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What does it take to adopt AI in my business? What does it mean to prepare my business to leverage AI? The answer may surprise YOU!!

Hey, welcome everybody. This is Grant, welcome to another episode of ClickAI radio. As you know, my previous podcasts had an opportunity to have my son Steve Larsen join. That was a real treat; I have another interview coming up with another business entrepreneur, I look forward to having them involved as well. Okay, so after talking with Steve, I was thinking through what what are some of the things that each organization needs to do to prepare your business to take on AI. And as you know, typically, as a small to medium business owner, you don't have a lot of time. And so what you need is to have the benefits and the luxury of AI. And at the little or the least amount of effort on your part, right. So as I started thinking through how have I seen the supplied, how have I applied it, what have been some of the best practices, and so I ended up coming away with seven items or seven steps to go through to prepare our organizations.

Now, before I go through that, not long ago, there was this research article from Forbes that was talking about preparing your business for the artificial intelligence revolution. So techie right? Anyways, kind of an interesting piece talked about some of the key steps. And I'll touch on some of these because I've seen some similar things from my own experience. And the funny thing about it is, the term AI is such a broad term that answering this question actually translates into, into quite a different answer based on the kind of AI you're applying. So for example, let's say that you're going to apply a chat bot, if you don't know what that is. Sometimes if you get onto a large company, website, and you're interacting with them in your typing something in one of those chat windows, those can many times be driven by chatbot, artificial intelligence, right, where they're looking at the text that you're sharing, and they've got some scripted and guided AI conversational interactions, right? There's that kind of AI, then certainly there's AI as it relates to more machine learning. where it might be doing image analysis or looking for patterns in sales transactions or things like that, right? So the when I say, hey, what are some steps we can go through to prepare ourselves for AI? I'm talking more general, right? I'm not gonna narrow in on any one specific thing, because there are some commonalities that I found across the organizations, and across the kinds of AI that we need to we need to go through so let me talk through these. But just briefly, I wanted to sort of set the stage here.

Why AI? Right. So why, here's this is an interesting piece that came out of a report from Price Waterhouse. When was this year or two ago. They were looking at what is the economic impact of AI, at least as they predict this over the next say, 10 years. And what they indicated was the global economic impact of AI up until through the year 2030. So what about 10 years from now is $15.7 trillion? That's huge. Now, that's not just a US number. That's not just a European number or China number. That's a global number now turns out based on their report, that about 3.7 trillion of that is US GDP impact, whereas Northern Europe has about 1.8 trillion. The other big, big one is 7 trillion from China. So it turns out AI is even going to leverage China's economy more at least that's that's what Pricewaterhouse is predicting, regardless of that $15.7 trillion impact to GDP across the planet. That's a pretty big number.

So the point is, we got to think about what does it mean to my business and what are some ways in which I can leverage this so that I don't get behind on the wrong stuff. of the digital divide, right? We know what that is the digital divide means that I'm at a point where I'm not leveraging technology to help my business compete. And that will become more and more important as the years roll forward. And now as AI is working to become more pervasive, right, it's working to become more as part of the fabric of the way we do things. In fact, I was talking, talking with one of my kids there the other day, and they said, Hey, have you ever you ever done anything with AI? And she goes, Well, in fact, some of you may know her name's Marie. I said, Marie, have you ever done anything with AI? And she's like, No, I don't think so. And I said, Hey, open up your open up your iPhone, and go to the Photos app. And you see your photos in there. Yeah. Enter the search word clouds. And pretty soon she types in the word clouds and back comes a collection of pictures in her iPhone with clouds. That's machine learning. That's AI.

So Apple's already been putting it into the products, right? It's starting to become a natural part of the way in which we interact with things. And sometimes we don't even know it. Now, it's important though with us as business owners to know it, right? We've got to know how can we leverage it so that we can be and, you know, maintain competitiveness? So there's a few things one is the so here's seven, seven steps, seven things to think about, number one, get familiar with the different kinds of AI. So when you're preparing your business for AI, it's actually critical to understand what are some of the different categories of it, how might I use it? Is it around image processing for my business? Am I going to use it for analytics as it relates to my sales predictions? Maybe I need to use it for understanding my you know, my, my leads and the quality of my leads, whatever it is, before you get too far into that understand the different potential Ai solutions that are out there. Okay, so that's step number one, just get familiar with the playing field. Step number two of seven, consider your business questions. So I started to articulate some of those think about what problem your business is facing. And think about a potential AI approach that might help you with it. Now turns out that the kinds of questions that you ask will actually impact the answer in terms of the way AI is applied. I'll give you an example. So if you want to understand, Hey, is this particular sales sale strategy, right? What do I think the potential revenue opportunity is? When the answer is more of a number, then that's one style of questioning and one style of AI. Whereas if I say something like, what kind of behaviors influence refunds if I'm going to get higher refunds or lower refunds, right, that's my Have a yes no kinda kind of question. And so that you don't have to really worry about that too much whoever you're working with though, when you are applying the AI, they'll they'll look at that closely. So that's step two, consider your business questions. What are they number three, step three. So determine then what kind of AI you think you're gonna maybe need. Right? Now, you don't have to become an expert at it. But you might be able to say, Well, I know for sure we're not going to be doing any AI on the iPhone, for example, right?

So you're able to break down and choose or, or D select, if you will, areas that aren't interesting. Number four, all right. Now this is critical part because, as it turns out, this is typically done impacting your whole team. See, when you apply AI, the fourth step is to get others involved. And so you want to understand from the perspective of your team, what will happen to your processing What will happen to them, if you actually go apply some AI? Will you likely have to change some of your business processes or change some of the ways in which you're doing business. And a lot of cases, what I see is that AI will point out not only the good things that you should go do more of with high probability of success, but we'll also point out, here's some behaviors, you should stop right that it either means that you're not going to get the lead, or it means that high probability that you know, you're going to get more refunds from this or you're not going to close as much in terms of business. Now, when you do step four, you need to understand the impact to the rest of the organization. Now, you may be a one person, entrepreneurial or small business owner team, you might have five people. In any event, you need to understand what's the impact to everyone's processes. That's number four. Number five, is now that you've taken a look at what kind of AI I might use. What am I doing business problems, what might be some of the processes and the impact to my team? Now you're going to prioritize them.

That's Step five, you got to prioritize, he can't go do all of it. It's just too overwhelming. So not all AI answers, whether it's patterns or predictions are weighted equally. That's one way to think about prioritization. But another is the impact to your business processes. Sometimes you might look at an AI prediction and say, Well, I realize it's telling me I could probably get a 20% growth here. But the changes to some of our internal systems or processes or whatever my mean, might be more than what we're willing to take on at this point. So you actually want to go pick whatever is the right subset of the AI prediction, you should go after, don't go try to do all of it. It'll pull your hair out. All right, here's number six step, step number six, actually, step number two Six I find is where most people tend to start, right? They tend to start thinking about their data, right? So step six is review your business data. But you notice that, in reality, what I found is you got to understand the potential of the AI capabilities, and then the business problem you're trying to solve, and then the impact to your business. And now let's go look at the data right, let's go examine what areas of the data we might have available or may not have available to help us answer those questions. So we need to understand what the data looks like at that point. So that's step six, take a look at it. And your data will most likely come from multiple places or systems. You might be getting your ads out on Facebook, you want to understand that information. You know, certainly you might be using something like a Click Funnels or something like that for for tracking your sales or what have you. Or, or if you're doing high ticket coaching. You might be using something like tribe or whatever it is. The point is you want to pull off Those together to tell a story of the journey of your customer from when you first reach out to them through the ads all the way through to you capturing them, and then even into the high value part of your ladder.
Okay, so that's understanding the business data. And then last but certainly not least, it's as you get the AI predictions. And as you get the information, certainly, you need to be preparing your business, to revise to pivot to adjust. So even before you ever get it, got to get people whether it's your own mindset or others into the line of thinking that you're going to be taking a consistent regular pulse of evaluating what are the things that the AI can see that we're not seeing. And then be open to now let me make some adjustments, make some adjustments to the business so that we can leverage the insights from that, but you have to have a mindset of being willing to make those adjustments. So just setting Business up, you know, it's funny, I was talking with someone the other day and we were talking about those companies that weren't willing to make change. And where are they today? Right. And we all know the stories of Blockbuster Video, right and, and other such companies that have sort of disappeared right from the horizon because when change was presented, it was fought against and justified against rather than embraced and making adjustments to your business model, or the way you do business. So AI helps you to create an evergreen business, one that can continue to pivot and revise and readjust so that you can be competitive as the technology and the world around us changes. Alright, so those are the seven steps. So to back up, I started by talking about how Price Waterhouse says hey, this is a $15.7 trillion Game Changer right the AI over the next 10 years is going to impact the global domestic product. numbers across the world by 15 over 15 trillion. That's a lot. So what part of that will be yours? What part of it? Will you actually be realizing and retrieving the revenue because you're taking advantage of AI for your business. Alright, so those are the seven steps through that. Thank you for joining and until next time star working on your seven steps.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIRadio.now.

