22: Using AI for Customized Business Solutions with Sara Davison

Hey, and welcome to another episode of Using AI at Work. Today we have a special guest, Sarah Davison, founder of Mavenly, an innovative AI agency dedicated to helping businesses navigate the complex world of AI adoption. Sarah's journey in the AI space has been remarkable, from building powerful AI automations to leading transformative projects that save clients thousands of dollars and countless hours. With her AI Business growth accelerator, Sarah is redefining how companies integrate AI to achieve real world, measurable and transformative results. Join us as we get deep into her strategic insights and practical tips on leveraging AI for business success. Let's get started. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Awesome. Hey. Today we've got Sarah Davison. And Sarah, thank you so much for being here and I mean that seriously. I know that you're an extremely busy entrepreneur who is being inundated with opportunities in the AI space. And for you to take a moment out to share with the Using AI, Using AI at Work audience is a fantastic thing. So feel you don't mind, just let everybody know a little bit about yourself and what you're up to.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you for having me. I'm always, always happy to jam with anyone and geek out and all the AI stuff. So any opportunity that I get, I'm always like, yeah, let's do it.

Nice.

So my name is Sara Davison. Chris and I actually connected via an AI community. So that's how we know each other. So, yeah, I connected with quite a few people that I currently work with from there. And I am the owner and founder of an AI agency called Mavenly. And what it is is that we focus on an accelerator as a path for companies to be able to adopt AI. So we've essentially figured out over the last year and a half of serving clients, of building automations, of doing all of these workflows and things like that, is that it really needs to be that cohesive component that you approach AI adoption versus a fragmented approach. And so that's where we sort of focus our efforts in the whole AI adoption game.

There's a huge demand for that, you know, and for the business owners and the leaders and the decision makers who are listening to this, I would imagine that a lot of them have started their investigation into what's out there as far as help, support, training, empowerment for their teams and before we recorded this, we kind of made a joke about, you know, the 22 year old kid that's like, I'm an AI expert, right? That's, that's not what most businesses need in my opinion. So if you don't mind sharing with the audience, what do you think a business should be looking for when they're sourcing that AI expertise externally to come in and support them?

I sort of feel that AI is this journey that everybody has to go on to a certain extent. So. So a lot of us started the same way where we heard about AI and then heard more about AI and heard even more about AI and that piqued our interest and we started understanding how important and critical it is for our businesses and our work and the way that we understand the world to adapt to what is coming. But there is just so much hype around that you can end up getting really confused. And I feel like a lot of us start in the same way where we get plugged in and we subscribe to all the AI newsletters, we start saving all of the ChatGPT template prompts and the mega prompts that you find on LinkedIn or whatever. You start playing with a million AI tools and subscribing to them all and then you just find yourself spinning your wheels because you're trying to do little parts of everything without really taking a step back and assessing where is my business needing to go and what do we need to do to get there. So I think it's really important to answer your question is that when business leaders are looking into someone who can support them with that is to engage someone who actually won't be tactical so much in their approach. I think it's totally fine to start with pilot programs and automations and get your, your kind of hands dirty because I think that's an essential part of the learning process, but not someone who will kind of just stop there because that's not really going to make give you the leverage that you need to actually benefit from the technology.

So that's very much in line with our thesis as well. Do you mind taking a second to explain to the listeners so that they can easily identify the difference between strategic approach to it and tactical approach to it?

Mm. So a tactical approach could be that you engage someone to or you end up buying, you know, a prompt, like a prompt library with a thousand prompts. Once you start engaging in that and once you start using those, you realize that that is not, you know, custom to your actual needs as a business and just looking at it from like the point of view of like these, these really generic kind of solutions. It's not a one size fit all. So you need to be able to take platforms Whether you're using ChatGPT for teams, whether you're approaching it in different ways. What you need is to be able to tailor that or someone who will be able to tailor what usage or power that that platform has and put it behind your business, not the other way around. So I think it's really understanding how you know, speaking to someone who will sit down and understand strategically what you need to achieve in your business, but also can bridge the gap between understanding that and knowing in with quite depth the elements of AI that will help get you there and a thousand ChatGPT prompts won't.

