128: Collaborative Intelligence: Unleashing the Power of AI-Assisted Productivity

1. Take a high-level approach by starting with context and guardrails around what you know about AI and what you want from it. The challenge when it comes to AI, or anything relatively new, is identifying what is actually useful versus what is a shiny object. Some business owners who don’t often find themselves at the cutting edge of technology are looking at AI with a bit of trepidation. Maybe you’ve read the headlines and you think it’s all hype. But when you zoom out, you can see that it can simply be another tool you could use in and for your business. The best tools are ones that actually solve a real problem.
2. Input equals output when knowing how to work with an AI platform. Unlike delegating a task to a human, the downside of delegating it to a bot is that there is zero context. You have to be really clear and specific in your prompt. Are you delegating what you need? Here is an example of how Wes has crafted a prompt.
3. Only use the platforms that are useful to you. If you’re worried about keeping up — or suffering from a major case of new technology FOMO — you could be counteractively wasting time. Focus on what is actually going to help you be productive. AI tools are only useful if you find a real use for them. Otherwise they’re just toys that you’re spending your time playing with rather than doing your work.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to today’s webinar. I am so excited that you have chosen to join us today. It’s gonna be a great a great conversation. all of us have experienced AI and how it’s blowing up and everybody’s talking about it. And so today our topic is collaborative intelligence, how virtual assistants clients and AI can maximize productivity. My name is Ryan. I’m on staff at BELAY. I’m your host for today’s conversation, and I just cannot wait for you to hear from our guests today. our guests are Wes Gay and his talented virtual assistant, Jody. Wes is a StoryBrand certified guide agency owner and private workshop facilitator. And since 2016, he’s helped hundreds of organizations find clarity with StoryBrand, whether it’s rebrand, training a team, or building a marketing strategy. Wes knows how to find the words you need to sell more, all without the usual hassles and headaches of marketing.

And Jody, his ex his executive assistant, brings a wealth of experience from the marketing, advertising, and photography industries as she supports Wes with her exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail. She seamlessly manages his complex schedule and coordinates various tasks to optimize productivity and efficiency. Together they’ll share their experiences, strategies and success stories in utilizing AI to collaborate more efficiently and achieve remarkable outcomes. So, why don’t you join me in welcoming Wes and Jodi as we jump into our conversation. Wes, Jodi, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about AI and how it intersects with your business.

Wes Gay:

Absolutely. Happy to be here.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. Well, hey just as right off the top as we get started, as a business owner and then a virtual assistant, can you provide an overview of your experience working with AI and how you think it can enhance your productivity?

Wes Gay:

Yeah, I’ll start. So before we talk about…before I approach anything, honestly, whether it’s this conversation with a client, I always try to look at a little bit of a high level first and, and think about context and kind of where are we looking, what are we doing? Because I’ve, I’ve found over and over again that if we can give ourselves a little context, create a little few guardrails in boundaries, it’s gonna help us be a lot more effective and get a, a lot better results a lot faster. So when it comes to ai you know, I’ve, I’ve been seeing this for several years. I remember 2018 ish, I remember reading an article that I think Chase Bank had just signed a big, or a big agreement to with some AI copy tool that was gonna be used for automatically working on their ads.

And I thought, well, that’s gonna be the future, right? That’s probably the next big thing to get commoditized. and now I wish I had jumped on that bandwagon as a developer because I would be doing this webinar from an island I had bought. I think at this point, it’s been a gold rush in the AI space. But but anyways, I saw it and obviously I’ve seen kind of all the things that have happened in the last several months from into 2022 to where we are now. The challenge has become figuring out what is actually useful versus what is a shiny object. I think a lot of the business owners who maybe aren’t, don’t find them often find themselves at the cutting edge of technology or where things are headed or that kind of stuff. They’re looking at this a little bit of trepidation.

