How Entrepreneurs Can Use AI Without Losing Their Brand’s Voice

[00:00:00] AI is everywhere now, right? But do you really know how to use it to grow your business without losing your human touch? In this episode, we break down simple ways any entrepreneur or small business owner can start using AI today without feeling stuck or overwhelmed. You'll learn how to find the right tools, save time, and get better results, all while keeping your brand's voice real and honest. So make sure you stay tuned to this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

[00:00:33] Social Media, Content Influencer, Marketing, Blogging, Podcasting, Vlogging, TikToking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing. There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice.

[00:00:56] Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaffer.

[00:01:20] Hey, everybody. This is Neal Schaffer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 427. In today's show, we're going deep into one of the hottest topics for not just any entrepreneur right now, but really any business or any person. How to really use AI to grow your brand and business. Now, many of us, if you've been listening to my podcast, you understand and you've probably already seen firsthand the power of AI.

[00:01:49] But there's still some of us who don't know where to start or how to keep our work from sounding robotic, which inevitably happens when you start trying to leverage AI too fast without understanding it a little bit more deeply. So that's why today I am interviewing John Suarez. He is co-author of the Marketer's Manual on Generative AI. You're going to hear some simple ways to plug AI into your daily tasks, tips to avoid overthinking it, and why your brand still needs your human touch to stand out.

[00:02:19] If you want to compete with bigger companies, and that is the promise of AI, that it can help you do that. And if you want to save time and unlock new growth, you will not want to miss this interview. Now, before we get to the interview, one last reminder. If you've read Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth, I would love to hear from you. I'm collecting reviews. I'm collecting feedback because I'm in the process of revising this book. And well, this next week is sort of going to be the deadline for any feedback that you have.

[00:02:48] Please feel free to reach out to me, DM me on the socials, or email me, neil at neilshafer.com. And if you're on Kindle Unlimited, it is available for free. So make sure you check it out. The book, Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth by yours truly, your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer. Now let's get on to the interview. You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neil Schaefer.

[00:03:17] Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer. Welcome to another edition of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Well, as you can imagine, because this is a digital marketing podcast, we talk a lot more and more about AI, artificial intelligence, and how we can all better leverage it for our marketing to grow our brand, grow our business. Today, we're going to be a little bit hyper-focused on AI for entrepreneurs.

[00:03:42] As you can imagine, the smaller your team is, the more you have to gain from using AI. You can compete with bigger entities because if you leverage AI correctly, you can scale a lot of different things. However, there's also a danger in relying too much on AI. We need to find that correct balance that we get over time and as we mature in our use of AI. So today's guest is really going to help us all accelerate how we use AI as entrepreneurs and as small businesses.

[00:04:11] And because this is AI, obviously the advice is going to be applicable to anybody here, regardless of how big your company is. So today's special guest is John Suarez. John is the author of the Marketer's Manual on Generative AI. So obviously, recommended reading if you want to dig a little bit deeper into the topic we're going to talk about today. But John's an author, seasoned marketing leader, and AI power user, passionately exploring how AI is reshaping how we work and learn.

[00:04:40] John helps marketers and business leaders navigate the evolving AI landscape, empowering them to achieve previously unattainable performance breakthroughs. His mission is to equip them with the knowledge and tools needed to unlock new growth, innovation, and impact through AI-powered strategies. Yeah, this is going to be a great conversation. I am genuinely excited. I know I've had some people who commented on the LinkedIn Live event broadcast, hey, I'm going to be tuning in. It's going to be 3 a.m. where I am. I'm not sure if my friend's here or not.

[00:05:09] But yeah, so without further ado, let's get started. John, welcome to the podcast. Neil, thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here. So John, I just gave your general introduction as to who you are, what you do. Obviously, AI, ChatGPT, November 2022. Before then, I'm curious, how did you get started into doing what you do now? Have you always had a technical background, a marketing background? I've always had a marketing background. I first got into AI in 2018.

[00:05:39] I was working for a firm that was developing an in-house AI product for kind of research across the world, looking into different databases, synthesizing it, using natural language processing to come out with a really good output so you didn't have to hire a team of analysts. So that was when I dipped my toes into the water. And I worked as a product marketing manager in that department. So I had the marketing side, but as a product marketer, you also need to intimately know the product.

