Efficiency Unlocked: How Entrepreneurs Leverage Technology for Innovation

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The great thing about some of this tech, you know, SAS and other products is that it really does give a small business kind of a level playing field with, you know, with some of the big companies out there. So that's why it's just so critical, you know, at any stage of life or a business, particularly when you're starting out, to find the right technology to amplify and augment what you're doing.

Today's bonus episode of Launch youh Business is sponsored by Comcast Business. With Comcast Business, it's not just possible, it's happening. Comcast Business powering possibilities. Learn more@business.comcast.com this is the Launch youh Business podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. I'm just going to assume you've heard the phrase work smarter, not harder, and while that's at least directionally helpful, it doesn't give you any real guidance on what to do next. So today we're going to address the specific actions you can take to work smarter as opposed to harder. And one way is to leverage technology. But I'm not expecting you to become some kind of tech whiz or build out an IT team. I'm talking about simple but powerful tools you can use to get more work done by faster. And here's a quick example. The other day I was thinking of topics for my LinkedIn content, and if you're not following me, please do. Because I actually put thought into my content, and my overall goal this time was to encourage people to explore entrepreneurship, even though they may be a bit hesitant to do so. So after staring at the screen for several minutes, I decided to finally ask ChatGPT. I put in a very simple prompt. What are five myths about entrepreneurship that hold people back from reaching their goals? And if you're curious, here are the responses. You need a revolutionary idea. You must take enormous risks. You need a lot of money to start. If you build it, they will come. Side note, I found it the hard way. That is not true. And you have to do it alone. So there you go. I have the foundation for a great post that will inspire and motivate my audience. I can bring up these myths in my content, state why they aren't true, and let my audience know what they should be thinking about instead. And since there are five myths, I could dedicate the entire week to myth busting by sharing one each day. So just like that, by using technology, I was able to get more work done faster. And if you think about it, Since I used ChatGPT to do this, I technically busted the last myth. You have to do it alone in the process. As you can imagine, there are several ways you can use technology to drive innovation and build your business. And today's guest will pass along even more great ideas that you can implement without a huge budget. Christian Nascimento is Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for Comcast Business, where he's responsible for developing, launching and managing multiple product lines and service offerings used by businesses of all sizes. But prior to joining Comcast, he served as the VP of Finance at a biotech startup where they constantly leverage technology to drive innovation and growth. And during today's episode, he'll share the lessons learned from his experience there and and how you can avoid some common mistakes. We'll discuss our realistic approach on expanding your tech stack when you're in the startup phase, even if you're not tech savvy. How entrepreneurs can put AI to work beyond social media and the advantages of being an early adopter of technology instead of waiting until it's absolutely necessary. Christian, how's it going today?

Great. Terry, how are you doing?

I'm doing well. I'm doing well on my end and I'm glad we're chatting about the topic of innovation because I think as an entrepreneur, that's one of your greatest assets. Right. You can move quicker and try out new ideas without having to ask, you know, a million people about it to make sure it actually makes sense. So I'm glad to have you here, but would you mind introducing yourself just so our listeners have more, even, even more context here?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, thanks for having me on. My name is Christian Nascimento. I'm vice president of Product management and strategy here at Comcast Business. Comcast Business is the commercial services entity of Comcast Corporation which provides broadband and television and networking services to millions of consumers and businesses all across the globe. Through our different subsidiaries. I am most focused on driving our connectivity and technology portfolio for commercial businesses of all sizes, from the local mom and pop all the way up to the Fortune 1000 in North America, the United States. I've been in been at Comcast for just over 17 years now. And prior, immediately prior to coming to Comcast, I was vice president of finance at a biotech startup. So, you know, certainly can empathize with entrepreneurs that are out there starting their own business and trying to be more efficient, use technology and find ways to, to bring their products to market and to get scale as quickly as they can.

Awesome. Well, that's definitely our audience, so I'm glad to have you here today. And we had a chance to connect in advance and during that conversation you mentioned the importance of using technology to scale for startups. And that's especially important when resources are lean. So do you mind elaborating on that? What are some of the key technologies that you would recommend for our listeners?

