Coffee, Travel, And The Setup

Dave 0:03

We're here to share real life insights, practical strategies, and the added lessons that we have learned from our own state, that we have been in your community. So whether you need help with operations, accountability, financial knowledge, details, or maybe just getting your mindset right. We are here and the right spot for no fluff conversations. So grab your favorite cup of joe. Let's jump into the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Alright, everybody, and welcome to another Friday morning. And grab your favorite cup of gee, or let's jump into the show. I don't have cup of go today because of that. We are on the road again for another tournament, last tournament of the year where we're out of town. And apparently this place doesn't really have a good we're at a Airbnb. They don't have coffee makers. So the first thing I will be doing after we end the show, if I want a happy fiance as well as for myself, is going and to the nearest Starbucks and getting us some coffee. So, but hopefully you have a good cup of Joe. Welcome back to another episode of your business owner and you, or maybe you're an inspiring business owner and you have any questions, any thoughts, you're in the right spot because we on this show share our experiences, our pains, our struggles, our obstacles, and then the things that we've done in our own businesses that have worked, some things that don't work, but also things that we have shared with our clients, our strategies, different things that have worked in their businesses as well. So we're glad that you're here. If you ever have any questions, feel free to drop them down below in the comments, or you can email us or reach out to us at any one of the social platforms where you're watching this episode. But let's jump into it. So, Darren, welcome back, sir. How are how are things? It's been a been a few weeks since you've uh you've joined us. How are you doing?

Duarne 1:51

Um has been a few weeks since I was able to grace your screens and join you on the podcast. It's been a very, very busy uh few weeks and also a little bit of a traumatic few weeks with some uh localized flooding related issues and making sure we can uh sandbag enough spots around the house to stop the water flowing into the house. So we managed to get that under control, and I think we've got a more permanent solution in place now, which is great, so I can stop stressing every time the rain comes, especially considering we only have two seasons in the Philippines, hot and rainy. So monsoon season is not fun, especially when there's typhoons lingering nearby. But yeah, other than that, it's been a lot of work, lots of hiring, recruitment, interviewing, and project preparation on boarding, all that fun stuff that you completely underestimate how hard it is

Flooding Stress And Rapid Hiring

Duarne 2:50

to do for a few people, let alone well, we did seven in one go, as well as an extra couple of hires on top of that a few days before for different roles. So definitely not something we're aspiring to do again in a uh any time in the near future. We'll space them out a little bit, I think. So but hey, look, you know what, you gotta do what you gotta do when you're hustling.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

I mean, what's from that experience? What's the biggest maybe lesson that you've learned for yourself?

Duarne 3:21

Doesn't matter how much preparation you do, there's gonna be something you forget, there's gonna be something you miss, and if it's a collaboration with others, it can be one thing that they don't get done right or doesn't get you know is forgotten. That can actually be what stalls your efforts as well. So yeah, my my my my retake on it is checklist, checklist, checklist. Just have your checklist, every department get your checklist, master checklist, go through, solve your problems, get it all out. Thank God for AI's amazing documentation capabilities now. Claude does such a wonderful job with documentation. So once you've got your your masters, it goes and makes it look beautiful. It can replicate and duplicate so much quicker than we can. So contract each new contract was much, much quicker to do because we had our template and we're able to duplicate that within minutes. So that was really helpful. But yeah, yeah, we've learned a lot of good things. We've got some great systems in place now as well. So there is an opportunity potentially in the future for another uh depends between four and twelve people that we'll be bringing on for the project within the next you know six to twelve months. So yeah, we'll just we've decided we're gonna put in some better processes for that. But we're really excited.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

You you brought up you brought up an interesting point that I think a lot of people should begin to consider not just an onboarding, but just any part of their business, right? Is is the checklist. You know, like what are the things, what are the processes or the systems that you guys are doing on a regular basis, and not just for yourself, but the ultimate goal is that you're bringing somebody into your business eventually, whether it's a new employee, new something, you know, manager maybe in the future, but those checklists are what's gonna tell them exactly what needs to be done. And I think we've talked about it a little bit, a lot or a lot on the show, right? Where it's about you know getting everything out of your head and onto some sort of documentation so that you don't have to be the one to do it every single time, all the time. And I think checklists are a first step in that.