[00:06:07] And I've always nerded out on things like coding. You know, I guess my background, as far as just a hobby goes, I've coded kind of most of my life, but I've never been a software engineer or anything like that. So anyhow, 2018 got into it and got addicted and hooked. And since then, I've been in the space in the world. And as you mentioned, recently published a book earlier this year on kind of the cross section of generative AI and marketing.

[00:06:37] Very cool. So technical without being too technical product marketing and very, very early on, I know that there were companies when I wrote my book, The Age of Influence back in 2019, I did a chapter with a company that was leveraging AI for influencer marketing. So people forget that AI did not begin with ChatGPT, but obviously it accelerated everything. So while we were prepping for the show, you talk about the plug and play AI framework and

[00:07:05] this concept of starting without overthinking. It's funny because the user interface in ChatGPT is extremely simple, yet maybe we are overcomplicating things. So I think we should start there. Are we overthinking? Why are we overthinking? How did you develop that framework and what is that framework? Yeah. So I think we still are in the part of the learning curve of the new technology where people are working with the ChatGPT tools of the world, but they really don't know.

[00:07:35] There's just so many possibilities. They don't know the best way to use it. And I see that a lot. It's almost analysis paralysis. This tool can do everything. And you see a million different LinkedIn posts about this or that. It's like, where do I focus? Where do I even start here? So that's where this plug and play AI framework that my co-author and I developed came from. And especially for entrepreneurs, business leaders, marketers, we're all juggling a million different things at once.

[00:08:02] So to get started, you really have to, I think the way that I look at it is just, you have to identify the biggest thing that's keeping you up at night, but only one, right? Or not even the biggest, but just a repetitive task. It could be taking notes for your calls, emails, writing blog posts or different content, and then just get started as far as having AI handle it.

[00:08:27] So this could be things like, okay, let's say that you wanted to understand how can I build an AI or how can I have an AI executive assistant? Take notes and send follow-ups for me because that is something that takes a lot of time out of my day as an entrepreneur. Well, good thing there's a million tools out there that can do it for you. So the first step is just saying, okay, what do I want to trial? Just using a tool like perplexity.ai or Google to find a tool and then just getting started with it.

[00:08:56] I think from there, I can kind of dive into a little bit more of a structured approach, but I don't want to overcomplicate it. It's really just about having your blinders on and saying, this is what I want to tackle today. And then from there, you just start to learn all of the different possibilities of what AI can do. Yeah. Amen, John. It's funny because I think a lot of people have, when you talk about the analysis paralysis, it's sort of twofold. One is, oh my gosh, what's that framework again?

[00:09:24] Whenever I talk to the AI, I need to say, is it like R-I-C-E or I have to first say this and then this. And then on the other side, it's like they're downloading these free eBooks of a hundred. These are the perfect prompts. But it's really, I think you'd agree about beginning by having a natural conversation with the AI about what you want to accomplish and going from there, right? That's exactly right. Yeah. There's a million ways to prompt. And I created even my own prompt, the STAR method.

[00:09:51] But anyway, AI is getting so powerful nowadays that you can just have that conversation. And even if you're not a prompt engineer or an expert at talking to AI, you'll get there. It's just about taking a little bit of time out of your day to engage in that conversation. And by the way, it doesn't have to be typing on a keyboard anymore. ChatGPT and other tools have a voice interface. So you can be going on a walk and have this entire conversation done in 15 minutes. And then you'll have a log of it when you get back home. Yeah.

[00:10:20] I find myself at the supermarket using the mobile app and having to compare different wines and, hey, look up wine reviews. And which one would you, based on the price points, which one would you recommend and things of that sort. So I think once you find a use case scenario, there's no stopping. And, you know, I appreciate your mentioning that you do have a framework. So my comment on the frameworks is less about that they're not useful, more about they're going to be really useful once you have that experience under your belt. It's like, okay, well, how do I get an even better result, right?

[00:10:48] Because what I'm putting in here doesn't seem to get the result that I want. That's where I'd recommend you start looking into the frameworks, obviously, to see how you can fine tune that. But at the beginning, right, we just want to get started. And I love that advice. So taking it one step further, you know, the plug and play that you mentioned then is really finding one area where you can plug and play the AI to inject it to be able to help you accomplish what you're not able to accomplish today. Is that the right way to think about it?

