ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown

Dave Erickson 0:00
Do you feel like you're drowning in Things To Do you? You wanted to start a business, not live a nightmare of too many things to do on this ScreamingBox podcast, we're going to search the latest AI automation tools for entrepreneurs, which you can then use to reclaim some time to live your life. Please like our podcast and subscribe to our channel to get notified when the next podcast is released.

Dave Erickson 0:40
Being an entrepreneur has many positives, but it also has many negatives, which is why not everyone is cut out for it. This is especially true when it comes to the amount of time it takes to run a business. Welcome to the ScreamingBox technology and business rundown podcast. In this podcast, Botond Seres and I, Dave Erickson, are going to find new AI automation tools for entrepreneurs with Carly Martha, founder of Success Positive LLC, Carly brings a powerful and deeply personal perspective to entrepreneurship and technology. As the mother of a 30 year old autistic son, she knows firsthand the challenges of balancing the demands of running a business with the responsibilities of family life. That experience shaped her journey into leveraging AI automation tools not just to grow her business but to reclaim her time and to create more meaningful moments with her family. Through AI automation, she transformed the way she works. What once required hours of hands-on management from her phone is now streamlined and automated, giving her the freedom to step away from the constant screen time while her business continues to thrive. She is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs do the same, building businesses that are not only profitable but also sustainable, giving entrepreneurs both financial control and the gift of time. Carly, welcome to the podcast.

Carley Martha 2:04
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dave Erickson 2:08
To begin with., maybe you can tell us more about how you discovered your first AI tool.

Carley Martha 2:15
You know, I was working as an outsourced CFO for a firm in Texas, and the owner of the firm was very much into AI, and it was right after ChatGPT had come out. It came out in November, so in February, we were already using it as a firm to source out, you know, general answers

Dave Erickson 2:36
In doing that, what did, what was your first kind of impressions about how AI worked, and did you see it in kind of a limited role, or were you able to get the company to kind of expand those tools to everybody in the organization?
Carley Martha 2:54
So predominantly, it was really used as a chat tool to go back and forth. There there were. And if you use ChatGPT, after you sign in on the left, there's these things called GPTs. They are expert trained up on, you know, GPTs that are trained up on 1,000s of different topics, whether it's marketing or business or accounting or anything and so, so when you go into these GPTs, you don't even have to do like a master prompt, because all that prompting is done for you, and you can just jump into these GPTs and find that information. And so we were able to really use that as a resource. And I actually use those GPTs to help me learn how to do automation to, you know, to build on the Make.com platform, to start putting things in place for myself, clunky at first, you know, and then you learn enough the software developers, you know, came out with new and better, you know, AI tools for us, and eventually the technology catches up to where I think it should have been, you know, but that was, that was how I first got into it. Was just by using chat, GPT and asking it, how do I make this easier? What can I do differently? Because I suffer from, you know, that executive dysfunction where you can't get anything done, and sending custom emails takes all day, and I think I sent seven, you know, the first time I tried to do that. That was terrible. I felt horrible doing it and but being able to use the the AI, not just to help me find the right words, but to be able to really automate the actual sending of the email, so that, you know, once I've come up with this, I can, I can then reach more people with instead of having to do this one by one.

Botond Seres 4:55
So how do you go from getting ChatGPT to write an email to having it automate the process of
sending it?

Carley Martha 5:01
So if you want ChatGPT to send the email, and right now, right now, their agents can do that, but at the time, you had to go through Make.com which was an automation platform that reached out to ChatGPT to get the content right, because automation and AI weren't really connected until, until about a about a year and a half ago, right? So, and now and now, we're working with autonomous agents that can complete more complicated tasks. You know, depending on what you're, what you're looking for. For example, there's a company called artisan AI. They actually just got their first round of seed funding for $25 million. I've been a tester, a software tester, for them and since November of last year. But what they have is an autonomous agent that sources email addresses, researches the person attached to it, goes to like their LinkedIn, their website, what have you, and finds, finds what they're posting about, what are they interested in, and then tries to find a correlation between that and a marketing campaign that, that you put together, and then once it does that, it crafts personalized emails to each of the those people, and then sets them up on a schedule. And if it doesn't get a response from the emails, then it sends in a LinkedIn connection request. And I don't have, like, you know, the paid LinkedIn or anything, but they have like, 30 or 50 connection requests allowed a month, and that's crazy. And it just and then once they connect on LinkedIn, it sends them personalized, you know, messages. So, yeah, it's really neat.

