Hey, a warm welcome back to all of our viewers and listeners.

This is Connect & Convert, and it's Dennis and Leah.

Hey, we're back, Leah.

Hey Dennis.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

I, uh, uh, you know, as always in the background, Producer Paul

lurking in the background, making sure that we don't mess up.

So he's with us too, but hey, I got a question, Leah.

It's September and have you guys had snow up there in Canada?

Is it snowing already?

We're having six inches snow, nothing.

We are having the perfect autumn weather, just it's pristine.

Oh, farmers are in the field.

They are farmers in the field.

There's a big joke that, you know, in the egg community, nobody ever says

it's gonna be a bumper crop, but wow.

We are having the weather, even our, our trees, not just the Christmas trees.

All the trees are still green, so it is

No kidding.

Come on up.

Uh, yeah, I may have to get up there because, uh, we're still

in full summer here in, in Florida.

It's, it's crazy.

It's always summer in Florida.

But I wanna know one thing before we get started.

Okay.

We got a great, we got a great guest today.

this is gonna be one of our best ever.

But I gotta know, Ms. Leah, are you ready for hockey season?

Oh, are you kidding?

I was born ready.

You know that.

This is Canada.

Are you still an Oilers fan?

You know what?

Just through association I was born there.

I have to be.

But you remember at our house, it's the Leafs I know in the Sens. Oh yeah.

And between my husband and my boys, I have to walk that delicate line.

I, well, just so you know, I've talked to some of

the Panthers in the off season.

Okay.

And

they tell me it's going to be a three peet.

They will be the champions again next year.

So that's just so you know.

Well, we're gonna get our bets on the table.

Thomas.

We were hoping.

Okay.

We are, uh, privileged today to have, we always try to bring our, our listeners

the best, the experts, the people in the know, the people who are in the arena.

And today we have a guy who's in the arena.

He is an expert in helping small businesses and large businesses use

technology, leveraging technology to make them more effective, more

profitable, and particularly the AI space.

How about that?

Say hello and welcome to Connect & Convert, Mr. Thomas Capone.

Good.

Good morning, Dennis.

Good morning, Leah.

Happy to be here.

Good to

you too.

We're glad to have you.

Just a little background, the good

introduction.

I hope I can live up to it.

Well, you will.

'cause I know you will.

I've, I've seen you in action.

Thomas is currently the vice President of business development

for Concepta Technologies.

Tom's been in that space for over 15 years.

Uh, he's not only a sales executive.

He came from a sales background into technology, but he is

now a technology strategist.

He has helped not only small businesses, but Fortune 500 companies,

uh, level up and use technology to make them more successful.

Did I get that right Tom?

Pretty good.

You're hired.

Well, and Thomas the man, you gotta know a little

bit about the man, Thomas.

This is a devoted family man, four magnificent kids, a beautiful wife,

totally devoted to his family, and a big UCF, university of Central Florida fan.

Go Knights.

Charge On.

Charge On.

And of course we share something in common that is a long suffering

long loyalty that we've been loyal to, uh, the Miami Dolphins.

I love the Miami Dolphins.

Yeah.

I used to.

Come on.

We're in good.

We're in good.

Well, Thomas is a native of South Florida, so he grew up there.

I lived there for 30 years and unfortunately we now are still

supporting a team that it hasn't been pretty since last Sunday.

Has it?

The, the, the news is not good.

But yeah, Dennis, I appreciate that.

It, it hasn't been pretty since about 1999, but I still have my Marino

t-shirt.

That's true.

That's, I saw my Marino jersey.

That's true.

I can choose to focus on the positives.

And one thing I'll say is I heard you guys talking about

hockey right before I jumped on.

Yeah.

And did you know that?

Florida is now the new hockey is the new national pastime of Florida.

We have four of the last six Stanley Cups here in state of Florida.

Anyway, you're here.

Rub in.

We're here

to talk business.

Rub it in.

We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, gonna boldly go.

I'm all boat.

She wants to get off of this and get onto business.

See, she doesn't wanna talk about hockey.

I'm more than happy to wax poetic about the Miami

Dolphins and we can talk Marino.

I still have the jersey, but let's just move this along.

All right.

Okay, so here it is, Thomas.

I do a lot of study and reading in the small business space, and here's what

I'm hearing and here's what I'm reading.

Big headlines.

AI is coming for your job.

AI is coming for your job.

Beware Thomas.

Is AI coming for my job?

Woo.

Doomsday.

Huh?

Doomsday.

Hey, what do you think?

You're in the space buddy.

Dennis, you know, I take that question and I try to

think of it from a different angle.

I try to think of a different angle, and my angle is, how can

I avoid AI from taking my job?

Mm. Okay.

How can I avoid AI from taking my job?

Okay, how And

yeah.

Right?