They’re seeing the headlines. They’ve seen the head of open AI testify before Congress. They’ve seen all the ridiculous Twitter threads and they’re ridiculous LinkedIn posts about AI and how it’s changing everything. And it’s just a hype machine. I look at it and go, okay, these, this is just another, kinda the next wave of tools that business owners can use for their businesses, right? And so when I look, when I think about any kind of tool, whether it’s a hammer, or a drill, or an AI solve platform, I look at, well, the best tools are ones that actually solve a real problem. Otherwise, they’re just toys that become giant distractions with playing with stuff. So I, for a long time didn’t use many AI as much AI stuff because it just became this wormhole of distraction for me. I get, I, Jodi knows, because she’s worked with me for six years now I can, I can chase rabbit trails like I’m an Olympic it’s an Olympic sport that I’m trying to cha get gold in.

And so anyways, I’ve, but what I’ve found over time is in the last several months particularly, is that there’s some tools that are really helpful, especially when you have, again, the guardrails to know how to think about ’em and how to approach ’em. so my, I came, I came in a little bit of trepidation. I’m, I love technology, I love all the bells and whistles and fancy things, but I also am a little bit wary of hype in general. I tend to be a, a, a pessimist in that regard. So I wanted the hype to die down a little bit before I could see what it would actually do. So probably in the last six months or so as we’re recording this I’ve obviously used chat, GPT, like a lot of people have. Jasper used to be called Jarvis.

It’s an AI content tool. I’m starting to use more. a friend of mine, and I know we’re gonna get this in a little bit specifics, runs a company called magi.co that I’m starting to test it a little bit because he’s got some really interesting features there. but it’s, the overview is, Jodi and I were talking about this, it’s been a little bit of like uncertainty, what’s actually useful that’s gonna help us as opposed to be the shiny object distraction that’s gonna be this thing we play with, but ultimately doesn’t do anything that helps the business make money.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah, I feel like we’re at that unique intersection of that where in between early adoption and like slightly more mass adoption, and it’s hard to tell which one is which. And I think ultimately the question that I was so inspired that I, I saw you answer recently we were talking was just like, I don’t know, whatever’s most pragmatic, whatever makes me most productive. It’s like, what’s most practical, Jodi, for you as, as Wes is clearly an early adopter and you work so closely with Wes what was kind of your first reaction to like, Hey, we’re gonna implement these AI tools into our process?

Jodi Reiter:

Yeah, so for me, I think there was a little bit of hesitancy. you know like I’m gonna give over my work to a bot, like, am I gonna hand it over? And there’s a little bit of that, you know, feeling of a boss delegating to an employee. You know, like, if I can just do it on my own and not have to explain anything to somebody else, and then I’m just gonna do it, I’m gonna handle it. So that’s kind of how I felt like I can do this. Why do I need to hand it over to somebody else, you know? but as we kind of started using things a little more and digging deeper into the tools we really started to see how useful they can be saving time, you know? and I can see as we are going to use them some more, how it’s gonna probably fit into our day-to-day workflow really nicely.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. That’s awesome. I feel like y’all are such a perfect pair and an example for so many of the people who are watching today on on exactly how you can use things and how you can kind of walk into that process of like, are all these tools that make us more efficient get so much more done in a short amount of time? I think I’d love to jump right into like, just really practical advice. So like what, what AI tools do you use and like, why do you use them? I feel like we can spend as much time here as you want, but I feel like you have like some real use, like, use case driven adoption, which I think is what’s so interesting in this like, rapidly changing world. Yeah. So where do you wanna start?

Wes Gay:

I’ll start. I think the first one we’ve used, I think it’s technically ai. they have in, they have incorporated more of the kind of generative AI stuff where it’s, you know, you give it a prompt and it, it spits back something is Grammarly I would argue grammarly’s been an AI tool for a long time. I use it because I’m a, I’m a pretty good writer and I’m a really terrible editor. And so hence why Jodi is so integral, because it edits, she edits everything. when I write without Jodi, I get a lot of red squigglies screaming at me from Grammarly. So Grammarly is one I, if every business owner should use Grammarly, it can save yourself a ton of time and frustration. And quite honestly, they, they continue to develop that tool to help you figure out how to rephrase things you’ve already written to maybe be more persuasive, persuasive or formal or informal, whatever parameters you give it.

