Dashboard: This Is 2025’s Killer App for Small Business

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard I'm Lauren feldin and I'm here with Jean Marks happy Monday Jean hello Lauren how was your Thanksgiving it was terrific how about yours it was great lots of family over we had a good time very relaxing not a great weekend weatherwise but it was that's what you want Thanksgiving to be cold and gray yeah unfortunately it was over too fast as always but uh but a good time this is the best time of year man like between now and Christmas it's awesome we're now in New Year's actually so we got our tickets for the Philly Orchestra Christmas show which we go every year in love very nice highly recommend it um let's talk business so Jean you've been pretty aggressive on the AI beat of late uh as you promised uh to be you recently wrote a piece declaring that you found 2025 is killer app for small businesses yeah do tell what is it it's called notebook LM from Google and um if you haven't heard about it I I strongly suggest that you look into it let me first of all say that uh notebook LM is a um there's competitors out there I mean the other chat Bots like chat GPT and co-pilot and gemni uh you know or or or you know anthropic though th those chat th those chat Bots have some capabilities similar to a notebook LM but it really does stand out apart and let me just explain to you Lauren what it is okay please when you go onto um any uh AI chatbot I'll use chat GPT as an example uh obviously you can give it prompts and ask it questions and it queries all sorts of stuff you can upload spreadsheets it'll answer questions on that or it'll just go on the internet and ask your questions and it's super valuable and really helpful notebook LM is your own company's large language model so when you're on chat GPT again using that as an example it has its own large language model which is massive and it's made by scraping up data from all around the world external sources to create this giant large language model that people can then ask questions notebook LM is your own companies so for example um with notbook LM you get it set up you can share it among um you know your team and you know individual users you can set up different notebooks maybe a notebook for HR or a notebook for accounting or a notebook for uh operations and you can upload all of your companies you know files it's mostly text files and PDFs right now but also videos you can connect to um as well as Google you know docs like do you know docs and and sheets all of that stuff if you're doing that in the Google World um or even not you can upload it to to notebook LM and then it becomes you know a resource for your company like your own little mini you know large language model you know people are like hey man you know I want to create like my own AI application or what do we do and we don't know where to start we don't whatever well you can create your own little chat GPT with your own company's data just by using notebook LM um one of the features that notebook LM has gotten a lot of press for recently is um it it it has an audio over I know what this is going to be yeah it's the audio overview part right so you know like I can upload it's really crazy I'll upload like an article or two that I've written and then I'll I'll ask it to to create a podcast uh based on the article that I uploaded and two voices like a male and a female voice that sound very weirdly humanlike I mean it's not like robotic at all we'll have a whole conversation about my articles that I uploaded and how incredible they are and whatever we're not going to have to keep having these conversations you're going to be able to just create this on your own it could literally do this Lauren I mean like you know what it doesn't it can't mimic your voice and my voice yet but theoretically like you know just so you guys that are listening you know Lauren and I obviously talk about the topics in advance and he'll say hey let's talk about this article or that theoretically you could take the same article that I wrote you know upload it to notebook LM and then have you know the voices there talk about it and then publish that it's your 21 hats podcast episode and and that's what it is I I think the whole podcasting thing is a little overblown because I I I don't believe that people find that that interesting I mean I think they like to hear humans and personalities and points of view and all of that however um if you upload something to notebook LM like a a whole research manual or or white papers or or documentation or vendors you order or or purchasing order or sales order or contract you can use the audio overview to to talk you through it you know what I mean so maybe you're driving or jogging or maybe you absorb information better by hearing it back to you like it doesn't have to be like a whole you know text chat type of thing it can be you you can use this audio overview to to communicate it to you that way which is great you know even if you might have a disability and and because of that it's it's really good and this isn't theoretical this is something you're already using right now right yeah so I started using it for two things like the first thing um that I did with it is um I have a job search going on and um you know for like a a Zoho you developer by the way anybody out there that knows a good Zoho developer let me know um and and I you did a search on indeed I got like you 200 resumés um from which I I narrowed it down and and I I should have done it from the beginning but I I I manually narrowed it down to about 20 I uploaded the 20 resumés to notebook LM um I asked it to create a chart for me uh like a a spreadsheet that I could use uh like summarizing the data it just did that for me just like chat GPT would um I also asked it um based on this job description which I also uploaded can you um you you give me a list of all of the um respondents by most qualified to least qualified and why and it did that too you know like it's using my own data as its own little AI large language model and you know it went and it did that work for me on my on you know on those people I mean did you review it to do you think it was it did a good job yeah it's pretty and and obviously what you bring up is is the obvious answer I mean you know you never rely a th% on what AI is doing for you and blah blah blah which is true so yes I did review it and it was good I mean it definitely you know Quantified who I thought was more qualified over others and um and and it it there for me to so that was one thing that I do the other thing I've been doing is I've been putting um I've been going through the process of