Dashboard: Is Microsoft Copilot Pro Ready for Prime Time?

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren Feldman and I'm here with Gene marks welcome Jean hello Lauren happy Monday happy Monday great to have you here Jean you've been pretty bullish on AI and the cool stuff that some of which we can already do that eventually will be able to do but you recently wrote a piece for Forbes in which you strongly advised business owners to stay away from Microsoft co-pilot Pro uh so first what is Microsoft co-pilot Pro and second why should we stay away from it so first of all I'm waiting for the pr people at Microsoft to start emailing me because that inevitably happens and you are a reseller of Microsoft products correct yeah my company's a Microsoft partner so you know I just want to tell you that's you know that's just is what it is but um so let's take a step back about co- pilot Pro right so if you own Office Microsoft released their AI addition uh to office it starts at 20 bucks a month for an individual and then it goes up you know after that and um it it promises to do all these really really cool things that I know it will eventually do I mean for example it will help you craft emails like maybe for if you're going to open Ai and asking for help a better way to say an email it'll it'll have that just embedded into Outlook you know it will help you create great you know quotes and proposals in in word for example it will help you attend more than one meeting at the same time in teams um it will help you to um build a PowerPoint in seconds you know right I know we're all chuckling at this and then the same thing with like um Excel um which was the base of my article is like you're supposed to go into an Excel I'm an accountant here because that's what interested me and you'll be able to ask it all sorts of questions and it'll magically give you analysis and prepare graphs and all that kind of stuff so spoiler alert can you see where I'm going with this I can right with this release it's not happening what's the problem well I'll tell you the problem is Microsoft you know we you know for ever since I've been in the IT world and you don't even have to be an IT person to appreciate it like the you know the obvious joke was you never buy a Microsoft product when it first gets released you know that right you know that's true of a lot of products though not just Microsoft right yeah but Microsoft Microsoft started it I mean it just would put out like shitty products that were all buggy and then you know they would let the users you know do the bug testing for them and then they would come out with new versions until they finally got it right and like I was always like you know have we gotten over that man like that was like back in the 90s you know like are we you know you would think with all the tools together this would have changed and for the most part it has I mean when Microsoft releases products nowadays they they are better quality but not this co-pilot Pro uh you know and the best thing here first of all if you if you Google around lots of people are complaining about its performance uh that it's not returning the right information and then I dug into it further and I found this great video um from this guy that that he's like a you know a tech nerd he's got like a ton of followers he's got a popular YouTube site and he um I don't have his name in front of me Lauren I have to I'd like to give him a shout out if I uh when I see him um but it's in the Forbes article that you wrote if somebody Googles that it was in the Forbes article yeah I link the video anyway so the guy was like hey man you know I'm a big fan of Microsoft like let me check out you know you know co-pilot Pro with Excel and like he just hit wall after wall you know like first he installed it but it wasn't showing up because you had to like go into some you obscure setting in your account to to enable it like who the hell knows that you know and then secondly like he's like okay I got a spreadsheet he started out with like a million rows on a spreadsheet and then it just it did nothing it just like just sputtered and then he went all the way down he tried different rows on a spreadsheet with you know spreadsheets of different size he finally got down to a spreadsheet of 500 rows which is not very big you know you want to run AI on something I mean and it it finally worked but it didn't even work that well there um like the returns the stuff he was getting wasn't that good and then you could tell his growing frustration you know I I think what he found was that if you just use the data that uh Microsoft supplied you it would work fine but if you were trying to input your own data it was a disaster yeah now in Microsoft's defense they put in these little tiny postcript to their blog that laun you know for the launch that Microsoft the the co-pilot Pro for Excel was in preview you mode you know what I mean so that's their out saying like this don't work but you can still we're still going to charge you for it it just doesn't work you know uh but it's okay because we said it's still in preview mode so so this guy like using it you know he's banging his head against the wall and then he's like then he talks about security like you know apparently you can only use it if you upload all your data to surprise one drive you know or you know to or SharePoint one of Microsoft's you know you know products you have to upload it to that where if you have an individual license and you don't have you know their new version of active directory it's called intra ID um it's it's not secure you know like anybody can get to it Microsoft can use it you know it's it's just it's I don't know so I'm like oh my God what a cluster so I I wrote this piece that basically said listen you know you're a business owner you got better things to do with your time right now I do you know AI is great it's going to be even better it's all it's super just first of all figure out you know figure out what you would want to use this stuff for anyway you know like who would be using it what's the return on investment you know what what's the benefit of of using your co-pilot Pro and there there there's many depending on your business um and then wait wait probably throughout most of 2024 wait until Microsoft gets its together and then releases a product that actually works and then then go into it now otherwise you're just going to be banging your head against the wall and any employees that you have that were tentative about AI it's going to scare them away they're going to go back to an abacus you know to use for their analysis so that's my recommendation stay away is Microsoft currently aiming this at small business owners sure sure I mean first of all