And they’re getting better on that platform as well. So Grammarly is one I’ve probably used the longest out of all these. I mean, I’ll admit I became a bandwagon chat GPT guy. I finally got on a, I don’t know, three or four months ago. And it’s cool for sure. we’ve actually used it in terms of a use case. So a specific way we used it probably three weeks ago, maybe Jody, two, three weeks ago from now, is that a client that was, has four kind of distinct customer groups that they, that they, they have the challenges though. They have, they’ve been around 15 years. They, they haven’t been, they haven’t been collecting a lot of good data in terms of like really useful data and then centralizing it in a way that’s actually actionable for people. And that’s a common problem along a lot of businesses.

And I’ve seen it from, you know, small businesses and like, say under a million to multi eight figures, close to nine figure businesses just don’t have good clean data of say their customers and their, their prospects. And so there’s one particular one we were targeting business owners and we didn’t have a way to know who their, who the business owners were and their customer base. So I thought, I wonder if chat GPT can help me figure this out, and I think most AI tools could help you do this. So I went into their HubSpot, put some filters in place to filter out their customers based on email address. So they had a lot of people that were Yahoo and Gmail took all the personal kind of email addresses out and did basically left with about 800 email addresses of the however many customers they’ve had that were like a business email address.

So like a BELAYsolutions.com kind of thing. and then I did a thing that I don’t normally do, which is I willingly went into Google Sheets spreadsheets is not my love language. I know some of our audience that’s, they, they would live and die and breathe, eat, drink, you know, eat, sleep, breathe spreadsheets, not me, put ’em in there, random formula. So I split the email address from the domain name and then I literally took a hundred domains at a time and went into chat GPT and said acting as a research assistant, pull up the, or match this domain with the industry. It’s of the, from the website, something like that. Gimme the answers back in a CSV file. I did all, I did 800 domains in three minutes and it would spit it all back as a CSV file.

So I literally would click copy and chat GPT, drop it into a spreadsheet and then, you know, it took a couple more minutes to kind of clean all that up. And then a, you know, a couple of clicks later, I had a tape or I had a list of their, of grouped by categories and I went through and checked a few of the domains and most of ’em were right, a couple of ’em weren’t. but, you know, 90% is still a b plus. And so, it’s like I had a guy one time tell me that, what do you call a guy who, what do you call somebody who graduates med school with a c average doctor? So like <laugh>, we don’t have to hit a plus, we’re not, you know, we, we’re not in the, we don’t have to get a 4.0 GPA in our business here. So I figured 90% good is still really good in three minutes, certainly. Yeah. Yeah. Especially, especially if I had given that to Jodi, it would’ve won, probably taken a couple hours. Two, the resentment that would’ve rightly followed from that tedious task would’ve lasted far longer. 

Jodi Reiter:

You may not have had an assistant

Wes Gay:

Anymore. Yeah, I may have had to call the BELAY team to help me find a new one. And I think one of the things about AI to think about is, and we’re gonna get philosophical for a second, I think there’s quite honestly some tasks that have to feel insulting to give to another grownup to do. Like, I don’t know if, I’m not saying it should insult their dignity, but at some point, I, and I’ve told her it is before, there are certain things I have never delegated, because I just feel like it feels un insult. You ask a grown person <laugh> to do that certain that for you to do this, for example. But I have, I don’t, the right now, the robots don’t have feelings. And so I’m fine with chat GPT or Claude or any of these other tools to do it for me and to then also automatically format it into a CSV so it can easily go into my spreadsheet that I’m not having to work with.