Agreed, that was well said. So for those of you listening, the tool is not the fix, the tool is an accelerant. The, the real fix has nothing to do with AI. It has to do with you getting clear on what you want out of your business and, and then working backwards from there on the plan. Exactly like what Sarah was talking about. So if, if you're out there on the tool hunt and you think that there's going to be the silver bullet, that's going to be that one, you know, tool stack that's going to change your business, if you don't know where to apply those tools, you're going to have minimal impact. So Sarah, with the, the individuals that are reaching out to you that are concerned, are you seeing any type of patterns or trends and like first off, the education level of the people that are reaching out for you, I don't mean education like did they graduate college, but their AI literacy levels. What are you finding from the individuals who are reaching out?

It's funny, I am like currently working with people who are across the spectrum where like we have one particular business who is, you know, he might have just tried ChatGPT one or two times and got gone. Holy cow. Like I know that this is the future. I, I can see that this is where the puck is going and so therefore I need to align my business to that. And so I don't even think he's got a ChatGPT Pro account or anything. He doesn't even want to know really. He just wants someone to actually come in and help him solve a problem using AI and take his business on that journey. And then you have other people, typically like larger organizations that, that have to consider the enablement component where they have to drive the team or they have to pull the team over towards a new way of doing things. So the training and the sessions with the teams becomes really important because you're bringing everybody along the journey and having to get by in a different level. So. So it really depends on the organization.

So are you. We were talking about this, how our LinkedIn feeds are nothing but AI. So we're just assuming that everybody is as immersed in this subject as us. Are you encountering prospects that are reaching out, that have that level of immersion, or are people just got FOMO and want to figure it out?

Both, I think. Both. I think there's this element where some people will, you know, have gotten their hands dirty or some teams or whatever and they're just, you know, they can see, they can see how it works, but they're not at that stage where they need to break through to the next level, which is, well, how do we actually make this meaningful for our work and our business? Like, we get, we get the whole, you know, building custom GPTs or whatever, but, but they kind of sense that there's more to it. There's like this next level and they're just not really sure how to break through that barrier. So there are people who are in that field and then people who are just caught in the hype and say, I get this is a. There's a sea change happening here and I feel anxious about it. And I'm not exactly sure where to start because I think that that's a big component is when you're locked into the hype and the newsletters and you're trying to keep up, it's impossible. It's impossible. It's impossible to run a business, operate a business and keep your finger on the pulse 100% of the time. So I think having someone whose job it is to actually keep their finger on the pulse for you to be able to, who has done the trial and error, who has tried the platforms, tried the tools, understands how to best to maneuver things to kind of massage them and make them work for different use cases. It's such a valuable skill that if you're serious about adopting AI that you should consider.

We'll be back after a quick break.

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So you brought up a good point. I did the same thing. I subscribed to all the newsletters and now they're all unsubscribed, right? Because I realized that they're all regurgitating the same stories. And at some point, here's the secret generative AI isn't that hard, right? So at some point you realize, I think I've figured this out enough. What's more important is the domain expertise about your own business or your industry or your department or whatever. So for those of you who are out there thinking that you got to subscribe to all these newsletters, maybe do it initially if you're a fact finder just to see what's out there. But I would suggest that that is not the path to mastery at all. So for, let's say you were on a plane and the business owner sitting next to you says, oh, what do you do? And you said, oh, this is what I do. He said, hey, what, where should I get started? What would you tell them to do?

It feels to me that there is this, this almost roadmap, you know, where you, it's, it's kind of like you have to start in the hype to actually go, okay, well, this is, this is not working in a way. Don't spend too long there though. You know, get excited, play with the tools, do whatever you want. But. But then understand that that's not going to really move the puck for you. I think, you know, for me, what I had to do, if I explained my personal journey, because I started there, I started with everything. I started with saving all those ChatGPT prompts. I started, you know, with the subscribing to all those tools and things. And I got to a point where I was like, there's just too much. It's just, I just need to clear, clear the, you know, my screens, clear whatever, and actually just really double down. What are the two or three things, the two or three platforms or tools that are, that is really going to be meaningful for my business. So as an example, like, I'm on the business side of AI, so things like midjourney and things like that, like, they're, you know, they're fun to begin with, but they don't really, they're not really part of what I would offer or anything like that. So so don't spend time there. I think it's important to go deep to kind of stage one is play and then stage two is go deep and then stage three might be kind of like, okay, well I understand these tools, I understand what prompts are. I've seen the difference between a good prompt and a bad prompt. I understand the difference between workflows and automations. I've seen them at work. And then I think then the kind of next stage could be in terms of AI applied is going well, what is a problem that I'm looking to solve or a challenge or opportunity in my business? And how do I align what I've learned and my process and my knowledge and my expertise and all of the things that skill set that I've built and use that to help inform, support and push forward this thing that I want to achieve in my business. And like, you know, being super focused on having an objective, a container, so to speak, that aligns, you know, building the capability, the talent, the infrastructure that you need in order for you to be able to essentially bring AI into that process or that business function and completely AI it to the next level.