they're any Amy for anybody who can you know who can has a credit card and it's uh you know it's individual licenses and it's all part of office well initially didn't they you had to have 300 seats at first or something right yeah they went back on that's gone that's gone yeah yeah it used to be like it was for large businesses but they they pulled that back so it's anybody can now buy it and use it don't and bang their head against the W yeah I mean read my columns if you want in fors because I'll keeping up to date on it and I my my job when I speak about this and I'm speaking a lot about Ai and writing about it is okay you know here's here's how it's progressing so here's what you need to know and then know your job is to kind of keep up with this stuff because it really will have a dramatic effect on your business once it works and once you figure out how you're going to you know deploy it and and you know and utilize it um it will be a big benefit but I wouldn't rush into it right now because everybody's still flailing around with that doesn't work so there do you have any good AI news for us is there anything that you've done or you've seen somebody else do that we we should know about yeah anything exciting okay so so there's a lot of good AI applications that are in development right now there are a lot of good startups I wrote about one in Forbes a couple of months ago uh this this startup that's um integrating um AI with multiple construction industry applications so that you could you could give it a prompt query ask questions about jobs and projects and um and it it it uses all this data from various applications puts it into its own large language model and then you can use it to do you know hey we had a job like this in the past what spec should we use for a similar job and it starts coming back to you like Chad gbt was in a conversational way that's cool stuff but like everything else it's we're still early days you know I mean chat GPT came out at the end of 2022 you know we're just here at the beginning of 2024 so it's just like when the iPhone came out like in 2007 I mean it really took a couple years before applications were you really utilizing it where we were paying for stuff and booking stuff and you know there's really reliable apps on on those devices it's the same thing with AI just going to take a little bit of time so I'm excited by the future I really am but everybody's just gotta hold your horses correct me if I get this wrong but I think hasn't chat GPT created kind of its own app store so that you can create create your own apps with the uh AI function and use your own data do I have that right you do so they what they did is first of all chat GPT has its own large language model um all of the big tech companies uh you know you know Amazon has anthropic and Facebook has U you know llama and Google they they all the tech companies are building their own large language models and they're licensing out to people and partners that want to take advantage of it chat GPT is doing has done the same thing they opened up an app store just like the the Apple App Store and they're basically they're they're basically saying to developers um hey build cool applications and use chat gpt's you know algorithms and and our large language model um to really come up with great stuff to help you know to to help people be more productive and so and then sell them on our app store and so they just launched that at the at CES at the Consumer Electronics Show just a couple of weeks ago um and that is exciting if we go to it and that's another some you know you ask me every week stuff I'm going to be writing about it's on my list I want to I'm waiting like a month or two and then I want to start digging through that App Store and say okay here are 10 actual you know chat GPT apps ex that will help you in your business you know but I I need to give it time for people to actually develop them you know that's exactly what I want to read I will look forward to that all right you also wrote recently about the topic of embezzlement you you noted a bunch bunch of recent cases that have gotten publicity of businesses where an an employee has uh has been stealing from the company and you had a really interesting suggestion for a way to avoid this tell us about that yeah I mean I love this I'm fascinated by people who steal money from their from their employers I'm just I find it fascinating I like how do they do it how do they expect to get away with it how do they sleep I mean I I would be just beside myself but it's it's it's sort of like this like you know you know Cowboy kind of thing even if it's a little old lady bookkeeper there's something like you know pretty I don't know just it's pretty wild and but it's not great for the employer the Eugene weekly uh which is a weekly paper in Eugene Oregon they had to like like stop operations um because their their accounting staffer stole like $90,000 and they didn't even know it and then I went back and I started doing a bunch of research and there's companies in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island and you know Atlanta then Ohio and you know all had suffered you know and this is just within the past like few months you know like people stealing money from them and and I know I know how it gets discovered it's not all the time disclosed in the Articles because who wants to talk about this to the Press if you've been you know if you've been con but there's it's always it's almost always you discovered through this um somebody takes a vacation you know and when I went to you know back in my auditing days and I went to accounting school about preventing fraud and internal controls the biggest thing that was pressed upon me and it's still the case now nothing ever changes is that you know your your financial people need to take vacations your bookkeeper your accounting manager your controller you have to require them to take time off and then you have to have somebody else trained to do their job job when they're away not only does that help with cross trining in case that person gets hit by a bus but on top of that when that person is doing that other person's job they're the ones that almost always uncover like what the hell is going on here this doesn't make sense or why is our bookkeeper uh you know Catherine what has a company called Catherine and a vendor called Katherine and we're sending checks to the Catherine company from the Catherine V I don't know what's what is it it always it say always gets revealed um when somebody's out of the office um and and that's my advice you to everybody don't buy into like oh my God you know my controller is such a hard worker she never takes any time off wow is she fantastic that's