So, that’s an obvious one. There’s another one that I’ve used is Jasper. I like Jasper better right now for generating content and a use case there is, I got a client that does they get a lot of their leads and clients from their, from webinars. They do partner webinars with people in our industry. Do a couple of month, I think 75% of their new business last year. It’s a three and a half million company right now, came from leads that were either direct referrals or had somebody attended a webinar and then reached out to sales and then became a six figure a year customer. and so we were gonna do, we, we tested this where they did a webinar, I dunno, three weeks ago it wasn’t well attended. So let’s send the replay out to the entire email list.
The description we originally had was, was tough to read, as in, I read it twice and I thought, I don’t know what this means, a b this is like somebody loaded a cannon with jargon and then just shot it at the wall to see what, what it was. And so I put that in a description and I, and then I put acting as a acting as a marketer, a copywriter for this company, rewrite this into a compelling offer or a compelling two paragraphs as to why somebody should watch this webinar. And it gave me three options. And, you know, I played at the prompt a couple of times. It gave me three really good options I ended up with, and it took me 10 minutes, edited it a little bit, you know, shortened it, cleaned it up just a tad, another five minutes. We dropped it in HubSpot and scheduled it all in, took 20 minutes and they thought the description, the client thought the description was great. They’re like, oh, this is so good. And I’m like, well, thank, thank the robots. 

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Well, I feel like one of my takeaways there, and I don’t mean to interrupt you. Wes, but I actually I do, I totally meant to interrupt you there. But the I think the, one of the takeaways I keep having from these examples you’re giving is kind of like input equals output. Like the quality of your prompt Yeah. Is the quality of what you get out of it. How, what was your process, and I didn’t prep you with this question, but like, how did you learn how to ask the right question or how to give it the right instructions? I think we have probably a lot of viewers or listeners here who want to embrace these tools, but they don’t necessarily know exactly like where to even start. Yeah.

Wes Gay:

The prompt thing is interesting because that’s one of the things that gets brought up a lot in Twitter on, you know, people talk about it on Twitter and in LinkedIn, you know, prompt engineering people are acting like that’s some of the next big, you know, seven figure of your job. It’s not in some ways you have to think about it. The, the, the downside of of creating a prompt is that unlike delegating it to a human, like if I delegate something judges, she can ask clarifying questions, right? She, and she can maybe bring a certain set of knowledge to a task that already pretty have a pretty good idea or she may know where things are. When I delegate it to a robot, they’re basically coming in only knowing what I say. And so in some ways it’s just like delegating in general, like Jodi referred to earlier.

I have to look at it and go, I’m delegating this to a machine that no, I’m going to assume knows no, has zero context unless I tell it something. And so that’s been the big part piece of it. And I’ve seen some people who have talked about how they’ve maybe crafted prompts. Jasper has a tool that, or a, you give it a prompt, you click a button and it’ll enhance the prompt and make it more specific, you know, and, and kind of, and help you get a better prompt. But it really comes down to just what BELAY is all about, which is delegation. And so you have to be really clear and really specific in, in the delegation side. you know, some tools are better than others with how it handles the prompt, but it really comes down to am I delegating what I need?

This also isn’t confessional time, but I will confess Ryan, before you know me, you Jody and the world here. So we’re working on, I’m working on a project now BELAY, and it’s a, it’s an email sequence. One of the emails in this, in this sequence, it’s a sales sequence, is a a testimonial. So I went on the website and the BLA site and I have a list of all the ones, and I found a couple that really useful and really good. And so I literally copy and pasted one of those into a into a prompt. because it, for some reason it wasn’t reading the, the URL rights. I just copied and pasted the test, the case study. And I literally said acting as a sales rep for BELAY Solutions, rewrite this case study to be, I think like a hundred words, make it really clear, make it fun, but professional.