uploading all of our um proposals and contracts that we gave to clients over the past five years we have to manually upload them and um but once they're there you can just you query notbook LM questions about it like you know what what clients you know we I have a quote going out for this type of project what what projects were similar to this type of project in the past five years and it would list out for me similar projects and what we charged and the kinds of services that we per formed you know and that's helpful because then I don't have to go through like a bunch of files and find that information I can just ask it and it gives me that information do you think it could just do the proposal could you just put in the not yet but it will I mean I I think that's that's where so much of this is going I mean I where where I where I think this this is real leading Lauren is that we don't you know right now we're so used to like generating files and documents I mean honestly we can upload whatever information we want to notebook LM and and then do we need Dropbox anymore do we need to store these files in documents once they're there I mean you can then ask for to create a new file for you or an updated file for you um and then obviously be used to do actual tasks like sending emails out based on this information or creating a task or uh you know things like that so it's it's it's and again it's not using data so like I can't upload my accounting data to it but I you know we do invoices that are PDFs so we could start uploading our PDFs to notebook LM and that way me and my team even people that don't have access to our accounting system can ask questions of uh you know of our accounting history of our invoice history you know what I mean like what did we build this client and what was the rate that we used or what services did we perform or those kinds of things and they don't have to interact with our our bookkeeper for those answers they can just get it right away from our own internal didn't you write in your piece that you're actually using it for financial analysis that you've put in your uh tax returns yeah I uploaded our financial statements and tax returns I started asking your questions about uh you know any anomalies that it sees or any comparisons that it wants to make or any analysis um and it did you know it would tell me like different expenses that seems unusually higher or lower than in the prior year things that you hadn't spotted yourself right correct yeah that is correct so it would only you know get and these were all in PDFs now obviously you know the first question is what about security right you know well I was going to get to that I mean it it and I think we've had this conversation before but you know Google promises that it's not using your data and it's not using anything to to train other AI apps it's you know it's completely secure and confidential and it's all yours that's what Google is promising you know take value no I don't believe them I I really don't and I don't believe that it's it's secure either because you know it can certainly be hacked I mean I I I I I don't care how strong you think Google or Microsoft or any of these big tech companies are they they have their security issues too um I think you know bad actor employees could get access to this information and sell it I think there's a lot of exposures there well there was an example um in an article that you and I have talked about uh Business Insider published it about uh Microsoft co-pilot and an example of uh I guess some companies had the experience of uh rolling out co-pilot and finding figuring out that anybody at the company could get access to sensitive HR documents to the uh to the CEO's inbox and emails what do you make of that yeah so there there's it there's two issues there and and it dovetails into the the Google you know the notebook lmsu right there's external security of your data and internal security of your data you know so you know we've been talking about you know is the data secured you know from Bad actors outside of your company and and um again you know I say it's not 100% but you just need to evaluate their risk and reward the Microsoft story is also interesting as well because you're right Business Insider you know published this report saying that uh Microsoft you know co-pilot users Enterprises they're trying to implement co-pilot across the across the Enterprise um are are running into security issues because they're using Ai and asking questions their employees and like their responses are coming back with sometimes you know confidential or private data you know conversations and emails between like the CEO and somebody else they're all appearing on like not ideal not great right so you're like geez and that that that's an internal security issue and and the warning is there is that in Microsoft they they you know this was all a configuration issue and it's Microsoft's fault because Microsoft it's it's not a bug it's just that they did not tell their you know customers how to properly configure their software and this is not a new issue Lauren I mean you know again we've been implementing CRM software for 20 years when you set up a CRM database it includes you know notes and calendar items and emails and all sorts of confidential stuff you need to go through a process of securing that data you set up individual users what rights they have what they're allowed to access they can be part of this team but not part of that team and then what rights and access to the team has you know you really got to go through that process most of these softwares like Microsoft co-pilot it's like you install it and there's no security setup it's just sure everybody can get access to everything so just remember that if you're installing co-pilot or gem knife workspace in Google if you're installing a CRM product or an accounting product you really need to set aside some time to set security the right way you either work with a partner like like what we do or you work with a vendor um to get that kind of stuff set up otherwise um you know the default configuration could be you know a real headache for you interesting I I just want to go back real quickly to the financial analysis that you were able to do with notebook LM I'm just curious you said you I think you said you found that uh there were some anomalies that some expenses had gone up that you hadn't really spotted or some uh revenues in certain areas had declined was it the kind of information that you acted on did did you make decisions based on what you learned from that process no not yet it was more that's nice to know information not need to know is what