EP 362: How Startups and Small Businesses Can Grow (and do good!) with AI

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Whether you're a startup or small business. I get that it can probably be overwhelming right about now when you think about how should I grow, right? It seems like decades ago, maybe startups and small businesses didn't have the same access to technology as the big companies, but Generative AI has completely changed that and leveled the playing field. And today I'm excited to be talking about just that, but with an expert in not just, you know, Silicon Valley startups and small businesses, but a leading voice at Google who is helping businesses of all shapes grow. So if that's you, you're in the right place. And I'm Jordan Wilson and this is Everyday AI. What's going on y'? All? I'm excited to welcome you to today's show. If you're new here. Thank you for joining us. This is a daily live stream, podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people learn and leverage generative AI to grow your companies and your careers. So if you're joining on the podcast, thank you. As always, make sure to check out the show notes for our website. Go there. Sign up up for the newsletter. We will be recapping today's show, your everyday AI dot com. All right, before we get into today's conversation, which I'm so excited, let's first quickly go over the AI news, kind of talk about what, what matters. We do this every day, y'.

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So first, Lionsgate has partnered with Runway to leverage AI in content creation. So the major cinema company Lionsgate recent collaboration with the AI firm Runway marks a pretty significant step in the entertainment industry as it aim to transform how films and TV shows are produced. So Lionsgate will customize a new generative AI model using its extensive film and TV library, making it exclusive to the studio. So the goal of this AI model is to assist Lion Gates filmmakers and creative teams and enhancing their work, particularly during pre production and post production stages. This deal is the first of its kind between Runway and a major Hollywood studio, indicating a shift in how studios are beginning to explore AI's capabilities. Lionsgate has expressed that this technology could lead to cost reductions in production, which is especially important for the studio that often focuses on lower budget projects compared to larger competitors. All right, LinkedIn has started to use user data to train its AI models, sparking privacy concerns. So LinkedIn has recently announced that it will use user data to train its AI models, a move that has raised raised significant privacy concerns users so this development highlights the ongoing debate about data privacy and the ethical implications of AI training. So LinkedIn is utilizing user profile data posts and other content to train AI models that power its features as decode, as disclosed in a recent post. So currently LinkedIn's policies do not mention AI or artificial intelligence, but the company plans to update its user agreement and privacy policy to disclose about the AI data usage. So some users have expressed outrage over this policy change, arguing that they should be compensated for their data being used in AI training. Speaking of AI training, Salesforce just launched a $50 million AI training initiative to upskill its workforce. So Salesforce has announced a significant push to enhance AI training opportunities, making this newsworthy as it reflects the growing emphasis on AI skills in the workforce. So the company revealed its AI for All initiative, which includes waiving fees for all instructor led AI courses, credential programs on its trailhead platform until the end of 2025. Salesforce is also set to open a physical AI training hub at its San Francisco headquarters dedicated to upskilling employees in AI tools and technology. This announcement coincides with the launch of Agent Force, a new generative AI platform from Salesforce designed to automate various tasks in customer service, sales and marketing, which is expected to be generally available in October. But despite the advancements and announcements, a skillsoft report indic that only one third of C Suite executives find AI skills challenging to hire for, underscoring ongoing talent shortages in the field. Yeah, it's all about people being able to learn and grow with AI, which is exactly what we're talking about today. So more on all that news on the newsletter, so make sure you go sign up. But I am excited for today's show because you know what, I can talk all I want about growing small businesses and startups, but it makes so much more sense when I have an industry veteran and leader in the space to help walk us through it. So I am very excited to welcome to the show. Let's bring her on. That's the wrong one there. There we go. All right, we have Lisa Gavelber, the founder of Grow with Google. Lisa, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show.

Oh, thanks so much for having me.

Oh, I'm excited. So real quick, Lisa, maybe for those that aren't familiar, can you tell everyone a little bit about what Grow with Google is and a little bit about what your role there is?