And then the call to action should be cl should be click to read the full story. And sure enough, it spit out three options. I took one of ’em, edited it, and then copied it in the Google doc. I haven’t seen what y’all’s comments have been yet, <laugh>, but it was able, like I I gave it, I literally said acting as a sales rep play solution. So it knew then to talk about BELAY in there. It knew then to talk perspective of sales. It knew to make it a little more fun and professional and what, what I wanted people to do.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah, that’s incredible. Jodi, what tools have you used as you are working with Wes to help be more productive?

Jodi Reiter:

Well, I’m still learning. This is still sort of a new thing for me, you know, and I’m learning from Wes. so chat GT is the one that I’ve used the most. And like Wes said, we, we knocked out that project in like 10 minutes flat. And what normally would’ve taken me half of my day. So I think, you know, as an assistant, it’s kind of taking a look at your daily to-do list and saying what makes sense, you know, to hand this off to AI and what makes sense for me to still touch, you know. but you know, like I said, Jack Chat GPT is the main one that I’ve used. and still just messing around with some of the others. I know there are some out there like Boomerang and Stiff Science that are good for assistants who do a lot of calendar management, a lot of email management. So kind of dabbling in those as well and seeing how I can use that. I don’t do, I don’t do a lot of like, travel for Wes, but it would be helpful maybe for a calendar or email management too. So that’s really all I’ve messed with so far and still kind of in the beginning stages of learning all the AI tools.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I think that’s incredible. I know for our CEO at BELAY her and her assistant, they literally have a, a KR what part of their OKRs for this quarter to implement and learn more about the system. Cause I think that’s where so many of our folks are, is like, if you have an openness to it then like how we, how do we learn and work together and figure out where it works. And I, and I don’t wanna miss this, Jodi, you said that something that would’ve taken you a half a day a half a day, that’s like a ton of hours you got done in 10 minutes. That frees up so much more time for you to add value, to drive revenue, to push forward, you know, products and things for Wes and, and Wes’ company. That that’s truly a remarkable, a remarkable example of productivity in this context when you have a limited amount of time.

Jodi Reiter:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s what’s so cool about it is that, you know, at first, like I was saying, I was so hesitant. But then once you dive into them more and you figure out, wow, what are they capable? Look at what they’re capable of, you know, how they can help us, how they can help free up time and like, like you said, increase productivity and just the normal, like helping in the daily routines and workflow. I think it’s really gonna be great as we move forward.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s incredible. Well, Wes, I know you have a few other resources as well. I’d love to hear about a few of the other tools.

Wes Gay:

Yeah, one of the ones I’ve been playing with some is the Notions AI. Anybody who uses Notion, which Notion is one of those tools you can do a whole separate thing on. It’s cool because it can do anything. But the flip side of it is it can do anything, which means you have to make all the decisions, which can get a little overwhelming. one of the ways I’ve used it specifically is I like, I like to read. I particularly, I use Kindle like a lot of people do. And I use a tool called, I’ve recently signed up or started using a tool called Read Wise, which is a great tool. Basically what Read Wise does, it can pull in all your Kindle highlights and it can pull in articles and other stuff you can use too.

But it’ll pull in your Kindle highlights and then it can sync those not only to read wise and you can make highlights and notes on the highlights, but then you can, it’ll sync those to whatever tool you want it to. So Evernote obsidian, I think it’ll do rum research and and notion, so I’ve been playing with on the notion, having it sync all my highlights. And then when I’m done reading the book, go into that note with all my highlights and notion. And then using the Notion ai, say, summarize all of my highlights. I can literally also have it pull out any action items if I highlighted those. So now knowing that when I’m going in to read a book on Kindle, I’ll be able to highlight and know that I’ll, you know, I’ll highlight kind of liberally and knowing that I can have an AI tool, summarize it for me.