So you got your business running, and COVID-19 is hitting you hard. How can you work smarter, using the assets already at your fingertips?
Steve J Larsen joins Grant to discuss how to Evergreen your business using artificial intelligence!!

Grant Larsen
Alright everybody welcome. This is Grant Larsen on click AI radio. Welcome to another episode. I'm very excited today because I've got this person in my life and he came into my life over 30 years ago, who would this be? Who would be in my life over 30 years ago? Well, I'm happy to announce it's my son Steven. Well, Mom and mom and dad we call you Steven. Right? I think your your show name is Steve Jay Larson. Right? Tchaikovsky, Steve or psychology Steven.

Steve Larsen
Either is fine. You brought me into this world!

Grant Larsen
I might slip back into Stephen node now and then Okay. All right. Okay, so Steve, or Steven has been really successful in business. He's done a fantastic job starting up businesses and applying technology. And as I started to think about the work that I'm doing in AI and what it means to businesses, I thought I can go grab Steven and get his thoughts and his stories now. He's focused on solving a real specific problem for businesses. And so before we get into that, and how we talk how the problem is Solving is actually addressed and and is actually benefited by using AI before we get there. I want to back up and give Steven a chance to introduce himself and talk about your origin story. So why don't we back up? I don't know let's say Should we go back to when we brought you home from the hospital? I mean, how far back!

Steve Larsen
Now I as far as professionally speaking goes, like the way this all started for me was I mean, you know, I was I feel like I'm saying this now to listeners about you, because in high school, I was selling tons of stuff. I sold stuff all over the place. We grabbed golf balls from the golf course clean up selling right back to the golfers and I mean, sold laser pointer pens had to do a bunch of community service as a punishment for that in. It's just lots of lots of entrepreneurial drives that I didn't realize I was doing or had in college. Really, when it first started, I would say, actually started and had a hard time feed my family for a bit and asked you for cash. I remember that. And I said, you know, as getting a student loan, which good or bad as well, it's another conversation how easy it is to get student loans, but money was on the way. And I said, Hey, could you float us some cash? And you said, "Son, no. If I give you this money now, you will not exhaust the resources he didn't know you had.""

Grant Larsen
I remember saying that. That was a painful discussion.

Steve Larsen
It was a little painful for me. Yeah, yeah. It was a moment of I saw immediately what we were what you were doing. And I was like, okay, and it's basically, you know, it's been shown that we don't do anything without a new environment, not necessarily new willpower. And so it put me in a unique spot where my back was against the wall in a way I would not have put it on my own. And you basically said, figured out kid, you know, which is great, but it's just started my entrepreneurial, like, puzzle. And I did everything from real estate to diamonds to ebooks to other physical products to flipping stuff to go. And I mean, it was literally about a year ago riebeck went back and counted again, it's about 34 tries over five years.

Grant Larsen
I saw that on one of your podcasts as amazing.

Steve Larsen
It's crazy when recounted all of them, and the names of each one of them when they happen when they hurt. Like why that, thankfully, Mona like they didn't work like I'm so grateful to try to didn't work or I'd be doing it. Yeah, like yeah, turn around and think the journey you know, so. So I am professionally mostly known for my work at clickfunnels when I got hired to work there as a lead funnel builder over there and and did that for a few years. And then I was like, I still got this itch. Russell, you know, Russell Brunson is like I gotta go man, and it...

Grant Larsen
...must have been a strange conversation right?

Steve Larsen
But he was extremely supportive. Have and which I think was rare and amazing of him and still good friends and still chat almost daily and still actually still do work for him. Just most people don't know. It's a Yeah, my involvement at the one phone away challenge has been fun, but basically what it showed me, I was already building successful sales funnels before I worked for him for a lot of other companies. But he certainly helped sharpen the saw, you know, and by all the things I was observing and things that the community was struggling with, and I decided to make an active stance and helping people make attractive offers and launch them into specifically internet. And so when I left Yeah, the first million took a little while, but came and then the next one faster next month, faster, faster. And it has been fascinating to see how it's how it's blown up since then. So that's, that's the professional nutshell. Yeah,

Grant Larsen
Yeah, that's an awesome story. What a journey now that journeys led you into some things that I think you've identified to me a couple times that maybe the market doesn't talk too much about now that that's campaigns and can we talk about what those are? And I think there's different kinds of campaigns you've identified.

Steve Larsen
Yeah, absolutely. So every time I say campaign well actually I was actually for a while in high school my dream was to be a high school history teacher and even into college most people don't know that I was gonna I was like high school history teacher that's why American history specifically and so I like history is when I saw their paycheck i i unmarried that dream. Like, oh, I can do history otherwise, but I love studying marketing history. And you go back and you start looking to see you know, the internet became publicly available. 1991 you look previously before that, and all these marketers these rich dead marketers, they had to go do things that we never have to go do because the internet's here so I got really obsessed about year and a half two years ago have these these models that that guys without tech had to Go through in order to still globally or nationally launched a physical product. That's, that's amazing. And so when I started seeing was these patterns, and I started recognizing that in the very successful product launches without the internet, what they were doing was what I would call a campaign, although that works kind of getting poisons. Now, I'd say, in a campaign I define it as being just a series of mini events that lead to a big one. So like guys, like PT Barnum, you know, like, yeah, show greatest showmen. Mm hmm. He had this museum his entire career, he would go every time we had a new product, or thing to show in his museum. He create these stories and these many events and he'd go to another city and create pressure and buzz and roll that pressure buzz into another city and build it. It's common, here comes the big unveiling of the new thing in my museum. And that rolls into the next thing. Now let's get the press involved. Boom, right? And that's like, but we don't do that. Now. People are like, I'm gonna launch my products and they send one email On the dates available, no one's heard about it since then. And they're like the internet's of scram. And you're like, Okay, campaigns. That's a reality like.

Grant Larsen
You don't know, the truth, right?

Steve Larsen
Yeah. So like campaigns today, like, well, I'm running Facebook campaigns. That's not a campaign. It can be part of one. But it's not a campaign in and of itself. And so I go in and I help basically, companies launch their products online to creating these small pressure events that roll into a bigger, they're rolling to a bigger, all quoting, inciting a future release date, similar to how Hollywood releases a product or movie, you know, with this increasing level of pressure towards the release date. So that's, that's what I say a campaign is.

Grant Larsen
Okay. All right. And through this, as you focused on this, I think you've identified these different kinds of campaigns, right? Yeah. So you talked about there's one in particular that caught my fancy because I think it lines up with some of the things that I've been doing in the AI space and that's I think we call an evergreen campaign. Is that Right.