Perfect. So folks, if you're listening, she did not say do everything all at once. She said get started somewhere that you can manage. So I think that's fantastic advice. And what's going to ultimately happen is you're going to either it's going to be a success or it's going to be a failure. If it's a success, move on to the next one. If it's a failure, figure out what you did wrong. Because I can tell you the level of AI that Sarah and I work with regularly, it's not the geeky data science side of things. It is the extremely applicable low learning curve generative AI tools that we're working with and that you can work with as well to get those solutions. What are some of the things, what's some advice that you might give somebody that we've obviously talked about that they don't need to, to try and keep up with everything. But I would imagine that if I was a business owner and I hadn't started my due diligence on the topic of AI, um, there would probably be some concern, some anxiety, some fomo, some whatever that. Because I've heard somebody tell me that it was past guest Jeff McPherson from X Agency, he said, when I talk to clients and I show them this stuff, the first time they see it, they have a reaction. And that reaction is oh. And he said it's either oh, like, wait a minute, you mean our competition is doing this like a bad oh, like oh. Or it's an oh, like right. Like their minds get blown. That, that, that aha. Moment for AI. So if. For the business owners who are out there, if they're listening to this, it's a great first step. But what would be some of maybe the other sources like you mentioned that you and I connected through the AI exchange of Slack channel? I think it's like, I don't know, 15, 20 bucks a month, incredible resource, tons of collaboration and sharing going on. Do you have any of those types of resources that you think would be helpful for somebody who is AI curious to kind of get them up to speed and get them exposed to different positions and views on it?

Yeah, I definitely like to recommend the exchange.

Yeah.

For this is where Chris and I met and a lot of the people that have come through and are, you know, really leading the space in terms of thought leadership and things like that. I feel like the people who come through that network are really people who are in. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, but sort of want, want to take AI to companies or either work for AI and need to like, they're the AI person for. For that company.

Y.

So I feel like that's the, the flavor of that community. But it really is a, a great place. Like, it was a real pivot point for me in terms of.

Yeah.

Professionally being able to move from that kind of hype cycle to. Well, there are people actually who are doing this really smartly and in a really meaningful way. So there's that community. I. I'm seeing more and more different industry things come up where, you know, I've seen like one for, I think one for, you know, legal sector, one for whoever, and they have different speakers that come through. So I think, you know, even just an introductory session in your particular industry is a great place to start because that is someone who is going to potentially focus you in on the basics, the foundations without all of the noise and. Yeah, and I think there's events that happen on LinkedIn. I'm also hosting one on May 21, which is an AI for business growth. So it's specifically around companies who want. Who've heard all the things about AI and they're like, well, how do we actually use it to grow my business? So that's the question we're asking.

You're doing this on LinkedIn on May 21st?

May 21st, yeah.

Okay, cool. How can people find out about that?

I can provide the link. I just like, literally threw it up on Friday. I mean, like Sunday.

Okay, well, awesome. Yeah, well, we'll put the link in the show notes, folks, but Sarah's on here because she knows her stuff, so if she's doing something, I would encourage you to sit in on it.

I appreciate that comment. Did I answer your question, Chris?