Dave Erickson 7:05
Yeah, I get a lot of those personalized messages on LinkedIn. So you know, for me, it's a little easy to tell whether it's automated or not, but I'm sure it's effective in the sense that you know, if you're sending out 30 a day, someone's going to respond Right.

Carley Martha 7:23
Exactly. And you know, depending on the coaching points that you give to the AI, the better the the actual writing of the email is, I know that's something that we're actually working with another a marketing agency to have them really craft good content, so that when the AI puts it together, it's more of it just putting together phrases and words that we want, instead of it trying to fill it out for us. You know what I mean?

Dave Erickson 7:55
Now that you've kind of experienced AI a little bit, where do you think for an entrepreneur there they should start when it comes to leveraging AI, they're there. They're trying to build a business. They may have a customer, or they may have set some initial business up, but they're, they're still scrambling to do everything themselves. Where would you start? Or where would, where would you recommend? Or entrepreneurs start to start putting together some AI.

Carley Martha 8:25
I would start by automating the marketing and the, you know, like the customer experience, outreach, all of that. And I've actually got a referral link that I will, I'll share with you. I created a ChatGPT agent to find me deals like I tell it what I want and what the parameters are, and then it goes out and it finds for me various things, right? So I don't know if your listeners are familiar with Go High Level. It's a, it's an all in one marketing platform. It is just a blank piece of paper. So you have to understand how to do marketing and how to come up with those words, right? But it will do everything for you, whether it's email marketing or file you know, hosting your websites, you can see how what you're posting on social media is impacting your, your web traffic, but it will also create content and schedule it, of course. But there's, you can have your own community, your own brand, you know, no code branded app from it. It has a, you know, a Secure Client Portal. It's got everything, literally, that you need to run a business, including, like, a storefront, or, you know, whatever you would want, and, and they have AI heavily built in so that they even offer an AI answering service. So normally, when you go to get one of these things Go High Level is very expensive. It's $300 a month for their basic, basic price. So I found there's a company called All In One Marketing Agency, and it's a guy who was responsible for the George Foreman campaign that was done for the George Foreman Grill. And he got backed by two Shark Tank Sharks, just to make it legit, because it sounds like it's not legit, and he was giving away these sub accounts, these $300 accounts, but it's the top tier of Go High Level, so that even all the AI stuff is free for me, like I don't pay for my AI answering service. I don't have to answer, you know, spam calls anymore. That's fabulous. Thank you so much. You know, like, I don't pay for text messages, I don't pay for emails, I don't even pay for phone numbers. So, like, everything is free, and he's selling it for $97 for six months, and it's, it's crazy, and it's and it's just such a wonderful deal, and every single business owner needs this. It will automate your marketing, your social media, your customer experience, and that will really allow you to just to start growing your business without spending so much time in it.

Dave Erickson 11:19
it, and what was the link that you're using or the firm.

Carley Martha 11:21
So it's all in one marketing agency. I have an affiliate link that I'm more than happy to share with you, but it's all in one marketing.com

Botond Seres 11:35
With all of this automation. I mean, personally, I would be afraid that my communications lose that personal touch, which I personally value. So and I did hear from some of my friends that that's not really a concern when implementing AI, since basically you can tell the AI how you would act or how you would write something, and then it mimics that style. How do you
Carley, how do you think we can balance automation with authenticity with directness?

Carley Martha 12:22
So I am a very authentic person, and so the way that I use automation for my business, like, I don't send out, like a weekly newsletter. I don't, you know, I'm not trying to get AI to create a bunch of content for me. But when I do decide, Okay, I want to, you know, email my circle, because I want them to pay attention when I email stuff, right? I don't want them to get tired of seeing things, right? So I, I, I'll send it out, and I come up with, you know, the email. I come up with, you know, the subject, so it's clearly that it was, it was written by me and what and, and I think it should be an AI sandwich, you know, I start with, you know this, these are all my thoughts, and I feed it to my, to my AI that is trained on how I write, and then it helps me organize those thoughts in ways that flows better, Right? Or, or maybe, maybe is more, is clear than, than what I tried to put down. And so I work it, massage it, change it up. And then I'm, I use the automation to just communicate that all at the same time, you know, instead of having to email everybody, you know, individually, because a lot of times I'm trying to say the same thing, you know, you know, pull this for me of all the people that I've met with in the last four months, and let's send them, you know, an invitation to connect for a 15 minute virtual coffee, just to keep it fresh, right?

