Embrace It. Leverage It. Or Die

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week somewhat unexpectedly Liz picarazzi Sarah seagull and Laura Xander wind up talking about artificial intelligence they conclude that the time has come for business owners to take AI seriously in fact Laura says she's already experimented with using chat GPT to create lists to write product descriptions and to write a marketing plan for a new product she even used chat to prepare a presentation for her staff about how to use chat GPT she did this in part to reassure them they don't have to fear losing their jobs what I told the team is it's a nail gun says Laura sometimes you need to use a hammer because it needs to be perfect and it needs to be exact sometimes you just need a damn nail gun and you just want to pop it through and that becomes the skill the skill becomes when do I use the hammer and when do I use the nail gun on their way to the conversation about chat GPT Liz Sarah and Laura consider the various ways business owners can tap expertise including through advisory boards through business groups and with strategic weekly lunches plus Laura explains why she likes to hire people even when she doesn't have an opening even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations brought to you by our principal sponsor the great game of business will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which Jak magazine named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to for free at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Liz picarazzi who's CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosures and package bins Sarah seagull who's CEO of seagull Communications a public relations firm based in San Francisco and Laura Xander who the CEO of Jimmy beans wool a digital yarn store based in Reno Nevada and meline tush a yarn supplier based in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled brace it leverage it or die welcome Liz Sarah Laura it's great to have you all here appreciate you're taking the time Liz let's start with you I I gather you've been thinking about whether you should have a board of advisors what got you thinking about this so I what really got me thinking about it was as we've grown and it's become more important for me to work externally with potential partners and collaborators and vendors I have so many different kind of people that I'm seeking advice from or just answering a question for me and a good number of them now want to like me to have a retainer at them so I suddenly you know have like two or three vendors that I really really would like to work with but not necessarily in the capacity where let's say a lobbyist of having a retainer so that got me thinking you know I don't need eight people on a retainer what if I just got them together like once a quarter to go over some of the main things that they all could have input in and it really was coming from a place of I really need the wisdom of these people how do I interact with them I kind of approached it from could they be on some sort of retainer and then I found out how much it was and realized I probably could get a lot of information by doing some sort of an Advisory board so that's where the it came from um what I should say is that I don't really know much about an Advisory Board you know how to structure it how to form it and that's where I'm trying to decide do I get advice from people on how to create an Advisory Board or do I create an Advisory Board as I would like to have one or be on one which probably would be a lot less formal Laura you've been doing this longer than Liz or Sarah have you considered at any point forming some sort of board that's a great question um yes I did probably 10 years ago so maybe we were you know 10 years in and that's kind of when we wanted to really grow and I think it was for me I think it was just really floundering you know and didn't know which way to grow and didn't know who to trust that was a big part of it you know is I've got all these people telling me you should do this or you should do that and I I just I didn't know who to believe and who not to believe so yeah I mean I decided not to um and decided to just try to find more people like Jay you know people that could just be my friend you know and could be mentors and that had similar experience and who have actually you know that Jason freed article that you put out the other day you know about finding people who have actually lived what I've lived and who have lived what I've lived relatively recently being careful who to take advice from make sure you take it from people who've had the experience that's relevant exactly exactly yep um you know and then the side note to that is you know don't take criticism from anybody you wouldn't take advice from that's a good point I like that one yeah so for me at this point point I'm glad that we didn't because I think that I can just get clouded with having too many cooks in the kitchen too many different people who have too many different opinions and then what do you do but so Laura what I'm thinking about is having them all literally meet together so some of the too many cooks in the kitchen could kind of get cut down in a you know a shorter period like what I'm doing right now is I'm talking to like 12 different Cooks you know and they're giving me a ton of information and I actually think if they got in the kitchen together that ironically that we would be able to really work through some things and get some answers in a more collaborative way if it's just me one-on-one with the person who you know could be the lobbyist