If it, if it was only so easy.

If it was only so easy.

Yeah.

Obviously there's mundane tasks that nobody wants to do and mundane jobs

that people probably don't want to do, that we won't be doing for long.

They're not here for the future.

And that's happened over time as every technology has been introduced, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

but.

I will say the real question is how can you leverage AI to

be better at your position?

Because who will take your job are the people that are experts in how

to apply AI to the role and becoming far more productive by leveraging

AI than you can be without it.

That's an interesting spin, isn't it, Leah?

Leah, have you come to grips with ai?

You and I have never really talked about it, and we need to talk about it more

on this podcast because our listeners and viewers, they wanna know about this.

How have you come to grips with ai?

Leah, is it gonna take your job?

No.

No, but it's gonna take away the stuff I don't like doing in my job.

Oh, and I, that's how I'm translating what Thomas is doing if when I find something,

and I've had some exciting opportunities just in the last couple weeks where

I went, oh no, I have to do this.

It's gonna take me this much time.

And then I thought, Hey, wait a minute, why don't I just see,

and we're talking pretty funda, like pretty rudimentary things.

Somebody who's really good, for example, at admin, would be able to take

this template and change it to that.

That's not my strength.

It's gonna take me four hours to do it.

So it's like, oh no.

And then it hit me.

Wait a minute.

And talking with Boomer about this, I went, this isn't

something that I could ask.

So I asked the AI platform that I've been, that I've been, uh, using, I've,

I've been going back and forth between a few and went, yeah, I can do that.

Two minutes later, I had everything done.

It was brilliant.

I was so excited.

It just gave me a huge lift.

And then I went on to do the parts of my job that I love, which are the

creative parts, which are the, the, yeah, the real human parts of it.

So Tom, there's an interesting response.

Love, I'd love to hear your reaction to what Leah just said.

Is this, uh, is this what you're hearing out there in the, uh, when

you consult with a client about ai?

Leah, I think you're spot on.

I think you're spot on.

It's gonna eliminate the task you don't want to do.

The next level to that though is how much more efficient it can make

you on the things you love to do.

You know,

as a sales, I'm in sales.

I know you guys are all in sales as well, and one of the things we love to do is

not necessarily create, but talk about proposals, present proposals, right?

Mm-hmm.

And think about the time we invest in creating proposals and putting things

together for our clients, and how much more effective and and efficient we

can be by leveraging AI to help us with those tasks and helping us to

present those proposals with feedback.

And things like that.

So could you I, I like this 'cause Lee and I both

work with a lot of salespeople.

I have for years.

It's one of my things that I've done for decades.

I love working with salespeople.

I'll tell you what, right now they are convinced Thomas, they are convinced

almost to a person that I've talked to that AI could never replace a salesperson.

What do you think?

There are, there are.

I will tell you there are probably tools out there that are selling to

you today that will say the opposite.

However, I think that the salespeople, again, that come with

the human touch, Dennis, right?

Human in the loop, AI is what's taking over right now.

I can't predict what's five or 10 years down the road.

I think nobody can.

But for today, and what the near future brings, human and loop AI

salespeople that can leverage ai, and I'll give you a great example.

I use AI in my space now as a salesperson for researching my prospects.

Interesting.

Okay.

And I used to spend hours researching prospects and reading through annual

reports and company structures, and now AI can do all that for me.

And it can summarize a prospect, but what I could find online in minutes,

saving me hours and hours of time, and, but that AI still needs me to

talk with the customer, understand the empathy, build trust, and those kind

of things that AI can't do by itself.

Okay, so question I have, uh, come across, I haven't

actually used this myself, but I've heard that AI can simulate a salesperson.

Okay, AI can sound like a salesperson, and can interact real time with a customer.

What do you think about that?

Is that number one, is that true?

And number two is, is it real?

Is it, is it, does it, is it authentic?

Does it sound authentic?

So, have you ever gotten a call or gotten on a call with an AI from

a company that's reached out to you?

I probably have, but I probably didn't know it.

I have, oh boy.

That's scary.

Yeah, I have, certainly seen companies, um, and, and

tools offering this service.

I've listened in, in a few of them myself.

The big advantages of it's a becomes a volume play, right?

So the AI can make.

Hundreds and hundreds or thousands and thousands of calls per per second.

Yeah.

And it, it, it brings me back six, eight months ago when we were first starting to

use AI to create content and the content's not quite as good, but the volume in

which we can create is pretty good.

Right.

That's interest.

So somewhere along the line there's a, there's, help

me understand.

Okay.

You made an interesting comment there.

The content isn't as good, but the speed is good under, let me understand that.

Actually, Dennis, I think about this the way I make my coffee.

I love espresso coffee.

I love it.

Okay.

And there's nothing better than a freshly brewed espresso coffee.

Okay.

But you know what?