Dave Erickson 13:52
That's kind of one of the issues or problems that entrepreneurs face. They're meeting a bunch of people, and then they don't have time to even enter them into a CRM or do anything, or they do the minimum of maybe they get the names in or take pictures of their business cards or whatever, and then they forget all about them. Are there good AI tools to help entrepreneurs manage all the people they're meeting?

Carley Martha 14:23
Yes. So there are definitely CRMs that you can use, that you can take a picture and it will upload it. The, there is that feature inside of Go High Level as well. It's not great. It imports the field. So I struggle with that. One of the things that I really use to nurture my professional relationships is a platform called Alignable. So it's similar to LinkedIn, but it is all like small businesses. Yes, and it uses AI from your profile to help connect you with either your ideal customer or your ideal referral partner. And the platform itself nudges you to take your relationships further, to, to not just meet with each other, but to introduce each other to other people in our networks. The way that the that the AI on the platform for Alignable works is it's really based off the words and the tags in your profile, the the gold mine of Alignable, especially if your ideal customer is a solopreneur or very small business owner, like one to three employees are the smart connects that are on there. Because when you join one of these smart connects, it's like speed dating for business owners, it will match you with either your ideal customer or your ideal referral partner. And if it doesn't, that means you need to work on your profile.

Dave Erickson 17:18
I think these tools are becoming more and more important, because I think the way people are earning money and making a living is changing. And I think this concept of solopreneur and, and small businesses of one to two people, I think that's going to become more of a norm than it has been in the past.

Carley Martha 16:21
More and more people are leaving the workforce just because of the conditions there, because during covid, they realized they didn't have to be part of the workforce. And we have a growing population of disabled people and the statistics of parents who are leaving the workforce because of their because of their children, especially autistic children, is more than 40% you know, and that's the ones that we know about and and most of the time when I because I I serve a lot of special needs families that own businesses, and most of the time when I see is that they they have one parent at home, or they have to hire a live in nanny, or, you know, or something of that sort, because they can't keep the child in daycare, or because of their, you know, a large amount of medical appointments, that sort of thing. It's just, it's really hard to balance a w2 job with that.

Dave Erickson 17:18
I think it's also going the other way, and that is as their parents get to the point where they can't function very well and they need someone to take care of them at home, they may have to be home for their parents. The sandwich generation is facing a lot of those issues right now, absolutely, absolutely, and I think that's going to drive a lot of people to have to start their own business or do consulting or whatever they do, so that they can manage their time that way, at least on the white collar side of things, let's talk a little bit about automation. We talked a little bit about ChatGPT and some marketing platforms. Probably the two automation tools that most people use is Make.com, and Zapier. I tend to prefer Make, it seems to be a little bit simpler over Zapier, and the interface is a little bit nicer, although Zapier has more connections and integrations, I think. But I've been able to do a lot with Make. Maybe you can talk a little bit about where there, those are going, and are they becoming more popular, or there are other tools out there that does the same thing.

Carley Martha 18:28
I think make is still really the first solid choice for those kind of, that kind of automation. There's, there are other ones, like Appify, if you are looking to, to, to get more of more of specialized agents to do various things like scrape websites or whatever. But I really when I,I When I was making agents, I tried a bunch of different platforms to see like who had the best or easiest or whatever. And I was using agents on make.com Until ChatGPT released the availability to have agents on any paid level.

Dave Erickson 19:08
Got it and what are some of the things that you used initially Make.com to automate.

Carley Martha 19:16
So at first, I was using it to automate some research. I used it to automate comments on my Facebook page, like if I was giving out links to grants, that sort of thing, it. I used it to do some posting on like LinkedIn, just to handle my social media and, you know, bulk emails, that sort of thing up. I had Google forms that you could fill out, like doing a quiz or whatever, and it would update my Google spreadsheet and send me notifications. And right now, right now, I'm building an AI call center so that I can have outbound calling, and I'm actually running that through the Make.com agent, since it's also got access to my Go High Level.

Dave Erickson 20:05
Can you talk a little bit about what are in your mind, AI, agents, and how do you create them?

Carley Martha 20:18
Oh, so this is the best secret ever. So when I what? So when I was worried about making automation, I was really afraid that it would be really, really hard and I wouldn't be smart enough, right? But then I just, I figured out that all you have to do is watch videos and they show you exactly how to do it, right? So I was able that way, to make the Make.com ChatGPT bots, with the agents. I was worried about the same thing, like everybody that I talked to that wanted to make agents for people, they wanted a lot of money for it. And it was, you know, not, it was, it was very custom and I was like, this is going to take a long time. So I went to Chat. When I started using them. I went to Chat \GPT and said, Hey, what's the best way to have an agent do this? And it created the prompt, the master prompt, to give to the agent. And then that's it. You just give it to the agent. It and, and I was like, This is crazy. That's all it is. It's just this really detailed master prompt. And that's really, that's really all it is. And in fact, it's so, it's so easy if you're going to use the agents that are built the their autonomous agent that's built in the Chat, GPT, you just get under a paid account, $20 a month. You go in, you click on a new discussion, the plus sign at the bottom says, chat mode, or, I'm sorry, Agent mode and you click that, and then just paste in whatever the prompt was that you developed in, in chat with ChatGPT.