then I don't know I'm not getting the perspective the of the other maybe nine or 10 people could who could be around and could see is that a good move or not and are you um and sorry I'm going to sound like a total jerk are you soliciting advice from all different people because you don't trust your own gut no it's in areas where I haven't worked so some of them are relating to like expanding sales with government there's a lot of things you know some technical things with product definitely with sales that's an area where I think we could really grow so it's like a little bit here and there can I trust my gut on certain things having to do with like hardware and those sorts of decisions like no I can't actually I don't have any on my team that has some of that knowledge it's not like I'm just fearful and I don't know how to do it it's like stuff I literally don't understand or know got it got it and so you're reaching out to Consultants at this point and paying people to get their input yes and are remind me are you self-funded yes okay would you be paying this board would you be paying them for their time to come together I would totally be willing to and I think it would be worth it I just don't even know how that's handled like how do you approach someone with an advisory opportunity like do you put the number right out there or you know actually tactically how do you do stuff like that Liz how much are you doing in sales can you share that or are you not comfortable sharing that I would rather not okay you've shared it before Liz I I mean is it 10 million 20 million no no no less than five between three and four okay um and how much do you expect to grow in the next five years are you looking to triple it quadruple it she's been trying to double every year right Liz yeah okay you're trying to double every year so it's fast fast growth and are are you going to need to take money investment at some point or do you foresee self-funding forever for as long as I can okay but yeah so you're making a profit yes got it I don't know to me it just seems like a distraction sari you were for a while part of a larger operation that you parted with earlier this year did that larger company have a board no they didn't okay you know I I I see Le's perspective and like I thought about it as well um but uh I worry about putting too many people in in the same room and not being productive in terms of conversation me too so I actually started doing this thing thing um this year where I'm taking somebody out to lunch once a week like that's my personal goal to take somebody new out to lunch and it's somebody I've met or usually it's somebody unfamiliar or you know somebody who I just really want to pick their brain and half the time it's turned into new business which is kind of cool but it's nice because it's just unstructured and uh uh it's an easy conversation and if I call somebody up or email them and say hey can I take you out to lunch the answers are usually yes how are you picking those people um not necessarily a strategy to it it's more like gut of like yeah I'm really interested in learning more about fractional CFOs and so I reached out to a woman this week who is a fractional CEO for nonprofits just to like find out what that is what services they provide like when I would want to consider working with somebody who does that and so it was it's kind of whatever's top of mind to me yeah I like that idea I like the informality of it Liz I'm surprised that you started the the first area that you mentioned the expertise that you're looking for is a lobbyist that it never would have occurred to me that a company your size would need a lobbyist um to to some extent at all but certainly on a board well Lauren can I share with you why that that's not the case please we're talking about trash and parking spots in New York City and the kind of the debate between do we want it's either rats or parking spots you got to choose wait a second explain that if you boil it all down you know the debate about taking care of trash in New York City and containerizing it it's largely about parking spots because you need to you need the space to put your enclosures is that what you're saying exactly so to containerize the trash you would need to go in parking spots and that's highly political for a lot of reasons so there's just a a lot of people that are involved in that and I've definitely come up the learning curve a lot from being in it and that might actually make the argument for not having you know adviser lobbyist on that but it's not another city where they're dealing with a little minor situation and they have enough parking parking is such a political issue and that's why I say it's either rats or parking you either containerize the trash or you put it on the sidewalk you know who I take out to lunch is whoever was be spearhead of the parklets that's who I would go for I know her and I happen to meet with her this morning wow yes nice job Sarah yes it's actually I have to say it's the person who was the advocate for it and for things like it as well as the actual designer because I am talking to them about some future collaborations which I'm super excited about Liz when I think of a lobbyist I think of somebody that you hire to help change laws uh to try to convince legislators to do something differently as opposed to a consultant you might hire to help you understand the way the current laws work and how you can get business under the current regime how are you thinking about using a a lobbyist well so I can say I'm not hiring a lobbyist because I had one meeting with one where I could tell that