[00:11:18] Correct. Yeah. And I mean, we're on a podcast right now. One great example is somebody, a friend in my network who runs a podcast as well. They asked me about this and they were like, promoting my podcast takes so much time. So that is the lowest hanging fruit for you. So what they did was turn their podcast transcript or each podcast transcript into about half a dozen LinkedIn posts in less than five minutes.

[00:11:44] And their click through rates went up about 20%, not to mention all the time saved as well. So it's like it's very simple things around getting started. And then once you have a good idea of, oh, this is actually the ROI or the gain I can get out of these tools, then you can work into a more structured framework to say, how do I amplify this? How do I get these gains across more areas of my business?

[00:12:10] So I think that leads us into the 80-20 framework, I'm assuming. So I'd love for you to give us a little bit more background as to what is that next step then to really leverage the early gains that we're seeing from AI? Yeah. So I'm going to say this a few times. I kind of alluded to it once before, but don't try to have AI do everything at once. The analysis paralysis, right? Start with the lowest hanging fruit tasks now, right?

[00:12:38] So you've done one thing, you understand some of the gains that can be had, which I'm sure many of the listeners on this podcast are already familiar with how valuable AI can be. So I think that what I typically ask founders, like if I had to frame this in one question, founders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, frontline marketers, what do you hit the snooze button on the most, right?

[00:13:01] And that will bring you, I think, most of the time into this 80-20 AI sweet spot where it at least gets you thinking in that realm. So first you need to, the framework is really just three steps. First, you are going to audit and that just really means identify around, you know, three to five tasks that you hate doing, that are manual, that importantly burn a lot of hours or cause a lot of annoyance or headache keeping you up at night.

[00:13:31] So that's auditing and identifying. The second step is automating. So now that you have this list of pains that are keeping you up at night, how much does each one take you on a daily or weekly basis? And then start to prototype a tool that can solve that. And I guarantee you, you know, everyone's problems are some variation of the same thing. There's going to be a tool out there that can help you solve it.

[00:13:59] So prototype a tool or tool. There's a lot of free trials out there. And then make sure you are measuring. This is the important part. So you audit, you automate, and then you amplify or measure, right? So you need to be tracking what your single measurement is, your KPI. It could be hours saved. If it's marketing, it could be replies or leads. If you are in operations, it could be dollars saved, right? You need to be tracking what's going on here.

[00:14:27] And then once you have that data, you either double down or kill the prototype. And then you just do that over and over again, going through your list that you kind of made at the beginning, one step at a time. Yeah. And I assume over time, like anything else, you begin to understand the ROI in terms of save time, hopefully bigger results. And maybe the KPI is still important, but maybe not as important as at that very beginning when you're trying to really show the ROI of doing it.

[00:14:54] And, you know, the advice that I always give and what you say is totally on target is that think about it when if you're an entrepreneur and you hired a virtual assistant, how did you begin? How did you begin to delegate tasks, right? And it's really sort of that same process, I think. Obviously, with AI, it can do things that people can do. It can really replicate at a higher intelligence. So, yeah, I'm sure you'd agree, John, like don't hold back on what you can try to use AI for, whether you get there or not. It's another story. But so I'm curious, John, in your experience, you're writing the book.

[00:15:24] And I know, you know, you have your own agency, Smart Bug Media. So you work with a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs. What are the use case scenarios that you've experienced where you think your clients or those that, you know, you know, have seen the greatest ROI from it? Obviously, it's going to differ by people and by company and their situation. But when they take that first step into, OK, we're going to, you know, we audit. And, you know, from the audit, we realize this is the task. And they just realize that, wow, this is amazing. The results we're getting.

[00:15:54] Like if if our listeners were trying to, you know, trying to decide between a few tasks, is there any direction that you point them through based on what you've seen and maybe what you've personally experienced as well? Yeah. So for business leaders, entrepreneurs, founders, of course, like time is of it's the most important. It's the most important resource, no matter who you are. Right. Right. But it is more acute when you are leading a company, starting a company, leading a department.

[00:16:22] And I think that identifying what is taking the most time you have. Right. So last month I was talking to a founder who was curious about, OK, I have all of these RFPs that I'm getting. And that, of course, depends on your business type if you're getting RFPs. But, you know, I've talked with them for a couple of years just as, you know, friends and associates. And they're wondering, do I know like how I can solve this for them?