Another thing I’ve started to use too is using Zapier, which I love, I love, I love, I would automate everything in my world if I could, if I could figure out how. but using even Zapier to tr to do things. So one of the ones I have as an ex, as a, a Zap set up. So if I’m on an article, say Harvard Business Review or Inc or whatever, I can go, I can click a extension in my browser and it’ll automatically send that article to chat GPT and then spit back out a paragraph summary in 10 seconds so I can read it or not. Or I can just say, oh, now I’m gonna keep that as a reference, as an article that I wanna read. another one is I set up recently, I haven’t tried it yet, but I saw a guy that set it up where he could take a voice.

Like if you had a voice memo, you’re in the car, you’re in a place where you can’t take notes or you have a lot to think about or voice out loud that you don’t wanna write down or can’t type record in a voice memo and then that and then have AI open or chat GPT not only transcribe that, but then go in and summarize that and pull out any notes and action items specifically and spit it all back out for you. That kind of stuff to me is a, I think at the end of the day, ai, I look at it as a great way to create stuff. So how do I create, you know, great first drafts of stuff because I’m a, in the marketing world mm-hmm. <affirmative> how can help would you research? Right? How did you know, like we were talking about this, this one example where what Jodi ended up using chat GPT for was we took out all the, all the email addresses for that one I mentioned earlier in the healthcare and medical space.

And then she ran those through chat GBT and asked what they, what those companies did specifically. So then we could, we, again, 10 minutes, she put it all back in a sheet, Google sheet and we could just see what all the patterns were. So then we could go, okay, now we know we, we, you know, 80% of our customers in the healthcare space are in these two different verticals. That’s where our next campaign pro, that’s where our next target is. because we know now, we wouldn’t have known, they, the client wouldn’t have known that before. They had no idea. and so it helps us do research, it helps us clarify some things and then, and also helps us create. So those are the tools I use. Like I said, I’ve started to test magi.co. Because I know the owner shamelessly is a friend of mine and he’s starting to integrate a one called Claude as opposed to chat GPT Claude, you can put up to 75,000 words.

So you could basically import a book if you wanted to and it’ll summarize it, which is bananas to me. I mean it’s like Cliffs notes on steroids. But yeah, that’s the next one I think I’m gonna play with. And all the image, there’s a lot of image generators. I’m not in that I, I stay awake because that means I’m entering the design world and I just, that’s, I don’t wanna fall down that wormhole either. but some other use cases too, I’ve seen people use, I’ve seen people use I think Microsoft has this builtin now or is building it in because they have a big investment in the open ai, the parent company at chat GPT to use AI to figure out the right Excel formula, which is that that’s gotta save the world on its own. Like I’m convinced Excel runs the planet and we’re all just living in a Microsoft Excel world. Yes. I’m also convinced there’s two things that nobody knows and that’s the formula to Coca-Cola and everything that Excel can do. And so having that for people who are in Excel all day long to quickly get the formula right, would save a ton of time and a ton of frustration and a ton of feelings of wanting to throw your computer out the window.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

No, absolutely. The Excel integrations are wild. In fact, if that’s something you’re interested in in a few weeks we’re gonna do another webinar that kind of dives into a little bit of that content as well. So you’re not, you’re not gonna wanna miss that one. Wes, you talk about Emit I’m on the kind of design side a little more and just the, the tools that are accessible for really low cost things like the AI tools within Canva that really create, you know, in the same way that some of these other tools Grammarly create accessibility to great copy and things like that, those things are accessible over there as well, which is, which is wild mm-hmm. <affirmative> to watch it. What, as y’all have adopted this and you’ve kind of fought your way through, what have some of the challenges been and how have you overcome those?