it's been do you know what I mean so um you know like you know it would say like gee you're so and so your travel expenses went up a lot more this year than last year um and it brings to my attention but I'm like yeah well that's because I did you know I spoke a lot more this year than last year that kind of thing do you know what I mean so um it wasn't anything that like knocked me on my ass or you know raised red flags but it was good information to know and you know the I don't know the way I view all these AI chat Bots and I'm using a more and more Lauren I don't know if you are but you know for I mean just as an as side you know like I'm looking for a new laptop and I was on chat GPT the past couple days it was amazing with completely current data you know what I mean making recommendations it's like just it's it's just another set of eyes that get smarter and smarter and yeah I mean my accountant is only around when tax time comes nice guy but you know not really so you know doesn't do not really does he do that stuff that much stuff for me during the year here I'm like and they like I can call on Notebook LM to look at my financials and compare it I can ask questions um and it comes back to me with some experienced point of view it might not be right all the time but I like it you know it's just another another opinion we should all be doing that that's what I think makes sense to me uh last topic for today you wrote recently about passwords um I've been hearing for a long time that passwords are going away um are passwords going away yeah they are I mean the big Tech companies and we need to all prepare for this as business people um the big tongue companies Microsoft Apple Google Samsung all these guys are they're moving away from passwords I mean you know I wrote this for the guardian can we all admit that we are just not mature enough to really use passwords okay I mean we're not you know I think you said the was issue is we're not smart enough we're not smart enough we're just we're too dumb I mean let's face it I mean you know like there was this recent study that came out uh from a password security company uh that the number one uh pass most commonly used password in 2024 is secret the word secret and the number two is 1 2 3 4 56 and number three is the word password I mean what the right I mean like we never learned do we we're morons we're morons and like you know okay we all know we need to be using all these like you know complex passwords with capital letters and asteris and symbols and all that but we can't remember all of this and well it's hard enough when it's just a one person you know handling my own stuff uh I get screwed up with password sometimes but when it's you know a team and you have a bunch of people and they all have to be able to get access to something it complicates it it's tough and then there's the password managers that are out there like last pass and keeper and um and they're fine but look last pass got hacked last year I mean what a catastrophe that is you know like you're you're you're paying for it to secure your passwords and it gets hacked you know like so all that you know none of that is that great so the big tech companies I mean you know Biometrics are are have been a thing um they're not catching on as fast as uh the tech companies would have liked I mean most devices that you get have fingerprint and I skin do you use that Lauren do you use like a fingerprint or an ice scam every time I get a new device that offers that I try it and it just doesn't work for me I find like with my uh with my laptop my MacBook it sometimes works for like a week and then it seems to I don't know if it's maybe I have a faulty uh thumb print I don't know but it it it seems to stop working yeah the biometric stuff is a little scary because what if it doesn't work and then you're like well now I can't get access to this thing because for some reason doesn't recognize my thumb print you know what I mean like it's just you know because it's Hardware that's part of it and Hardware breaks so I don't know like so people are have been tough to go to that then there's multiactor authentication which is fine and obviously a lot of services set those up you know my recommendation I mean I have on on a accounts where um there's money involved like PayPal for my PayPal account and some others I have um Google authenticate you know it's just an app and and it's really good like you you know it's on my phone so if I try to log into PayPal it it you know I use a password but then it says give me your your pin your your code from your Google authenticate app and sure enough on my Google authenticate app I go in there and there's a newly generated code for PayPal and I use that code and it gets me in you know what I mean like Google authenticate talks to PayPal and communicates that password so it matches what I then key in and it's pretty good you know it's some people use those USB Keys those UB Keys um where if you want to get access to your your financial information you got to have the the thing in your Port your your USB port otherwise it won't let you go but that's hardware again and you attach it to your key you might lose it you know and then that's an issue so there's all that the um the big tech companies though they're moving pretty fast uh towards pass keys and a pass key is where maybe you've already started seeing this Lauren like you try to log in you do give your a password but then it asks you for a pin and the pin is connected to your local device you know so as long as you're on your device um and you put in the pin it recognizes that you're on that device and you're logged into that device then it lets you in you know what I mean and that you know the big tech companies are are agreeing that that is like the best way uh to secure your access into their software um the issue is what happens if you lose that device you know or you like when I get rid of my when I get rid of my uh laptop when I replace it I mean I'm told to like drive a nail through the hard drive of the of the laptop you know that so like to completely disable it really yeah because you can't wipe it I mean think about your laptop I mean how many how much confidential information you've got stored can't you take that off isn't there a there is so there's software that's out there and I just wrote about that in four yesterday and now I'm forgetting the name of the company I mentioned uh but it was a uh they they they swear up and down their software completely WIP wipes clean the hard drive you know um and they're they're selling it to corporate Enterprises that want to WIP clean devices and then reissue them and maybe