[00:16:48] Lo and behold, there's a dozen plus different AI RFP responders out there. I sent them a few that I had heard of. They looked them up. They bought one for I can't remember the exact price, but it was pretty inexpensive compared to what they were paying somebody to answer these RFPs. And it took them and another person on their staff from having about two hours per RFP to 15 minutes.

[00:17:16] So it freed up both of their time and they could use that other employee for higher value tasks. When I was writing the book, a lot of what my co-author and I were writing about, we, of course, wanted to we wanted real world experience. So it wasn't just theoretical. So we were either going out and testing it with different companies or marketers or testing it ourselves. For instance, content, that's one that is kind of been around for a long time for marketers.

[00:17:43] And however you create content, written, audio, video, it's going to be around for a lot longer. So what we were looking into is like, you know, written content. Everyone needs to write content for their website, for their social media pages, what have you. So we ran a test with a specific company that were creating blogs, two blogs a week, and it was taking them about three hours.

[00:18:08] We through kind of looking through their entire process and using a lean methodology, cut that down to six minutes each. Now that is for like the first draft. Of course, there's needs to be the human review afterward, but the time savings were pretty substantial. Yeah, that's amazing. I think those of us that have used AI for content creation have seen similar gains. So I guess that leads to another question. You mentioned like finding a tool for RFP.

[00:18:36] So I began my AI journey because I blog a lot about marketing technology and I used to run a conference called the Social Tools Summit. And I've talked about it here on this podcast. I started with like all these different tools. I was a big Jasper user before ChatGPT was announced. So already, you know, playing with a lot of different tools. And even when ChatGPT was announced, I was still working with all these tools. And then I realized that, you know, I can do a lot of this in ChatGPT, right?

[00:19:02] Now there are things like Opus Clip, which I've talked about here before, Opus Pro, where cutting down videos, video editing is something that ChatGPT can't do yet. But, you know, when you talk about like RFPs or other textual based tools, I'm finding that, you know, it may not be perfect, but these tools have just fine-tuned recipes that allow me to more easily do this. But I feel like doing it in ChatGPT, I have more control.

[00:19:25] And I'd be curious to hear, since you wrote the book and since you mentioned that use case scenario, what's your take on, you know, putting everything in the ChatGPT and really fine-tuning the model and let it learn as much as it can about you versus using a third-party tool for a specific task, which it should be fine-tuned for? I just don't know how much of that machine learning, personalization. I've used some tools like that before, like to create social media captions, and I don't feel like it's getting better like when I use it with the ChatGPT.

[00:19:53] So I'd be curious to hear your opinion on that before we go to my other question. That is a very excellent question. I dove deep on this in a specific chapter of the book, but Jasper and any content model or tool that is using other models like ChatGPT, they're kind of wrappers in a way. And that is, I do not mean that in a bad way, but for the most part, they're using the models, right, of Anthropic, of OpenAI and all the other big models out there.

[00:20:23] So theoretically, not even theoretically, right, you could train, you could prompt ChatGPT to do the same thing. I think what it really comes down to is how comfortable you are having conversations with and directing these AI tools. And I'll just use ChatGPT as a blanket, right, because there's a lot of AI chatbots out there. But for ChatGPT, you can just start with a blank page, a blank chat screen, and then just start talking to it, and it can start learning and learning.

[00:20:52] But you need to have that conversation, so it takes a bit of time. A tool like Jasper, you also need to set it up. So the time savings are about the same there. I think the difference is that Jasper is a little bit more guided, the Jaspers of the world, where ChatGPT, people kind of see it and they think, like, ah, it's like the blank, you know, staring at a blank page as an author. You know, you've written a book too. It's the scariest thing whenever you're starting a new chapter or something. It's like, okay, I have my outline, but where do I start? So I think it just comes down to comfortability.

[00:21:21] But one thing I do emphasize in the book is that AI literacy, I think, is going to be one of the most important skills of this decade. And what I mean by that is just being able to command, to control, to delegate to these tools, much like a leader would to one of their staff members or employees.

[00:21:39] So I think if you have the capability or at least the time to learn, using a foundational model like ChatGPT to start and to have it learn from you and then to start crafting your content is probably the best way to go. Now, when we get into other use cases that, you know, maybe ChatGPT can't handle, then you might need another tool that goes outside the bounds of what they're capable or good at. Yeah, thank you for that advice.