Steve Larsen
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in my pursuit of looking to see what these campaigns were, and I'm trying to bring back kind of this dying art, you know, think about the internet with such free distribution, but we'll treat it terribly because no one knows how to leverage it anymore. Like it's called an E blast, weakest form of campaign ever just blast it out there, available. Like I didn't know it was even coming. Anyway, but there's these certain campaign styles that I've noticed are really good for getting the rocket into space. But there's other kinds that are good for keeping it in orbit. And more often than not, I've been noticing that when someone launches something on the internet, they will turn around and though they'll build the rocket, it's an amazing offer a great funnel, it's a good sales, it's good enough to do really well it actually could go into space, but they don't put enough fuel in the thing.

So then they go back like the Rockets terrible. It's like you put a quarter tank gas in something that needs a lot more to get out into orbit. There's nothing wrong with your funnel 980 percent of time I'd say that I don't really touch my offer after I launch it, that's not usually the issue. It's just that there's not enough no noise, not a buzz, they get it out there. So I have a list of launch campaigns and evergreen campaigns get into orbit and keep it in orbit. That's kind of so with my funnel building process with my internal team. I've incorporated your AI stuff into our evergreen stuff, because I'm terrible. The evergreen Phase I like to launch stuff. If we can use AI to show patterns in what it is that like, that's great, because I anyway, yeah, that's that's kind of what happened.

Grant Larsen
That's, that's what got me thinking about about you is when I saw your powerful ability to take organizations and to help them launch, and I come from a world of Hey, the thing is launched, how do we how do we keep it going, right? The thing in space, right? And that's what led me into the AI world and so on. Here's the question I have now that COVID is hit and impacted all of us. Right and tons of small businesses are being certainly negatively impacted. How do we keep that that thing launched? Right? What impact has that had to the Evergreen campaigns? Do you think it's possible to keep the small companies going in this? I mean, would AI help us something like that?

Steve Larsen
Yeah, absolutely. There's two, there's two moves them, I'm encouraging everyone to go for right out of the gate, first cut costs, I went through all my stuff, I was able to cut 13 grand a month in expenses that I didn't realize we didn't need to be spending, which means I had to sell less to keep just as much I'm just more profitable now. Like, that's the first easy move. The second easy move is to, you know, when you're creating an offer, offer creation and the way we sell is really a function of value. It's like how valuable am I? So we've asked the question then, like, what is value? We know what prices we know what cost is how do you define value? Because value is not right. Money, but can be, but sometimes isn't. And you're like, Whoa, so that was another one of the questions I started diving into few years ago. And what kind of deep with that and found out like value is usefulness. That's it. And it's not usefulness in the eyes of the Creator, it's useless in the eyes of the user. And so so again, first of all cut costs second of all become more useful to the marketplace. And then third, when you are figuring out how to keep those repeat sales going, I mean things like AI is huge, showing all the patterns that are I can't see it's massive, consistent content creation has been a big one for us.

The way our ads have been working, and using AI to show ads, how they're working with Facebook ads, massive just got that report from you on a product will re launch and re evergreen at the end of this week. I mean, it's we're we're doing this everyone who's listening or watching right now. It's a It's been, it's been powerful. I think when it comes to evergreening stuff, though, consistent content creation and consistent ways to find new veins of gold. And having a look at that, I think it's gonna be one of the easiest things moving forward. We I mean, you come from such a huge, big, big e entrepreneur world, you know, and I come from very much the small E, small entrepreneurs are like, look at all the resources that these big e companies have. And it's, it's something's been on my mind for years now. I'm like, I make decisions based on how someone's belief patterns are, how they are their stories, you know, what it is that they've been telling themselves, and I'm trying to enter the conversation in their mind at a certain place, these big e entrepreneurs that you have access, they're just looking at data towers. Like, most of the time, they're just looking at data towers and huge spreadsheets, and they're letting data show which both is right but I don't have access to so I feel like I remember when you and I first started talking about goats like, Dad, if I could tell Turn around and get these big, massive data towers and have like, see the pattern, I could have the best of both skill sets. Yeah. And I feel like that's the marriage that's happening.

Grant Larsen
So that conversation was very pivotal in my mind. Because as you know, I've been working with large companies who have access to that. And you think about a guy like Jeff Bezos right? And you think, what secrets is he getting and leveraging out of his data? Right? He's been doing an incredible job with it, right? And we all know the other big companies that do that, certainly apple and Facebook and so forth. But that conversation made me start thinking, Hey, I, I want to democratize AI. I want to I want to take AI. So it's no longer just in the grasp of these big data science teams in these big organizations. And I want to put this into the small and medium business world so that we can compete. I mean, I think that's a fabric of capitalism, right? It's a fat capitalist pig, right? Yes. So I thought, Wait, this Is this is the right time and the right timing to do something like that? So, quick question I have for you. And actually what came out of that conversation was the way the AI works is you and I know it's evergreen is that when you go apply it, and I know you're, you're applying it right now in your organization. So, so when you apply it, what happens is, is you're gonna change your history, right? Your something will change, because you're going to change your behavior, right? And then then, in a few months, guess what, you should take another look at the AI again, because you've changed your data footprint right in the sand basically, right, got a turn, look back and say, Okay, so we changed ourselves. What does the AI tell us? Now? That's another key aspect of evergreening the business. Does that make sense?

Steve Larsen
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's like, I mean, that's what you told me too. It's like data is all historical, because it happened in the past. And then you have to keep taking new stamps of the data because it changes the predictions in the past. And what's gonna happen and, and so what we've been doing. So when I was leaving clickfunnels, one of the roles, the final role that Russell's asking me to do was help bobe an internal funnel agency. When I got there, it was literally just he and I, there was an a copywriter a designer, we were doing everything. And then as we brought in a funnel guy, you know, another assistant guy or another copywriter, we had to finally actually build a process beyond Hey, what are you on? Alright, let's do this. Right, we started building a system and, and I started documenting it and making these processes and systems for what it took to get a successful funnel out the door. So that I wasn't just leaving him and he had to just hold this thing now. Yeah, well, what that turned into and started developing into and what's now turn into two and a half years later, is this 12 step process that designs launches in evergreens lucrative funnels. Well, just a little while ago, I was Like, why aren't we in the launch phase in the, in the funnel building phase, we need to be setting up data capture systems that I can then send to click AI. So that we're so that it's there. It's there, when we get to step 12, which is evergreening. And then I can send it to click, and then you go, Hey, here's all the patterns and insights your naked eye can't see. And then we go back, and we make the tweaks and the changes. And that that's, that's awesome. Because I evergreen phase, and now I get computers looking at it.

Grant Larsen
And you know, what's interesting is a lot of companies hate the Evergreen phase. And so that's why looking for ways to automate it with things like AI, take some of the monotony out of it, right? Because otherwise you lose the creative edge because you end up just going into maintenance mode. where's the fun in that right as humans we love to create. And so I see the AI piece as a way to help us still explore the creative avenues in terms of evergreening our businesses. Yeah, so I have a question for you. What in your mind are the biggest hurdles to small to medium companies leveraging AI to help them? What do you think would be the things that would get in the way of that?

Steve Larsen
Yeah, you know, especially when it comes to the small entrepreneur, they're thinking sale, sale, sale sale sale sale, because they gotta eat what they kill, you know, and, and since most of them are so new, they don't really have any evergreen selling systems. And so they're, I mean, I've been at phase two for a while. It's like you're selling and launching and selling and launching. We recently went back and I started making a list of all of the projects that we had once launched, that were very successful that we're not doing a thing with that aren't selling because I'm not doing that last phase. It was like 15 projects, and I was like, that is literally millions of automated dollars. I'll have to do nothing for just sitting there. I was so mad. I was so I was livid. I was like Darn you and your distaste for evergreen. So that's what I went back and started adding In those things, to our funnel process to tie into click AI, and I think the danger and the challenge for small entrepreneurs will be not understanding how simple it is to simply I mean, this is how, for everyone who's listening now, this is as simple as I mean, data capture systems. Yeah, it's a zap to a Google Sheet. There's nothing else download it and then like, send to ClickAI.com.