I KN I knew far more about trash and de like sanitation and laws about it and which city council members were on which committee and I realized I'm on top of this already you know but there are areas where like for instance next week there's going to be a hearing about whether restaurants can continue to put trash in bags on the sidewalk or whether they're going to be required to containerize them so that's before the city council obviously you know which one I want is require the restaurants to put them in containers so that's the sort of thing where could I influence that or not I'm not quite sure but there's there's multiple things being legislated right now about trash that impact my business that makes sense what are the other type vendors that you're thinking about that you would want to have part of the conversation you're imagining it's more about getting advice also from veterans so for instance in the locker space I'll say kind of broadly um there's a bunch of companies that do lockers and a couple of them are somewhat similar to mine and I'm talking to them and they're really just kind of being nice and we're you know passing along some advice but that would be the sort of person where I would really like to have like if I had an Advisory Board have a regular check-in with that person because they're really interested in my company and I know that they also could open a lot of doors which is Al also probably the the prime reason to have an Advisory board if they can open doors for you but do they have to be on a board for you to do that like as opposed to you just checking in with them once a month I think that that is correct that they that I would rather just have a a check-in like once a month or even nicer take them to lunch like think that would be a lot less time for everybody for me for them so that's actually kind of an interesting idea because then I can also look forward to having lunch once a week that I would I would expense to the business and I would make sure to play it to some lovely places not necessarily expensive but that I would like to have lunch at smart that's really smart well and then you also can break up with people EAS more easily so if you're not getting the kind of information or if you find that you're not on the same page you know you just don't go to lunch again as opposed to like the formalities of okay now I don't want you on The Advisory Board anymore and blah blah blah it just seems easier it seems like a it's a it's a a way to dip your toe in the water without committing like like Laura suggested right if there's a rush you know you to tell us there's a rush but if there's not a rush you know take your time and you know have the lunches and figure out who you really want to keep having lunch with and then next year go all right those are the five people that have really like provided Sage advice I want to put them all in a room yeah yep love that well you guys have really helped me work through this you know this topic did come up on the podcast uh fairly early on I think it was Stephanie Stucky who who raised it uh she had experience in the nonprofit world and was used to running organizations that had boards and when she bought back the family business she immediately thought about creating a board uh there and Jay was a little bit skeptical as you might expect he was skeptical about whether you could find people who could really help you for the price that you could afford to pay and I I think that's probably a legitimate issue someone should start a a dating app for businesses you know there are services that help companies do this uh I'm familiar with one there's an organization in Ohio called Aeron that's a a really unusual organization they provide a service where they have a database of potential board people and they connect owners operators with uh potential board members and help uh with the whole process of creating a board but even something nonformal where it's like hey I you know work in this region and always interested in look meeting with you know like-minded business owners and let's go on a date a business date well the other way to do that is with a business group uh Liz you're a member of EO do you think of your EO group as something of a board of advisers I definitely do I mean I meet with the same eight people every month for five to six hours so you know they all know me very well I mean in there we talk about both you know business and personal um but for some of the stuff I'm working on I they would not be able to provide the subject matter expertise or experience on enough of them but having them I mean I bounce stuff off of them all the time in fact next month I'm giving a presentation about impostor syndrome actually and how I'm feeling it a lot and I know I'm going to be very vulnerable I'm going to be talking to seven of my business peers about this and where it's showing up and then you know they're going to be giving experience shares about how they've experienced it so yeah I view them as a board of maybe not necessarily advisors but a board of supporters so is is EO similar to like a vistage but it's for entrepreneurs correct yes okay it has the the the biggest difference is that vistage actually has like a paid facilitator and a structure whereas EO is totally self-run interesting so we all get trained in the way to have conversations trained on coaching trained on the gestal method where you're not offering um advice you're only offering experiences so yeah there's a lot of similarities I think in the role that that group can play in your business emotional life Sarah you've given some thought