Yeah, absolutely. It's really critical to get the right type of technology in any size business at any stage of business life. Right. But when you're a startup, that's really the opportunity to leverage technology to one, scale the business up and two, innovate faster. When I was at the startup, now this is, granted, this is going back about 18, 19 years at this point, but we were very lean. Yeah, we were in, like I said, a biotech startup. We were in the cancer detection and prevention space. We had some great technology that we're trying to commercialize and productize, but we still had to operate as a business. We had payroll to do, we had IT concerns, security concerns, HR needs. So as VP of finance there, I was responsible for all the finance and administrative work. So it was up to me to do all that. You can't just hire people when you're at that stage of life, right? Like, you've got to scale up using vendors, using technology. And the difference between what I had to do back then and what entrepreneurs can do today is just really massive. Remember, this is back before we were talking about the cloud. This is back before we were talking about SaaS in the way that we're talking about things. And so, you know, if we wanted to do marketing or develop a marketing campaign, we had to do it ourselves or we had to go hire a firm. Right. Today, you know, you can, you can use SaaS products that will, you know, distribute a message for you. You know, back then we had to physically buy servers and have, have some of the technology and the IP stored in a closet and made sure that that room was at the right temperature so that the, the servers didn't go down. Today we would just go and put that right and we would save the cost and the time involved with having to go and build out a physical infrastructure on site, and we would do that virtually. This is all really the increased digitalization that we've seen that's been happening over the past few years, which really accelerated with the COVID pandemic. By necessity, this is just coming to that natural point where technology has really been democratized and business owners of all shape and size can get technology at the palm of their hands. And the great thing about some of this tech, SaaS and other products is that it really does give a small business kind of a level playing field with some of the big companies out there. So that's why it's just so critical, you know, at any stage of life for a business, particularly when you're starting out, to find the right technology to, to amplify and augment what you're doing.

Yeah, I agree. And even my experience at working at a startup when I was younger, I was amazed at how, how many people it took to just make the ship run right. Whereas now there's so many low code and no code tools. You don't need someone just who's really good at email marketing, just someone who's really good at building websites because it's just a lot of drag and drop or these, these SaaS tools that make your life even easier. So you can get by with a leaner tool, whereas back then you actually needed a larger staff. And just sticking with your experience at the startup. I know that you outsourced your work to an IT shop or a third party marketing firm, but with the rise of SaaS marketing platforms, startups can now handle their own marketing campaigns. But can you just share some pros and cons of using SaaS for marketing versus hiring an external firm?

Yeah, I think that, you know, first of all, it's really going to depend on, on your ability, right? Like your resources. And you have enough money to go hire a third party firm. Do you have enough money to bring somebody in house? Do you have the skill within the founder or group of founders to kind of put some of that messaging together? Those are some of the threshold questions that you have. But then from there, you know, if you do have some expertise in, you know, in house rather than going out and having to go do advise and publishing and find things like that, like there are, you know, SaaS applications for marketing, for example, that will let you distribute that message and right. Whether it may, whether it's, you know, email or text messaging, you know, there's different channels, even digital ads that can be purchased, you know, to run, you know, your favorite social media platforms or connected TV platforms. That's all really kind of at the kind of palm of your hand these days. And it's through SaaS and the application of a lot of these types, of, these types of functions out there. So really fundamentally it's figuring out what's going to be core to your product or to your target vertical or your service, finding out what you can support and then finding the right mechanism that works for both you and for that product.

You make a good point even in regards to the ad part of business. And I used to work at an ad agency and, and this is about 10 years ago, but the media buyers even there were getting, even there were getting nervous because back in the day their job was to like manually select media placements to put these ads in. And all of a sudden programmatic advertising came out and it's like, well, do we really need you to push the button? You know, so there's obviously a shift in the market there and we're seeing another 1 Obviously with AI, I mean, you can't like, you know, open your computer or newspaper without hearing about it. So there's a lot of buzz around it Especially with generative AI in business operations. So do you mind explaining what generative AI is and probably pronounce it better than I did, as well as how it's revolutionizing the way that businesses can approach tasks like copywriting, for example.