This grandiose thing, it is behind the scenes on you. It's super smart, very wizardry. But I think that because we hear data science, you know, the spoiling the entrepreneur data science, and, you know, all this stuff is gonna be this massive, like, I gotta go get a Harry Potter wand and like, you know, get up, you know what I mean? But it can be simple.

Grant Larsen
Yeah, you know, it's funny, you mentioned that we're doing some stuff for Blake Nubar the other day, and he goes, he said the same thing is like, "Okay, so, Alright, so what am I going to have to do?"" I said, "Send me your Excel file."" I go, "Yeah, yeah, we, we got the rest."" He said, "Yeah, okay." And then we will tell you what changes to go put in place. He's like, "Okay, well, that's simpler than I thought so." Yeah. Yeah, it's critical. Yeah, it's hard part was just just in the head, right. It sounds scary. Ai right. So you're like, oh, gosh, that this must must be hard. Okay, so, all right. I know we're, we're out of time here. Really appreciate your time.

Steven, I will just mention one other thing. Do you remember the last wrestling match we had when it was you and Kenneth and Jared and me and we are wrestling on the floor in Colorado and I got off the floor and I said, "I'm done wrestling you guys."" I went upstairs and told your Mom, "Okay, I think that's the last time I tried to wrestle those guys. They're kicking the crap out of me."

I know you're super busy. Just really appreciate your time coming here today and representing capitalist pig. A lot of luck the branding. Thanks for doing that. Any final comments?

Steve Larsen
No, it's just it's fun to see ClickAI go. You know, I actually I do get asked frequently to like, okay, looking from where you are in the funnel world and all that stuff, you know, and where do you see it happening and I don't see a way where the marriage of AI and and small e funnel tech can't happen because it's already have I feel like it's something you have to jump on and find a solution for similar to how like, you know, email autoresponders are out and now suddenly few people have heard of these SMTP providers now you can send email on your own now you sending like, do you have Windows yet yet? Was it I feel like that's what AI is gonna be soon. It's like, do you have an AI provider and so, this is like a, you know, the pre bubble, you know can take advantage of.

Grant Larsen
Exactly. Steven, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate that and Everybody, thanks for listening today and until next time, get some AI.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIradio.com now.

How do I go about using Artificial Intelligence in MY BUSINESS??
How many steps does it take to use AI?

Okay, welcome everybody. My name is Grant thanks for joining another episode of click AI radio. All right, so on topic today, I wanted to spend some time discussing What are the things that we do as a small to medium business owner? To prepare our businesses for AI? What are the steps that we go through in order to accomplish that? I remember one of the very first startup company companies as involved with out of college, we had zero control over our data there is we in fact, we didn't even know what data we had. And that was really, really the biggest problem, right? We didn't know what information was available to us, let alone Even if we knew what the information or the data that we did have, we would know how to have extracted any value out of that. So the fact of the matter is, you know, this, I know this is a business owner. Over time we we collect a lot of data from our businesses, right. In fact, over time, it actually starts to look a bit like a mountain, right? So you get this mountain. There you go. That's quite the mountain, right? You get this mountain of data that's collected over time.

And some of that information represents or describes the money that we're receiving some describes money that we're spending, the money's coming in, it's going out. Lots of times, we don't really break that down, especially as a small medium business owner, that's we're so busy just turning the crank, we don't really understand what might all be inside there. Now, the thing that's important to note is that when we have that data, there's actually a lot of secrets and insights that are in the data, right and so deep inside of all of this information that's down here that we've been collecting down inside of there is is some insights that are just looking to be harvested, right, just looking to be pulled out. Now with the things that are going on with COVID and the challenges that are happening to our small to medium businesses throughout the country. It becomes even more incumbent or necessary for us to be Why's with the use of what resources we already have available to us. So this isn't even about going off and finding someone else's stuff. This is looking at what we already have what's available to us that we have rights to it. And then using that to extract some analytics, some insights and predictions even, and some next steps. And that's an important piece that there's those insights tend to be broken into a couple categories. There's one categories that right here on my whiteboard, that's called patterns, right? And that's a very analytics sort of view. It's where the artificial intelligence looks at the data, this mountain of data that you have, and it says, oh, here's some patterns that you may not have been able to see before. And that that becomes important, right that we can't always see it as a human. And so the AI helps us to discover those things. That's the first part. The second part of the mountain over here is what we would call predictions. Okay.

And so with the predictions, it looks at the patterns and it says, what are the what are the probabilities based on different mathematical and other models, that, that something could happen in the future? And so we'd want to be able to understand that view as well. So help us discover looking backwards. What are patterns are, some of them are empirical, and us as humans, we can already we already know what they are. In fact, sometimes when you hit when you look at what the AI produces, you go Yeah, I already knew that. In other times you look at ego. Oh, you're kidding. I didn't didn't realize that there is that connection or correlation that was established over time. And so, so the patterns are critical, because that helps us to even understand how we can adjust our behavior moving forward. But so are the predictions, right? And the predictions come with some level of probability, right, which is While the accuracy level or the probability level of this is 80%, right, or whatever it might be. And so the key is, is to be able to look at both of those, and then ask yourself, therefore hot, right? What am I going to do differently as a business owner with this? Now, we find that the companies that of course, practice this that that are in the habit of leveraging the information, the insights, the patterns and predictions out of their data, they tend to use their resources more effectively.

And especially today, where again, as Ed mentioned, things are even tighter, it's harder to course get access to everything that we need. But it becomes very beneficial for us as an organization to use our resources more efficiently and effectively. And so AI helps us to do that. That's one of the other benefits is it helps us to grow the business And to know, oh, moving forward, let me put more emphasis in this area and less emphasis in another area. And so gives us the opportunity to course grow. Now, sometimes these data insights that comes from AI May we might refer to those as oil. I know you've probably heard the phrase data is the new oil. Where that data comes from. Sometimes it comes from human behavior. Sometimes it comes from systems behaviors. Sometimes it comes from something in the environment outside of our control, wherever it comes from, whatever the source of that is, it translates into some form of information or data on our computers. And therein lies the opportunity to harvest this oil. This oil again, is is a set of these insights, you know, these predictions and these patterns that are available to us. Now when we're thinking about how to I get started with this. What there's one thing when you think about AI, it's looking at it from the perspective of Well, I'm just going to go in and open minded. And that's certainly fine. Because sometimes we don't really know what question to ask. It's also helpful, though, to think about specific questions, because whether it's you that's doing the artificial intelligence preparation, or it's someone else, having an idea of what the kind of questions are that you're looking for that guide some of the predictive direction and behavior, right. In other words, you end up focusing in certain areas saying, Well, if I was trying to predict how many refunds that I might get based on the patterns from the past, right, what does that look like? Obviously, you do some things in the artificial intelligence work to make that happen.

So there's a couple of things on this. You know, there's old business owners and entrepreneurs and more gutters and so forth, right? They do this kind of work. In fact, I've been working with, you know, multiple companies over the not multiple, many companies, multiple doesn't sound as much with many companies over the years that are preparing their data and themselves to take advantage of artificial intelligence. But there's a couple things that I found on this, see if you're going to go do this yourself, right? If you're going to get yourself organized, unique course prepare those business questions like I talked about, that's number one. Number two, gotta get control that data and lots of times organizations will hire artificial intelligence teams, right? The development team, right, that focuses on artificial intelligence, and that's pretty pricey when it comes down to it. And then number three, then you implement that artificial intelligence solution to find your oil, right? What's the oil and then you look at, you know, what came out of it. What does that oil tell you? One of your patterns and predictions and then you look at making adjustments to your business right now. What are the steps to do that? So let's say you're going to go hire your own team that can be really pricey right? It's it can be painful and slow you need data engineers you need a data scientists you need a business analysts generally tell tie it into the business without connecting it to the business. This is all an academic data analysts, you know, activity, don't do that. Right, the real, the real key is to actually tie it to what the business objective and goal is, and then focus all of the energy and efforts that way.

