Streamlined Success: Leveraging AI for Time and Cost Savings

Curious about how AI can transform your business? Imagine cutting down hours of mundane tasks and enhancing customer interaction without needing to expand your team. Join us as we, your certified AI consultants, unpack the massive potential AI holds for coaches, consultants, and speakers. We’ll even weave in a cautionary tale about dental mishaps and the importance of night guards—because efficiency and self-care both matter!

Unveil how AI can revolutionize your decision-making processes, from optimizing warehouses to crafting personalized marketing strategies. Discover real-life examples of businesses saving time and money with AI, boosting productivity without replacing human employees. We’ll share some of our top AI tools and tips for setting them up to ensure you get the most out of this transformative technology. 

Explore advanced AI tools that can supercharge your business operations. Learn how ChatGPT can go beyond messaging to build social media calendars and perform competitive analysis. Dive into the utilities of Metricool, Beautiful.ai, and Suno for streamlined content creation and analytics. Get insights on leveraging efficiency-boosters like Grammarly, ClickUp, HubSpot, and Salesforce. Whether it's effortless video creation with InVideo AI or enhancing your marketing campaigns with tools like HubSpot and Marketo, this episode is brimming with actionable insights to help you scale up your business. Tune in and transform your business strategy with AI!

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Chapters

• 0:03 The Importance of AI in Business
• 9:10 Benefits of AI in Business
• 18:34 Utilizing AI Tools for Business Success
• 25:36 Exploring AI Tools for Business Success

Transcript

Mary Fain Brandt: 0:03

You're listening to Scale Up Strategies, the business growth podcast for coaches, consultants and speakers. We're your hosts and business coach experts Mary Fan Grant and Laura Bay Shore.

Laura Bashore: 0:16

We're sharing all our insider tips from 20 plus years in business, including how we successfully scaled our businesses without losing our minds or our husbands.

Mary Fain Brandt: 0:27

Sure, you can piece it together and try to DIY your way to success. Or you can listen to us every week and learn the shortcuts, because we promise they're really awesome.

Laura Bashore: 0:38

So grab your favorite cup of coffee, tune in and let's start the show.

Mary Fain Brandt: 0:44

Welcome back everyone to Scale Up Strategies the business growth podcast for coaches, consultants and speakers. Hi there, I'm Mary Fane Brandt.

Laura Bashore: 0:54

And I'm Laura Bayshore, it's here. I just wanted to say that today we're diving into why business owners need to use AI to scale and crush the competition, and I'm so excited because what I'm saying it's here. I feel like people are finally talking about this, like small business owners are talking about this too, and the fear of being left behind is finally overcoming the fear of new technology is finally overcoming the fear of new technology. So just a quick note Mary and I are both certified AI consultants, so a little shameless plug here, but get ready for a really fun episode because, according to Gartner, 72% of business leaders say their organizations use AI in some capacity. So are you being left behind?

Mary Fain Brandt: 1:47

Don't be a dinosaur. That's what I always say. Don't become extinct. You know, some of the new titles in careers and stuff are futurists and board of directors. I've mentioned this before, but earlier this year a study came out saying that board of directors are looking to add other, I guess, directors or staff that understand AI. So if you are serving on a board, you are probably looking to add a position of someone that understands AI maybe a certified AI person, consultant. But that is where the industry is moving. It's going to be in every industry. Ai isn't specific to one.

Laura Bashore: 2:33

I'm already having organizations and universities give me offers to try to entice me to be on their board, and the positioning that I see is they have a whole section that is talking about AI, and that's how I know. That's why they're coming to me for this, because I'm certified. So you're absolutely right, mary, you nailed it. So, before we dive into this excellent topic, which we're going to try to keep it concise we have so much to say about it, but I wanted to share something with you. What? So you know how, a couple of weeks ago, when you were in town and we saw each other and I was hoping to bring my husband, but I wasn't able to bring him because I said he needed to watch the children.