to joining a a vistage group haven't you I yeah and I had a conversation with a a a moderator I don't know if they're called moderator or group leader she's starting a grou facilitator thank you and it was okay conversation but there were a couple things that turned me off like immediately and I and I was honest with her like she told me that she was working on putting together a group of only women business owners and as a women woman business owner I I don't want to be part of women's only business owner group because I want to play in the same sandbox as everybody so I was clear about that and so I'm still kind of you know having conversations with her she's super nice I don't know that this is going to be the right thing for me in particular but I'm happy to continue to explore it Laura have you been in a vistage group um no I was just thinking I did EO for about a year um I have been to a couple of like guest at a couple of vistage meetings and then I was talking with a woman maybe a year ago and she was creating a new group here in town and I decided against it why did you decide against it um Reno is a really small to the town that I live in is very small and I don't know I just felt like I would enjoy being on boards instead you know and kind of focusing some of my energy and meeting new people people through other ways I just uh I don't know I didn't enjoy the EO experience a ton I mean the thing about joining groups that I've learned a couple times the hard way is if you're not very discriminating and you start going to meetings maybe one or two and then you really realize this isn't a good fit for me there can be incredible awkwardness than when you try to leave it yeah I mean I'm thinking back and the woman who was going to be the moderator I I don't know I just didn't feel a connection I didn't feel like it was super authentic and transparent and they're just it's just I don't know just didn't seem right yeah I I well the person the regional somebody rather like she asked me a lot of questions about kind of what kind of group I was looking for and I was very specific about saying I wanted somebody who was going to provide Financial accountability and make sure that that was a huge focus of the group because that's important to me just to have really smart people who understand a p&l who understand projections and all that kind of stuff and the leader that they the group leader that they connected me with doesn't have that background at all so that's made me kind of like all right what I requested was not listened to initially so that's why my I I kind of step back a little bit um I'm still going to you know go to a lunch that they're having um just to check it out um because it may not all be about the the facilitator it may be about the people that show up but sure yeah again yeah I think you're right you have to make sure that it's going to be the right fit because otherwise you're wasting their time and your own time and potentially your money yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure and that was a big part of it I mean that's okay so what is it 20 grand for the year for vistage or something like that it's in that area yes so I'm like for 20 grand could I spend that 20 grand in other ways and get as much out of it so yes like there are some really smart people I know I could go fly out to see them okay that's $1,000 you know or $2,000 and spend a day with them and what I get more out of doing that I just I'm also I'm maybe because I'm old but I just I've got no interest sitting around with a bunch of suits you know and posturing and people who are just telling us you know that do things by the book um so you know I like a a more eclectic group of downto Earth kind of maybe West Coast people so it just wasn't a good fit it didn't feel right it sounds like you were right not to join that group um I would say and I've Heard lots of people talk about you being disappointed with their experiences but I've also talked to a handful Paul Downs is one of them who found a vistage group that just works for them and Paul refers it to it as kind of an Advisory Board yeah that the group that you're describing Laura I think probably exists whether it's worth it to you find it or not of course it's another matter totally Sarah when we emailed about this session earlier in the week you responded in a way that suggested you were you were not having a great week I think one of the things you mentioned was that you lost an employee you were disappointed to lose can you tell us about that well I mean okay so she was our second to most recent hire and she's lovely she's a recent yeah this year we hired her in January she graduated from school in December and delightful great member of the team but you know she looked at me last week and she said I feel really bad but when I was applying for your job I was also applying for an internship with Communications Department for the San Francisco 49ers and uh they took forever and randomly just got back to me and offered me a position it's too good to pass up and I get it I'm like all right you know that you got to take it I mean it's the 49ers and it's an exciting opportunity and you got to get us some free tickets um but the hiring process is a long and painful process that my operations manager works really hard at streamlining but having to go back through that again after you found somebody that you're like and you've trained them you got them their computer you've gotten passwords you've gotten them up and running um just to start again in you know three months later is is just kind of painful that's all I'm sure everyone