Nevertheless, it's really expensive to hire those people as employees. Right. And so that's, that's one of the challenges. The other is when you do bring on your own team obviously takes some time to build that team up, of course, and so that could be slow as well. So while it takes months to get the team on board, Well, you know, today's business cycle months are critical because Heck, just a few months ago, we were in a very different world right before COVID. Now, here we are a few months later. And wow, wouldn't it be useful if we could have continuous updates of our data and the analytics and the insights from that, and therefore make pivots and adjustments as a business. And so having an ongoing artificial intelligence, service or activity that keeps you moving forward on a recurring basis, that's actually one of the most efficient and effective ways to serve your business moving forward. Now, let's say that, you know, you did have your own team do it, then you're going to do at least these five or six steps, right? I've already mentioned determine your business questions, right. So what are my business questions number one, number two, you got to go in here. So it's number two, go in and clean up your data. And then number three, you need to pick some sort of AI algorithms right? And of course, the the data scientists and stuff such know that I'll throw out a few just to be nerdy. It could be a random forest, right? could be some linear regression, right?

And so forth, the end up looking at the nature of the problem to be solved. And you got to pick the right set of, of AI algorithms. So that's another step who I yeah. The next one is you execute those on that data, not once, but lots of times, hundreds, thousands of times actually running lots of tests. And you're building up these cases, eventually getting to a point where you start to see the patterns in the predictions, you begin to identify, but then that leads to the next step, which is now you've got a lot of these predictions and patterns, what are the most relevant and probable and beneficial to the business? And what can we even go do as a business right? Some of them may be rather esoteric. I can you're like, well, only do this if it's Tuesday in Belgium, well, what good is that? Right? So it takes some augmented intelligence with your artificial intelligence. And that's the way to use AI. It's not just, you know, rely on it blindly, right, but rather to leverage the human cognitive capabilities within as well. And so that leads to the last step, which is, you know, you go, go make your timely adjustments to your business. In the end. That's all a lot of steps.

And generally, the small to medium business owner doesn't have either the skill set or the resources or the time to do that. So one of the things that would strongly encourages you to look for an organization that can help you with that, as a small to medium business owner. And so that's, that would be one of the key takeaways from this. Know your business questions, figure that out, take a quick look, just what do I know about my data, and what's the state of it? But then identify a strong organization that can take all of those complex activities around, you know, identifying and cleaning the data. And of course, getting the right AI, algorithms, so forth, right, all of that grungy stuff that I described. They take care of those things. And what you get back then is something that, of course, helps you to move forward in your in your business. In the next few episodes, I will be bringing on some people, some organizations, which I've done this with, and we'll hear some of their experiences, lessons learned the good, the bad, and the ugly of this. What would be a mistake would be to not do anything. It's even more critical as a small to medium business owner to leverage what we have available to us our resources, the data, the things that are available to us, and figure out how on an ongoing basis, we can continue to prove how we serve our customers. And without leveraging or taking advantage of some of the technology available today, it actually ends up putting us behind the competition. We all know the big companies do this, right? Got the Facebook's and the Googles, and the Netflix's and so forth. They've learned the secret of how do I take advantage and leverage, right the data that's available to me so that it can guide where we go as a business. Well, it's time to do that now as a small to medium business owner. So hey, thanks again for joining and until next time, go get the oil out of your data.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

The small business owner said, "Grant, I am working twice as hard and earning half as much...what can I do???"

Okay, so I have an opportunity to talk with quite a few small to medium as well as large actually business owners last week. I was talking with a small business owner, I think he's got about five people in his company. And he made a statement. We were talking about the current context around COVID, and the impact of small, small and medium businesses. And he said, Hey, basically, I'm working twice as hard and earning half as much in the current in the current current context with COVID. It made me think about all of the things that it takes to become a successful business owner, a successful entrepreneur, especially during COVID. Right? Is there a set of things that are most meaningful? I started looking at different polls, what different research groups have talked about this one I found was on inc.com. They had done this, this research where they had found that, hey, as an entrepreneur, you're going to have to work hard or you're going to have to do more. And in fact, you got a disadvantage against you right? The cards are a bit stacked against because your larger competitor likely has more resources, you know, focusing on the same task as us. So one of the things you got to do is actually put more effort in if you want to succeed as a small medium business owner. So they came up with this list of items. And the first one they said was, Hey, quit talking about plans so much and just focus more on getting things done. And that's true. You see a lot of just talked about laying, let's just go do something rather than actually getting stuff accomplished. The other is stop being busy. And the thing about the buisiness is, yes, I might go do some work, and it looks like I'm accomplishing things. But if I change my focus to outcome based, right, I'm looking at what are the effects or the results of my activity, it's not the business that wins the award, but rather the the outcomes of that. The third thing they mentioned was be available, especially around the customers right be really available. It's certainly available to your teammates and of course to customers as well. The fourth thing they said that was really helpful for being successful as a small medium business owner was one more rep right? That's kind of got a workout sort of mentality, right? you're lifting weights and you just want one more rep but the mental mentally you gotta be strong enough to say, I gotta go through one more effort one more iteration, until I'm really satisfied with the quality and and what it is we're producing. Another was go to sleep with a plan and wake up with a purpose.

I love the way they said that. In particular, what they're saying is try not to go to bed without having some form, have a plan for the next day. That way then when you wake up, you end up having a little more organization and structure to your thoughts as you move forward in the day. I love the saying that says you know, an ounce of mourning is worth a pound of afternoon. And so boy if you can wake up feeling like you have some plan purpose already, then those fresh energies and that high level acuity in the morning can really be beneficial for us as a small medium business owner, create a winning routine was the next thing they pointed out. You know, recently, I was listening to one of those interviews of Jeff Bezos, you know, the CEO of Amazon. And interestingly, he was talking about his morning routine, which is rather slow paced. I think the word he used was putter he likes to putter around. And he takes opportunity for him to just have unstructured time where you can do some free thinking, whatever your routine is, come up with that find that routine. And then and then stick with that. The last thing this particular research pointed out was follow every setback with good with the word good. This one was interesting. It was basically how do you take something that's negative or bad, but try to turn it into a positive statement because there'll be plenty of negative things no doubt. So for example, let's say if I'm talking And if it's time for a workout, how do I translate that into something good? Well, the way they suggest it is Hey, good, I'm work. If I could say it, good, let's work out because I'm tired. I actually think this came from Jocko, who was a Navy SEAL who turned author and podcaster. That's where that tip actually comes from. Sounds like a navy seal, right?

Boy talking about being mentally tough for sure. Alright, so as I continued my search, you know, I was I think in about the conversation I had with that small business owner, where he said he's working twice as hard and getting half as much. I looked into another group, and this is on score.org. They were talking about how hard small business owners have to work right. So the first thing in terms of how do we be successful, come up with a good routine, come up with you know how to change our mental model when something bad happens, go to bed with a plan, you know, be available focus on outcomes and so forth. In this second piece, they had some interesting things around, you just got to be able to work hard and decide to work hard as a small business owner. In fact, in one report, one survey that they'd found out of the New York enterprise report said that business owners ended up working twice as much as regular employees, which is kind of interesting, because lots of times we equate, you know, coming into our own small business as here's our step to freedom, when in fact, sometimes what we're not maybe mentally prepared for is, Hey, I'm going to be working a heck of a lot more. Certainly, that's not news to anyone.