I use an espresso machine in my kitchen.

Yep.

And it's not as good as an espresso, but I get my cup of coffee in like 14 seconds.

Mm-hmm.

And it's hot and it's what I would call Good enough.

It's good enough.

Interesting.

Good enough, right?

Good enough.

So it meets a demand.

It meets the demand at a level that's good enough based on the time trade off.

And I'll say for ai, we have a lot of the same.

So there are tools that can help you get from zero to good

enough very, very quickly.

And then what happens as professionals, it's our job to take good enough

and bring it to the next level.

I mean, I can think of times when I've been talking

to, um, going in the past two, three months, talking to my bank.

Talking to, uh, booking flights.

So two very different, different types of apps that I'm using

and I can tell initially, okay.

They're trying to figure out what do I need, what do I need, what do I need?

And they're taking me down the rabbit hole.

And as long as they're doing it fairly quickly, I don't care

that I'm talking to a robot.

But then it comes to the point where I'm freezing it wrong.

They don't get it.

They get into this loop and it's like, okay, person, attendant, give me a person.

I want that right Then otherwise, you know, they're getting a bad,

they're getting a bad review.

But that, but there's a point where I'm okay with it.

They wanna know, you know, what, what, why are you calling this, why, what can

we take the time to please the, you know, do a survey after, no, I don't wanna do

a survey, but all of this is regimented ai, I know it and I'm okay with it, but

when it comes to the point that it can no longer answer my question, gimme somebody.

Interesting.

So did we lose Tom, are you there, buddy?

No worries.

One moment please.

Hey, I

heard my rant and it went, oh yeah, this is what, see, this

is the kind of stuff that scares us.

I've read Isaac Asimov.

I'm a hind line fan.

I'm a science fiction gal. This is what happens every time.

Really?

Yeah.

So when you start talking bad about technology, it screws you.

It comes to find you.

It finds you.

Yes.

Interesting.

This is what happens.

There's, been some great short stories about this.

Really.

This is exactly what happens, right?

Thomas?

You start dissing on AI and then everything goes, goes.

It goes to hell in a hand baskets, right?

Yeah.

They were listening to us, weren't they?

Course?

Absolutely.

Yes,

they were.

Well, where were we?

Should Let me start over.

I think you, I think you, I think you said something.

Oh, go ahead Dennis.

I'm sorry.

No, go ahead, Leah.

Finish your thought and then I've got some other, no,

I was done.

I wanna hear what Thomas has to say about my little rant.

Go ahead.

No, I think you said something so interesting, Leah, because we, we

all get to that point and there are limits today where AI is, I will say,

you know, I, I think it's clear we're in the early stages of, ai still it

doesn't feel that way, but it is.

you know, the future, we don't know where we go and how we get there, but, uh, I

agree with you a hundred percent, right?

AI can do the job like we talked about to an extent, and then that's where the human

in the loop comes into play to really.

Take it to the next level and leverage that information we get from ai.

So AI can help us for the jobs that our customer facing that are personal.

That personal touch still makes a huge, huge difference.

So let me challenge you, uh, and get your response

to some, some questions here.

Let's say you're a 22-year-old.

You have all the AI tools, all the knowledge.

What is stopping that 22-year-old from launching your exact business

with zero overhead and zero employees?

Well, Dennis, thank you.

I don't, I feel 22 sometimes.

Dennis, this is you have a young spirit.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. This is a conversation that I, I

have with businesses actually very, very often and a lot of love that

businesses that we speak about.

They start looking for ways.

To use AI to fill gaps in their business.

How can we use AI to improve this part of our business?

And that's a great way to look at things.

But I'll tell you this, especially for bigger, more mature companies, there

are people that know now what you didn't know when you started your business.

And they're not looking at your business saying, how can

I improve this incrementally?

They're saying, now that I have ai, how can I, starting from scratch,

knowing what I know now, do this.

Way better, way different, more efficiently, and more effectively.

So the whole thought process of the business changes to, how would I,

do we have to change that together?

How would I, if I could start over my business from scratch, what would I do

differently now that I didn't know then?

Yeah.

And that, that is a great, great question.

In fact, it's a question that I wanted to ask you, so I'll

go ahead and ask it right now.

You just opened the door.

What if you, Thomas, were starting a new business?

Okay.

Uh, just as you said, uh, you're not tied to what's been done in the past.

You're starting fresh and you know how to use ai.

How specifically would you design that business?

To incorporate the benefits of ai, what would you do?

Wow.

Dennis, such a, such a loaded question.

There's so much that you can do.

There's the, world is at at your fingertips, right?

Well, let's, alright, let, lemme

make it easy.

Let me make it easier.

let's take it step by step.

One of the things that I read the other day said, make AI your co-founder,

not a tool, but your co-founder.

