middle of it as we build out things and things that I've wanted to achieve forever that I'm able to do with a click of a button now. Like, oh, yeah, I can do that. Blink. And you know, it's just phenomenal.

Hey, speaking of AI successes, Shannon.

Yes.

I got my check from the irs.

Oh, that's awesome. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Right. So I talked about this probably a month ago now on the show by the time this episode comes out, but I had mailed the check to my bank and evidently it was to the wrong address, even though it was listed on their website as the correct address. And it was a check from the IRS for $37,000. It was, I explained it in the episode, but it was not a typical classic refund, so I couldn't use their automated systems. ChatGPT helped guide me through calling the right department for the IRS, and, and I walked through it with someone and this was all happening the week of April 14th. Wow. Right when the IRS was completely overloaded. And ChatGPT got me right through by telling me what to do, gave me a script, was coaching me the whole way and. Two weeks. I know it's a month now by the time you're all hearing about this, but two weeks later, I received my replacement check and I mailed it in differently this time, as you might imagine, Shannon, I've learned my lesson.

Yes. Yes. I think the takeaway for me is that you need to be thinking of these AI services as your assistants and your coach in some ways, but more like an assistant. And if you don't have it on your phone where you can then just. And if you haven't ever done the voice interaction with it where you can have a discussion with it, you, you owe it to yourself to talk about just weird problems you may have or questions you may have.

Pick some topic. It doesn't have to be important.

Well, I gave the example of solving this irrigation problem in my yard.

Yeah.

That I, it was so random and it would have taken me forever to figure it out.

I had it teach me how car dealerships profit structure works.

Yeah. It's just anything that you can imagine and having the dialogue back and forth, you know, is, it's just natural and it saves all that data once again. So you're creating this massive content library for yourself.

At least for yourself. Perhaps for others too. Well, you know, be careful sharing data. It's one thing. It's easy for us as entrepreneurs and if we're the business owner to just make the executive decision that I'm okay sharing data about my business with this engine that it's going to store it there and there might like they have a, they have a fairly good privacy policy. But there's always a risk. Right. So you are taking that risk. Eyes wide open. That's fine. Where you need. We all need to be aware is when we are doing this or about to do this with someone else's data. A client's data.

Yes.

An employee data.

Yes.

You got to make sure you're, you're, you're still honoring all the confidentiality that you're supposed to honor. But it, I mean it like there's a good argument to be made that. Yeah, it's fine. Good to go. Yeah.

So that's cool.

Yeah. Helpful. It's great. I.

Awesome.

I probably have shared more with it than I, than I. Yeah. Than, than would be wise. Yeah. But it helps me immensely. It's.

It's same. Yeah, same. So it's incredible.

It's incredible. Yeah.

Yep. We'd love to hear what you have going on in the AI space. Send us a new service or just a different way. You're using one of the popular ones. Feedbackusbrain show. Let us know.

Yep. Like he said, feedback. Businessbrain show. And keep living that charmed life, will ya? We'll see you next week. Later.