Demystifying AI_ Understanding its Potential Benefits for Business Owners | Demystifying AI Podcast

So by now you've heard about AI. It's been in the news, it's been in the media, it's been on social media, but you may be still wondering how can you use this in your business? You're not in the marketing field. Maybe you are, but in most cases you're probably not. You're thinking to yourself, this all sounds too complicated. Well, that is why I'm recording this episode today because I realized as a business owner, you need to figure out where it fits in your business. So let's do that. So today's episode is one in which was a long time overdue for this podcast. I've had a lot of different discussions over the last several months around AI. If you follow what I've been doing online, you know, I speak a lot about the topic of artificial intelligence and the different tools that I've been trying out. Along the way. Now, what I found is when I start to speak to those in my social circle and those in my professional circle, I realize a lot of people don't fully grasp what AI is and also what it can do for them. So that's why this episode we're going to be talking about artificial intelligence, but not in the way where I assume you already know what it is. See, artificial intelligence, it's been around for a long time. But as with any type of new or perceived new technology, which is what's happening here because it's in the mainstream media, people are talking about it, marketers are talking about it very heavily, business owners are realizing that it is a huge thing. And with this, with a lot of discussion around it, we tend to feel that it is very complicated and it's something that It is, is unimaginable that as a business owner, it's something you could take on. And I'm here to tell you that it's not. It comes down to your mind thinking about what it is that you are doing every single day in your current business and professional life that's taking up time. And then how can AI either enhance that? Remove that from you, or even make what you're doing a whole lot easier. So think about this. If you start to look at artificial intelligence as if it was another team member, another person in your company, and you start to think about things you could hand off to them, or maybe they are somebody you hired who is far better at writing copy than you are. What would you normally do if they were a physical person? Maybe you were going to start it out. You were going to write your initial copy, whether it was an email or a script or a blog post, and then you would hand it off to them to make it better. Well, AI can do that for you. So where does this leave us with? Well, the main term that you hear when people speak about AI is ChatGPT. And while it is a tool and a program that you can pay $20 a month, there's also a free version for it. There are hundreds, if not thousands of other tools that are using the ChatGPT technology to do different things. Let me share a couple of which I use personally in our own practice here at Blue Cow Marketing. Now I am recording this podcast into a program called Descript. And what this is, it allows it to transcribe audio. Now I've used it in different ways where I've recorded previous episodes into Adobe Audition. I've then saved that audio and then imported it into Descript to transcribe it and give me a script off that. I've then taken that transcript and I've gone ahead and put it into ChatGPT, pasted it in and said, hey, come up with 5 or 7 different quotes from this that would make great social posts. And it does. Takes that script or that transcript and analyzes it, pulls out different quotes in text form. I'm then able to take that and export it and maybe throw it into a Google Sheet and then import that into Canva. Where I have social graphic templates designed and I can bulk create the different quote graphics for Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn based off of that. So what you're seeing here is I could have done all this manually. I could have listened to it. I could have written out what I said. I could have pasted it in and created each graphic, but I didn't. I was able to use an AI tool to then amplify what I was doing. But in this case, I was also saving myself time. So what would have taken hours in the past, now literally I could do within an hour. But there's a whole lot more. We initially think and hear about ChatGPT creating content. Now, while I've used that a couple times to create content that I needed pretty quickly, it is not something that I suggest or even feel is going to be the true power of what AI technology can do for you. And I'm going to talk about a couple other tools that we use, how it's helping leverage productivity and make things a lot more streamlined. Now I educate my followers and my clients and anyone I talk to around the fact that you are only as good, or the AI is only as good, as the content in which it has access to. Now, ChatGPT out of the box, I think it only has learnings up until 2019. That's what they say. Now there are plugins that can make it go and reference the internet. Now it doesn't know, or doesn't know how to discern between which is better content versus other content. It looks at what is out there and what is available. So there are times when you're getting facts back and things like that that aren't essentially true or not the best reference. So everything needs to be reviewed. Now, if you're going to go ahead and write something, or you're going to record a video, or you're going to do a podcast just like this is, This is initial content. What I'm saying right now is the content that I want to get out. Now, taking that and putting it into a different tool will allow you to reach a larger audience. So there are tools out there right now, and I'm not going to mention this one yet because as of yesterday, it was introduced to me. I'm just testing it out. So I want to make sure that as with any tool that I recommend, that it does a great job and it works. So I'm going to tell you what the concept of this is. It's a tool in which I can upload a full podcast episode, just the audio, and it will then transcribe it, analyze it. Give me full timestamps of different topics that I talked about in there. Give me all the keywords that I would need or tags. If I'm going to then use a video format, it will also do YouTube videos. It will give me TikTok scripts for reels, for Instagram. It'll give me LinkedIn posts. It will give me an email to send out to my list. It will give me follow-up discussion questions if I wanted to do follow-up sessions to that content. And it will do this