Laura Bashore: 3:18

Yeah, so what I didn't share with you is that the reason we had no one to watch the kids. My dad was planning on coming to town, but he lost or broke off a piece of one of his teeth. And so he had to go get it pulled, and I thought you would find it extremely ironic because I just had to have my tooth pulled because I cracked it.

Mary Fain Brandt: 3:45

I am one of those people that grinds my teeth at night, like severely. So the dentist is like, oh, you have a crack there, yeah. So Laura knows like I had two weeks of going to the dentist and they found this crack. And he's like that doesn't surprise me, because you grind your teeth. So anyone out there that's grinding your teeth, I didn't wear my night guard for like three nights in a row and I think that's when it happened. Wear your night guard, because I had to have this. No way, yeah, he's like you have to wear that every night. So I did have to have my tooth pulled and I was so worried because I was supposed to get my little fake temporary tooth.

Mary Fain Brandt: 4:30

And Laura, because I was supposed to get my little fake temporary tooth and Laura knows I went to the dentist.

Laura Bashore: 4:33

Um they ordered the wrong tooth.

Mary Fain Brandt: 4:34

Yeah, I don't understand how that happened. Like ordering should be complimentary. No, it's not. Yeah, $341 for a temporary fake tooth. I'm like, uh, shouldn't that be free now?

Laura Bashore: 4:43

Yeah, I mean because now you've lost out on the time, right or they need to prorate that. Here's the time you lost, prorate it.

Mary Fain Brandt: 4:51

Well, I'm sorry to hear that your dad had to have a tooth removed, because it was no joke. I lost a whole day. I did not think I'd be down and out. But maybe one day AI will just create that tooth with a 3D printer in the dentist's office and you'll leave with that fake tooth.

Laura Bashore: 5:09

I don't know, I mean they're getting, they're getting closer to it Absolutely, and I'm going to share with my dad about the grinding thing, because he's a grinder too. He has a night guard and he hasn't been wearing it. So, thank you, tips you didn't know you need yes.

Mary Fain Brandt: 5:26

Well, let's dive right into AI and the importance of AI in the modern business. Why don't you go ahead and kick that off for us, Laura?

Laura Bashore: 5:37

Yeah. So it's really not. Having AI is no longer an option. Not utilizing it is no longer an option for us. So one of the things is picking up your efficiency, right. If you are not working on how to cut down your time, you're really going to start to be left behind. This is like the number one reason why we're utilizing this, and so incorporating AI is going to help out with that.

Laura Bashore: 6:09

So imagine having an assistant who never sleeps. Or if you're outsourcing and they happen to be in a different country, you're not having to match up different schedules and like oh, I have this great idea, but I'll have to wait to implement that for like 24, 26 hours, right? So by automating routine tasks like customer service with AI chatbots but not generic ones, right? That's where the whole AI part comes in is you're gonna be able to customize it and that's really gonna help to free up your time to focus on what truly matters, which is growing your business. So AI chatbots can handle things like inquiries. They can provide instant responses, because we all know everyone wants instant gratification in their communication, right?

Mary Fain Brandt: 6:58

And the AI chatbots are very different from what you know as a static chatbot.

Mary Fain Brandt: 7:05

The static chatbot you put in the questions that you think your customers are going to ask and then you give it an answer where an AI chatbot is learning from your website and what the customers are asking. So it's intuitive. So that is a service that I now offer, laura, and I know that we talked about that. So that's a new service package is putting on AI chatbots onto my clients' websites and training them the right way. So I want to share this statistic that PwC estimates that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030. So if that doesn't get you excited on how you can use AI and how your business can grow along with the AI industry, I just don't know what would right. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about some of the business or the benefits of AI. As a business owner and you already talked about, you know, automating the routine tasks to save time and having an AI assistant. You know they don't call in sick, they don't talk back, they get the job done on time and, let's be honest, lightning speed, enlightening speed. We both use it and we'll go into that a little later in the show, but there's really like the four areas that benefit the business owner on using AI. Number one is efficiency, number two is accuracy, number three is personalization believe it or not. And number four is saving time and money. So the accuracy you can reduce human error and you can improve decision-making. So by implementing AI in your business, you're actually able to move quicker through the decision-making. If you can move quicker through the decision-making, you're saving time on implementing or launching a new product, hiring a new person, launching a new product, hiring a new person, coming up with new reports faster. So I really like using AI for decision-making. It can process the data, manage inventory, analyze trends. So think about warehouses. Right, it takes the guesswork out of the decision making. So you have data-backed decisions that can propel your business forward with confidence. So that is with accuracy, with AI. The second thing is the personalization that you can tailor your customers' experiences. Wait, the next item is you can tailor personalization. Oh God, let's try that again, okay. The next benefit is personalization. You can actually tailor the customer experiences to drive engagement and sales. So AI isn't a want to have, a nice to have. Laura and I are here to tell you AI is a have to have in your business if you're going to succeed, if you're going to scale and grow. If you're going to scale and grow, ai allows you to tailor every customer interaction to their specific needs. So I think that that is, and that goes with the AI chatbot, I believe.