else can relate yep totally you know and it's interesting though because we and yesterday I we had a phone call with Vanguard cuz we're setting up our 401k and and they were asking us questions like when do you want people to be eligible for the 401K and uh you know do immediately on start or uh a month later two months or whatever we landed on three months just because like you never know like someone may come in work for you for a month get a better opportunity leave although I have to say that I don't know that we're going to get that a lot I hate it I hate I actually just hired somebody yesterday and she's amazing uh we had talked to her about 6 months ago and she at the time um was looking for more than we could offer her but now she hasn't gotten anything in 6 months so her um requirements have changed so it's worked out perfectly but it reminds me I mean I hate looking for people and almost everybody at the high level that we've hired I'm trying to think almost everybody at except for two we've hired when we weren't looking for somebody in the last four months we've hired three or four key employees and we weren't hiring for people but they came on the market Word of Mouth referral knew who they were and were like yep we'll make a position for you like we don't need you right this second but you're so good we don't want to pass you up and that has just and you know I mean that's our kind of hippie Tahoe personality is just to like go with the flow and which is probably why we're not a $30 million company and we should be but it's just so much more fun I think to like just find people and let them kind of come to you and let our paths cross and it's so scary to me to like go out and look for somebody and you have no idea who they are you know they're just giving you their best answers it's a 50-50 chance that they're going to work out I mean I know Jay would disagree because I mean that's a skill in and of itself is hiring and figuring out who is going to be a good fit but I hear you um that stuff just drives me crazy well and it's funny though because you're right you're asking these people blindly and you know references I think that we talked a little bit about this at the the the the meeting in Chicago is that references are pointless they can be you know yeah I mean they totally can be they're either pointless or they're awesome because they tell you don't hire this person well that's J's Point most of the time it's not going to help but if one out of 10 times it stops you from hiring somebody that you might otherwise have hired then it's worth doing it it's totally worth it yeah I agree absolutely Sarah in that email you sent earlier this week another thing you mentioned was uh painful business processes waiting for decisions to be made was is that with potential clients that you were referring to yeah I mean I'm sure everybody has experienced this is just the it's the hurry up up and wait um syndrome where it's like oh I need to get the proposal for work on Tuesday um this is said to me on Friday you deliver it and then they take two weeks to even respond to the initial proposal and then when they finally respond they say something along the lines of you know we're we're still figuring out our our how we want to you know spend our money and we may not be ready for PR yet you know it's like you kind of want to just be like listen it's a lot of work that goes into those proposals because we don't just cut and paste materials like we actually go in and look at their past press hits their social media what their competitors are doing so we can put together a thoughtful recommendation for how we think that we can help them be successful and so if we're doing that in an abbreviated period of time you know I'll be sitting there on my Sunday on my couch working on a proposal that then you don't um would get back to me about it's just annoying and then you know we've been starting to apply to a couple requests for proposals from like government agencies and you know we went and we met the deadline and the they they usually give this whole thing where it's like you have to submit your proposal by this date we're going to review and narrow it down to the finalist by this date set up interviews on this date and let everybody know by this date and we met the date that we submitting it and have not heard anything for 3 weeks like they've totally bypassed everything I emailed the person I was like hey just what I know I'm not supposed to email but like we haven't heard anything just making sure that like our our proposal was received and this and that and they're like oh well we our timeline has been extended I'm like great thanks for letting us know yeah well I mean I get that a lot with this government work that we're doing now um there's one contractor to the city that works a lot with um public housing and they enlisted us it's been about two years to work on some trash containers and we've sent a lot of pricing a lot of documentation we've attended a lot of meetings but we're still not actually a subcontractor with them and like zero money all of this is speculative like if we were to get in with the New York City Housing Authority all of this work would would be worth it maybe even all of this unpaid work but then finally I put my foot down a couple weeks ago they asked us for some shop drawings for a meeting that they had the next day so that's like the hurry up and wait and I just basically wrote back like we're not attending any more meetings and we're most certainly not sending you shop drawings unless we get a subcontract and we start getting paid I took a big risk on doing