Yeah. You know, one of the things, me personally, I'm curious how, how are other people staying? Like, for me, the AI exchange was a great resource for me. It's very busy over there, so if you're, if you're new to this, and again, it's very affordable for the amount of just like peer education that is occurring in there on all these different topics. But I'm always looking like, is there a podcast I don't know about? Like, for instance, one podcast that every guest seems to listen to is the Marketing AI Institute's podcast right on Tuesday or whenever it comes out, I'm always listening to it as well. So I was just looking for maybe some resources that, that you found helpful. That. Because if I was a business owner and I'm googling this stuff, or if a smart business owner would be using perplexity, they are. They're inundated. Right. And I think you and I would agree that not all of the commentary on the subject, particularly about AI and business, it's not all equal. There are individuals out there who are strictly a cash grab that they got in early, they knew how to aggregate an audience, and now they're selling, you know, semi decent prompts or whatever. And I'm, I'm always looking to make sure that the business owners. Because what I would hate is for somebody to go down that path and go, I tried it. It sucks. AI doesn't really, you know, and that's not the case. You have to find the right people. So I was just curious if you maybe you had some resources that I did not know about. Um, I try to stay abreast of all that.

Yeah, I honestly, I don't listen to that many podcasts. I know that, you know, the Marketing Institute one is good. Another good marketing focused one is the marketing against the Grain, which is the CMO, the two CMOs of Zapier and HubSpot. They're, they, Their focus is like really evolved around, you know, around AI for the podcast. And they talk, you know, think about things like, you know, what is the impact on SEO and things like that.

Nice. Okay.

Yeah, their podcast is good. But I find myself, it's probably because I am kind of immersed in the AI space on the practical side of things. So I spend my time actually, you know, working with the systems, building things, pulling things together. I spend my time doing that. So I like to actually, so I'm immersed in AI. So when I listen to business things it's more around, I mean for business things I listen to like more just purely business, like how to actually build, operate a good agency and operate and.

Things like that with your clients. One of the, you know, obviously using AI at work and as I shared with you, the intention is to expose listeners to how other people are doing it in clever ways so that the listener can go hey, wait a minute, we can try that out, right? What are some of your, maybe the low hanging fruit that you've kind of identified that when you go into a company or you're advising a client that there's usually a couple of areas where you know that they can get a quick win, they can see the results of it and they go, hey, this stuff works, let's do more. Are there any particular areas you, you have noticed that are the easy wins for companies?

I really love to work with Cassidy AI, that is a incredible platform that I essentially live in, honestly, where you can access various different models at the same time. So as you get more into AI you'll find that the different models produce different results and then you'll start preferring different models for different things. But you're also able to build. It's essentially an AI that's trained on your business. So if you start to experience ChatGPT and you go this is great, but what I really want is a chatgpt for my business. It's essentially that experience where the AIs are like the AIs that you end up using are trained on your own company data and you can build workflows, things like that within it. You know, more on the automation side as well. So that's always like a baseline that I feel I would love to recommend because it gives, it's that level up from, you know, from ChatGPT but not too, too far down the path where it's like too inaccessible for people.

Are there any other tools like you mentioned that you have kind of slimmed down your tool stack? Are there any besides Cassidy? Are there some faves that you find particularly useful and not just for you, but maybe across all of your clients that you know that hey, if you're interested in AI and you run a business, this is going to be helpful.

I really love respell for more The AI automation side. So Respell. Yeah, Respell AI.

Okay, okay.

Yeah it's a really powerful, really incredible platform that they've built that enables you to create workflows, automations and things like that that are all AI first. So it's a very like this is something that I don't necessarily expect my clients to want to learn to use but we use at the back end to support the architecture of what we're building for them. So really like my kind of go tos are Cassidy Respel AI. I always, I love Fathom as an AI notetaker. That is a really quick easy win they produce. I mean I've tried quite a few notetakers if not all of them and I've had the best experience with Fathom. The notes that you at the end of it is incredible but also this is a really good hack. But as an example, one way of how we use Fathom and Cassidy is that once we have say as an example I have a discovery call with a client and I need to produce a proposal. So I take that transcript, add it to my Google Drive or my notion which is connected to Cassidy so then the AI can access that information. So when I go to create a proposal or an assistant for it, so I've got like a proposal assistant in Cassidy it will go and pull from that information and help me create like a really compelling proposal that is tailor fit for solving that client's pain point, you know and really speaking their language. So it's not just about recording and then note taking side it's about how you use that data in a really powerful way to help you with your business. So yeah, those are my top three.

And it's free.

Yeah, it's free.