Mary Fain Brandt: 10:23

The next item is probably or the next benefit is probably my favorite. It saves you time and money hands down. So this is where the real magic happens with AI when you're automating the tasks and you're getting the job done. You're not waiting for someone to show up to get online, whether it's a employee or it's your VA. Now, I'm not saying that AI is going to replace humans. It's going to make us more efficient, more productive. Somebody has to run the AI. Why not use AI to increase the productivity of your employees or your virtual assistants?

Laura Bashore: 11:05

Yeah, exactly, once you set it up with the items that it needs to get the personalization down, that's then where the saving time and money happens, so that it's not generic. And then just to your point when you're looking to scale, you can still pass that on to somebody else to execute it. But first you set it up you make sure it's in the right tone, it's addressing the right clients or the right business partners, you give it the information it needs so that it isn't generic and it doesn't just keep saying driving a beacon of hope, a map, you know.

Mary Fain Brandt: 11:41

Right, and even with the AI chatbots, there's just so many different tools out there. We're going to talk about those next, but I just want you guys to think about having an army of AI assistants that can do the mundane tasks. You know, that can save you hours. One of my clients after our AI session this was a brick and mortar solar company, electrical and solar company and he literally said at the end you just saved me 23 hours. So think of business development managers, right. Think of your marketing teams. Think of your salespeople. Think of HR. Imagine how much time because HR is complicated, right, all those forms and getting people in and out there's just so much work to do in HR. Imagine having an HR AI assistant that can do the mundane, mundane things quicker.

Mary Fain Brandt: 12:33

I worked with a client where we created um, a termination letter, right. So she's a small business owner, I'm very busy. She doesn't have an HR staff and she was just stuck on how to word that and what to say. I whipped it up for her in under 10 minutes, like having a conversation with her. Whipped it up, send it to her. She was like this is perfect. So there's a lot of different ways that you can save time and money because we can't all have an HR person on our staff right.

Mary Fain Brandt: 13:01

We can't all have a marketing team and even if you have a marketing team, are they doing the best job? Are they being the most productive?

Laura Bashore: 13:10

So I agree. Yeah, I was just going to say as a small business owner. I think the thing right there that used to or would hold me back is because my services are so customized and also I need to be seen as somebody who can be trusted in the written realm, right. So I can't have a bunch of grammars, typos and things happen right, but I can not have grammar issues where people are confusing two, two and two. Well, now y'all know.

Mary Fain Brandt: 13:45

I gotta be real because if you know me, you know me and hopefully you love me. But I am the queen of the typos, right? And I love it because, because you know that not all my stuff is written by AI, because I you'll see typos and I appreciate everyone that's like hey Mary, there's a typo over here, yeah.

Laura Bashore: 14:03

And and exactly that's my point Like typos are common, but when it's like an obvious grammatical error that you know is not a typo but it's just this person not using it correctly, and that would happen when I would hire the type of marketing that I could afford at the time when I first started.

Mary Fain Brandt: 14:20

Now you can afford a whole marketing team with your AI assistance. You can have an email person.