that because this could be a huge huge thing for us but I finally had to draw the line and that doesn't seem to be like uncommon where they will bring you into potential work and really take up a lot of your time and expertise and then something can shift or something is needed at the very last minute so we'll see how that goes I mean we've had some good interaction since when I put my foot down but it's still a little bit in limbo but I have some good news oh well it's been a long like I have weird little goals that I put um put down for myself and one I wrote down two years ago was I really want to have a chocolate company as a client oh you told us about that at one point wow and so I got an inbound um this week and had a fantastic phone call with the founder of a chocolate company and I like that's awesome even if we don't win it which I hope we do um I just exciting it was just exciting to have that come in CU my entire team knows I really want to work for a chocolate company everybody was like yay so that was really cool that's like the fun stuff right like these little dopamine hits right and you know and I don't know I know these folks won't have much of a budget so I can't it's not it's not like a huge source of Revenue but like it's just fun I mean who doesn't want to work with chocolate just yeah like those are the fun like we have a doughnut client that we've had forever and it's oh my God you know who does it's really it's easy to pitch right it's like it's selling it's giving candy to a baby when you talk to Media which is yeah you need a yarn company too I know we actually used no we've done yarn we've done yarn my dear friend owns two local shops in the Bay Area and Amanda um she would yeah are you friends with Amanda are you serious yeah Amanda Matlin and I are de dear friends like um her aunt taught me how to knit so that's where I learned that's how this haul started for us Amanda and I did our 20s in New York together like she and I she then we all moved out here and like we're really close um but yeah when we were first getting started we're doing fine on the pr side and we decided that we really wanted to start adding social media to our offerings because you know it was something being asked of us but we didn't have a lot of clients so I literally called her up I was like can we do your social media I'll charge you like next to nothing just so we can start building our portfolio and she was like okay my God that's awesome yeah so she actually still has like half of my camera equipment over at her her Studio because she like we showed her how to take pictures and all that kind of good stuff so she does a lot of her own content now which is I mean it's beautiful but yeah small world that's pretty great Laura what's going on with your business I'm good spent this week really talking and digging into chat GPT um did a presentation you know with our marketing teams and everybody about how I mean for for me how I feel like the media is really doing a disservice um and scaring so many people and so many creative people I mean our teams are terrified that they're going to lose their jobs and you know so we had an hour-long conversation and I put a presentation together about how this is just an amazing tool that if we can all lean into it like oh my gosh like what we can accomplish is ridiculous we just have to think a little differently and change our skill sets you know learn to ask the right questions as opposed to learning to write the right sentences give us a hint what what is the potential that you see for your business oh well content for sure like I mean we can be just content juggernauts you know and just pump out content five times faster than we've ever done it before and are you sure it's going to be as good as you need it to be absolutely yeah I mean you don't take away like the human side of it and that was the conversation that we were having is you're not going to just like produce this content and then blindly put it up I mean you still need humans with big brains to analyze it to edit it to curate it to make sure you're asking the right questions um and then the editing ability to be able to go in and say hey can you edit this paragraph you know and you just throw it up there and it fixes like all the errors and it restructures some of the sentences um I don't know about you guys but I get stuck on especially when my brain's moving too fast even just structuring a single sentence or a single thought sometimes so now I got this best friend that I can just pop it in there and I write rephrase rephrase this sentence and maybe I have to do it three times but then I'm like ah perfect that's exactly what I was looking for I don't know if I've ever heard such a big endorsement for this from a business owner my God I'll send you the presentation that I put together I mean it's lifechanging like I'm so excited the content that we can put together for like just blog posts or social media or whatever I mean give me a list I threw together give me the best place to knit in every state in the country right I mean how much time would it take you to like pull that together now all of a sudden like I can come up with all these lists I can come up with all these ideas hey I just made this sweater and I loved it what should I make next and then it'll tell me I mean how cool is that that's really cool I second her endorsement 100% yes it kills me I mean with with with the human touch but yeah yes absolutely I've used it a lot for like planning for example I was talking to a client about um Awards program and I was like God I don't want to sit there and write down