Duarne 5:42

Absolutely. Well, we had an experience with a problematic staff member probably over the last month for one of our clients, and it was a bit stressful for the client as well as for us. One of the scenarios in that was the client had gone through and checked their SOP documentation only to find out that there's notes in it, like, go look

Why Checklists Beat Good Intentions

Duarne 6:10

at this video. Well, guess where the video was stored on the local machine of the individual who was meant to have uploaded it. The video had not been transcribed, video had not been turned into an SOP. So, can you imagine trying to train someone else up on that skill set without that documentation in place? He personally had been entrusted that work to this individual. That individual had given false indications that the work had been done. Clients were happy with the rapport, so from a client point of view, there was no concern. But behind the scenes was where all the documentation fell apart, and it was just a very stressful situation when it all became very evident to the client and they noted it and then trying to scramble to fix it and start a new staff member who came in as a replacement to that particular previous staff member.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Now, in that situation, what it did, was there a checklist in place or something?

Duarne 7:14

I think this is the interesting thing. There was a checklist, but each part of the checklist had an SOP that sat behind it. Now, in this particular scenario, the SOP, the standard process behind it wasn't kept up to date. So things had changed, made adjustments have been made. So whilst the checklist was okay, the rest behind it wasn't, which is interesting because we had a slightly different scenario about two months before for another client who he had two other staff members in his team and then brought a staff member in from our team to help. And the checklists that were in place for that these previous staff members or his existing staff members had created was so generic. Yet it turns out he's got 15 different sub-clients with a various variation of each of those checklists. So it needed to be created as a variation of the main checklist for each of those clients, but his staff chose to not do it and instead, in that situation, kept the information in their head, thinking that they made the job safer by not sharing that information. So when the new guy comes on, can't get the information, feels like he has to start from scratch and start creating all that documentation for himself, which is a bit overwhelming for someone new who's starting in a team. But again, documentation and checkbooks are just they're great as long as they're kept up to date.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah, and I mean, I mean, documentation, even in bigger companies, it's it's never a fun process. Like it's not it's not the fun part of business that you're gonna be doing in terms of creating your systems, creating your documentations. Because I mean, I remember, you know, in corporate, you know, it was once a year. Um we would have to go through all of our SOPs, all of our you know, policies for the department and deter and kind of review them. And and are the processes the same, are the technologies the same? You know, are we doing the same process? Do we make something more efficient? Just because like you have to keep that stuff up to date because when you leave, that knowledge goes with you, you know. And as an owner, it's a little bit different, right? But you when you leave, so when you want to go, you know, take time away from work, right? And I and I've actually just had this conversation with a client last week, or no, it was this week before I left on the trip, but it was like, you know, you have to determine when you leave, like if you go on a vacation or you take a long weekend off, like what are those things that you're continuing to do in your business that you want to pass off, and then you have to document right, and you have to write the process of how would somebody else do this so that I don't have to, so that you can get that time away and and not have to you know be head down into the business.

Duarne 10:44

It goes one step further than that, too. If you're a small business owner, you might only have one other person in your business working with you. So if one other person has the rest of the knowledge that you don't have, or has been working on SOPs that you have created, but they've been with you for years, a few years now, and those systems have changed and they've never updated the documentation. You as a business owner are busy working on the business, bringing in, you know, working in different parts of the business now, leaving that part of responsibility to that individual you've hired, you've got to take the time to make it a part of your KPIs now to keep the documentation up to date because this stuff falls behind so quickly. We I used to see it all the time from a tech industry. The amount of times you go to a knowledge base and you look at some articles and you're trying to follow the instructions, you're like, this isn't right. And that was with companies that, like you said, corporates that actually go through and check their stuff and make sure it's up to date. The problem is it's only as good as the person who's checking it. If the person checking it is making the assumption that it's right because it looks right, but doesn't actually go through the process and check everything, then that's a whole different story. And you know, it's it's almost like you need to have somebody who's dedicated to doing the QA, the quality assurance of your documentation when you get to a certain size. And that's either you as a research owner or the head of the other.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