Mary Fain Brandt: 14:26

You can have a social media person, a copywriter, a landing page, you know, an HR person, an event planner, set up your SOPs. It is just amazing. So I think that is the biggest thing is saving time and money for the small business owner and even the larger organizations. There's there's nothing wrong with implementing this and having someone on the team you know, manage it, watch it, train it and really dive in. So, laura, let's talk. You know that's some of the benefits that you know. You know you need it.

Mary Fain Brandt: 15:03

You have to have AI if you're going to have a successful business and scale from this year forward. You know, we just talked about the benefits efficiency, accuracy, personalization and saving time and money. I mean, who doesn't want to save time and money, right? So let's talk about some of our stories and our favorite AI tools, and mine are. I mean, I have a lot of AI tools. I'm always testing them out. I use Gamma for presentations and I just want to put this out there that they're not perfect. You guys, I go with a 90-10 rule. Ai tools are to get you 90% to the finish line. The last 10% is that human eye on it, and that's why I'm like it's not going to replace us. It's just going to allow us to do what we want to do more of that working with our clients, one-on-one, or networking, or taking more time off Right.

Laura Bashore: 16:01

Yeah, yeah, exactly Exactly.

Mary Fain Brandt: 16:05

I'll go through mine really fast and I know you have a wonderful list Some of the things we both use, like Claude and ChatGPT. I'm really digging Claude. These days I've been using it more and more. We both use Video AI. I'll let you talk about that. Fathom to record all of your calls because it transcribes it and it highlights your action items. So if anyone's conducting calls sales calls, consultation calls, client calls you need to start using Fathom. It is amazing. And then this one you may or may not know about FlyMessage. It's a SaaS tool from Vingresso and their motto is type less, do more, so it creates all your shortcuts. Motto is type less, do more, so it creates all your shortcuts. You can have a whole email like a template, and just type in you know five strokes on your your keyboard and it'll type out the entire email. You can also use it to comment on LinkedIn. It gives you those options. It's just a Chrome plugin, so easy to use. I love it. Uma AI has really gotten better with our images. I'm actually liking it.

Laura Bashore: 17:16

It has, it has. You're right about that. Yeah, I've noticed over just the last two weeks. Which is also something cool about AI is it just keeps-.

Mary Fain Brandt: 17:24

Changes, changes, changes, and I love Canva with its AI integration. Yeah, you know, all the improvements that it's made. So those are some of the top 10 that I use, but there's many, many more. So follow my LinkedIn newsletter that comes out on Thursdays, where I showcase new AI tools every week. So, laura, I know that you use some of those, but you use some different tools. Can you tell our audience about the tools that you're using?

Laura Bashore: 17:55

Yeah. So you know, first off, I'm a little bit old school. So how about Grammarly? Yeah, that's a great one. You know, I've been using it for almost 10 years. So that's something also for our listeners to think about. When you're like, oh, I don't use AI, yes, you do, we're just calling it AI now. Yeah, exactly. So think about that, because basically, anything that is helping to cut the time down, that is using intuitive technology is in fact artificial intelligence Siri. Alexa.

Mary Fain Brandt: 18:29

Google all of that.

Laura Bashore: 18:31

Exactly so. On a more serious note, I have a couple of things. So you talked about ChatGPT, and obviously that's the one that we all care about, but utilize it for more than just making a message. It's a great simple way to build a social media calendar simple way to build social media calendar, but I also am using it to do competitive analysis on my competitors out there, and then I love that, once it has that, I can say now make this into a chart, and then it will make my chart and then I can export it and just so really dive in and utilize it.

Laura Bashore: 19:12

Don't just sit on the outskirts and say, okay, I've used it to make a post. There's so much more to use. One thing that I absolutely love that I've been waiting for is metric, cool, so metric, like metrics, and then cool and it's all one word, and it can hold up to five different brands. So you mentioned Canva. This can also link in with your Canva to help make your creation easy, and then it just plugs everything in. But, as you know, I've got two different businesses that I'm running this for, so you can have up to five different brands holding your colors, your content, themes, your font, your tone like the tone of your messaging. You can input all of that information. I'm going to have to check that one out, yeah, and then you just click the button and then it will put everything into your tones of your colors if you don't have it already.