that's true maybe that's not but every security expert tells me the the the the best 100% way is you destroy your hard drive you know and you turn your lap site up and down and you take a couple of nails and you have camer them through your you know the bottom of the laptop and then that way it will stop you know people who get a hold of your laptop from figuring out what's on it and whatever do you know what I mean so just have you ever done that jeene haven't done that yet no I'm gonna wait until I'm really angry you know and then when you do make sure you make a a Tik Tock video out of it I think it'll do very well yeah I I could do that just like an angry bald middle-aged man just hammering away on his device who hasn't wanted to do that before it's like like that scene in office space yes but is where passwords are going and and you know and the only you final thing I didn't write this in my uh in my article but I do I I do have to say this because my aunt my 82y year old aunt called up because she was panicking because like her Instagram account was hacked and I do have to say that when you're running a business and it comes to security over your personal and your business you know information you you're going to have to it's a never- ending War um but you have to prioritize and to me it's like wherever your money is should be the most secure right I mean you know I mean if somebody hacks into your email account for example or your you know your Twitter account all right I mean that's a pain in the nuts and you know that's going to have to be something you deal with but you don't want your money going anywhere so that that's where you have the multiactor authentication you go to the links to maybe have a USB key or you have a uh you know a thirdparty authenticator app or you set it up with your Banks you're using a you know a local pin a pass key um because that's you know to me that's the most important thing is making sure your money is secure everything else kind of falls down in priority that's my takeaway there is there ever going to be a really truly definitively easy and completely secure solution to this no because the Packers will always find ways to uh to imitate our fingerprints and our eyes and you face recognition they're always going to find ways to figure out you know what our passwords are that we're using or authenticator Keys there'll always be way around it the the goal is to just make it as difficult as possible so that they get tired of it and they go for because these guys go for low hanging fruit you know so they're trolling around the internet looking for people and there are plenty of people that don't have like multiactor authentication set up say like on their bank accounts you know what I mean so they'll they'll find those that's who they're looking for and then they can grab that money as opposed to like having to go through extra steps to try and hack through different layers of security unless you know you got a billion dollars in your bank account you know so you know the goal is to try and keep it as uh um as difficult as possible but it'll never be 100% there's never you're never going to have that security issue that where you're 100% secure you just got to make it as hard as possible anything you're working on for this week that we should keep an eye out for so yeah um which which would be of interest you um perhaps you already know this um maybe you've written about it a lot you know the the overtime role has uh uh from the Biden Administration there has been it's coming it's going it's coming it's going yeah it's been stayed by a Texas court and now uh Biden Administration is now appealing it you know this was the rule to increase overtime wages um half of it already accomplished by July 1st now there's another increase for January 1st and now the bin Administration you know even though they're outgoing man they're they're going down swinging so they're they appealed you know they're fighting the appeal so then the question is what's the Trump Administration going to do and if a fight has already been started uh does the Trump Administration have to carry it through like what what's their obligations to do that and all of that impact answer to that question I don't know the answer do you know the answer they don't have to you don't think so no you don't think so yeah probably not probably not I mean I think if if they could just you know pull the appeal back and say you know we're not going to pursue this and that in all likelihood is going to happen but then the question is what about all the companies that raised there overtime back in July you know does there because because does it go back to January 1st rule of 2024 or will it stay at the July 1st number and then the companies once they've changed their overtime policy um you can't roll that back I mean on your employees can you you can but it's not great well where did what was the ruling is the ruling that was that the judge issued staying this did it freeze it with including the increase in the exemption level that already went through in July or so let me let me just say that I will know more details to answer your question as I start writing this um my understanding was though is that it goes back to the original rule that went effective earlier this year you know what I mean from the begin that makes sense but I will you know I'm going to know that more when I when I actually sit down and start writing this face I'm sure we will talk about that again and I got quotes from a couple of attorneys you know giving us giving me their their thoughts and opinions but um it's just another like headache and there's going to be a lot of that in in 2025 you know rolling back of some of the Biden regulations and uh we'll have to see I also want to write about uh you know like Trump you know nominated uh this new you know uh Department of Labor Chief you know what I mean and um she's like a kind of pro Union yeah she's pro-union and uh you know her name is you know it's it's it's Lori Chavez you know darier and she um you she's also Pro the pro act which really curtails the use of independent contractors really interesting isn't it so um that's a question like what do we how do we uh you know what a businesses do to react against that what can they expect so I'm going to start tackling that as well it's interesting sounds good Jean 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 and entrepreneur you can also hear I'm on ABC radio's ey on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcasts with paychecks Corporation and the Hartford thank you Jean thank you Lauren we'll see you next week have a great week everybody [Music]