not good that is not good you need your people to take time off from an internal control standpoint I I like this advice because it's good for other reasons too I mean people should take their vacation time for one thing and for another the cross trining part of it is really important too too cuz even if even if you don't get hit by a bus I mean people leave their jobs things happen people get promoted yeah and I know you you your bleeding heart Lial Lauren you're like oh it's good for their mental health as well it keeps them all balanced it's a very good thing to require vacations fair enough fair enough wow you you really nailed me there Jean H how was that invitation that sounds just like you it was perfect Jean you give your people vacation time don't you hey we have unlimited vacation in my business I don't even know people take V when they don't I don't ask I don't care just get your jobs done there you go I'm serious um Ser last thing Jean I just have to point out you um you wrote a piece for the guardian with the headline fellow Republicans it's time to admit that the US economy isn't bad um that must have been hard for you to write I'm thinking no it wasn't hard for me to write Lauren thank you for even thinking about that first of all and by the way I'm a Republican the title is fellow Republicans it's time to admit you know the econom is bad the if you know anything about the guardian okay and where they lean on the politicals that my editors were like there no Republicans reading it right nobody read it because all their all their readers were done I was GNA mention that Jee I want to know when you're gonna write this for Fox or the Washington Times yeah yeah good point good point well all I can tell you is that my editors were squealing with Glee when I wrote this piece uh but listen I mean it's the that is the case I mean for for God's sake I mean you know it was just announced last week that GDP in the third quarter was like 3.3% the the fourth quarters 3.3% the quarter before that was like 5% you know are you know unemployment is at you know historic low open there's still more open jobs than in 2019 you know inflation is coming down under control the stock market is high do I need to like you know this right we we're all we all know all these numbers can we just admit it you know like and I know I you know you hear from some people being like Oh my God the cost of groceries or rents or gas is so much higher than it was when when Biden took office and it and and it is it's about 20% higher I over the past three years I get that as well but you know first of all so are wages wages have now caught up in are exceeding the rate of inflation household wealth has still at an all-time high and uh stock savings and pension savings are still at an alltime high so you know yeah I I get it people are still trying to catch up to some of these higher costs but overall I mean and and by the way Lauren you know I run around the country speaking to a bunch of associations y I'm telling you man other than real estate every Association I go to they and they're made up of people that lean to the right so they're not like you know they don't want to like admit it but they're grumbling they're like yeah it wasn't a bad year in 2023 yeah we we we did fine you know so the economy is strong right now we have to admit that like I'm just to my fellow Republicans there's a lot of stuff you can complain about for with President Biden but I don't know if you should be using the economy as one of your things I'd pick some other issues in my that's my opinion you know you you like to get into the politics of it I prefer to just look at it from the in terms of what business owners should know I mean I think you probably agree with me I think presidents get too much credit when things are good and too much blame when things are bad most of the time um but you know we've been through this period where there's just been this constant prediction oh that recession that two months 3 months it's it's coming it's coming and it never came and I think it's important to acknowledge that and let business owners do what they need to do and not have this threat hanging over their head I have to say as recently as like two weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had a headline you ready because I'm looking at it right now um it won't be a recession in 2024 it will just feel like one what the hell does that mean Lauren I don't even know what they're talking about you know what I mean like what do you mean it will it won't be a recession just feel like one it just seems like come on you guys are grasping in straws here I will tell you one one thing that we one big red flag that we need to all be very very careful about uh just last week uh in like I think a CBS news interview treasury secretary Yellen said that 2024 is going to be a very good year for the economy and given her track record I think we should be battening down the hatches I have a lot of concern look there are always red flags out there you could always point to something if you're looking for for it but I think you got to acknowledge what you acknowledge the you know the the the basic metrics are are looking pretty good they really are they really are Jean you already told us one thing is there anything else that you're working on that we should know about to look for yeah this week I'll be writing a a piece for the inquire about the uh eeoc's new harassment rules which are taking place um which are a whole bunch of fun so uh that that should be of interest so that that's that's the thing I'm focusing on right now there was a there was an outrageous case in California I don't remember the details now um I think the Wall Street Journal wrote about somebody wrote about it yeah I mean just as a spoiler alert as a spoiler alert I mean the EOC is coming out you know they will be effective probably the first quarter uh you know where you know our employees Behavior if they're harassing other employees is going to be um you know the owner's responsibility you know the company's responsibility and that even extends to their behavior like out of the office so um so I spoke to a couple of attorneys and I'm going to be writing I'm writing this up uh with some advice uh I'll be good to see that piece and I'm sure all of our listeners will as well Gene marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the Washington Times the Chicago Daily Herald Forbes an entrepreneur you can also hear him on ABC radio's ey on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcasts with paychecks Corporation and the Harford this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thank you Jean thanks L we'll see you next week and have a great week everybody [Music]