What do you think of that Concepta, AI as your co-founder of your new business?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I, I often say that AI should be your first employee, and this is

maybe a very similar Concepta, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because we have to first see where AI can help us and

then see how we can, we can have employees to improve that process.

The one thing that I'll say is whichever AI tools you're using to start your

business, and there's a plethora of them for different reasons, right?

From sales to operations, legal, whatever, to marketing,

whatever AI tools you're using.

It is very important to invest in the setup.

The more information, the more about your processes, about your business,

about your goals, the more about how you want to sound as a company, that AI

knows about you and about your business, the better responses you're gonna get.

So

how do you, how do you teach ai, those things you just

mentioned, it doesn't know that.

They, it doesn't have any knowledge of that unless you give that

to the ai.

Right.

That's a hundred percent accurate.

And I'll say that teaching AI is, is different depending

on the AI you're using.

Okay?

But the goals are the same.

And so you, you, you're gonna wanna find a tool that accomplishes

the tasks you want to focus on.

If it's sales, find a tool that works in your aspect of sales.

Maybe it's one that puts together.

Great presentations and proposals and there's a great tool that I use

that does that, uh, called Gamma.

And one thing Gamma allows you to do is upload everything into the

program before you even get started.

So I can upload my logo, a lot of information about my company, my website,

I could upload some design assets, really the tone in which we want to communicate.

And then everything I create from there on, it has that in its brain and

it starts creating With that in mind.

Now, is that a proprietary AI that's not just going

on chat GPT or Claude or something?

Are you talking about something that is built just for you?

This is actually a tool that anybody can access.

It's similar to a chat GPT or it's similar to a Claude, but it's a,

it's a sub, a subscription tool.

Okay.

And they're actually free versions of it.

I would say if you're, if you're, still building PowerPoints

of presentation from scratch.

Definitely a tool to check out.

It can make your life so much easier, from anything that you're leveraging there.

And

it's called, the big

thing is at the beginning, it's a lot of work

because you gotta be doing this.

And I've read some interesting stories that maybe you can

comment on, Thomas, where,

all this information was downloaded and then it became evident that because

of what was coming out of AI that.

The information that they were feeding, how their customer service reps were

talking and, and, interacting with clients was actually kind of rude.

Had had a, had a, had a bad flare to it, you know, they were

talk, if it was a woman, it was, they were talking down to it.

Maybe it was a minority, but it had the tone of the CSRs, the human CSRs that

were feeding the information when it came to pitches and answering questions.

So it was eye-opening.

They had to shut it down.

And there's been a few instances of that.

Because suddenly AI's goal is ramping up and, and standing in just like a

human with that propensity would do.

Yep.

Yeah.

Everything we do at our, at our business, we do with human in

the loop for those exact reasons.

You have to have guidelines around it and that setup, but always putting a human

in the loop, um, can help with that.

But yeah, certainly ai, look, AI is not perfect.

It's not perfect.

It's great.

I think of AI as, like my scatterbrained employee that is an amazing

executor, but struggles if I give them a lot of tasks to complete.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

So if there's somebody that's managed closely, they can be your best asset

and your best employee, but you have to make sure you have them under close

management and a close eye to, to keep them on track, to keep them moving forward

and to keep them in the right direction.

Interesting.

Interesting.

So, explain to us what a company like yours Concepta, uh, when you get an AI

assignment, what generally is it that you're asked to do by your customer?

Well, Dennis, what's amazing is at Concepta for years,

we always helped people leverage technology to right, automate their

processes and reach more people.

And we did that with applications, integrations and mobile apps.

And really, AI is just the next step.

Nowadays, people are asking us how we can, how can we bring AI into a

tool we already have, or how can we create this tool and use AI to make

it even better than we can imagine?

One of the things we're getting asked a lot, now I, I use this example

because it's really cut down the, the way you can accomplish this task with

AI is we have quite a few clients who have some kind of documents

that they need scanned and reviewed.

And an example I give is we have one of our clients who

helps businesses with taxes.

Mm-hmm.

And they have, for one of the tasks they get from their clients,

they're asked to, they're sent a shoebox or digital shoebox of receipts,

and they are asked to categorize all these receipts of a year of expenses.

And you can imagine the manpower that they've put into that for

these businesses over the years.

If you get a shoebox of receipts from a pretty big business,

I'm sure that could take weeks.

Sure to categorize.

I love

that.

It's a digital shoebox that cry.

I'm telling all my girlfriends that are accountants because

they, they cry about the banker's boxes of just random paperwork.

They get a digital shoe now.

That's fun.

Anyways.

It is.

And so with, programming, this would be an almost impossible

task or a very lengthy task.

But with ai, AI can recognize a lot of things on these receipts with

relatively minimal training and start categorizing them for you.

And so you think about the manpower that saves and it's just incredible.