Botond Seres 21:58
So how, ho,w how large a prompt are we talking when? When we are discussing master prompts for agents, should we be thinking 10 of 100,000 sentences?

Carley Martha 20:11
Um, you know, I've, I've never counted it. I've just asked it to help me create the, the perfect prompt for whatever it is that I was looking for.

Dave Erickson 22:22
So you go into ChatGPT and you say, hey, ChatGPT. I need an AI agent who will do the following. And then ChatGPT comes back with, okay, enter this prompt into AI agent. Is that correct?

Carley Martha 22:38
So I tell it that I'm going to use a ChatGPT agent, just so it knows in case there's anything different it needs to give me. And then I tell it that, what I'm trying to get the agent to do, and if I wanted to, you know, like provide that to me in a document or an Excel, how often I want them to run it, how I want to be notified about it, whatever. And then I give it to it. Now my ChatGPT is trained to ask me reiterations of questions, but if you also use the how is the best way for me to do this, it will come back to you with more questions so you can really hone in your prompt. So it's so it's right

Dave Erickson 22:22
You mentioned that, that you had to train your ChatGPT. How did, how did you go about doing that?

Carley Martha 23:29
So when you go into your personalization Settings, under Settings, you're, you're able to, like, tell it who you are. That's where I put, you know, I, I told it, I gave it my master prompt in that area, in that section, I forget what it's called, and then the other section, where it says, How do you want us to respond to you? I put in my brand voice. And so ChatGPT knows that I, you know, what my master prompt is, that I wanted to ask me questions whenever it's not whenever it's not sure exactly how to answer me. And with, with that, I'm able to really get good answers each time, and it's smart enough to know when it doesn't have to ask me questions.

Botond Seres 24:18
So how much effort would you say it takes to set up a new agent?

Carley Martha 24:26
You can do it in under five minutes. (Oh, wow), Yeah, so, so like with the with the agent that I made, and you can have an agent do things on multiple whatever right now, with the ChatGPT agents, I'm just having them do a project, one project at a time, just making sure that it's right. You know, as I get my trust level up with that, but literally, it'll, it'll do it. It'll do anything. There's it when it needs you to log in, it like, pauses and says, Hey, you know you, we're, we're doing sensitive stuff. You need to take control. And you. Just because it gives you a little the agent creates, like a little monitor screen on the ChatGPT page that you can see exactly what it's doing.

Botond Seres 25:14
Oh, cool. I, honestly, I tried to play around with ChatGPT agents for a bit, but it's been a complete failure. (Oh, no), I couldn't get it to do anything I wanted. Oh, what did you want it to do? Oh, I was trying to add subtitles to video, which may have been a bit more complex, but I think I should reframe the way I use agents, because I never even thought that they could send emails, for example, which is a great first step. (Absolutely) What kind of tasks would you think agents at this point are ideal for, besides sending emails, for example, graphic design or not, quite sure.

Carley Martha 25:55
Um, you know, I am using agents for admin tasks. I'm using them for things that are, you know, just repetitive. I'm not using them for any of the accounting or bookkeeping work stuff like that that I do. But I do use them for like research, and, you know, for like, market research, as well as like content, you know, to come to find Go, go out and find this and bring it back to me, yeah.

Botond Seres 26:21
So when you use an agent for research, how is that different than just using regular ChatGPT for research? So when?

Carley Martha 26:32
So I'll give you a really great example. I created an agent to help me understand the one big, beautiful bill and how it was going to impact my accounting clients, my tax clients, so you know, business in general. So I asked it, go out, find out all the things about the one, one big, beautiful bill, and come back, give me an executive summary, give me a PowerPoint presentation, give me an Excel spreadsheet with a checklist of things that I need to do to make sure that we're compliant and up to up to date. And, you know, and it went out, and instead of just coming back to me with, like, a top level summary, because when, when you ask ChatGPT to do something, it really can only do one thing at a time like it might be able to hold something for a little bit, but then the quality of your answer, you know, diminishes, because it just can't hold it that long. But with an agent, they're able to split up the tasks and be like, Oh, that's not working the way we thought it would you don't have to sit there and keep hitting Okay, thanks for telling me that you're working on it. Okay? You know, you don't have to do that. It takes care of all that.