Yeah Folks, I've had some very smart friends hear me say, you know, oh well the models, the models, the models and like what the hell are you talking about when we say model? It's just a shortened version of LLM or large language model and a model would be Chat, GPT or Gemini or whatever the case might be. Do you have kind of a favor do you. Are you using CLAUDE for the writing and GPT for data analysis? What's kind of your blend on that?

I love Claude. I've always been a Claude fan and yeah, yeah. And the new Opus models are. Is incredible. Incredible. So I find myself leaning into Claude more and more. I find it, I find it like a shame that OpenAI and Tuftgpt from A features and shipping point of view are just blowing everybody else out of the water. But I just think about, imagine if Claude had some of that gumption behind it, you know, in terms of the real competition. Yeah, yeah, I just think that the, I just resonate much more with the output that I get from Claude and especially with opus now than ChatGPT. I mean, ChatGPT is great.

Sure. So for those of you who are out there, maybe the only model you've ever been exposed to is Chat GPT. There's several out there. And what I would encourage you to do is, you know, spend 30 minutes, just 30 minutes in one of these models and using it. Not, and don't use it like a search engine, use it for a solution based endeavor. And I think that you'll notice the nuance that Sarah's mentioning here and that, that I'm aware of as well is that some are better at certain things and that Claude tends to be the go to for people who, who are doing a lot more creative work, a lot more writing and things. They, they tend to say Claude has better output. I, I just did it the hard way. I, I've built some custom GPTs and trained it on my writing style.

Right.

That's kind of how I get around that. So I notice one of the, one of the places where I keep up with what you're doing is in LinkedIn. Is that your primary channel for sharing, thought leadership?

Mainly LinkedIn and TikTok, two completely different vibes.

Yeah. What's the TikTok audience?

Interesting, you know, interesting audience. Is it young people across the board but, but just a different, it's a different vibe, you know, like you've got the LinkedIn vibe where you have to be a little bit more buttoned up and then, you know, you can let it all go on TikTok.

So yeah, so what are you doing there? Are you doing videos? Are you doing interviews? What are you doing on TikTok?

I've got, yeah, videos mainly. Yeah, mainly a lot of videos. But I think I've got like just over 4,000 followers on that. So not, I'm not an influencer or anything like that. But yeah, it's interesting and it also helps keep your finger on the pulse of like where people are at. My best performing posts on TikTok are always something along the lines of there's more to AI than ChatGPT. Whenever I post something like that with say a client result and you know, a backdrop of an automation or something like that, nice. It completely goes off. And I think that that, like to your point, that's A, A real kind of, it makes, it's an aha moment, you know, for, for a lot of people. Because a lot of people just think that AI is chatgpt.

Sure.

And when there's a whole wide world out there, you know, you start with, I think ChatGPT is a great gateway. And then, you know, I, I kind of see it in different layers where you have, you know, the ChatGPT experience and the gateway to then AI, which you know, start with, you know, your skills around prompting because you really need to dial that in to be able to, to extract the, the exact thing that you want from these systems. And then you go, okay, well I am, I have dialed in my prompting techniques. Then you can scale that with something like automations. So when you are able to create a really dialed in prompt, you don't want to do an automation without that because all you're doing is if you've got a garbage prompt and you put it into, into an automation, you're just gonna push out garbage faster. So that's why even people who say like prompting is dead. I don't know, I think that maybe a lot of people get, get by with just putting words in ChatGPT. But if you want to start essentially designing systems around this, you do need it, you do need to know how to prompt. And so after automations, you start to build workflows. After workflows you start to build things that. I'm struggling to kind of connect the dots on this, but essentially architectures or ecosystems where it goes back to like, what isn't the business problem that I need to solve and what are the things, the tools, the platforms, the the components that act together and talk to each other in synergy to be enabled me to, to achieve my objective with AI.