[00:22:08] And I couldn't agree more. And I realize, looking back, that the Jaspers provide, I mean, they provide recipes, right? They provide templates, and it makes it very, very easy for you to harness that power of AI if you're still new and you don't know how to maneuver around or get the result. I mean, even today, there are times using the ChatGPT, especially the new visual model of image creation, where it's just not getting what I need it to create, no matter how I alter the problem. So maybe at that point, I should go to one of these AI image-specific tools.

[00:22:37] And I think that's a great example, even for those that are very experienced with the technology. But the other question I wanted to ask you is you mentioned the blog posts. And I should actually create my own podcast episode about how I use AI and blogging. And it's a very, very similar approach in that it really helps create the outline, the SEO analysis, the ideation, obviously. And you can use it to flesh out parts of your blog to where it can write a first draft, as you talked about.

[00:23:01] I guess then the balance becomes, and John, I don't know how deep you are in the SEO world with Google Helpful Content Update. And you need to talk about your personal experience. And this is something that AI cannot do, right? It can sort of allude to things that you've fed it. But there has to be the human injected into it. So as we were prepping, you were saying that AI should assist and not replace. And it really comes up to this topic of how to use AI without losing your brand's humanness.

[00:23:28] And I think once you get to a certain level of doing everything that we've talked about until now, this becomes the next challenge of actually, wait, wait, wait. We need to sort of pare this down. And we need some human interjection. And we need to make sure this represents our brand. So what is, I don't know if there's like a secret formula, and I guess it's going to vary company to company, you know, founder to founder. But what's the advice you give on finding that balance between the AI assist, you know, the human element and the AI element?

[00:23:55] Another really good question and a very hot topic that has been perennial, right? It's been going on since ChatGPT launched. I'll start with, I guess, talking about the thesis of my entire book. And it's simply that humans who use AI will replace humans who do not. And I really want to emphasize humans who use AI, right? I do not think that AI will replace humans. I think it will be an augmented scenario.

[00:24:25] And with that, right, and using AI, it should be your assistant. It should be your extremely smart savant intern. But that still needs direction because they're a little green. So, you know, I have a whole list of different, like, to-dos and not to-dos.

[00:24:45] But I think the number one thing is that you should not look at AI as necessarily an easy button, though it will save you time and effort and money. Because what I see is people who say, okay, I'm going to create something in six minutes because they hear a stat like I threw out. What they're not realizing is all of the work that went in to get to six minutes, all the tweaking and refining and reviewing and re-reviewing and re-reviewing.

[00:25:14] So it really comes down to knowing how you are commanding the tool, how you're commanding ChatGPT and what that basically means, how you're prompting it. And then reviewing everything. You should never ship anything without a human reach. Like, period, full stop. ChatGPT is getting so strong and so much more powerful than it was a year ago and two years ago. But with the good comes the bad. It's really good at lying.

[00:25:41] Like, I have to fact check a lot of what it's saying. Like, if I'm learning something new from ChatGPT, I often fact check it against other resources because it's good. It's called hallucination. But really, in art and human terms, it's lying, right? So, yeah, I would say for, you know, without using that, that the humanness, without using losing your brand, you need to make sure that you're putting in the effort to create a process for creating content.

[00:26:08] Some quick wins or some quick tips for that is I have like what I call a voice bank. And these are my favorite emails, landing pages, social media posts, either for myself or other people in my network that I use and feed to AI as a style guide. I also make sure to review everything for personal hooks. I typically type those myself because I feel like, I don't know, it just feels a little bit better and I feel like it can do it a little bit more human.

[00:26:37] So have a voice bank of things you can feed it. Maybe don't be afraid to type a thing or two yourself because it's not going to get everything right. And then I always read everything aloud. It feels weird to say it, like aloud to yourself sometimes. But I find when I'm reading it aloud, oh, like that actually sounds a little too robotic or a little too strange or this or that, right? So I think those three things are really good starting tips for keeping your content or any AI output human.

[00:27:06] Yeah, that's really excellent advice. Listen, I was going to echo the reading aloud part, especially if you're going to write a blog post. Actually read what the AI wrote, right? It's like, wait, it'll make up stuff about me too as well, right? It's like, well, I didn't do that, but that's not my client. So yeah, you might even get sued someday if you're not careful with how you use AI. I'm curious though, John, you probably listen to a lot of other podcasts where there's guests that talk about AI as I do. And you mentioned the, I guess we could call it training data.