Botond Seres 27:42
Oh, nice, that, that's one of the big impediments with whenever I try to use AI, is the context window. The longer a conversation goes on, the quality just gets worse and worse.

Carley Martha 27:56
You know, you know what? This is, this you might also like, are you using projects on ChatGPT. So the difference between a project and general so before ChatGPT could not see into your other conversations. They were all isolated conversations. Now, now it has the ability to see the other conversations, but only top level doesn't remember all, all the things. When you go into a project and you can upload files, you can have it save websites, you can really treat it like a brain. So I have one just for my brand voice, and so every single conversation that I have underneath that project can access all of those things, and can access all of the other conversations that are under that project. So I don't, so when a conversation gets too long, I can just open a new conversation and start up again and not miss a beat. This was really helpful when I was doing, I was redesigning my website, so I was sending a lot of screenshots and, you know, and we were having a lot of detailed conversations and and so, like, I'd get done one page of my website and I'd have to start a new conversation. And that's when I discovered projects. I was like, Yes, this is so much better.

Dave Erickson 29:16
In designing your website with ChatGPT. And this is something that entrepreneurs and solopreneurs are going to need to kind of deal with. What did that process look like to do that with ChatGPT?,

Carley Martha 29:32
So, I used Elementor, and I put my, my website on WordPress, and use element word to do it, yeah, okay, because I did it through my Go High Level so I could see all my information and be able to put tokens in so, my lovely cat, so his name is trouble, obviously. Um, so I, I went to ChatGPT, and I was like, Look, this is what I'm doing. How do I find this? Because I didn't know anything about Ellen mentor, and I wound up doing this entire website over a weekend, you know, and I don't know anything about this stuff, and I was able to, like, copy and paste things and and there's actually a GPT that's trained up on on Elementor and on WordPress and and there's even one for Go High Level itself, you know. So I was able to get really good expert information. This is what you're doing wrong, don’t do this. And because, you know, chat, GPT has the ability to to really see photographs. Now you can send a screenshot, and it actually can read what's on there and tell you what to do. And I don't know if you're aware of this, but if you have ChatGPT downloaded on your phone when you go into voice mode, there it, are three little dots in voice mode. One of them is now screen sharing, so you can share your camera with ChatGPT and have it tell you what's going on. I got a rental car and couldn't figure out how to get it to show me the song that was playing on my Pandora channel. So I, like, I was like, I can't figure this out, so I ChatGPT two seconds. It's like, right there.

Dave Erickson 31:29
Those are some pretty powerful features that are, that are being developed within ChatGPT.
I'm sure that, that, that's affecting a lot of different people when it comes to interfaces, is ChatGPT able to interface with a lot of different things, or is that what you need to use make.com for? And can ChatGPT interface with make.com then have make.com go out and do stuff?

Carley Martha 31:56
So when you're using the web version of ChatGPT, and I do not recommend downloading the desktop. It has less features. Then, when you're doing the web version, you're in chat mode. When you're using make.com you're in API mode. So that means that it can do things with the information from ChatGPT. I don't know if the, if there's an API for the agent, I assume there is, but I just have not looked.
Dave Erickson 32:26
Well, clearly, you're using technology to help run your business. How has it affected your business as far as considering hiring new people?

Carley Martha 32:38 It’s actually made us more effective. I don't think that there is. I don't think that there's a good way to replace accountants at this low level, like I will always need bookkeepers. You know, the AI can help, but if we don't allow our humans to receive the education and training that goes into these repetitive tasks, we won't have anyone to hire or to take over, because how do you get middle management if you don't have entry level,

Dave Erickson 33:15
Right.Yeah, it's a big question that's popping up with businesses with AI as AI becomes more able to do things, the question comes, who do we hire and how many? And AI is definitely a productivity tool and can help with productivity. And if you're starting a business or a solopreneur, these are very critical, but there's this question about, who do we need in the business? What can AI do? And although AI is getting very smart and very good, it isn't actually a thinking thing, and therefore it always has to be managed. It always has to be looked at. You have to take a look at what it's doing, because it it, it's not 100% accurate, and you need people to do that. So I think this question that the businesses are having is, who do I hire? Who do I really need? And as I bring AI into the business, who do I keep, and who do I let go? Or who, how do I expand the business, right? Do you have any thoughts on that, or what your experience has been with businesses?