Yeah, absolutely. So we founded Grow with Google based on one very important belief and value which is that we believe that the opportunities created by technology should truly be available to everyone. And part of that is really making sure that it's easy for people to access information and training around technology so that they can effectively use those tools. We all know that tech is often a part of our everyday work lives, and it really puts the power in people's hands when they know how to use these tools. So we started Grow with Google in 2017 and we built a foundational program called the Google Career Certificates that trains people for different career fields, anything from technical fields like data analytics and cybersecurity to more everyday things like project management and digital marketing and E commerce. And through this program, almost a million people have changed careers or gotten access to new jobs. And we're really proud of that work. And now, as you can imagine being here on your show, we're teaching people about AI.

You know, I'm curious, Lisa. So it's been up and running now for seven years. And I understand that, you know, tech skills are always changing in terms of, you know, what employers want, but how would you say, especially since this kind of generative AI boom over the last couple of years, how do you think that that's changed both what employers want and, you know, maybe can you talk a little bit about how you've even seen the grow with Google platform kind of adapt or change to meet that growing need?

Yeah. So in so many of these fields, employers just can't find people who have the talent and skills they need. A great example of this cyber security. So incredibly important for organizations of all types and sizes, but it's really hard to find people who have cyber security skills. As a matter of fact, there's hundreds and thousands of job openings in the US that aren't being filled right now because it's hard to find people who have the skills. So one of our career certificates is a cyber security certificate. And we teach you everything you need to know to get an entry level job in cybersecurity. And we've basically built all of our Google Career certificates for fields where there's really good demand in the job market for people who have these skills. And because our courses are all designed and taught by experts in the field, we're teaching exactly the things you need to know to be successful on the job and make you job ready. And those certificate programs are available to everyone. We make it online on demand so that even working people can easily access the training.

You know, and getting back to that, because, you know, we've talked about this before on the show, but this demand in the job market and it looks like, at least to me, sometimes employers are looking for people with, you know, skills and background working with, you know, large language models and different, you know, generative AI systems. So how does, you know, moving forward? How can that kind of get solved? Because it seems like, hey, everyone wants, you know, so many people with, you know, experience in AI and large language models, but there's not a lot of people out there that have that experience. Right. So how does that kind of piece get solved moving forward?

Yeah, so I think that there's all kinds of jobs obviously available for very technical people in AI. But what I think a lot of people don't realize is that AI really is kind of for everyone, my system. You need to learn to use AI. And the good news about it is people are outstanding learners and AI, you just get better and better at it the more you practice. So one of the things that we've done to help people is we built an AI basics course called Google AI Essentials. And it is online and in less than five hours you can learn what is AI, how does it work, what do you have to be careful and thoughtful about, but also what are the basics of things like prompting, because we all know that prompting is about practice. And a few basic tricks get you a long way in terms of getting better results out of the technology. And then we give you hands on practice with everyday use cases, things that you might really use at work, whether you work at a big company or organization or whether you have your own business or startup. And it's really built to be practical and useful for everyday people. So that's a great way to get started because it gives you both the big picture of what AI is, but then it really gets you in there hands on to practice yourself, which usually makes people a lot more comfortable.

So yeah, for our audience out there listening, in our newsletter we'll have all that information both about grow with Google in the Google AI Essentials course. I've recommended it many times in our newsletter before. I think it's definitely worth checking out. Checking out. But Lisa, I want to talk a little bit, you know, now that we've talked about kind of this, this growing market for, you know, job seekers and employers looking for people with these skills, I want to, you know, pivot a little bit to the actual companies themselves. Right. So, you know, when we look at especially small businesses and startups and I kind of open the show with this, would you say that, you know, is this kind of the first time that, that you can remember that small businesses and startups have access to kind of that same level of, of tech that the rest of enterprises have. Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow your business with AI? Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on Genai. Hey, this is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead. And some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to use Gen AI. So whether you're looking for ChatGPT training for thousands or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you can partner with us too. Just like some of the biggest companies in the world do. Go to your everydayai.com partner to get in contact with our team or you can just click on the partner section of our website will help you stop running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on gen AI.