Mary Fain Brandt: 20:16

Everything into your tones of your colors if you don't have it already, and then it links into all social platforms, including LinkedIn, and you know how that was hard to send me that link because I know we've talked about it before.

Laura Bashore: 20:24

I want to want to get that one out, and you can also use it for your personal page, analytics and company page, so you can get both of those things in there. Like I said, you can have up to five plugs right into them. Pulls analytics I am loving it, so you no longer have to rely on the analytics of the social platform. This pulls everything out for you one place. Love it.

Laura Bashore: 20:53

Something that I've been using for presentations different from Gamma is beautifulai, but, backing up what you're saying right there, this is basically a starting point. To get it done quickly. No longer do you have to spend an hour thinking about what the format is. Have it throw one out there for you and then just do some editing in it. But I love it because it has the talk tool, so I'm able.

Laura Bashore: 21:20

I created a presentation by just saying three sentences into it and it even made you know and I was very specific like only 10 slides, blah, blah, blah, and it made it to where I was able to go ahead and use this. I had something come up where I needed a presentation and I only had 15 minutes. When I gave this presentation online, the people I gave it for were like that was amazing and I was like cool, it took me like five minutes, so that that is really good. And and again, it has branding tool feature as well, so you can upload your vector files, you can upload your fonts, your colors, everything's good. Um, yeah, and then what else did I say? Oh, um, and just for fun. There there is Suno, which makes like jingles and music, and I just like it, that's fun.

Mary Fain Brandt: 22:17

I like that. Yeah, I forgot to mention an important one that you know, not just for marketing and copy and all that is Human Linker. You can unlock sales potential and boost engagement, so it is Human linkers. For LinkedIn, you can view your prospects personalities and get a recommendation on how best to engage with them.

Mary Fain Brandt: 22:40

So you can use that to connect or message someone on LinkedIn. So I think and it's a, I think it's just a Chrome plugin as well, but, like just to understand, get a little more information on a prospect over on LinkedIn, since we both use LinkedIn, you know that's a good one. Like I said, there are millions of them. I don't feel that you need 20 different tools. Probably you guys, some of the tools you use, like Canva, we use ClickUp. Clickup has AI built into it. Now, hubspot, salesforce, all of those have AI built into them. So find the top 10 tools that you need, whether it's video content creation, sales pipelines. Grammarly is great. You know everyone should have that, just everybody.

Laura Bashore: 23:30

Yeah, I have it on my phone. Now that doesn't mean you're not going to see some grammar errors and some typos, just to be clear, because it's not 100% accurate, okay, but you know, basically, as a writer, the tools that I find that I'm using with AI are tools that help turn what I'm doing into high level editing, so tools that let me do the great work that I need to do without as much of the mundane that leads up to the final product.

Mary Fain Brandt: 23:59

And for those of us that are not video editors, I started using in video AI. I used to use in video. I just used it this week to create videos for my clients, so we're doing a doggy daycare video with pictures from them that are their dogs and stock photos, and you get to pick the voice, so it's a woman's voice.

Laura Bashore: 24:25

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one too. I've been using that as well, especially for like B roll and just all that kind of stuff.

Mary Fain Brandt: 24:32

We're just so here. This is why we do this podcast. This is why we collaborate and work together and refer people, because we're literally the same person, just, you know, in two different states, just different. Um, yeah, so I love in video, it's pretty easy to use.

Laura Bashore: 24:47

Oh, it's really easy, like if I can put a video together with the music, with the captions, with all of that. And the quality is so nice. That's the thing. The quality is yeah, it's on point.

Mary Fain Brandt: 25:01

I love that. So we talked there's a whole bunch of tools, you guys and we're going to have everything in the show notes, so let's go on to the next point here is let's talk specifically about the 10 ways business owners can use AI, and we started that, but let's just go over it again. So AI powered chatbots to provide 24 seven customers support. We talked about why they're different. They're not static, right, they're. They can learn from your website and from the customers asking those questions.