[00:27:34] Like you hear about people that, you know, I've written emails for, I'm a copywriter, written emails for 10 years. These are my top 1000 performing posts. And I just feed it to AI. And then when I need something like, boom, it's 99% usable. Do you think with enough training data and with enough back and forth with the chat GPT, do you think we can get to a point where that six minute blog post output is going to be 99% ready versus 25%?

[00:28:01] I assume the hallucination issue is always going to be there, although it might get better. But what's your take on that? Because as marketers, we hear that. It's like, that's the Holy Grail. That's where we want to get to. But in reality, you know, what's your gut feel about that? A couple things, but I think to keep it concise here. Yes, we will get there. Though we have to realize when we get there, what happens?

[00:28:26] We're already seeing with SEO, the likes of Google with EATT and other search engines where you need to have, you've always needed to have valuable content that is providing something to the reader, right? And whenever you're creating something from an AI tool like chat GPT, the inputs are really important. And what I mean is not just the prompt, but data that you're feeding it. Like you said, a thousand of your posts that you've done or other things, your voice bank, as I called it.

[00:28:55] That is really important because if you leave it to its own devices, it's just going to keep regurgitating from its very, very large database. But it's going to be some variation of what someone else has already written. So it won't truly be original, even though it uses different words. So because of that, if we take that a step further, if everyone's just kind of regurgitating the same content without original data that they're feeding into it, then you're not really providing any value to the end user who might click through to your blog.

[00:29:25] Which means you're not being differentiated from anyone else out there, which means you're probably not going to rank high in whatever algorithm is ranking your post, whether it's Google or perplexity or some social media algorithm. So I think it just comes down to, yes, we will get to a point where all of this is just faster and faster. And it gets from 50% ready to 80% to 99% ready.

[00:29:51] But it's good data in, good data out, bad data in. You're probably not going to stand out from the crowd, which for us marketers is one of the most important things. Yeah. Would you say, John, as part of that data, what I've found, and I haven't seen anyone talk about it, but I'm starting to upload presentations that I'm working on, proposals, as you said. And really getting it to understand my business and my thoughts and what I do for a living.

[00:30:18] And I find that with every iteration, what it feeds back to me gets better and better, right? So there's that, hey, if we already have a database of these analytics that show, hey, these are top performing blog posts or social media posts, that's training data. But would you agree that just using it on a daily basis, injecting it with your own thoughts, is also going to help train the model to give you better results that are unique to you as well? It will. It will. And, you know, ChatGPT is the biggest tool out there.

[00:30:48] And you could keep doing that and keep uploading it. And it's going to learn from all of your conversation history. I would recommend if you have an extra 30 seconds every time you upload something to ChatGPT, put it into a file folder on your computer or Google Drive folder. Because ChatGPT, it's a private company and it's an extremely strong tool.

[00:31:09] But as you talked about earlier, Neil, like there are some functions that other tools can do or do better than ChatGPT. So I guess what I'm trying to say is you don't necessarily want to be locked into ChatGPT in two or three or five years. If another extraordinary tool kind of takes over, you want to be able to take all that learning and data that's already prepackaged and just throw it into that new tool.

[00:31:35] Or if you, let's say we have, you know, founders or entrepreneurs on this podcast that they blow up, they get some investing. And before you know it, they have this, you know, big company and they need to build a tool because of data, privacy, whatever. And they need to build an AI model for themselves. Well, if you have some sort of data, like whether it's your personal voice bank or other information that you can feed into it, that's going to be a really important repository to have.

[00:32:01] Yeah, I wonder if someday there's going to be a law that will allow us to export our data from the ChatGPTs to be able to do just that. But obviously, I don't think ChatGPT has an export your personal library function. So that's really, really great advice and something that a lot of us may not be thinking about, but thinking long term. Absolutely. This becomes this unique IP part of our brand, part of our company. So really awesome advice. John, on a final note, SmartBug Media.

[00:32:26] So I just talked to an agency owner yesterday who were basically saying, you know, a lot of our clients are taking our advice and they're using AI more and we're getting less business. So we're going to evolve into less of an agency and more of a AI enabler consultancy. And they're finding success there. So I'm curious, obviously, you co-wrote a book on generative AI marketing and you're an evangelist and a subject matter expert, but you're also, you know, SmartBug Media.