That's, that's interesting.

Let me jump over to, oh, oh, let me, first of all, you mentioned the word cost in one

of your responses there a few minutes ago.

How much.

Are people spending to get AI savvy?

Is it expensive?

Uh, you mentioned that some of these programs are either free or

relatively inexpensive, but I'll bet you can run up some expense on this.

Give me a, give us an idea, give our listeners an idea of what it

costs them to ramp up with an ai.

Well, Dennis, like, yeah, like anything else, cost is very

relative, relative to the business, right?

Of course.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I came out of an AI conference last month where I talked to people who

had already invested, tens of millions of dollars just in r and d in AI and how they

can create AI to improve their business.

Now these we're talking about large enterprises that are, you know.

Finding ways to use AI with access of data lakes full of data, right?

Massive amounts of data, information, waste to automate

process at a super high level.

However, I will say this, one of the beauties of the AI boom and

I'm, I'm amazed every day at the amount of subscription tools that.

I think for your audience, for the smaller growing business

that are available at very low introductory costs, it's incredible.

It's incredible.

I mean, I pay for, one of the big chat agents.

I think it's 1999 a month.

And I can't believe the amount of time it saves me, again, when we invest

and set it up properly, invest in that time, uh, and, and in everything that

I do from my personal life to business.

So it, it's not cost prohibitive.

It is possible to get involved, uh, fully in AI and not break the

bank and have to go out and get a loan or something to pay for.

And I think you have to, I think it's possible,

and I think you have to.

So let me keep on with this thing about, uh, uh,

you're starting a new business.

We already talked about, uh, uh, AI as your co-founder,

AI as your first employee.

I like that.

How about customer intelligence?

I know when I was in the radio business in South Florida, you know,

we had thousands of customers and we really didn't have any good way of

tracking everything that they did.

It was rudimentary at best.

We were just getting started in computer technology, so we had a little bit of

information, but we never had enough to really get a good track on customers.

What is it when you're designing that new business that you would

do regarding customer intelligence?

How would you design that?

Awesome, awesome question, Dennis.

What I'll, what, I'll turn it around a little bit is I think that I, I

mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I think the research you can do with ai.

Becomes very helpful on your prospects and on your customers.

Of course, tracking customer intelligence depends a lot on the business, the type

of business, what they're doing with them.

but where I think there is a, huge opportunity is in

the research of a business.

And so I have.

An AI agent that I created, that anybody can do it.

I'm not a programmer.

I've never been a, I've never been a programmer,

okay?

But I have an agent that I created that helps me do research

on my customers, my prospects first, but then my customers, right?

And so even when we're engaged.

And an ongoing contract with customers.

I'm researching them all the time, and on a weekly basis, I'm

talking with my AI and I'm finding out what's new in that company.

What can I find online that's about them or about their industry, about

their space, and then the AI can even review that and start making some.

Some recommendations of how I can leverage that to help grow our

footprint within that company.

And so now, as a salesperson, of course, I need to use my relationship, my trust,

my understanding of their business, to then take this and make something of it.

But it's already given us a headstart, saving a lot of time, uh, in, in our

relationship with our existing customers.

So can, AI make predictive models about, the,

the lifetime value of a customer?

Can, can it predict stuff like that?

Can it take data that you put in and, draw conclusions from that about the

value, lifetime value of a customer, the churn, risk, upsell opportunities?

Is it capable of doing that?

Well, that's, that's, also a loaded question.

So what happens here right, is AI is as good as the data that we have.

Okay?

Yeah.

And with the right data could do amazing things.

A lot of the bigger companies that we talk to when they start implementing

ai, the first step is organizing their data properly from all their systems,

okay?

And getting all the systems to talk together, integrate

together into a single data source.

So that AI can read that they understand it.

So, um, it's like anything else in life, and we've heard this probably a million

times, but garbage in, garbage out.

So the data is the data.

The data is the

data we're gonna get out.

So the collecting and organizing the data may be

one of the biggest jobs to do.

To incorporate ai, Is that like, and

I gotta ask too, the other thing is knowing what it

is that you want AI to do, because you mentioned doing proposals.

Well, to Dennis's point, you gotta put in every proposal and every bit of

information that reflects accurately how you want to present things.

As a sales person, as a business owner, this is really important, but.

First of all, you have to identify, these are the kind of proposals that I wanna do.

This is the kind of information.

Then there's the idea of research.

I know I've loved using AI to explain to me in a very simple way,

how do I make this work for me?

Because there's different things and I'm not talking about ai, I'm

talking about other apps, other opportunity, how, how do I do this?

And it will come back.

Okay.

You do this, this, this, So I know what I'm wanting from it,

but I'm always struck with.

I know there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm not asking it to do for me.

Yes.

How do I find out what I should ask?