Well, actually so many of Google's products and tools are used by small businesses every day. There's our product suite called Workspace which gives you Google Docs, Google Slides, Gmail that we all know and love. And those are really the same tools that large enterprises use. As a matter of fact, we use Google Workspace at Google and it's the same tool that millions and millions of small businesses around the world use. Our advertising tools work the same way. We give small businesses the same access that the biggest advertisers in the world have. But AI is a great example of kind of the next phase of this where small businesses do have access to the same powerful tools that big business businesses have. And I really love some of the use cases that we recommend practicing in our AI Essentials course for small business. And I can share some of those examples if you want.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's, let's go ahead and do that.

Great. So as many people know, most of American small businesses are actually sole proprietors. So those owners are doing everything and sometimes they need a thought partner or a helper to get some of those things done. And actually AI is a great thought partner. So in our course, one of the things we teach people how to do is think about a new product line and you can have the AI help you decide what product line might be the most appealing to your target audience. You could have it help you think about who the best target audience for the product line is. You could have it help you name it, make a logo for it, make a tagline for it, start creating marketing assets, make a marketing plan, make a business plan, do a pricing analysis, think about how to go to market all these things which are, which can feel like a lot when you're doing it by yourself. AI can help you with every one of those things and it's a great thought partner, but also doer. So it can help you mock up your marketing assets and all of these things get better when you iterate with the program. So we teach exactly how to do these things in our AI Essentials course specifically because we know that's the kind of help that small businesses are looking for.

You know, one thing I'm constantly talking about but also reminding myself is, you know, sometimes trying to unlearn good habits, right? So, you know, maybe doing these things that I've always done myself, you know, for the last two decades, and I'm like, oh wait, I probably shouldn't be doing, you know, that very time consuming task anymore. That's something that AI is great at. You know, I'm even wondering for, you know yourself personally, Lisa, right. You've been in Silicon Valley for, you know, 20 years. What's maybe can you walk us through some of your own even mindset shifts or walk us through even some of your own use cases that, that you think have really paid off in terms of using AI?

Yeah, you know, I get easily overwhelmed when I have to look at a lot of research. I know some people really love that and they can spend hours. For me, I don't want to spend hours. So one of my favorite tools is actually a tool that Google makes called NotebookLM and you can find that on the Google Labs website. And so what I'm trying to do is keep up with all this great innovation that's happening around AI. So you can load up a NotebookLM with a whole bunch of research studies. You know, take the latest academic study, you can take the latest McKinsey study, you can put it all in notebook LM and ask it to summarize for you what the latest research is telling with different amounts of detail if you want. You can also do that with a project at work. You can load up NotebookLM with, if you have an enterprise version with all of your internal documents and spreadsheets and analyses that you have already and have it work with you. I think one of my favorite tips and Tricks that I like to share, which was shared with me by one of our AI experts at Google, is kind of treat AI like your summer intern, right? You don't just ask your summer intern one question and assume it's going to come back with. They're going to come back with exactly what you want. You need to give them some context, you need to have them understand what you're trying to solve for. You need to have them understand what kind of output you want. Right? And so kind of interacting with AI as if it's your intern and giving it context, giving it an outline of how you want the output to look and then iterating with it, give it feedback like you would when the summer intern came back with the first round of the work. You'd give it feedback and you'd say, oh, this is great, but actually I wanted a little more detail or I actually wanted to approach it this way and it would come back with more. And AI is really great at that. And we all just need to know it's a little bit of an iterative process. So, you know, as we've thought about bringing all of this training to the world, we've really invested a lot, not just in time and energy, but we've created a whole AI Opportunity Fund to make sure that it's easy for people of all backgrounds to access training around AI, including small businesses. So I do want to mention that last week we announced a contribution to that fund that is specific to small businesses and we're working directly with small business development centers around the country. I really love this because small business development centers are in backyards of many communities and we've built small business clinic AI clinics at these small business development centers and we're really involving people in the community at these clinics. The college students in the local neighborhood are actually going to help small businesses learn AI. I really love that. It's a great experience for those college students because they get real hands on experience with real use cases out in the world, which is great for them. And small businesses get to learn from these college students who understand this technology and have fresh ideas. So we're very, very excited about the google.org AI Opportunity Fund and specifically this grant to the nation's small business development centers.