the bullet list of all the things that need to happen to develop an awards program so I literally went to chat gbt I was like give me a list of all the things that I would have to do to start an awards program exactly and it did it and I was like all right I'm gonna take that one out that one out that one out and that one out it's irrelevant we did the same thing with like um I said give me a marketing campaign for XYZ and then our marketing team is relatively Junior so it would have taken them I mean first of all they'd be completely intimidated they don't know how to put together a marketing campaign so it's not that it's the end all Beall but it just gave them it's a mentor you know it gave them a structure and so then I said okay now give me the marketing plan so now they have a plan you know so it's a teaching tool the first question was structure a campaign or yep give me a campaign so it came up with like slogans and it's just it's a kickart and then the next question was give me the actual plan and and that laid out how you roll it out step by step yeah so the human brain is not meant to remember it's meant to process I'm like this is once again another way for us to think at a higher level right so let this do the leg work um and let it do the repetitive tasks like writing product descriptions you know once we can teach it our tone and what words we do want to use and what words we don't want to use our team's so sick writing product descriptions and then and that copy and it end they all end up sounding exactly the same anyway we're so excited to bring on this new yarn um so this helps like give them a bit of a break so that they can focus their energy on more creative stuff and stuff that only humans can do Laura I just highlighted uh a story in the morning report I read it about how Shoppers are starting to use chat GPT to to search and actually uh make purchases does your presentation does your thinking include anything along those lines um I had not but I sent the article that you put out this morning I just sent it over to our entire team before this podcast and was like this is a mustre I want everybody to read this and um then let's talk so no I mean we're so excited about it you know I mean just the potential it's just a tool and you know what I told the team is I'm like it's a nail gun you know sometimes you need to use a hammer because it needs to be perfect and it needs to be exact sometimes you just need a damnn nail gun you know and you just want to pop it through so and that becomes the skill the skill becomes when do I use the hammer and when do I use the nail gun I haven't even downloaded it if that's what you call it what do I download it in the App Store no you just type in chat GPT into your browser and it will pop up and you log in and it lets you start doing it wow you just you type in a couple literally you can type in prompts that are like like um draft me a quote uh about the importance of trash enclosures in major cities yes in terms of prevention um of you know rats and mice and other things that could impact People's Health and it will give you a quote I guarantee that you'll be like oh damn yeah that's good yep Liz I'll send you um if you're interested I'll send you the presentation and I'd love to see it too yeah me too yeah I mean it's it's rough you know it wasn't meant for public consumption so please don't critique it um well seeing how it's tailored to your team like giving a presentation to your team about this I think it was probably really useful for them I hope so I mean it's been on my list to like dig into and figure out how we could leverage and then I got feedback that you know we have mostly women um that the girls were very scared you know and they hate the idea this and it just it's that kind of fear mongering it just it's not going to take people's jobs it's and I you know having been a member of the media it's like three weeks ago everybody was talking about how the recession is going to make the Sky Fall yes and this week it's about like the chat DPT taking everybody's jobs away and we're going to get ruled by computers my feeling is if you either embrace it and you leverage it or you die or you die that's yeah exactly and that's what we talked about and I'm like if you guys can learn using it as a skill in and of itself so if we can learn this skill and develop the skill you're going to be like heads and tails above everybody else like you put that on your resume Laura did you ask chat GPT to prepare your presentation about chat G you're so funny Doug asked the same thing yes I did for some of it absolutely and it was good oh yeah yeah no it's great I mean again you have to use your critical thinking skills to figure out what to keep and what to throw away so you know the human part is never going to go out but it's such a great like give me 10 names for this new product that's going to appeal to 45 to 65 year old women on the west coast with higher than average disposable income and is related to blah blah blah blah blah and then it just it's a springboard how does it do that don't get it who cares I don't know how my car works either well we will be talk lots more about this I suspect but we got to stop now unfortunately thank you all my thanks to Sarah seagull Liz picarazzi and Laura Xander and to our sponsor the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thanks everybody wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your morning report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L ren21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21 hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]