Yeah, it's a great example. Right. And this will have long term impacts on how we do business. Right. I think we're only scratching the surface on how like AI and generative AI and machine learning is going to actually impact how we do business. But you know, immediately we can see the short term benefit to entrepreneurs and businesses that are in startup stage. AI is traditionally it's artificial intelligence that will perform certain tasks and it's based on predefined rules. And so you teach the program how to do certain things. Generative AI will actually is actually artificial intelligence that's capable of creating content. Right. So it can generate text, it can generate pictures, images, music. You know, ChatGPT is kind of the most famous, you're one of the most famous versions of this. So you can see the really the power involved with the generative AI where it gets really interesting for entrepreneurs and small business folks and startups is really around marketing in other areas as well. But marketing. Now you can think you can picture write me a marketing jingle or write me a marketing slogan or develop a marketing campaign. The generative AI can then produce that. It still takes a human being to actually go and check that and make sure that it aligns with the product that you're trying to sell. But you can put in as much input as possible. You can be very descriptive about your product. The generative AI will then, you know, produce, you know, whatever you've asked for. You then can then pivot to some of these SaaS applications and deliver it that way. And so whether it's, you know, a digital ad or you know, some kind of online advertisement, or even like the content of an email, you've gone and you've had the generative AI develop the contents. Then you have an app or a SaaS product that's now delivered the content. All you really had to do is, you know, have the core idea, have the core product developed. Obviously you have to figure out the channels it's gonna go to, but it's super easy to go buy cell phone numbers or emails or things like that. And then you've essentially kind of insourced a marketing function using technology. And so that's really in my mind for a startup or for a single person in their garage building out their business, that kind of comes Together in that example, when it's really a example of where you can see how you can use all these technologies together to.

Help scale your business, you use the term insource. So the opposite of outsource, which I have not heard before, but I'm going to use that myself and pretend like I already knew what it meant the first time I heard it. So I like that a lot. And this is so important to me, the use of AI for entrepreneurs, that I just tell everyone, like, just take a week off from doing whatever you're doing and just learn as much as you can about the platform because you will get that time back. I had someone on the podcast previously, her team got 20 hours back per week just by spending two days determining how they could use AI to automate some of their processes, especially in regards to creating content. So it's one of those full stop things like, we can't afford not to do this. You are getting left behind. You are making it harder for you to do your job and you can have more time to relax just by using these tools. But you have to get out of the busyness of work. Instead of working in your business, work on your business. And generative AI is a great way for you to do that.

It's really a great opportunity for folks to get really super strategic about what they're doing. Right. Like to your point, it takes away some of the mundane tasks about actually going and writing copy. It will present that copy to you. Of course, you've got to go edit that and make sure it's aligned with your brand and your values and the product. But it's taking some steps out. And I think everybody talks about what's the impact of AI going to be long term and will it replace human beings and this and that. Like that is a core example of how it's augmenting human being. Right. It's, it's taking some of the tasks and allowing somebody to scale themselves up by doing some of the, you know, kind of mundane might be the wrong way to put it, but some of the foundational tasks and letting the human being, you know, do the strategic piece, which is, you know, put the inputs in, take output, edit it, make sure that it aligns and going from there. So I think you're absolutely right. Everybody should be playing around with it. It's kind of like a few years ago you would go out and talk to small businesses and they would talk about the cloud and they talked about, in a very mysterious way, right? Like they knew, they've heard of it. They knew they probably needed to do something with it. They weren't really sure what it was. People were hesitant to put things like financial records into the cloud. We've kind of gotten past that. I think the pandemic helped accelerate some of that. But, you know, we've gotten past that and people use that all the time now. And it's, it's really table stakes. And I think, you know, AI, and particularly generative AI, is kind of like at that moment now where people are starting to. To think about it and, you know, playing around with it. And then we'll get to that point where it's kind of accepted and used as a tool. It won't be the only tool, but it'll be a tool in the toolbox, particularly for. For entrepreneurs.

Yeah. And I think the sooner people get over the fear of AI, the better, because people are saying it's going to take our jobs. It's like, not really. I mean, for AI to work, for artificial intelligence to work, you also need natural intelligence from a human. Right. So it's not going to replace people who have these ideas and this vision and everything. It's just going to make it easier to execute. And I think this leads into my next question, because a lot of small businesses are using technology to compete for customers with larger enterprises. So can you share some specific, specific examples or case studies where technology made a big impact for a small business?