So I've asked ai, what can I ask?

And depending on the platform, you get different things.

So it's like this candy shop and it's like, well, what do I want?

I like dark chocolate with cashews.

Dennis, I know you like your, you, you're kind of a milk chocolate guy, aren't you?

Milk chocolate.

Yeah.

I know you're not gonna

join me in black licorice, but I know the stuff I like and negative.

But you should, well, anyway, that's a whole other question.

Well, is

that a Canadian thing or something?

Black licorice?

No, it's, it's,

it's a senior flavor thing anyways.

Oh, okay.

But knowing what it is, you wanna, I'll note that.

I'll

note that.

I'll ask AI whether I should have that

well for when I win, when I win the hockey pool this year anyways.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good luck.

I'm, I'm safe.

Sorry, Leah.

Love you.

So

I, I love that, Leah.

I love that Leah, and I do that too.

I ask, I ask, not only what can you help me with, but how do you help me?

How can you help me, right.

Or give me the questions that I haven't asked

you, that I should ask you.

Is that Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These are all things that.

Our, business owners can do today.

Right.

What are the things that I need to know that I ain't smart enough to ask you?

Tell me what those are?

A hundred percent.

A hundred percent, yep.

It's the a AI could be the best coach.

It could be the best coach.

And how do you use ai?

To be the best coach.

Yeah.

Coach me on how to use you.

Right.

So I wanna move, oh, I'm sorry.

Go Leah.

Just a quick question.

Tell me if I'm crazy, I can't help myself when I'm working with ai.

I speak the way I would talk to Dennis or the way I talk to Paul or you.

Like I say, thank you.

I how, I do business in forms and I find that AI is kind of nice to me.

You thank your AI box.

Yeah, you

thank your AI bot.

Yeah, thank you.

I do.

Okay.

And this is another one, and I don't wanna take this too far,

but when I was in Austin recently, I was calling for an Uber.

Called for an Uber and I just went for the least expensive one.

I was downtown Austin and what came was this vehicle, and it's telling me that

you know, that my vehicle's unlocked.

I was afraid that my vehicle in Saskatoon was unlocked.

Someone broke into it at the airport.

Then we, then my son and I went around to get into the vehicle.

Here.

It's one of the, the, self-drive, like driverless vehicle.

Oh, yes.

The Waymo, which I have, I

would never get into

the Waymo cars.

Yeah.

I didn't know that's

what it was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I went in and very polite in talking and Fletcher and I had a very, like,

I. That to think about going into that vehicle, but that's total ai.

Did the car talk to you?

It

did.

And it was, and she was wonderful.

And she even reminded me, reminded me to bring our leftovers, which I've promptly

forgot because I was too busy, you know, uh, recording the whole period.

Wait a minute.

How would

it know you even had leftovers?

That's the question, right?

Uh oh.

I think that's more than ai.

Leah.

I'm getting a little nervous about that.

Ah, it's knows a little too much about, you did know what

you did the night before.

I,

I, I'm, that's all I'm revealing.

I'm just saying, okay.

That I went for it and I was very happy with it.

I'm gonna go check out and see if it can tell

us what you did the night before.

That's all.

Thomas, let's back to this new business you're building.

I am a big fan of having competitive intelligence.

You know what I mean by that?

I, I wanna know about my marketplace.

What's going on in my marketplace?

What are my competitors doing?

How are they pricing?

Are they, how are they positioning?

Okay.

I know you're gonna probably tell me it's about the data, but is

AI useful to develop competitive intelligence with the proper data?

I.

I've asked AI questions about my competitors all the time.

I love it when, piggyback a little off what Leah said, when AI replies to

me and says, wow, what a great idea.

Nothing's better than getting a compliment from my ai.

And it says, yeah, I can really help with that.

Do you believe those

compliments just outta curiosity?

I take them to

heart.

I take them to heart.

I do

forms the whole day.

I have four children, absolutely.

I have four young children, Dennis, I don't get,

I don't get complimented often.

Really.

How about your wife?

Yeah, she probably does.

She probably compliments you a lot, Bella.

We won't go there.

Yeah.

but yeah, in, in, in a very similar way, the way you can research your,

your clients and prospects, you can research your competitors using ai.

And one thing that is super important.

If you're starting a business and whatever type of research you're

trying to do is invest time.

Of course we, we talked about investing time in the setup, but

maybe the next step, maybe even before that, but invest some time and take

a class on a prompting framework.

Ah, okay.

Google has very simple prompting frameworks.

One of them, they, they call, uh, PTCF, like it's persona, task, context, format,

and it shows you how to talk to an ai.

Like Leah said, you gotta talk to an AI like it's a person.

But if I was asking you to do a task for me, Dennis, as wise, intelligent,

and expertise you have and good

looking, he's good looking too,

and good looking as well.