Carley Martha 34:28
Obviously, you know, a lot of the businesses that I, business owners that I'm talking to are not tech savvy. They, they know that they should be doing something with AI and automation, but they have no idea where to start or what they should be doing, and the most that they're using it for right now is really just writing emails, you know. And they, they know they should be doing more automating the marketing. And the emails, I mean, that's a, that's a great first step, because everybody has those problems and, and there is, there's a an email newsletter. It's also a website. It's called, there's an AI for that. And if you, if, whenever you, whenever you think of whatever it is that you want to automate, or think about like there must be an easier way to do this that you you just, I just go up there and I look and because somebody has already had, there is no such thing as original thought. Somebody else has already done it. They've already created it. You know, let me go support them. And I think that with business owners, when they're bringing in people who bring in new people, they're going to be looking for someone who has, you know, AI experience, or at least understands the tools that are out there, you know. So that's, that's a huge asset to have on, on a resume, on your skills, for sure, because business owners don't have the time or the know-how to get into it.

Dave Erickson 36:03
Right. I mean, if you know all the features of the latest version of chat, GPT, and you've kind of taught yourself how to actually write prompts, you have a skill set that people will need, even though, technically, what you're doing is just managing an AI.
Carley Martha 36:20
Because, because, just like with writing the agents, like, that's the, that's a big secret. It's a huge secret. Go ahead, make an agent. They're so, easy technology. The more advanced technology gets, the easier it is for us to use.

Dave Erickson 36:35
One of the questions that people will have, and entrepreneurs especially will have, is, what do I automate and what do I not automate, right? And do you have any thoughts on that, on how someone should approach that?

Carley Martha 36:49
So my rule of thumb is, anything that you can do from your phone can be automated.
The thing that you should automate first is the thing that you hate doing because you're not doing it, or you're not doing it well. So automate it. Because even this is the way I look at, you know, when I'm when, I'm putting stuff together, if, like, with marketing, or like my like my post for, for social media, whatever, you know, like this, this is me and ChatGPT, this is the best that we can possibly do with where you know and like and that has that's gonna be good enough. It moves the needle just enough, you know. So don't be afraid to jump in and try it.

Botond Seres 37:34
If you don't mind Carly, I usually like to ask this question at the end, but I think in this case, we can bring the topic forward a bit. I always like to ask our guests about the future and where they think certain technologies are headed. So in this case, where do you see agents and automation in general heading in the next three to five years?

Carley Martha 37:59
So I think if we look at how Asia is handling robots right now, I think that that is definitely where we are. Are headed for our use with, with robots and agents in our country, they're already using them for manufacturing. They're already using them for police. You know, the, the AI that we have right now is only a couple years old, and we now have quantum computers. And if you have been watching anything related to quantum mechanics and quantum physics, you know, on YouTube or or, you know, elsewhere the world that we know it is not is, it's not right. What they taught us about how things are, it's not right. They're figuring it out if, and if, third, if they're figuring all of this out about our physical reality, just imagine how much faster we're going to advance in AI because now we have agents that can constantly self improve, and we have quantum computers.

Dave Erickson 39:15
So there's going to be some pretty big leaps and bounds over the next five years. That, that brings me to kind of an ethical, spiritual, moral question, you know, the push for business and the push for technology and AI is to make it even more productive And to make it even more useful. And the question is, there's going to come a point in time when AI is so useful and so efficient and so productive that it is going to displace many, many people from jobs. Now this is not all jobs, but obviously in the white collar section, you know, even if they replace 20% of the people working white collar jobs, even in just America you're talking, you know, 100 million people get displaced. So is this a question that businesses have to think about, do I not be as productive and keep people employed? Or do I go for productivity at all expenses, people be damned

Carley Martha 40:34
Well, the majority of those white collar jobs are in big corporations, so they're probably just going to worry about productivity. The, the smart move is, obviously, create,create, you know, a business for yourself where you are the valuable asset and can't be replaced, and learn to leverage AI to, and automation to make you that way and keep you there right. That is, an understanding technology and AI is, is, is definitely one of my differentiation points from other accountants that you know that help businesses. You know, being able to really understand and support and a business and how it needs to operate, it's completely different running a business now than it was even 10 years ago. You know, things are, things are definitely changing. And the the white collar jobs that are going to be replaced by AI, they know, like accounting, accounting is, you know, definitely, especially tax preparation, or definitely, you know, an industry that that is going to be heavily automated, you know, which just means that in order to to be in this industry, you really have to specialize, find a niche and be excellent in your care and service, right?