in a matter of minutes. While this is a heavy load to, to carry and a big promise to make, initial things that I've seen, it does a pretty good job at that. So think about all those different things I just mentioned. How long would it have taken you? To do that before, and in most cases, you just probably wouldn't have done it. But because I'm feeding in the words verbatim from my podcast, from an episode I created, I know that the content is going to be pretty close to what I want to put out there. And as with anything right now, I say review the content that is generated. To make sure it is still on point with what you are giving it and what is outputting. www.canada.ca/start to learn more. But there's a whole nother aspect of personal productivity. I've started to use a tool called Grain. And what this is, it's a meeting attendant. So in our practice, we have, you know, different meeting softwares that, that we use. Uh, and there's different meeting softwares that different clients use. So Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams. Right. And the list goes on and on. But what this tool does is it allows you to have it attend an online meeting with you. Now you could also send it to a meeting you're not attending if you just want to get some information from it, but it really works well in meetings that you are on. So I do a lot of different client meetings. I do sales meetings and things of that nature. And I've started to use this over the last week and it's been doing a fantastic job. So I don't know if you're like me, but I'll admit that in a meeting I could have a pen and paper in front of me. By the end of the meeting, I don't have any notes written down. I come with all intentions to be taking notes along the way, but I don't like writing notes and losing the attention or missing something. From that meeting. So I tend to just, you know, go through the meeting and then after take the notes to figure out what I have to do for the follow-up based off of memory. I'm getting older. It doesn't always work that well. So what Grain is doing, it is recording and transcribing the entire meeting. And while a transcript can be helpful, it goes a step further. Analyzes what's said in there, gives me the highlights of the meeting with linkable timestamps to the recording. So it might say that, you know, Shaun discussed this topic about this. And if I click on it, it'll go to that video. I could watch it back. Where I really saw the power in this was below that, it gave me Next action steps. Anytime anyone in the meeting said that they were going to do something, or somebody said that someone else should do something, it itemizes those in bullet points, says who's doing it and what they're doing, which is the key actionable outcomes of that meeting. That right there, huge productivity. It's using artificial intelligence to give me that functionality. Now you can find AI for many different things out there to generate images. And while currently at the time of recording this episode, it's doing an okay job at generating images. And sometimes it's not the best quality that you're getting, but let's say you're, you want to do some editing. So let's go back to Descript, very light program, but it will actually analyze the audio when I'm done. And if the audio had a lot of ums and ahs, it can cut those out. If I'm recording video, it will actually allow me to edit the video as well. It can take the transcript, generate subtitles on the screen, which is great for your social videos. That are coming out because now your subtitles can be on brand and they don't have to be auto-generated by the platform. We've also tried out a different program called GetMunch. I mentioned it in a few episodes back, which allows you to upload video and it will use AI to transcribe it and cut into different reels for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, um, you know, all the different platforms that would take video, but it also gives you the description, all the keywords, all the hashtags. And while it's a really cool tool, what I personally found was the editing isn't quite where I want it to be. So I'm going to stop using it and there will be another one that comes down the road. So as we, we wrap up this episode, here's what I want you to think about in your business as a business owner. AI is not here to change and take over everything that you do. AI, if the right tool is selected, will actually enhance what you're doing and give you back the time that you are spending, that precious time that you are spending doing the things that could be done a lot quicker. So come at it with an open mind. Come at it with a, a view of excitement. I guarantee that we match the right tool with what you're doing. You're going to look back after a month down the road and be like, where have I been without this? Now, if you'd like to talk about this a bit more, I invite you to Reach out to me, right? My email address is, you know, I'll give you the main company one because you'll misspell my name probably. It's just hello@bluecowmarketing.ca. I don't care where you're located. You can be in the US, you can be in Canada, you can be in the UK. Reach out to me and say, Shaun, hey, you know what? I found that interesting episode about AI. Still have some questions. I'd love to just have a chat. I will give you time on my calendar for that because I want to help you out. And I can give you my honest opinion on what I think would help you out. So, AI, what are you going to do with it in your business now? Maybe you still need more education about what it is. Perfect. Go on YouTube. Look for the top AI tools. Do a Google search. The information is out there. I don't know what next month will be. I don't know what a year down the road will be. All I know is how fast this has evolved over the last several months. How many amazing time-saving tools have come out in that short period of time. Using this technology. Again, thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe. If you got a comment or question, again, reach out to me, hello@bluecowmarketing.ca. Until next time, have a great time growing your business. I want to take a moment and thank sponsor of our podcast, eWebinar. If you've been doing webinars for any time now, or you've even just considered starting to do a webinar, you should consider eWebinar. This platform allows you to do evergreen webinars with a feature set that is just like hosting a live webinar. Those that are in attendance can chat with you, can engage with your content, all in a recorded format. Check it out. You want to learn more? Go to BlueCowMarketing.ca/eWebinar.