Mary Fain Brandt: 25:36

The second way, which I think we all need and want is marketing automation. Right, automating your email marketing campaigns, social media posts and ad placements. I love AI tools to create email sequences and to refine them and refine them. I love how easy it is to create even a social media post in a friendly, professional manner, and I'll be like okay, now add my brand voice, which it knows is fun, sassy and casual. So it's a totally different vibe, right? Yes? So marketing automation, so tools like HubSpot, marketo what do I? Agorapulse, promo, republic, if you're not using the scheduling tool? You should. You should, because why are you spending your time trying to schedule out posts?

Mary Fain Brandt: 26:27

That's not where you should be spending your time so customer service and support marketing automation. Do you want to take the next couple, laura?

Laura Bashore: 27:44

Yeah, so Salesforce casting, which I think really is something that people are not fully engaging with yet. One of the great examples we have is Salesforce Einstein, so that uses AI to provide Salesforce casts and insights. Check your current CRM and databases and see if there's already a plugin. I'm finding that a lot of them are adding it over what maybe like the last month and a half, I've seen them integrating more and just kind of popping up. Or you're getting emailed to alert you personalized customer experiences, so tailoring product recommendations and content that are based on user behavior, so kind of like what you were mentioning with in human link. I think you yeah, it's kind of that where you're looking at figuring out okay, how do I, how do I make sure that I am saying the right things to this customer? So Amazon's recommendation engine right, how do you think these things keep popping up? You know so they're out there.

Mary Fain Brandt: 28:47

For sure, based on your past buying history, we think you might like these 20 things. Mary Fane Brandt, right, and you're like yes, I do. I'm like well, yes, I do. Right, so that's AI. You guys, that's an AI tool.

Laura Bashore: 29:01

I love that. I love Amazon.

Mary Fain Brandt: 29:04

Thank you, amazon for delivering my new mic arm by three on the same day. We got it within four hours. That's great, I love it. So laura knows that my mic arm broke yesterday right before I was getting on a call. It just crashed. Because that's how things go, because I pulled it hard. So thank you, amazon. Um, so you can also use ai number. The fifth way is data analysis and insights analyzing large data sets I love Claude for that and uncover trends and insights. Now I did just analyze two websites using ChatGPT yes, the day before yesterday, asking it the right questions, what I wanted to learn, and I analyzed my own and I was really scared to do that because we're still updating some things on my website. But it came back pretty good. But it did give me one recommendation. I forget what that was right now. Oh, I didn't have like an ad, you know, sign up for my email list. I didn't have that. So that was really great. You can analyze websites just using chat to be T, because now you can put a link in there.

Laura Bashore: 30:14

Yes, so good, because before.

Mary Fain Brandt: 30:17

I was like really I know.

Mary Fain Brandt: 30:18

Number six inventory management. I don't use it for that, I don't know how to use it, but you can optimize your inventory levels and supply chain logistics. We should probably have my husband, joe, on this call, because that's what he does he's logistics at Amazon, ironically but there are some tools that we found. Clear Metal uses AI to predict the demand and manage the inventory and, if you guys didn't know, I was the inventory specialist for Southern California for a company called Pagemart back in my day. I managed five inventory locations and it was all manual process, right.

Laura Bashore: 30:54

Oh yeah.

Mary Fain Brandt: 30:55

Counting the stock and I had to do sales forecasting, inventory forecasting. So imagine having an AI tool that helps to do that and probably cuts the time down by 75%, I would imagine.

Laura Bashore: 31:08

Yeah, I'm not familiar with Clear metal, but that might be something that I should share with Blake for our inventory for our e-commerce.

Mary Fain Brandt: 31:17

So yeah, okay, you learned something today. Look at that.

Laura Bashore: 31:21

Yay, I love it.

Mary Fain Brandt: 31:24

You want to take the next one.