But mentally we have to step up to it and own that when we decide, hey, I'm going to go do my own business, in fact, found that one Gallup poll found that 39% of business owners worked over 60 hours a week. Obviously, as we talked about earlier, it's not just about the hours but the effectiveness of them just being busy isn't necessarily right at the end. have success, of course. But they did talk about how important it is to find work life balance in that 44%. It said of small business owners take 16 vacation days or more each year. And then 26% took 11 to 15 days of vacation each year. Well, that's certainly good to know that even the small business owners are able to do that. That's that's promising news, no doubt. But despite all that, you know, lots of times when you hear about millennials, people will really give them sort of negative connotation right? We'll say, hey, Millennials are slackers, but turns out that almost 90% in a Bentley University study 90% almost is 89% that were millennials said that they regularly check into their work after work hours, right, which and that that's an amazing study. And so it turns out, the good news is millennials you're cut out to be busy. This owners, right you're figuring out a you can take time off. But you also know that you got to come in and put in that extra effort as well. So not to not not to belabor that. But I do think that we can find that balance right between how to work hard and how to have some time off so you can mentally and emotionally refreshed. That's that's a critical, critical juncture, critical capability.

In fact, as I was looking into it, I reviewed this study from this guy by the name of Dr. Michael Gershon. He's the author of a book called The second brain, and he's the chairman of the Department of anatomy and cell biology. That's a big long title at Columbia University. What it was he I thought he proposed a very interesting question. He said, What would happen if everyone in the world got twice as smart, because everything so far that I've been talking about as well got to work hard Obviously, we got to work smart to, certainly we need to improve, you know, our efficiency in our work, etc. But we got to work smarter as well. So one of the things that he, he suggested here, just reading off a few of his items, he said, Look, eat a plant based diet, veggies are really good for you. The other was do focusing exercises, cut out sugar, meditate at least 20 minutes a day, trust your gut when you make a decision. In fact, he goes so far as to say, view your body and your mind as a whole system, which lets make sense. All right. So here is what we've talked about. Like we're going to be successful as small business owners during COVID. And even after but certainly it's more important now than ever. Got to work hard and got to work smart. And as part of that find work life balance. Figure out your winning routine. As Bezos and others point out right? Follow every setback up with hay turned it into a good statement. Go to sleep with a plan. One more rep, you can do it be available, stop being busy and rather focus on outcomes and quit talking about planning so much just go go get go get the results. Well, you know, one of the things that always comes to the top of my mind, given the my, my focus here is in technology as well.

I also think that working smart means to automate the pieces that we can, we want to of course, leverage the assets that are available to us. And some of those assets are our information, right? It's our data. It's what are the secret things that are hiding inside of our data that can course expose that right? So tell us here's the insights of things we can go improve on in our business. The funny thing about the AI stuff is that when you apply it, you have to continue to go back and apply it again and again. In other words, when you go apply AI and it gives you some insights in your business. Then you Go make changes to improve yourself working to be more efficient with the resources and the assets that you have. In a few months later, she should just go do a quick another run on it. See how the world has changed how your world has changed because you've applied it. So it's a combination of multiple things we need to do or we're going to go run our businesses augmenting all that with let's leverage technology the right way. Hey, my name is Grant. Thanks for joining and until next time, live right.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAIRadio.com. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

Hey everybody, this is Grant Larsen. Thank you for joining ClickAI Radio. Okay, so COVID-19 has certainly been on all of our minds and it has radically impacted our businesses. But to talk about that, I want to back up and tell you just quick story. So one day, my kids were building something that they called a moving landmass. Now, it was a platform of wood and nails, and duct tape. And the idea was to ride the platform, this this moving landmass down the street. So it did okay, until the actual framework fell apart. Because the duct tape was not the answer, right?

Although duct tape is the answer to a lot of things. I myself am a duct tape fan, but it didn't have the properties that were needed for this particular purpose. So sometimes in our businesses, we apply duct tape, right? And and sometimes that's just fine. It's the right answer when we just got to hold something together whether it's a quick business process or minor adjustments or changes in some messaging, gotta hold it together so that we can provide value to our customers. Well, coming out of COVID-19 may actually require some duct tape, of course, but in a lot of cases, it's going to require a more serious business re architecting. And looking at that, I'll give an example. Recently I was looking at an article in The Washington Post, the title of it was and you may have seen this, the title of it was the end of small business. I think this came out on July 9, take a look at it. The writer does a good job describing his view, right? He basically says, Look, it's probably over for a lot of small medium businesses, only the large corporations are going to survive this. He makes a couple comments about even when the economy recovers more or less obviously people are going to still need to buy things, but the Coronavirus is going to you know, obviously change mainstream across the country right.

It's gonna accelerate some changes that have been waiting a long time. And so a lot of the mom and pop stores are at risk. This is the viewpoint of course of this writer. He further went on to point out that in the 1980s, one half of retail shopping took place in independent stores. And today, it's less than a quarter. He makes one other key point that I'll just call out here. He says, like, many small businesses and weaker corporations won't have enough capital to outlast the pandemic, and their customers will be claimed by a handful of winners, with the cash and the technological infrastructure necessary to survive and prosper in the new environment. That's the context so we're living in so that's in quote there. That's the context we're living in, right, which is a lot of our small businesses are at risk. No doubt, no surprise to everybody. But it's gonna be Hey, can you hold on to your cash and can you survive the pandemic?

Make it long enough so that you can still have another business day. I've done my share of investing and trading, the real thought there is live to invest or trade another day, right? Well, as a business owner, can we live to invest and trade or do our business another day? So again, take a look at that Washington Post article, interesting viewpoint, flipping the coin. I also looked at another article, this is from Forbes, and they were talking about their viewpoint was, hey, six ways to rebuild your small business after COVID-19. All right, so the Washington Post was just a little bit like a you know, the sky is falling, and in some case, it really has fallen. In other cases, though, like from the Forbes perspective, they're describing, hey, in order to come out of this, right, there's six things that you got to take a look at number one, and this was let's see, this was April 20th 2020 is when they wrote this article. So take a look at that one online. six ways to reopen as a small business number one, here's the six things they pointed out. Number one, assess the financial damage. Number two, take a second look at your business plan. Number three, consider whether you'll need funding to recover. Number four, revamp your budget to account for new spending. Number five, develop a timeline for rebuilding. Number six, create a contingency plan on the next crisis. Right now, I want to talk about a couple of these for just a moment. So on Step three, where talks about Hey, consider the funding that you might need to recover. Clearly, you've heard about the SBA, the Small Business Administration that's been handing out some pretty decent loans recently to small businesses. I know a number of people, number of business owners, small business owners that have taken advantage of that, and I can see some real value in it. I think the interest rates are really low. You see everything from

Like 2.75% to 4%, those are some pretty decent rates. I think I also saw that you don't really start paying it back until like a year after you, you actually take take the loan, so they give you 12 months. And then I think it was a 20 year sort of deal. So it's an awesome stimulus, of course, for the small to medium business. But earlier, when I first started this episode, I talked about duct tape, right? And here's, here's the point I want to make on it if I just apply for an SBA loan, but I continue to spend and execute on the same business model as I had before. COVID-19. The likelihood of my business sustaining the big changes is much smaller. In other words, I probably won't survive. Here's the point. It's kinda like duct tape, right? It's if I if I just take the money, and I don't really change the way I'm going to do business.