Without the right context, without the right ask and without understanding

the why behind what I'm looking for.

You probably would do, I hate to say this 'cause I don't know

how you could do an average job.

Yeah.

But if Dennis, I know agree that if you know a. The persona, who

you, why you're researching, who you're acting as as a researcher.

What is the task you're trying to accomplish?

Some background, context, and the format in which I want that information back.

That's that Google framework, persona, task, context, format.

You're gonna, I know you're gonna provide me back a better result than not

only you would've before, but probably that anybody else in the world can.

Right.

That's 'cause that's you.

That's Dennis.

That's Dennis.

Colin.

Wow.

That's an interesting thought, isn't it?

P, how do you say this again?

PTFC.

PTCF is one of the frameworks.

Oh, I got it.

Backwards P. Yeah, there's course summaries.

C-F-P-T-C-F, persona, task context, format, and there are some Google even

summaries if you don't wanna take the whole course that are like 30 minutes

to an hour long, but you could take a much, far more in depth course.

Okay.

Which really helps to prepare the ais.

What I find is there's so many courses being offered right now.

Thomas and I sign up for them or, or it's a masterclass or

it's a, and within 15 minutes, sometimes they give me 20 minutes.

They are hardcore selling me on their system course.

Yeah.

And.

Maybe they're the best in the world, but as a salesperson, salesperson,

that turns me off completely because I got sucked into some, and I

don't mind paying for knowledge and paying for the opportunity to learn.

But there's so many and they're so vast, and they're all telling

me the other ones are stupid.

And some of them are even smart enough when I unsubscribe to figure

out how to resubscribe themselves.

I don't like that either.

So I, I love hearing from a professional like you.

Okay, here's something.

This is valid.

This is something that I can learn with, but how?

How do you navigate this?

I guess that's why you, yeah.

That's your business.

Yeah.

No, I, I'll say that I, I get that a lot.

And actually nowadays, I feel like any amount of research that I'm

doing online tends to come with an ulterior motive and a bias, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's difficult sometimes.

Uh, but I mean, who, who else can you trust in Google?

I'm sure they have plenty of things to sell, but probably there are tools for You

and me are the smallest of their worries.

But I actually, I actually do a lot of, I'll find some experts

who are summarizing these courses.

And, and you know, depending on how deep you want to get, you can

get a course summary in 30 minutes.

Um, from a course that might've been a three or four day long course, right?

Mm-hmm.

So there's, you could get the highlights or the cliff notes, so to say.

Yeah.

And that's another thing is, you know, you can also then throw that into

AI and start asking questions, start asking your own questions about it.

Yes.

I do that a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Take a cut.

I learned.

Take a transcript from something that you like, right?

Take a transcript, put it into AI and say, give me the top 10

bullet points from this transcript.

What are the findings?

What are the conclusions?

what's the point of this whole, conversation?

And give it to me in bullet point summary.

Have you ever tried that, Thomas?

Yeah.

I love it.

I actually did it yesterday.

I said, give me the top seven books ever published in a certain area.

Okay.

I want the top seven books.

I want a 20 point bullet point summary of each book.

I want the finding.

What is the core finding of that book?

And then I want you to take all of those seven books and give

me what they teach in common.

Whoa.

Okay.

I don't care what the topic was, but share that with me.

That sounds

no.

Fabulous.

I'm

not That costs money, Leah.

Come on.

Proprietary prompts.

Yeah,

proprietary prompts.

I love that.

We can't

leave this conversation.

Oh, is that producer Paul Chiming in.

Producer Paul, by the way, has just written a book about the secret.

Yeah, but I just wanna tell him you have written the book and I am going to provide

him with a copy as soon as it's published.

The Secret Formulas of Artificial Intelligence.

So, uh, boomer is not only our partner and our friend, but he

is, uh, also in the AI space.

What do you, I'd love your comments, Paul, on, on what we've talked about so far.

We're getting towards the end here.

We gotta wrap this up.

But what are you thinking about what we've talked about?

Yep.

We're gonna

have, should we have it?

We should have him back.

Huh?

When Tom writes his book, we're gonna have him back to promote his book.

Okay.

Excellent.

I I, I don't think we can leave this conversation though, without talking.

You brought up the, P word.

Well, there's two P words.

Preparation.

I. Paul Boomer and Thomas Capone, and the other P word is prompts.

Okay.

Those who are just trying to get, you know, people that tell me, yeah, I use ai.

I know all the prompts.

I know how to do that.

Yeah.

Well, when you dig into it, you find out they don't.

What is the role of the prompt in getting the proper output,

Thomas?

Dennis, the prompt is the heart and soul of the output of your ai.

Okay.

We mentioned earlier that AI struggles on long tail complex

tasks, so I would say break things down into clear, smaller requests.

This is where AI excels.