Yeah, I mean, we see it happen every day. Right. You know, Comcast business, we're in the technology and the connectivity business. Right. And the thing about the Internet and connectivity is that once you've connected, it's not just about sending emails or doing FaceTime calls. Right. It's about connecting the business and all the people in the business to a network of vendors, suppliers, customers, partners. And once you've done that, then you can expand the reach of the business. And so when you can take that connectivity, that's kind of the connective tissue, right. And you can layer technology on top of that. And that will let a small business or an entrepreneur just be much more efficient. And that's how they're going to be able to compete with the larger enterprises. It opens up the ability for them to communicate with people all over the world and just really pull expertise in. That 20, 30 years ago wasn't readily available to somebody that was located in Philadelphia or San Francisco or wherever because they didn't have that connective tissue to the whole world. And then you layer on these applications and technologies that allow a small business to really do anything, whether it's marketing, whether it's analytics on who's coming into their location or who's driving by or who's opening their emails. Just a wealth of big data that's available to even the smallest business. And if you can take the time to look into that, you can start to really figure out what your business strategy is. And that's really going to give them kind of a level playing field with, with some of the bigger players out there.

Yeah. And that's going to lead into my next, next question, which deals with COVID where we all had to turn it up a notch in order to get through, especially with businesses because they were forced to use technology to essentially extend operations outdoors. I live here in New York City and there are so many like outdoor eating areas that were set up because we couldn't eat inside. And people started saying, well, look, if I'm going to have coffee, I still need WI Fi, right? Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to come here if I can't get WI fi in this outdoor shack. So that became a necessity. But can you discuss some other innovative ways that companies adapted during the pandemic? And do you think these changes are here to stay?

Yeah, it's great question. So if you think about large restaurant chains or large, big box realtors, they have the ability, because they have scale to comply with whatever requirements the local municipality had around spacing and cleaning and whatnot. Now, if you're a local restaurant or a local shop, you may not have had the same amount of space, you may not have had the same amount of resources, but you had connectivity and you had WI fi. And we've seen many businesses that would take more access points from us and move them outside so that they had a bigger signal outside. So then the parking lot becomes their showroom floor or the parking lot becomes their dining room. And you know, one, it's the ingenuity of entrepreneurs. Right. They find a way to keep going because they have to. And two, it's just again, speaks to the power of technology that, you know, when you combine that scrappy entrepreneurship with the technology that enables you to turn your parking lot into a dining room, that's how some of these businesses kept afloat. And you know, talk about communications for a second. You know, we saw lots of, you know, bar studios or fitness places that couldn't be open because they weren't big enough for people to social distance or there were certain restrictions in that city or state or municipality that didn't allow them to be open. So they set up a webcam and they broadcasted, you know, bar classes or yoga classes. Now, you can only do that if you've got the right type of signal, the right type of equipment, the right type of technology that will enable, one, you to get that signal out in a way that's going to be easily digestible, and two, that there's endpoints that your customers will be able to accept that. And so that just gets to, you know, we talk about ubiquity of connectivity and a broadband. You know, that's what enabled businesses to stay operating during the pandemic. That's what enabled businesses to expand. And I think that, you know, we're kind of in this period now where we're kind of coming back to normal a bit with people returning into the office, like on a very regular standpoint. But I think the one thing that we won't lose is the ability to, is to use technology in different ways.

Let's go specific in regards to Comcast Business. And just how does Comcast Business help entrepreneurs make better use of their technology to power their business? And if you don't mind sharing, what are some common challenges that you see among small businesses as well?

Yeah, you know, we're in a lucky spot that we get to help small businesses every day. You know, today, you know, the Internet is probably one of the first things that you would that you buy if you're a business starting a business, it's just kind of that critical to operating a business, no matter what that business is, whether it's on top of your garage or multiple locations across multiple states. And so the opportunity that we have is when you're one of the first partners that somebody calls, you have an opportunity to help them pick the technology that they need. And so we certainly, you know, we are known for our network and our connectivity products, you know, wi fi and broadband and obviously communications. But then we also are lucky in that we've got a host of products that we partner with other folks with. And I think some of the value that we bring to a small business or an entrepreneur that's starting out is that, you know, they trust us to deliver their Internet. Right, which is critical. It's kind of the lifeblood of their, their operation. And so because of our size and scale, they can trust that we can go and evaluate the partners that we bring into them. And so rather than having to go and evaluate this type of technology to make sure that it works, they can trust us to kind of bring that and know that we vetted them and it's somebody that we feel comfortable doing business with and staking our reputation on the partnership as well. And then beyond that, we are really, we aspire to be that trusted advisor and help problem solve for small businesses. And we serve so many of them. We saw a real opportunity over the years to provide connectivity and communication services to these local, call them moms and pops, right? But they're just entrepreneurs. They're folks that are following a dream. And because our network is so vast and so distributed, we're able to provide those types of services in a way that pretty impactful for those businesses. And so we, you know, we, we're passionate about helping them out every day.