Yeah, yeah. So this is interesting. So I, I teach this concept of thinking in AI, right? Like I can go and watch people do tricks and do cool, clever stuff and that, that will interest me and oh, I didn't know AI could do that kind of stuff. But being the person who can walk into a business and doesn't need to go to their library of tricks and they can say, okay, what's the issue? And they can go, okay, well we can do this, we can do. That's the real skill of, of like being an AI expert, it's not, it's not the, the person who can create the sensational videos and stuff. Although they do get a lot of engagement for sure. Hell, I watch them, right? And I get FOMO and I say, oh, My gosh, that person's so smart. We should be doing that stuff all the time. But I can tell you that what you're sharing here is advanced stuff for the listener. And so, so folks, when she's talking about this, this, this evolution of your efforts, that starts with playing with the models and then actually understanding how to get good output because your prompts are better, and then understanding, hey, I've got a prompt that's getting me consistent output now. That prompt could replace this node in a process that we do internally. And how, then introducing the automations and things like that. And for, for those of you who are listening, a lot of times people will just say, oh, we're using AI in our business. And the reality is, is that they're probably using some automation, some AI. There's probably still a monkey back there, you know, grinding things up or whatever. So it's not like it's turned into this Skynet situation where it's all being run by general intelligence. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a series of evolution for each of you. And the best place to start would be in Sarah's case, use Claude or GPT or whatever it was that you were doing and get good there before you. It's that whole, how do you eat an elephant? You know, one bite at a time, right?

Yeah.

Introducing AI into your business can be an elephant. So yes, don't try to eat it all at once.

And I, I do feel that in a way I don't expect my clients to know how to do what we do, but in a way I expect them to want to know what we're doing. Because there are certain concepts that, when you get to this stage of AI applied that you need to be aware of. Like when you're starting to integrate AI into your business, you need to be aware of certain things. Like, you know that there's a concept called human in the loop that ensures that there's oversight on, even when you're doing an automation, what the output is. There's concepts around like prompt drift. So you know that if someone builds into automation, an AI automation or anything like that, that these, the prompts can also, the quality of the output can change over time. So even though I don't expect my clients to build the automations, I want them to know what those things are, so they're aware of them. Because just in the same way that I don't necessarily want to know how to code or anything like that, but you know, I don't need to know that to make use of a website or whatever, but I need to know things around like data security and all those things that actually make the website secure and work for my business the way that I want it, want it to work for my business.

So for those who are listening, how do they know if they're ready to start using AI in their business?

Okay, you're ready now because I think it comes back to that, to that conversation that you just had before about how when people hear about AI, they have two reactions. If you've had any of the two reactions, so you're excited about it and you immediately see the opportunity or you see or you have that moment where you think, oh my God, everything's going to change. And it's more like a existential threat. Right?

Yeah.

If you're having any of those two reactions. Good. Because you get it. You get it, right? Yeah. You're not having a reaction. Then I would be. Yeah, you're not ready yet. You know, if you're like not there yet. But I think that biased to say, but the world is not going to look the same way in a year, six months, whatever. We are on a trajectory and those of us who are in it are feeling it deeply and we are seeing that that's the way that things are going. And so if you're, if, if you think back to, you know, I don't know when was the Internet created, but the 90s maybe. Yeah. But when, you know, if you think back and if you thought to your, you know, if you said, no, I'm not going to actually, this is just hype and I'm not going to consider putting my business online. Like, that's where that is the, the difference. Like the way that the world changed after the Internet, we're, we're in that moment now where everything is going to change. It's going to open up opportunities, it's going to just completely disrupt industries. And the worst place I think to be is to be in that fear and anxiety, but not doing anything about it. If you even take little steps, you know, if you get, I think the worst thing is like having fear without understanding something. The more you understand something, the less you fear it. So if you're in that space where you're fearing it, my advice is to make friends with it and see how you can actually work with it and make it work for you versus the other way around.

That's great advice. So for those of you listening, if you've had that oh, moment that aha moment, good or bad, it's time. For those of you who are like, is this AI thing going to stick around? Based on what both Sarah and I see happening in our own businesses and client businesses and stuff like that, there's no way that it's not going to. Right. Like, this is an accelerant in productivity and accelerant and revenue generation and accelerant in like, enjoyment of the, the profession. Right. This is so. And here's one thing about the comparison of the Internet and AI. As far as I see it, the Internet took a minute. AI, like generative AI became popularly available 14 months ago, 15 months ago. Right. And it's already. If you don't see it, there's transformations afoot, doesn't mean that they're not happening just because you don't see it. So let's talk about that. That's one thing that, that I'm always curious about. What is your forecast or timeline before? Because I think that like last year we were early, right? And it was great because you and I had a chance to, to really get a lot more repetitions with the tools and do the investigation. But now we see like it's, it's only getting bigger, faster, stronger. What do you, what do you think the timeline is before businesses are going to. There's going to be this like, pivotal moment to where it's too late.