Okay.

Start small test, expand on it if it works.

AI is the most powerful when it's practical and when your ask is specific.

Specific and

practical.

Okay, good.

Got it.

Specific

and practical and, prompting is everything.

Prompting is everything.

Asking the right questions,

and as you said, there are a lot of resources out

there to help you with your prompts.

Right.

I don't think a day goes by in my feed that I don't get 10 different ads,

as Leah said, you know, they're all ads, they're trying to sell something,

but there's inform, hey, hey, do you need the next 150 best prompts?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They're out there.

And I guess the, key is, uh, getting the ones that you really need, and

yes, sir,

of course.

Yeah, great.

Great question and I'll say that, um, you don't always

necessarily need a prompt engineer.

Like anything in a business, as you grow, need to become clear.

But what is important as a business is protecting your information.

Protecting your IP and protecting your company, right?

And so rolling out AI to your staff, it's, a culture and it's a culture that requires

guidelines and guardrails, as you know.

So it becomes letting the staff know what tools we can use, what we can use it

for, what we shouldn't be using it for.

And how to use it.

And so just like there's sales training, just like there's all

kinds of training in your business, your AI philosophy as a company, I

think needs to, from my perspective, needs to be, progressive thinking and

forward thinking, but also needs to come with guardrails and with, yes.

Uh, I wouldn't know, know if I'd say caution, but with a strategy.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

You and I have talked about certain companies that have not had the

training and the cultural updates, and they throw it at somebody and say,

do this, this is what we're doing, and they have no idea how to do it.

So, uh, I think, a, key warning is you cannot just say, this

is now part of what we do.

Just do it without assimilating it into the culture.

Would that be fair to say?

I would agree a hundred percent.

I would agree.

A hundred percent.

Hey, before we, we, I have one last question, but

before we leave, I wanna remind our Connect & Convert listeners and viewers.

We are brought to you by the Wizard Academy, right?

Leah Bumphrey.

Tell us about the Wizard academy.

Wizard academy.org.

One of our favorite places, right, Dennis.

And it's because.

Really it is, it combines the cutting edge of we're talking tools, the cutting

edge of tools that businesses need, along with the, traditional wisdom of

imagination, of music, of writing, of what it means to connect with people.

That's why I love the classes there.

I mean, they're not afraid of getting into ai, uh, what it, what it means,

what it should mean, any kind of tools, but also in concert with, wait a minute.

What makes you, you, what's your origin story?

Why is it so wholeheartedly?

This?

This is a, this is a a Wizard academy.org sponsored event here with Thomas, because

it absolutely calculates all those things.

Thank you, Leah, and uh, thank you Thomas.

I have one more question.

Okay.

One last question.

Let's leave our audience with.

Some words of wisdom.

Uh, we always like to close our podcast with some action steps, okay?

With what can we do today?

Monday morning, actions, what can we do, Thomas, if you were advising

our small business owners, our business leaders, our founders, our

sales leaders, sales managers, what.

If there was one or two things that they should do if they're not already doing

it, one or two things they should, they must do to get on board the AI train.

What would those things be?

Dennis, I think that for the business owners or the business

leaders that are not currently leveraging AI or don't know how,

yes,

the first thing that I would do is what we talked about a lot today.

Is, invest some time in learning, invest some time in learning prompts, and

from there, invest time in the setup of the tools that can work for you.

Right?

And you know.

Mr. Paul mentioned earlier that it takes time to do all this stuff, but this is

one of the things you'll do in life that will give you that time back tenfold.

You'll be so much more productive, so much more efficient in your business and your

personal life and, moving forward if you can leverage these tools for yourself.

So invest time, it's a guaranteed payoff.

There's not a lot of guarantees in life.

Wow.

I like what you just said, guaranteed payoff.

Folks.

Did you hear that?

Here's the expert in AI who works in the space every day.

Spend time, figure it out.

It's a guaranteed payoff.

I love it.

There are no guarantees, but Thomas just made one.

Okay, Tom.

Hey, I can't thank you enough for being our guest today.

ladies and gentlemen, you've been listening to Thomas Capone.

He's Vice President of Business Development for Concepta Technologies.

Okay.

You can find him on all the social media.

If you're looking to get in touch with Tom, he is on Facebook

on this one, on that one.

He's everywhere.

He's everywhere.

And uh, and if you can't

find him as ai, AI will track him.

Yeah, AI will find him.

Ai AI knows exactly where he is at.

So ai.

This has been a stimulating conversation, I knew it would be.

Thank you for adding to, uh, the knowledge base of our listeners and viewers.

Uh, we're gonna have you back, buddy, and, uh, thanks.

Thanks for a great show.

Uh, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode.

On behalf of Leah, I'm Dennis and goodbye For now, tune in

again for the next episode of

Connect

& Convert.