You got like the regulations depending

When SOPs Fail Behind The Scenes

SPEAKER_01 12:18

on your industry, too. Like we were in healthcare, and so we had a QA department where they they did internal audits, they did all of that, and obviously they were the ones that drove the process and improvements of of all your policies, but you know, they were important because they were able to catch things before they became a bigger issue. Like, and obviously, we were dealing with like Medicare and insurance companies and things like that. So it's if there was an issue, it would cost a lot of money, right? In terms of non-billables or denied bills, denied services. So on a smaller scale, you have to do it just in different ways, you know, and a lot of times it's not because you are documenting it for somebody to come in and do it as an employee, but it's documenting it so that you understand how to build an automated system, right? Whether it's you know, just follow-ups when things are out, like the simple process of creating an automated response when you're out of the office to clients or whatever to say, hey, by the way, I out of the office, I have limited access to emails, I will respond to you sometime. If this is an emergency, please call me here, right? Or you have my cell phone if you need to call me if it's an emergency. Like that first step of an emergency response can create that necessary distance because people are going to respect you on vacation. Like they understand you need a break, but if if you don't have that part in your email, right, or in your text message, or whatever, wherever they're reaching out to you, they think you're in the office, you know. So they're like, why aren't you responding to me now? So it's like you those small steps can make great improvement into your flexibility and your availability as a business owner to kind of take that space when you need it.

Duarne 14:10

That ties into communication, doesn't it? When you start talking about out-of-office messages, keeping your customers informed. Like we we do this all the time. When someone emails you and you don't respond, it they don't know if you're working on the problem. They don't know if you've acknowledged the problem. This is why, like, if you look at a lot of companies that use ticketing systems, they have a one-hour response, is what they guarantee. They have a one-hour SLA response time. And the reason they can do that is because they know that every ticket that gets emailed in gets an automatic reply that is considered a response, that is the acknowledgement of your original concern. And that's enough for some people just to get that. So when they send you an email and you're not in the office, that's cool. You can give them that little heads up. I mean, you can do the same thing if you're having a really busy day, lots of meetings, put a little out-of-office notice on, and just so people the emails are coming, hey, got a big day, gonna be in a conference all day. If anything emergent, hit me on instant message or give me a text message or call me on the mobile or the cell phone, and I'll try and address it for you. Or reach out to Barry over here, he can assist you if it's related to this, and Mary can assist you if it's related to that. But it's it's just become when you're a one-man team, it's really, really hard. Or if you're a two-man team, it's really, really hard. But one of the biggest things we've done in the past is I used to help with provide phone systems to my customer base in one of my previous roles. And what we would do is we'd put on the IVR where they get to select the departments, or we'd put on a simple, you know, good voice message. It actually is a little informative and gives them some options like, hey, look, can't take your core now. But if it's an emergency, call this number and our help desk system, help desk team will help you, or if it's not an emergency, feel free to drop an email into this queue and our team will pick it up as soon as we're available. And that sort of thing just it also helped business owners stop taking all the phone calls and interrupting constantly during the day, allowing them to get more focused on their role and getting work done as well. And customers felt hurt, they felt in, you know, they felt like they were being able to get their messages across, they felt informed.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

And at the same time, that's that's the piece of it, right? Is that if they're outreaching you, just getting that initial response is the biggest piece because I where I don't remember where it was or something, but I remember here like we it was this specific when a customer reaches out to you, right? And if you go without responding, like the worry starts to set in. Like, are the are did they hear me? Do they understand? Are they working on my issue? Like, just think of how negative, like, because we're we're humans, right? So we always go to those negative emotional pieces. So it really comes down to you know, just giving a quick response. Hey, uh you know, and and I'll um we're looking into this, or here's a quick response, we're gonna dive a little bit deeper on it when we have a moment, you know, maybe tomorrow or whatever, but give that information to them now. They know you're they feel supported. That's where the support comes in. You know, if you just leave it on read until the answers come up, they wonder if you've even seen it, and then they even you know causes a little bit more stress when they're end, too. You know, just think it's happened

Keeping Docs Updated So You Can Leave

SPEAKER_01 18:26

to us, you know, it happened to me. You know, so you even as simple as you send something and it's like, okay, I wonder, like, did they see it? You know, car buying experience. I just had that, you know, where I'm just like, okay, I sent a text message, it's now been like two hours, did they see it? Even a quick response back to saying, hey, like I'm with a customer, I'll get back to you. Like that simple, like that message that I could have gotten back would have been greater than me sitting there wondering, okay, like what's going on, you know what I mean? Because there was no response.