I don't change my business architecture, my plan, etc. But I just take and apply it. I'm kind of duct taping the situation, because the world has changed, as pointed out in that Washington Post article, whether or not you agree with everything there. There's some great insights there. The fact of the matter is if we just take that sort of funding, and we just apply it, again, without making any sort of adjustments, we're kind of duct taping it right? And like my kids big moving landmass, it's not going to hold up to the weight of things. So here's a thought, rather gonna suggest that you think about what assets Do you already have, which can give you insights in order to help you make adjustments. So I'm definitely a fan of taking advantage of the SBA loan, but don't just do that on its own. Let's also take a look at what assets you've already as a business owner developed over time. Well, you've captured the information that you have available to you now

As you think about, you know, revamping your budget, which was number four in that Forbes list, gonna encourage you to think about a few things here. First of all, you've got a lot of business information or data that you've collected over time, right? And in fact, lots of times you have a lot of data, it turns out that a lot of that data contains insights to patterns, your patterns, right? So it's the patterns of your good behavior, and your bad, you know, your bad behavior, things that they shouldn't have done, right. He listened to some of my previous episodes, I shared some bad things that I did, and some of my earlier startups 20 plus 30 plus years ago, so easy to do the bad things, but I tell you what, rather than just taking the quick fix of the money, let's step back and look at your data, what it's going to tell you, right and what the insights are there. They're so before you get too far, examine the data or get someone who knows how to

Do it right to examine the data and identify your best behaviors and the activities to carry forward and then identify those behaviors, right the things to actually stop doing. It makes no sense to come out of COVID-19 with a renewed plan, and updated funding if we continue to spend our time and resources money on bad behavior. So get someone to apply some artificial intelligence and data analytics on your data to help get you the insights. It actually is a good spend, right? It's a good spend to stop sharpen the saw in you know, Wasn't that a Stephen r covey thing? I think, yeah, he's like a sharpen the saga. Right? This is sharpen the saw time. All right, step back, take some of that funding that you're getting from the SBA and apply it to doing some data analytics and some artificial intelligence to tell you based on your patterns, the things that are good, they're not good and do some predictive analysis on that. So you're spending

In your time on the better activities, you know, duct tape is a powerful thing. In fact, one of the things that our kids have done with it over the years is birthday times or Christmas times, they'll even wrap presents in duct tape. Right? And that makes for quite the serious moment trying to get that stuff on done. So still a fan of the duct tape, but if we don't, if we don't work smarter, coming out of COVID-19 we're actually gonna have a hard time surviving as small to medium businesses, right? Have In fact, there's some effect. The bad thinking, back to that Washington Post article, he made the comment that a lot of that money is moved to you know, the large organizations right, like Amazon or Walmart or things like that. So as a small to medium business owner, we're obviously competing with organizations that leverage a lot of data. Amazon at leverages a lot of data, right? They look at how you spend, they look at how you search and so on.

We actually have to play a similar game as a small to medium business owner. Now the challenge in a small medium business organization is, I'm not going to be able to go hire a large team to do that. Well, there's organizations that will help you through that. So you don't take on all that cost. But you get an opportunity to go at the data and insights that are in there with very little cost to yourself. So I sure hope you take a moment to don't apply duct tape; don't just take the money and keep doing the same things. Stop and examine what you got at your fingertips stuff that's already there available to help you. Alright, everyone, keep buying duct tape on the fan. Let's use it for the right reasons. Thanks for joining. My name's Grant Larsen and but until next time, let's use our duct tape right.

Thank you for joining grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback and remember to Download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

What does it mean to make money!!?? That's That's a big question on a lot of our minds, right? What what does that actually mean, especially for all this going on with COVID-19 and such? Wow, small to medium businesses are just getting hammered. I'm sure a lot of you have been seeing the small to medium business loans, the SBA loans that are coming out. And obviously, some of those are even grants, if you will. What I wanted to talk about was some of the secrets that we've learned in terms of making money or earning more money in our businesses. It actually kind of goes back to some of the things that we've done with our kids. So, so quick, quick little story here. So we have a large family. We have six kids. And we basically have started each of our children with running their own business in our home. I call it the yard manager. So as each of our children were growing up, they each took turns being the art manager, and over the years well, first of all, I should probably explain why What What it means is they're responsible for getting the work done in the yard. Now, that means they have the opportunity to hire their siblings that have budgets, they'll have cost of goods sold requirements. But in the end, they ultimately have to send me an invoice. And one of the lessons they've learned over time is no invoice no money. And so there were times when I went without paying them for weeks and they'd be like, Hey, Dad, where's you know, where's the money? It'd be like, you got to send the invoice. And so they would do that and they'd get into the pattern of that and help them to start tracking and finding some independence but I noticed a pattern over many years of doing this as each child took on the role as they came into the role they are crowned you know, with with this crown, your crown is the art manager anyway, the pattern that I noticed is that is it they almost always Start projecting into the future. So as they start to see the flow of the money coming, right, and they start to get into the pattern of that, and they start collecting the data. Now, of course, the data in this little operation is very simple. It's, it's, here's the work that was done. Here's the data was done. Here's the amount and of course we come up with with what those mounts are ahead of time. And here's who was involved with it, if any, mostly it's down, but like, like I said, sometimes some of them hate doing weeding, right. So they, they want to hire that out to their siblings. But in any event, they almost always start projecting into the future because they see the money flow, and they start looking at ways to optimize it. Alright, so maybe there's another way they can figure out to get the work done faster or cheaper. And of course, like I said, they're looking at the cost of goods sold. Some of them may have even looked at patterns like, Well, okay, when it's storms or rains or whatever it might be, they realize that there is Come reduces, right? Well, it's interesting when we look at our businesses and we look start looking at the data that we have available to us, it actually becomes a critical activity to monetize our, our data, right to commercialize it. There's a couple obvious ways, of course, for companies to commercialize data. One of those is the data, of course gets collected, and it's analyzed for product development purposes, right or to make better products. And of course, that can translate into improve sales and, you know, products with higher value and so forth. That's the first sort of obvious way. The second obvious way is, of course, the data gets used to identify problems and bottlenecks in internal processes, which of course then can eliminate or improve, you know, business bottlenecks and improve the efficiency and profitability. Right. So those are two obvious ways. I saw that with our kids in the US Manage payroll. Again, I've seen it many years over over time with small to medium businesses.