Yeah, and we'll definitely share about that in today's newsletter. That grant that just earlier, earlier this month, I think it's huge news and also I even have to personally shout out Google. Right. I worked at a nonprofit for 10 years and you know, the Google for Nonprofit program is fantastic. And all of these, you know, different programs that Lisa here is, is talking about, I think definitely should be highlighted and celebrated to help small businesses. But, you know, even pivoting to that and diving in a little bit deeper here, Lisa, with, with small businesses. Right, I know, because, you know, I've helped small businesses, you know, try to grow for the last seven years, right. Since I started my first company. And I understand how difficult it can be. What is maybe some of your best advice for these small businesses? Because I understand, right, they're, they're wearing so many hats, yet AI is changing so quickly. What is your best advice for small businesses to kind of not just keep up, but to keep, get ahead and actually grow?

Yeah, you know, I think one of the big things small business owners always have to deal with is a shortage of time, especially if you're a sole proprietor and really everything is landing in your lap. Figuring out how to save time is key. And the good news is AI tools are terrific for that. Whether it's summarizing meeting notes and action items when you're working with your customers, whether it's creating new assets, whether it's, it's helping you do structure your data and do an analysis, all of these things are just faster and easier with the help of AI. So I would say, I know it can sound intimidating and I think the tech industry has not done anyone any favors with making it. I think we make it seem inaccessible, but actually it is really great for everyday people and especially great for small businesses. And I would say take a quick course. Whether it's Google, AI essentials or some other course, put your hands in it and practice. Like I said, treat it like your summer intern, give it a little context which will help it help you and really just start using it is my best advice for small businesses. And like I said, there's lots of resources on the Grow with Google website that can help.

Yeah, start, start using it. Can't emphasize that enough. And you know, even I have to also shout out notebook. LM my gosh. Like, you know, I've, I've used more than a thousand, you know, AI tools over the past like three years and that is easily top three. You know, I'll, I'll go ahead and put a review that we did in the newsletter. But Lisa, I want to shift a little bit to talk about the startup side. So we've, we've talked about how, you know, both AI and you know, Grow with Google can help small businesses, you know, how they can help job seekers as well, but you know, on the startup side you have quite a background and you lead, you know, Google's startup program. How has first, how has the startup kind of landscape shifted since this generative AI boom? How have you seen it shift?

Well, we see smaller and smaller startups capable of doing bigger and bigger things. And you know, one of my favorite things is when smart or startups take take on big societal challenges. So as Google for startups, we have lots of programs that are helping startups from everything from learning how to pitch their business and go to market and grow, to giving them technical mentoring and expertise. So we've had founders funds now for the past five years. And the most important thing about those funds, believe it or not, is not the funding, it's about the support that we give startups, startups that receive our grants. That's technical mentoring, it's leadership coaching, but it's also really helping them think about their go to market and growth strategies. So just this week I spent some time with some of our startups who are working on big infrastructure solutions. We have startups who are helping with agriculture. I really love this. They're doing everything from helping reduce water usage to increasing crop yield. They're doing it either by identifying weather patterns or some of it is computer vision that's identifying issues with the crops before they become big issues. And these startups are helping farmers all over the world, small farmers, get more crop yield and use less resources, which are really important things in terms of agriculture around the world. Or they're doing things like. One of my favorites that I met this week is helping community college students who are trying to transfer to universities make sure all their credits get recognized and making sure that that transfer process is really seamless, which is so important. 40% of college students in our country are community college students and many of them actually go to community college as an access point to getting into a four year university and making that transition and translation of those credits easier to universities. Such an important part of helping those students succeed.