[00:32:54] So what does SmartBug Media do in terms of AI and have you found like clients, you're enabling them to do more. So you've had to ship your agency as well. Yeah, I think, like you said, every agency, the ground is shifting under us. So we have to change. So traditionally, we've been, you know, a marketing and sales enablement company where we help businesses build pipeline value and ultimately generate more revenue. And that's still our main mission, right?

[00:33:23] It's providing that value, that business value at the bottom line of it all. And we're definitely shifting into more of a mindset of how can we be AI enablers through training, through building AI tools, through supporting, through our own use of AI, our clients. So it's really an AI augmented strategy from we're helping clients execute their marketing sales and CS strategies with AI, right?

[00:33:51] And it's full, you know, transparency, everybody knows what's happening. And we're also building tools for companies as well. You know, their own kind of AI fine-tuned models or platforms based off of what they need AI to do, right? Like their own chatbots based off of company data or other industry data. So kind of that, those two ends of the spectrum and everything in between. Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:34:18] I think there's actually a huge need for that because if they contacted you at the beginning to help augment their pipeline, you know, grow sales, and now they want to use AI to help do that as well, you understand how it all works. And you understand how AI works. And I'm sure there's automation and other things and your technology background. I see that offering, you know, really, really strategic value to companies.

[00:34:41] And I think that a lot of companies are going to be going to agencies trying to figure out how to enable AI at a local level using custom technology or, you know, integration that you can provide. So it's a really smart move. I think a lot of companies need it. If you need it, John, how can my listeners reach out to you? Where should I send them? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. It's just LinkedIn slash John J. Suarez. You could email me at jsuarez at smartbugmedia.com.

[00:35:10] And my book, The Marketer's Manual on Generative AI is on Amazon as well. So through really any of those channels, be happy to have a conversation or if you just want to talk shop about AI or marketing, that's really what I get the most joy out of every day. Like this podcast with you, Neil. So happy to do that as well. I appreciate you, John. You know, there's a lot of people that talk about AI, but they're not always approachable. And I think you've come across as being both extremely knowledgeable and extremely approachable.

[00:35:40] So appreciate your lending your time to help us all better understand this, help us all become more AI literate. And yeah, I just thank you for your time. And like I said, if you're in need of what we talked about today and maybe creating some more in-house technology, in-house tools to be able to support your AI usage and optimize things from a sales marketing perspective, definitely reach out to John. And John, thank you very much. Do you have another book in the pipeline or are you good to go for now? Yeah. Yeah, we do.

[00:36:07] I mean, you've written a book, so you might understand this gripping need. As soon as you publish, it's like, okay, what's the next thing? So my co-author and I are working on something else. And of course, AI is evolving so fast. We published our book four months ago and we wrote it to be evergreen, but there's just so much more we want to talk about. So, yep, a new one is in the works. Awesome. Well, we'll have to have you back again when you have the new one out.

[00:36:32] We're all, you know, you can't talk about digital marketing today without talking about AI. Obviously, AI does not relate to everything that we do, but if we look at what's happening, what's evolving, what are the news, what are new innovative things that we can do, AI obviously becomes, you know, important part of the conversation. So looking forward to seeing what you come up with. And yeah, thanks again. Thanks a lot, Neil. All right. Isn't that just a refreshing look at AI? You know, I have a number of episodes about AI in this podcast.

[00:37:02] Some are more beginner entry level and some are more advanced. And I know that you are all at different levels. So I'm trying to really serve you all in the best way I can. If there's a topic, it's like, Neil, why haven't you talked about this? Or Neil, why do you keep talking about that? You've already covered it. I would love to hear your feedback. Tag me on the socials. Send me an email, neil at neilshafer.com. Or why not write a review on your favorite podcast listening app?

[00:37:30] It will also help expose this podcast to more people. Well, we are getting into the dog days of summer. I am looking forward to do some traveling. I hope to record episodes in advance so you won't even know when I'm on the road. But make sure you follow me on Instagram. That is where I share my travel pics. Just a hint, I'm going to be going to a country that I have never been to before. And I've traveled to a heck of a lot of countries. So I think you'll want to check it out on Instagram. It is at neilshafer, N-E-A-L-S-C-H-A-F-F-E-R.

[00:38:00] Until next week, continue enjoying your summer. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links? Go to podcast.neilshafer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilshafer.com to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business.

[00:38:30] While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.