Duarne 18:58

Well, that's okay. You're sitting there scratching your head going, well, did they get my message? Or go to spam? Are they ignoring me? Do they am I not important? All these things go through your customers' heads when that happens. This is something I've trained my team on. That even if you're not able to fix the problem, just respond back and let them know you've acknowledged the receipt of the problem, you're working on it, or you've scheduled it for work, and that's enough. People just want to be updated and communicated with. And if they're updated, they take it off their checklist because if they don't hear from you, it remains on their list, and then they have to keep following it up. All right, I haven't heard anything, I've got to keep doing that. And then it falls becomes their onus to follow up. And if they're feeling like it's part of their responsibility to follow up, they're gonna feel less supported, they're gonna get more pissed off it, they're gonna get upset, they're probably gonna find you know reasons to get annoyed, like, oh, it took five days. But if you were to say, hey, look, we've got we're gonna look into this, it's gonna take three to five days to look at it and hopefully get to a resolution, it's just letting you know that up front. Cool, all right. I have an expectation. And if you wanna you want to see how real that is, I see it with my son all the time. Whenever we order something and he looks at the due date and they put in 17th to the 24th, he's there waiting on the 17th. Is it here yet? Is it here yet? It's like, well, no, he said up to the 24th. So every day after that becomes a very he becomes very impatient. And you know, most people are in the same position. If you they'll only hear the first number you give them, and if it does, if you say three to five days, just give them another update in three days. Hey, we're still working on this, give us a couple more days. But that really, really helps. So, yeah, I I think when you go, it's good you're going on vacation, but yeah, just keep people informed. Um, I I'm terrible at this because I'm on vacation all the time.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

And if there's there's things within the business that you're doing, I think that that would be right, would be like mark them down, and this is the challenge I give to one of my clients this week was write down everything that you continue to do in the business while you're on vacation because you feel like you have to in order to kind of move things forward, and then we'll review it when he gets when he gets back because ultimately it's he he has employees, right? He has something, so it's like what's behind it? Is it is it a lack of trust of the employees? Maybe they're maybe they're at capacity, they're not able to do it. Is it an automation that can be built out to to manage that? There's a lot of different sort of concepts that have to be looked at when we're talking about it. So it's not cut and dry a lot of times, like you would hope it would be. But I think ultimately, you know, building those checklists are kind of like we went back into and the processes, you have to get it on paper, out of your head, especially if you're looking to grow and you want to start taking time away because you want your business to work for you, not necessarily you being a slave to your business because you have to do everything because you own it. And so I just thought that was an you know kind of topic to take from what we were talking about in terms of onboarding and you know applying it to business as a whole, because it's definitely an important thing, too.

Duarne 22:20

It is really it is really, really true. And when you do onboarding, those checklists really do help. We we got so caught up that we forgot to actually send an email out to one of our previous onboarding project uh employees.

unknown 22:39

Right.

Duarne 22:40

So when we went to do something which was obviously needed that prior step, and we're like, hey, did you have this ready? What you know we emailed you about this at the beginning of your employer. I don't remember seeing that. Went back and checked. Oh shit. We never said let's try it. Let here, go and work on this, would you? And you realize like with the checklist, that might not have happened.

unknown 23:07

Right.

Duarne 23:07

That might have been able to be.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

avoid it right just the ability to be able to go well yep that's been done that's been done that's been done one and even even some of that too like when you when you build the checklist that that's gonna give you the roadmap of okay what can we actually like automate as part of this process so that you never have to do it again right and it's part of the process right it's hey I marked John is hired boom that email goes out you don't even have to think about it now it's you don't have to mark it off on a checklist it's just done as part of the system and that's so it's like a checklist but it's like a step by step of what you want your process to be yeah it's like a it's like creating a a project workflow right right and it's like okay this part could be built into the system this could be automated this part needs to be manual and once you go through that you now can build out the plan to then implement that and and create the system that's going to help you and save you hours you know I said it I don't remember if it was with you but if you can save yourself an hour a week right that's 52 hours right that you're going to get back a year so you're almost basically I mean you're saving yourself a week and a half every single year like if you could just save an hour now multiply that by two now could people always like well how do you get so much done well it's because if I can take something that was taking me an hour or two hours and I can automate the process where now it takes me 15 minutes well I just got back an hour and a half every single week and an hour and a half every single week it's 80 hours. That's two weeks more a year that I can get work in that somebody who's not doing that can't.