Dave Erickson 42:17
You know, our education system has been set up to kind of create kind of cogs in the wheel, per se, that the structure has always been after school, you will be able to get a job in a company doing X, right? That's your career path. But I think that's changing, and I think that schools are going to have to also change to start educating students on how you can be valuable on your core skill, and not be part of the cog in the wheel by starting your own business or being your own independent consultant, or whatever that takes.

Carley Martha 42:58
So the man who designed our school system literally stated that it was, it was to create manufacturing workers. They did not want original thought. They did not want to teach, you know, critical thinking, because you don't need that as a manufacturer, you know, as a factory worker. And so that's exactly what we've turned out. You know, are all these people who really struggle with critical thinking skills, and you're right, it's got to change. I actually we have an 80% failure rate in businesses, 80%. And I think that that is a failure of the business community, especially in the and, you know, in the professional, in the services industries, because the the construction, you know, they don't just support each other in the construction, you know, the trades, they actually have their own Chamber of Commerce. And they don't just have a Chamber of Commerce where they have happy hour, and everybody comes and pass business, because that's like not a thing. But what they do is they field calls from people who are looking for work, you know, like, I need a plumber, I need an electrician. And then they feed those leads to their members. The Restaurant Association, you know, serves the restaurants in a very similar way, you know, to help them with, with negotiating producer contracts and that sort of thing. But for general businesses, for services, we don't have anything like that. And our Chamber of Commerce, they, all they do is they have happy hours where you can, like cute meet, you know, maybe your, your ideal customer, your ideal referral partner, but you got to work a room of over 100 people, and good luck with that. (Right. You know, then remembering to follow up on all those connections) That is not support, that is not help. And we really need to, we need to do more hands-on workshops. We need to actually tell business owners the secrets that you know, that we found to help them grow their businesses. You know, the whole I can't tell you how I found business, because then maybe you'll take it away from me, or there might not be enough, and the pie is way bigger. People are hiring, not just for the skills that you hire, but for the personality that you have, for what you stand for they are hiring for the, for the full package. You know, this is, this is not interchangeable widgets. So, yes, so, so share. So share, by all means. You know, there's actually, let me tell you something there. So one of, so, one of the agents I did was to find me, you know, cheap, something cheap, right? So, I don't know if you know what been bore a buyer. Intent is there. It's bumper. Is this company that it takes all the search results related to a corporation's IP address and it cleans them up, scrubs them, puts them in generic buckets to give you some level privacy, and then it sells that information. And generally it's really expensive, you know, because your options are Dnn and Bradstreet, which obviously they have a lot of financial information, including, like first research reports. I have a subscription with them as well, but they're very pricey. Zoom Info is more up to date, and by third, like, $10,000 a month. Who can afford that? Right? So, so I was like, alright, find me some better alternatives. I looked at Apollo, you know, but their intent data is from, like open emails and, and some soft indicators, it's not as good as Bambora. And so I found, I found another one that, but they, but they also was very expensive, it was more than $4,000 for the year. So I told, I told the agent. I said, Go find me. Go find me Bombora topics that I can change and that I can get individual people's, you know, based on their job title, their, you know, their, their personal, I'm sorry, their company emails and their company phone numbers. And I think this also has the personals, but so I found this website using that agent. It's called Lusha L, U, S, H, A, and for $29 a month. They have a sliding scale so you can say how many credits you want to buy in a month and that changes like how much it costs, right? So their minimum is $29 and you get, I think it's 200 or 250 credits, and it's one credit for the person's email and five credits for their phone number. That is crazy affordable. You get five topics, and you can change them once a month.

Dave Erickson 47:54
And so this gives you kind of a source for leads.

Carley Martha 47:57
Yes. So these are people that are looking specifically for whatever services you target, you know. So if they're looking for outsourced accounting, you know, I, I can look based on, based on that intent and and come up with the decision makers so I can reach out to them personally and be like, you know, hey, got a tip. Thought you might be looking.

Dave Erickson 48:19
There's this theory I'm having about leads, as AI helps people generate leads better and more efficiently. The amount of contacts that a lead gets, gets to the point where your odds of securing the business are falling as more and more people are approaching that lead, because more and more people have the tools. So that, in itself, generates its own problem. But if you are first to the pot and start using it correctly, you'll be the initial ones, but I think it'll have diminishing results over time.