Laura Bashore: 31:26

Yeah, so content creation I kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier, but you know, generating ideas, helping you to write articles and optimizing for SEO, chat, gpt and Claude, right. So chat GPT gather that information, claude is really kind of the finesser of it and it hallucinates less. So, and if you want more information on what that means, you can let us know. Reach out to us and we'll help you with it. But something to think about.

Mary Fain Brandt: 31:56

And again I just want to reinforce it's not cut copy paste. It's cut copy paste, review and edit Exactly Please. I just want to get that out there, because if all you do is cut, copy paste and put that up. We're going to know that it's AI and there's going to be some mistakes. It gets you to the finish line 90% faster.

Laura Bashore: 32:18

Right, exactly, recruitment and hiring. So this is something that is definitely being used right now, and if you are in that space, you should jump on it too, because it does streamline the process with applicant tracking systems. Okay, we've had that for a long time, but difference is that now you can also utilize AI to screen the resumes and conduct initial video interviews, and just so you know candidates are used to it.

Laura Bashore: 32:45

Candidates are already used to it and preparing for it. I've already been helping some people, so it's pretty cool, did you have a client that had a?

Mary Fain Brandt: 32:56

or was that me? Did I talk to someone who said I talked to someone, I think, or maybe you did? They said they had a interview, a video interview, but nobody was on the other side. It was AI.

Laura Bashore: 33:07

Yeah, I had had a client like that, yeah, and they were scared, but I'll tell you I had even been getting this back in 2021. So it's just that it's perfected now to engage, instead of saying now, like here's the question, say it, it will then re-engage back with you, right, and keep it going, even though it's not a human face that you'll be seeing. So you know something to think about Financial management tools. So, upping the game on our bookkeeping and expense tracking, there are plugins for QuickBooks or Xero.

Mary Fain Brandt: 33:41

I use Xero. Xero is based in the UK, and so it's actually what I use in my business. It creates amazing reports that I just share with my tax person, and it shows me what I'm spending in each category. Once it's set up, it's really pretty great, so I really like Xero. I'm not a fan of QuickBooks Just not a fan. Sorry, guys.

Laura Bashore: 34:06

Yeah, yeah.

Mary Fain Brandt: 34:09

Cybersecurity. Now, this isn't something that I've used personally, but AI can be used, obviously enhancing security measures with AI driven threat detection. So when an example that we found was Darktrace uses AI to identify and respond to potential security threats in real time. So I mean, it's just another. You know, we wanted to give you 10 different areas that you could use AI in your business, depending what industry you're in, so and it can be used for more than these 10. These are just 10 that we thought we'd share with you guys.

Laura Bashore: 34:44

So I mean just a few quick stats and trends to share about current adoption and future growth. So, according to McKinsey, 50% of companies have adopted AI in at least one business function, and that was as far back as 2020.

Mary Fain Brandt: 35:02

So imagine where we are right now.

Laura Bashore: 35:04

Yeah, exactly. It's just now we're talking about it.

Mary Fain Brandt: 35:07

Right. And so AI, you guys. It gives businesses a competitive edge by enabling faster, more informed decisions, and that's what we all want. According to Accenture, AI has the potential to increase business productivity up to 40%. I mean, who doesn't want that as a business owner? So, you guys, there's a lot of information that we shared in here. You can find those tools in the show notes, and I actually have a PDF that we can attach, laura, that has the top 10 AI tools for small business owners. If we want to do that, we'd love for you guys to explore the different AI tools. My one tip is if you're curious, will it work? Sign up for it, even if you have to pay for it. Cancel it right away. Use it for 30 days and see if you're actually going to use it. That will minimize minimize the risk of you signing up for a tool and being on a membership forever.

Laura Bashore: 36:01

So you guys.

Mary Fain Brandt: 36:02

Laura, you want to take us home here?

Laura Bashore: 36:06

Yes, so we really hope to hear from you guys about what you took away from this episode. Please reach out to us through our email, and one way that you can always help us out if you're enjoying this content and finding it valuable is to subscribe, rate and review this podcast. Make sure you share it out with your network and until next time, here's to good coffee, great conversations and even greater success. Ciao, cheers.