That's a good question.

Are we close?

I think so. I mean, I've certainly seen 20, 24 close. Oh, I think this is the year of AI applied. This is the year of like, I think last year was more of the hype where it was the 1000 tools launching daily, the like ongoing news. You know, even in this news cycle now, you don't see as much around it. It's kind of more integrated. Like, my husband watches a lot of golf and so, you know, in the ads or whatever is always, you know, they mentioned something about AI powered golfing something or the other. So yeah, so it's kind of more, more, less like news headline and more like this is the way we do things now. So I feel like we are getting to that place where people are accepting that. Okay, right. But like, but, but what does this mean for me or my business? And what do I need to like practically do about it? So I think I felt that is that the kind of roller coaster and the AI tools, you know, the million of them that we're launching on a monthly basis, people got fed up about that. People got really tired and we're Just going, cut the noise, Tell me how to actually make this work for my business and for me right now. And I feel like that's starting to happen. And especially because people are seeing other, you know, their competitors or people in their industry actually start making, you know, moves in it, that it's becoming more kind of top of mind. But, you know, even the people who are starting today are. We can talk from our personal experience, Chris, about, like, the difference of how we work in terms of our productivity and our daily work. We could talk about that. But also seeing clients who are now implementing these solutions just able to get so much more done, so much faster and so much cheaper, you know, why wouldn't you? You know, like, we have one client where we built an AI automation for them, and it's like one single automation saved them about $40,000. You know, that's like nothing.

Love it.

That's one process, one process that we fight for them. So if you think about stacking up those things one on top of the other, and it was a process that was so manual and time consuming, everybody hated doing it and complain about it all the time. And it essentially created a bottleneck in their company where, you know, there are people who weren't able to go and grow the company because they were stuck doing this one process. And so, yes, you think about the $40,000 saved, but what does that actually mean for the opportunity gained as well now that that bottleneck is business?

Yep. Not only just the money. Yeah, yeah. The time, the now you've got employees who are happier because they're not having to do that. That crap work that. Throw it to the robot. Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. Hey, so we're coming to the end of the interview here, but I want people to. I've gotten a lot out of your positions on AI and business. I'm not on Tick Tock, but I do follow you on LinkedIn. So for those of you listening, if you are looking for sane commentary on application of AI in business, there's a lot of hype out there. I don't see Sarah generating the hype. She's sharing stuff that's happening real time in the real world. And it's obvious that she is somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about this stuff and like, creating new thought around the topic as compared to regurgitating what's being, you know, fed on podcasts or, you know, comment from the Business Insider, whatever. So I would encourage you to do that. But if somebody was interested in engaging with your services, what does that look.

Like, like the process or.

Yeah, they, they reach out and then what should they expect to happen?

I mean, you feel free to reach out via LinkedIn and we usually kind of get a sense of what you're looking to achieve, like where you are in your journey, what you're looking to achieve. We jump on a call, we talk about exactly where it's at, you know, where you're at, where your teams are at, what you're looking to achieve. And we, you know, work away to help get you there, essentially.

So, so collaborative dialogue on solution discovery. Sounds great. Is the website a place for them to find you or you're better at the LinkedIn would probably be the easiest way for them to get you.

I love LinkedIn because it's that immediate exchange where you can be in the, the DMS and things like that and it's not so kind of static. But also, you know, you can check me out on my LinkedIn or you can go to www.m a I v e n l y mavenly dot com. That's the website and it's all about building the business mavens of tomorrow. So that's why I covered that.

And don't forget Tick Tock, folks.

Right.

Go find Sarah on Tick Tock for.

A different side of me. You can get a tick tock. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time. I know that, that it's a precious commodity and that you've got high demand for the things that you shared today. And I can guarantee that the listeners have a better understanding of the approach that they need to be taking and how they need to be thinking about using AI at work. So thank you and thanks everybody for joining on this episode and we'll see you on the next time. Anything that was discussed in here will be included in the show notes, so make sure you check those out. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to Using AI at Work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work. And a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for a free AI Readiness Assessment and AI Strategy Guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefai officer.com. so thanks to our producer, Evan Desolier for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle using AIATWORK and visit www.usingaiatwork.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your role.