Wes Gay:

For me it’s the, how, it’s, it’s this tension of what am I using that’s actually useful versus what am I using to, to feel like I’m quote keeping up, right? Is that kind of internal struggle? Because I have friends of mine, I see people online that are just all over it and they’re saying all kinds of crazy things of, you know, every day somebody posts, everything changed. The whole world is never gonna be the same because chat GPT added a new color palette to their web logo and you’re like, okay, Johnny, let’s, let’s calm ourselves. but there is that fear of missing out, I think. And so, you know, it’s, it’s focusing it, this, the, the challenge of focusing on what’s actually gonna help you be productive. I mean, I think all the time AI tools are only useful if you can find a real use for it. Otherwise they’re just toys. and you know, that’s one of the challenges, other challenges is spending, you spend more time playing than doing, you know, am I mo am I really moving the ball forward? Am I just kind of playing the game? and then also, and I, I know Jodi’s gonna speak more on this also the like, fear, not the fear, but the concern about delegating it out.

You know, I’m, I’m okay giving a lot of stuff to robots and there’s other things like, well, can they really do that thing? 

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. Jody, what about for you? What have been some of the challenges you’ve faced along the way? Especially having a boss that’s so kind of early adopter wired? Yeah.

Jodi Reiter:

Yeah. So kind of the same thing. What he just touched on and what I touched on earlier is just delegating and really thinking, okay, this can actually be done. You know, this can actually be done and be done correctly. And I guess part of that too is knowing and realizing, which this is just stating the obvious, but just realizing that what comes back isn’t going to always be perfect, you know, so it’s going to need us on the back end of it to, to refine it, you know, make it better and just make sure that everything’s making sense. Because sometimes things come back and you’re like that, you know, even like transcription, the transcription piece is like, that doesn’t even make sense. But I guess that’s when you feel like, okay, I am needed. You know, it’s not just a robot doing all my work for me, but so it’s just that it’s just delegating it to someone something else.

And then I guess going along with that, it’s just feeling like a little bit of losing control. You know, for me it’s like, I wanna have control of everything that I’m touching for Wes. I wanna make sure that you know, what’s scheduled on his calendar comes from me, or I know exactly what that is or you know, whatever project I’m doing in chat GPT I wanna make sure that it’s done correctly. So part of it’s just losing control and I guess it’s just taking that step and kind of overcoming that feeling of, you know, I can give this away to the bot and then take it back and control it on the back end and make sure that everything’s perfect on the back end.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s a really good point. I’ve actually never considered, but I know for like my assistant, she is, she saves me from the details. Like I’m not always great at the details and you know, they’re a cumbersome will like if a project is super cumbersome, I’ll just get a little overwhelmed. and, and I can, I had not considered how the integration of ai would actually make her feel out of control or like, you know, not being able to, you know, cross those t’s and dot those i’s that that’s really interesting and I think actually gives me a ton of grace for <laugh> for like my assistant as we’re taking steps towards that. So, so Heather says, thank you Jodi. I appreciate it.

Jodi Reiter:

Yeah definitely just need personality too. Like <laugh>, I just need to have control of everything. I dunno if that’s good <laugh>, but yeah, I just feel like, you know, like I said before, the boss and employee thing, like was said, I don’t have a good, he wasn’t good at delegating maybe at first. And then you kind of get used to the idea like, okay, this is actually helping me. And it’s the same thing with, you know, an assistant using ai, this is actually going to help us, it’s going to help our productivity and our processes. So it’s just taking that first step, I think, and realizing that it’s a good thing.

Wes Gay:

Yeah. I think one more challenge too is you, I think to use it well, you have to pause long enough to almost break things down to say, okay, what are the actual steps that need to get done? You know, things that I’ve done repeatedly I could do in my sleep. Same with Jodi. You just know ’em and you think, okay, if I wanna use ai, how, if I wanna integrate it, what, what is actually happening? Like what is step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 through 20 of this thing we’re doing? Even if they’re very, very tiny steps and then coming in and saying, okay, where can a AI tool help us here? And then having that clarity to know all the way through, which also opens up, like this one example we’ve used now with chat GBT about the kind of research project I have. I would’ve never, ever thought to do that ever with anybody, with any other client up until now. Because it, I just never thought that was an option. Yeah. You know, I just never thought, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna research 800 people’s websites. That is sounds awful, right? Rightly so. Because it is terrible. It would be terrible work for somebody to do, but you know, these AI told you they’re gonna, oh wait, we can actually do this. We can actually get this done. But before we never could do it. It would’ve, it would’ve been terrible for somebody to try to do. 