You know, with startups and you talked about, you know, now startup, smaller startups are able to do bigger things, right? And I've seen this now even when we talk about, you know, AI assisted or AI powered, you know, coding and development, it seems like people even that don't have technical backgrounds can, you know, go from zero to mvp. You know, used to be like, oh, a weekend project. Now you might be able to do it in a couple of hours, right? To get something that works and that can solve a problem. So for These, you know, maybe startups that maybe launched pre generative AI and now they see all these smaller startups come on and seemingly, you know, they can just put a little, you know, fuel on the AI fire and go boom. Right. How can startups maybe use AI to sustain their growth or to maybe get ahead of these smaller competitors who are now able to do bigger things?

Yeah, I mean, I think as we've been talking about today, Jordan, the key is for everyone to figure out how to best put it to use for their use case. It is an incredible tool and I think that everyone around you is starting to use it and the best way to keep up is to figure out what do you need it for and to get better and better at putting it to work for you.

What, what do you see? As, you know, I know it's hard to talk about, you know, the future of work. You know, maybe this question may have been easier, you know, five or ten years ago, but, but with how quickly things are changing, especially when it comes to how businesses can, can use AI to grow. Where do you see kind of this both for small businesses and for startups? How does the future of work look different now than maybe it did a couple of years ago?

Well, hopefully this is taking out some of the mundane work that people just never liked spending time on in the first place and freeing up your bandwidth and capacity to do some of the more interesting creative or in person work where, you know, humans are actually the best at. I think that's the biggest difference is it can take out some of the grunt work or the, you know, mundane, repetitive work that we all don't like spending time on anyway. And I think that's, that's the biggest asset that people are really doing is they're getting time back. And you know, time is our least renewable asset. And I think that the tools are really helpful for that.

So we, we've talked about a lot here, Lisa. I mean we've, we've gone into, you know, different programs that Grow with Google has different certificates, grants. Right. Google's obviously doing a lot to help small businesses and startups and job seekers. Right. Grow and thrive. But as, as we wrap up here, maybe what is your one biggest takeaway for how startups and small businesses can grow with AI?

Yeah, I think there's just, there's a lot of resource out there to help small businesses and startups. Please check out the Grow with Google website and see if the AI essentials course can be helpful to you. We've also made sure that all of our career certificate programs also talk about how AI can be useful for that particular career field. So whether you're going into cybersecurity, data analytics, or project management, all of the Google career certificates also show you how you can use AI in that career field. So I think getting started, really teaching yourself and getting your hands on practice with these tools is the most important thing. And like I said, the AI opportunity fund that google.org our philanthropic arm, has created is really providing access to everyone from small businesses and startups to teachers and others. Yesterday we made an announcement for how we're helping teachers in the world of education. And there'll be lots more coming from our side just to make sure that these tools are really accessible and easy to learn for everyone.

All right, and there we have it, y'. All. A 30 minute crash course from an industry leader on how small businesses and startups alike can grow with AI, and in this case, grow with Google. So, Lisa, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show. We really appreciate your time, time and efforts.

Thank you so much for having me.

All right, as a reminder everyone, we covered a lot. So many resources that Lisa mentioned. They'll all be in our newsletter. Don't worry. So if you're out walking your dog and listening and you didn't have anything to write it down, we got you. Make sure to go to your everydayai.com Sign up for that free daily newsletter and this was helpful. Please share share it with someone. Also, if you're listening on the podcast, please subscribe and leave us a rating. We'd appreciate it and we'd appreciate it if you join us us back tomorrow and every day for more Everyday AI. Thanks y'.

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