Carley Martha 48:58
So one of the great things is that, this the Bombora information is done once a week, it’s on the last six days, right? So I've, right now I have access to four different lead databases because I'm in the process of deciding whether or not I'm going to renew my Dun and Bradstreet. So what I've noticed is that they're not the same companies. I'm not getting the list of the companies because they're only showing me companies that they have contacts for. So so like the, the Lucia has significantly less contacts than seamless AI, but the price tag is also a lot smaller. And honestly, if you're doing this for yourself and you have more than 10 leads, you're not going to follow up with them, not 10 at a time, you know. And so, because they refresh every week, then you know, even, even if, even if somebody else is looking for the same exact company size, the same exact topics and the same exact geographic areas, right? You know, the, the chance, the chances of that are, you know, small and and when it and when it gets to be not as effective. I'll find a different source, right?

Dave Erickson 50:24
So we've talked about using AI for marketing and sales and kind of general communication response process. What other areas do you think AI is going to be very valuable for an entrepreneur in automating.

Carley Martha 50:44
I think the value of having access to experts at three o'clock in the morning is life changing as an entrepreneur, because before it was it's just me, and I have to figure this out on my own, through trial and error, through guessing or through, you know, trying to figure out if somebody near me has gone through this. And now I can really use the AI to, you know, tell me this is, this is what industry standard is. This is how you know, this is handled by, you know, these people, whatever you know, it's just it, I think that is really the gold for business owners.

Botond Seres 51:39
We already talked about, What do you think the future of AI agents is, in general, but what do you think the future of people who use AI is?

Carley Martha 51:51
I am hopeful that as more people start using AI for good, that it will improve how we interact with each other, you know, like, when I go to AI and say, help me write this, it doesn't just teach me, it doesn't just like, help me write the paragraph right, or the email. It actually teaches me, you know, like I, I'm definitely on the neurodivergent spectrum, right? So, all those, Hi, how are you doing? All those warm, you know, niceties, I didn't, I didn't have those, and didn't see the need for them. And now it's like, oh yeah, that's, I'm supposed to do that, that helps me so, so, so for for me, I that for me that works really well for that. And so I really appreciated that.
Dave Erickson 52:48
One of the things that AI can be used for and is helpful for is communication. When working with special needs kids and adults, what do you think the future of AI will be in helping them communicate or to help their lives get better?

Carley Martha 53:09
I think it's invaluable. You know, even just from identifying resources, there's a National Disability Navigator in those GPTs to actually helping non verbal autistic kids to talk, to helping them socialize. They're already coming up with, like AI educational tutors, you know, to really just help meet them where they are and teach them in whatever learning style they need. And that can be, that can be, being educated and being able to read is life changing, because when you're not you're completely helpless, and you know everybody else is making decisions for you. So being able to communicate that, that way, especially for these non verbal autistic children is critical.

Dave Erickson 54:05
So Carly, can you talk a little bit about your business and what you do and what are the type of clients you're looking for?

Carley Martha 54:12
Absolutely, I am a certified public accountant. I'm actually a forensic CPA, which means I'm an accounting expert, I'm a Certified Fraud Examiner, and I'm also a certified CFO. So I can really help business owners, not just untangle messes. A lot of times, they hire bookkeepers who mean well, but they don't know how to handle complex transactions. And I can really help them understand their numbers and help them protect their investment to keep their money from walking out the door, right because, especially in tough economic times, employee dishonesty is a real problem. I predominantly work with special needs families that own businesses because, they need all the help they can get. And I'm a whole bunch of resources in one tiny package, right? I can do, obviously, their accounting work, but because I am technology minded, I can help them with automation, I can get them the tools to help them grow their business, and I can get them the lead generation to to really allow them to focus on their family without having to worry about all the things that they don't have time to do and don't have the skills.

Dave Erickson 55:29
Carly, thank you so much for being on our podcast and discussing the latest AI automation tools for entrepreneurs.

Carley Martha 55:37
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Botond Seres 55:52
Well, we are at the end of the episode today, but before you go, we want you to think about this important question.

Dave Erickson 55:29
Which new AI tools are you going to use to run your business?

Botond Seres 55:52
For our listeners, please subscribe and click Notifications to join us for our next ScreamingBox technology and business rundown podcast, and until then, use an AI tool for your business.

Dave Erickson 56:05
Thank you very much for taking this journey with us. Join us for our next exciting exploration of technology and business in the first week of every month. Please help us by subscribing, liking and following us on whichever platform you're listening to or watching us on. We hope you enjoy this podcast, and please let us know any subjects or topics you would like us to discuss in our next podcast by leaving a message for us in the comment sections or sending us a Twitter DM till next month. Please stay happy and healthy.