So I wanted to look at some examples of some companies on how they've used data like, there's a search and discovery service called Foursquare, and they sell its data to retailers. So they can optimize their outdoor advertising and online marketing to match you know, the routes that people use to navigate the city. Right. There's other groups, media companies that collect digital data on people's interest, and then they sell that to online advertisers. Certainly weather forecasting companies like freaka can, you know, they also help advertising match weather conditions? Those are certainly some examples. There's other companies and this is of course, in some cases, it's their own data, or its data there that they're intentionally collecting from others or for others. Certainly An example would be Facebook. Right. So the you know, the question is, you've got Facebook, right? Would Facebook really have paid $22 billion? And you know, for WhatsApp in 2014? If if, in fact WhatsApp didn't already have data on 600 million consumers worldwide? I mean, they probably wouldn't have done that. Right. So it wasn't the fact that what's apps revenues were massive. I think at the time, maybe they're around 10 million back in 2014, or 2013. You know, Microsoft, what did they pay over 2 billion, I think is two and a half billion. They did that for from Minecraft, and that the time Minecraft had very little actual revenues. It was the data that the Microsoft was after, which is a key valuation. So, fact of the matter is, even as a small to medium business owner, if we're not cognizant of the data and information we're tracking, we're actually leaving money on the table and now ends up hurting us rather than helping us. And in today's technology world, it actually becomes more important for us to do this to take a moment to get our data strategy together. Doesn't have to take a lot of work. We got to take some effort to do that. Well, I'm sure you've heard the phrase, hey, data is the new oil. Right? And there are some people that certainly say that, and I think that while at a surface level, you might say, Yeah, that makes sense. But there's some challenges with that with that metaphor. Turns out in reality, I think we're the oil in the metaphor, right? It's humans, right? It's the footprint, the digital footprint. The transactions that we do, the places we go, the people we see how we interact. That's actually the data. And that's actually where the money is. It's tracking that. So we have to be much more cognizant of how we of course give our data but also as business owners We need to be more cognizant of, if a consumer is sharing certain kinds of data, and they're open to that. It's important for us to also understand the opportunity that's available there as well. I think when Zuckerberg you know, Facebook when he was testifying before Congress, he explained a bit about how Facebook makes money, right? He said something about, Hey, you know, it's we're taking data in terms of what's happening, you know, where the people are clicking what they're doing, who they're interacting with. And then ultimately, they sell that, you know, off to advertisers, right? I think they do over 200 billion a year annually, right, basically, by selling our information. So to get started, it's really important that you know, as a small to medium business owners that we start with the data that we currently have, we have to look at it and say, what's our business, what's my role in the business, and then there's typically at least three things to get through. are no one is we got to look at the patterns of our data, right, we should analyze it. Look for patterns and trends that certainly present themselves. But number two, we got to look for what those patterns mean, they tell a message, right? There's some information about it. And the key to this is to figure out what's actionable and what's not. And number three is to focus on the big picture, where are we trying to go as a business? What are we trying to get done, and then use some tools to help us get there. Now one of the things that we do is we apply artificial intelligence to do that. So because after a while you realize you go mind not looking at all this information, number one, number one, right take so much time number two, the AI is proving to help see things that we can't see very easily with our eyes. And so given the fact that we believe that there's money on the table in our data, that we don't have to do a lot of extra work to go harvest it. We just got to go mind for it. Pull it out, leveraging technologies like AI helps us to do that. One of the things that we've seen that comes out of this is the ability to make better decisions, right? And so I'm not a fan of saying take AI and hand it off, and we just go blindly do whatever it says, I'm more in the line of thinking that this is augmented intelligence, use the intuition that you have as a business owner, but then augment it with what AI insights are providing. So, you know, these days, as I'd mentioned, you know, the more that we have data at our fingertips, the more important it is for us to leverage some kind of techniques that will help us to, you know, understand and get the insights from it. Now, recently, I was applying some AI for a company and was evaluating patterns and the predictions and as I reviewed it with the business owner, he made the statement simply, I had no idea I had no idea that the patterns were existing in my business, and that if I did more of this and less of that, I actually can, you know, increase my sales as well as you know, reduce some of my losses. And that's just as important to know ahead of time. You know what this is actually, uh, you know, historically and predictively a losing venture on these particular set of activities. Therefore, let's stop doing that. So whether we'll see improvements in you know, making more money or reducing losses, both are certainly benefits to our business. All right. So there you have it, the How To Make Money, it's in our data. Let's go after the data. And quite frankly, there's enough tools and services out there today, that even if we don't have the skill sets in our small to medium business, reach out to someone such as ourselves that click AI and talk to us about it or find someone else but nevertheless, go harvesting for that data. My name is Grant Larsen. Thanks for joining us. Next time, go find the money in your data.

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"What do you mean we only have 4 weeks of money left in the business??!!!""
Do we need data transparency in our small-to-medium business...?? You bet we do...

All right. Hey, this is Grant Larsen. Thank you for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio. So all right. I was thinking about data right how important data In data is and I was talking with one of the one of the entrepreneurs that I know, he's been running his business here for several years, doing a fantastic job knocking it out of the park. But I was doing some AI work with him, right. And, and he was pointing out something I thought was really critical, which was He's like, Hey, you know, Grant, he's like, a lot of us, you know, small to medium business owners. We're just trying to keep the lights on, right? We're trying to get stuff done trying to keep things going. And the fact of the matter is, we don't always have the ability, or the opportunity to go back and really look at our data. In fact, lots of times we're making a lot of decisions by intuition. And I thought, gosh, you know, that's, I think he's spot on. And so it prompted me in this particular episode to talk about the need for data, not not to replace intuition, but to augment it. So let's talk about that. So years ago, When I did my very first startup company, gosh, this was almost hate to say it. This was in the 80s. So my, my wife and I had we had just come out of college and, and, and we were going to move to Chicago Actually, I had my first job offers with a large technology company. I don't even think they're in existence today. Actually, they're not 30 plus years later, but anyway, so I had received an offer from them. I actually accepted it. And then about a week later, I'm up on campus on at the college worth college and I'm working through and I see this entrepreneur opportunity on the board there. And I look at it and I'm just drawn to it. And I'm like, No, I actually think that's the route I want to go. So I go home to my wife. I'm like, honey, I got, I got, I got this great idea. How about we leave the you know, hey, here's all this security Sort of job opportunity, let's go after a startup company. So it took a lot of convincing of eventually, we did it. So I went, I turned down the sort of for sure deal with the big company with a startup company in Chicago. So at the time, we had our first child. So this is a big decision, right to go at the higher risk, sort of opportunity. So what I did was, you know, rented this truck got my wife and my little baby in the in the truck, we drove across the country. We ended up in Chicago, I remember pulling in thinking, Man, where in the heck am I gonna live? I mean, it, it pivoted so quickly. It's just shocking to me how fast you know, our trajectory changed. So we pull in, we figure out a place to live. And I start with a startup company. And of course, a few weeks go by pretty soon as a few months now. It's about six months that we're into it. And I was focusing mostly on the technology so I really wasn't thinking much about others. things right in terms of running the business certainly wasn't thinking about the finances. One day though, I happen to take a look at the finances. And so I, I opened it up, and it there's this number, and I do the quick math and realize we've only got four weeks to live. And so I approached the owner, and my partner and I said, Is this true? And he's like, Yeah, it's true. We are actually about out of money. I'm like, Wow, man, you know, if I'd have known that four months ago, I would have made some different decisions. Right. So looking back at it, I realized, wow, I would have operated differently, if I would have known that right if I had access to that or been aware of it. So for me, this was just one of those first realizations in business, right? Just coming out of college where I realized Not only do I need the data I need, I need the transparency of the data. I need to be able to see it and you know, In small to medium businesses, you know, we're all taking on different roles, and we're busy and so forth. But running on intuition alone isn't sufficient. So augmenting it with data makes a lot of sense. Now, of course, it depends on your role, right? So the CFO or the CEO, obviously, they tend to look at that more, quite frankly, though, in today's world, technology and business is blended so much doesn't make sense, especially in small medium businesses to keep those separate. So as a result, we ended up having to make some pretty drastic decisions. We I was only there another week, because I realized we don't have enough runway to actually turn this thing around at this point. And I really like the guy I was working with and wanted to give him a chance to survive even longer without me being involved. I think he stayed on for another year with it eventually ended up shutting shutting it down. So here's the point. We got to have this blend of not just data on its own, and not just intuitive Now lots of times as you know, startup companies or small to medium businesses, it's intuition that gets us to the point where we get an operating model where cash is flowing and people are, are making money in the business is growing. But there's a point where that becomes risky, where we actually can't just run the business just on intuition, we actually need the insights that data can provide. Now, lots of times that data will come from things that you're already doing, right? Like, it might be your CRM system, or you know how you're capturing the transactions or the sales. It's not that you have to go do a whole bunch of extra things. But one thing is important, the need to start being intentional not only about tracking the fact that transactions are taking place, but then stopping to extrapolate from that, do some analysis on it and figure out do we need to adjust course, what are the patterns that are working that are while are those things that are bad? So Who needs data? You know, it's interesting. Sometimes marketers don't always need data, right? So when you think about if you got a small to medium business, you got the CFO or a CEO, you've got maybe technology people, you've got marketers and people who are doing sales. Lots of times, the marketers are thinking about, hey, how do I improve conversion rates, right? Or how do I better serve the customers, things like that. And they're often not looking at the data. Turns out that when we get data into the hands of marketers, they're great intuition capabilities that can build these businesses. They're great intuition capabilities actually can be amplified when we can augment their strong intuition with good data patterns, good data analysis, I would dare say, with artificial intelligence. So it's critical to augment the powerful capabilities of people in our small to medium businesses with well informed data. That's teaching and And providing insights to you. So who needs data? Heck we all do. Hey, thanks again for joining. My name is Grant Larsen and until next time, go get some data.

Thank you for joining grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

I wanted to do technology and not milk cows!! Finding the blend of how technology can and should be applied to business problems is a wonderful balance.

But what about this AI stuff...oh, what IS AI and why should I care??