Ryan Fitzgerald:

The effort to impact equation has actually changed significantly with these toolsand I think we as leaders and people who wanna scale our businesses and things like that, we, we get to reevaluate what’s doable now. And honestly, I mean, talk about incredible service and a remarkable product you delivered to your client that they, they never thought they could have either. Like, so what a, as a business owner, incredible way for you to impress a client as well because you’re able to integrate a tool together when we both used it.

Wes Gay:

I think the future of AI is gonna be again, avoid the hype train of the internet. I think the future of AI is gonna be really coming after kind of entry level knowledge work. You know, it’s never gonna come after plumbers or the trades are always gonna be fine. It’s that entry level knowledge worker job where you’re, I think we’re gonna see a divide in the coming months and years where those who are using AI to supercharge are gonna become even more valuable. So they’re gonna skyrocket up that ladder versus the people who aren’t, you’re gonna have a lot of that entry level jobs are gonna be, frankly, taken over by bots that can do it for $20 a month at 90% of the return of effort.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. What in kind of conclusion like if you had to give like one piece of advice to a, a business owner or a leader who’s sitting here thinking about how them and their assistant could incorporate AI into their workflow, like, what would your piece of advice be to them to just like, to get started or to kind of grow in that?

Wes Gay:

If I had to give one piece of advice, it would be, you’re not gonna get left behind. So ignore that hype, right? Your business can still make money, you can still make good money, you can still be very successful if you take baby steps into using AI and integrating it into your business where it makes sense. The worst thing you can do is jump into the hype and then start trying all this stuff that doesn’t actually bring real value to your business, right? Instead, play the, you know, be a crockpot, not a microwave on this, and say, what are the problems or the gaps that exist in our business? And then find the tools that can help you do that work for you. And then over time you’ll figure out how to integrate it. You don’t have to go from zero to automated overnight but, you know, give it. Don’t know you’re not gonna left behind. It’s not gonna destroy your business if you don’t have it. it can just make you a little more valuable, a little more efficient, and live life a little more stressful if you do, if you can identify the problems that it can help you solve with your job.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s incredible. Jody, Wes, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing sharing your wisdom. if they, if people wanna find out a little more information about you, where do they find information about your business?

Wes Gay:

The best place to go is wesgay.com. It’s real complicated. W-e-s-g-a-y.com. That’s where I have all my stuff that you can find me, you can find me on the, on the interwebs Facebook, I guess us old people still use that. LinkedIn Twitter, Instagram’s all just at WesGay.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s awesome. I will endorse Wes. We use Wes at BELAY and very, very, very grateful for you and for all that you do for us. And today everybody who listened and watched. So thank you all of that. That was incredible. Some very practical information and to those of you tuned in, if you’re watching or listening thank you so much. I hope this information was a help as helpful for you as it was for me. I have a whole list of things that go check out now to, to be more efficient and I know for sure. My assistant, Heather, is really grateful about some of the things that I learned about today. if you have more questions or more, or kind of more thoughts or you want to get access to more information, couple places you can go follow us on social media.

We’ll be posting about information there on this webinar and future webinars as you heard me discuss earlier. Also, you can check out our blog the BELAY Solutions blog you can get to from anywhere on a website is gonna be a great place because in the next few days we’re gonna post a replay of this webinar that you can get to from there. also going to post a link to all of the different things that Wes talked about today. And then you can find more information on Wes and Jodi both there. Once again, thank you so much for being here today and we wish you continued success as you accomplish more and juggle us.