Yeah, that, that turnkey solution is so important for smaller companies because there's, there's already an apprehension about using technology and the lack of trust makes it worse. Right. So if you're like, hey, we understand where you're at. We have this, this suite of tools and partners. We recommend we have your back and we're going to be here tomorrow too. We're not just going to sell you something and leave. So I can appreciate that. But what I want to do, I'm going to ask you one more question. I'm going to give you a real scenario that my wife was in. She works in the wine and spirits industry and she went to this one local wine shop and was just asking the owner, hey, how are sales going? What's the ebb and flow? Like, so and so forth. And this guy pulls out like a notepad to look at his sales for the last month. And she's like, you know, by the way, there are apps that you can use to track your finances. And she talked about some other technology and he was just so apprehensive. He's like, no, I've always done it this way. I've been here since 1970, so on and so forth. This is how we do it and we know it works. What would you say to again, a small business owner who's like, just kind of stuck in their ways and I think we would agree wasting their time and energy to an extent by not leveraging technology.

Yeah, it's hard, right, because you have someone that's been doing this for so long in a certain way and to the point it works. I mean, I think what I would advise that fellow is that, yeah, it may work, but like Terry, going back to the point that you made before, right, like, but you may be able to save time and you may be able to Be more efficient. And what does that mean? Saving time is just kind of like a saying. But what that means is, you know, more time to look at other types of wines to bring in or other types of product to bring in, more time to spend with the family, more time to do, you know, work on that expansion that he or she's been thinking about. So the first thing I would say to that person is, like, you absolutely have the Internet in your business, right? Because you got to take credit card transactions, and so you just need to kind of trust that foundation and build off of that. And I'm sure what your wife was talking about where any number of digital POS systems that can not only take a transaction, but then can analyze that and start to recognize customers and what they like and how much they've spent and can give you all types of insights into. Into what's happening in your. In your business. And so that's why you say, like, the Internet is kind of like the foundational product, because everything else kind of builds off of that. But I would take that business owner through some simple, you know, simple opportunities to. To automate what they're doing, to kind of, you know, God forbid, something, a bottle of wine spills on that notebook and he's lost a bunch of his records, right? So. So it's making sure that folks understand what's out there, what can be done, and then how secure it is. I think that we haven't talked about security much, but that's always top of mind when you're thinking about these types of products. Anything's Internet connect. You gotta make sure that it's got the appropriate level of cybersecurity, which it's important us to make sure that our network is secure and the applications that we serve on top of it are secure. But I think there's plenty of opportunity to show someone like that the ability to help scale their business and expand their business, whether they've been in business since like 1970 or seven days ago.

Yeah, I agree. So we'll try that approach. But, Christian, this has been amazing. I appreciate your time and the advice you've given to the audience. Just want to ask if there's any parting thoughts you want to share or where we can learn more about Comcast business. The floor is yours.

Yeah, absolutely. Terry, thanks for having me on. This has been great. Like I said, I've been in the shoes of some of the entrepreneurs, and so I do have a passion for making sure they understand how technology can help them scale up and simplify and augment what they're doing and so always happy to talk about that. ComcastBusiness.com is a place where someone could go and find out more about our services, our products, and just the broad set of broad suite of services and solutions that we bring to bear for businesses of any size. So encourage folks to visit that and learn more about us.

Awesome. Thanks Christian. I appreciate it.

You got it. Thanks Terry. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. And that's our show for today. Thanks again to Christian for stopping by. And be sure to head to business.comcast.com to learn more about the services and products Comcast provides to help you launch and scale scale your business. Thanks for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at Terryrice Co. Podcast again, that's TerryRice Co podcast and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram at it terryrice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife, Dominique, for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.