Duarne 24:51

So that's two weeks of vacation leave every year that you can now do.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Or depending on yeah so and and that applies to not only business owners but employees like if you're just an employee like just think of what is something that takes up a lot of my time that you now can turn into a process and automate and now you're more outcome driven than hourly driven you know and free up some time there. So there's just a lot in that aspect but absolutely like one of the kind of wrap up I think the biggest piece there right is is build a step-by-step guide build a checklist and then then look at it and say okay what can be automated what needs to be you know a person what needs to be you know maybe coordinated with your partner like as you mentioned you guys had some partners and then you know get a buy-in from everybody and then build it out that's the biggest thing I think that you could do in your business oh absolutely I I was talking to a client today she was sharing with me that it's her and one other in her business plus a staff member which they've got and the staff member hadn't been doing her part of the onboarding process what did this what was the result of this well

Fast Acknowledgement Builds Customer Trust

SPEAKER_01 26:03

because the client hadn't been onboarded she wasn't able to do the billables for the services that she was doing for the client which meant that there was a significant amount of billable hours unable to be allocated against a client to be paid which delayed cash flow coming in delayed work getting documented delayed the client knowing the work was being done or because somebody didn't follow their checklist so it's when you start looking at these things it's not don't just make a checklist and then forget about it.

Duarne 26:38

Make sure you're actually got someone going through and checking it's being done and there's a way of there's a review system in place with this as well because that's the other big drama that happens in business people just go yeah I made a checklist two years ago no one follows it. When was the last time you checked where they drop off right and if they're dropping off your checklist then there's probably a reason for it.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

So that's a good time to review and overreview it exactly so many yeah yeah so many different aspects of that aspect so but if that's you you take a look at that run with it but I think the other thing I wanted to kind of touch base on is you you we were talking pre-show and I thought I just thought it was like an interesting topic topic that I don't think a lot of people understand and that was the functionality that you were talking about like within ChatGPT right so we you know the AI pieces. And so I think a lot of people especially because chat GPT is the the more relative easy to understand name within the industry so I still think there are a lot of entry level people not entry level but just a lot of people using chat GPT so walk walk us through what was the you you you were telling me about this functionality and how you use it because I I don't use chat GP in a way that you do so yeah well I mean like I jump between multiple agents a multiple platforms as but ChatGPT it's been my go-to from the beginning and I'm honestly I'm pretty happy with it still for the majority of my work each day.

Duarne 28:08

Claude's really good for making stuff look pretty so that's what I use it for. So one of the things that I discovered recently and it might have been around for a little bit longer but I haven't really used it before but a lot of the times when you're doing a chat you tend to maybe start a chat and then start it you know start a new chat in the same chat or you will get lost on a tangent and go oh shit I've got so much context in here that's completely irrelevant now I really want to just focus on what was talked about six chats ago on the same thread so there's this really cool little function you can do. When you go into ChatGPT you bring up the bottom of your you the little icons at the bottom of the actual last message and that message there my camera's aside and mine have a ton here in the moment it's got like your copy your thumbs up your thumbs down your source and also the ability to refresh but then you get these three little dots these three little dots is your more actions and one of those functions is called branch into a new chat what that does is it takes all the context prior to that portion pushes it into a new chat fresh with all that history and understanding of that chat up to that point and allows you to carry on the conversation at that point. So from my example for that I've been using it for recently was I'm using it to create a fundamental understanding of a marketing plan for example with my back and forth. Once I've got that foundation down for the business that I'm working on I then want to work out a brand strategy. I want to work out a logo I want to work out content for the website I want to work out a social media plan for that. Now if I do all of that in one it's going to get very messy it's gonna get very hard it's gonna be hard to understand and it's gonna eventually just get to the point where it's just too much going on. So I've been branching out the primary information that we brainstorm pushing that out and then saying hey go and create me a brand story and be very thorough put it into a downloadable word document that I can pull out and edit I want you to do it in my brand format these are my parameters and use all this information from prior and then I've been playing with the intelligence levels. So I've been very impressed with the high high uh extra high in the pro functionality in the latest 5.6 soul version of GPT and you guys have all probably used them as well as you start playing in Claude if you've played with Clawed you've got opus and all the different variations with that and Sonnet the more thinking it does the longer it takes but the better the results come out. One of the other things I've done is I've done some editing on logos and created some logos finalized my design then asked it to go out and create me a mono version in dark and light colors social icon variations for profiles in and also a full color with and without and all those logo sets with and without a tagline then go and put into folders and save them in the following formats of file formats vectors, PNG with no background and JPEGs right something would normally take a team or an individual about half a day to a day to put together we're able to put out now in about 30 minutes based on the skill that we've basically worked with on ChatGPT and it all comes from just having the ability to branch a conversation. So when you think you've written off an entire conversation because you've just started getting nonsense output just go scroll back branch it start that conversation somewhere else and it's very similar from a coding point of view where we're using AI and we fill the context window we'll ask for a handoff document. Then we'll go copy that handoff document and start a new chat this is of an alternative to doing that we can go and start a new chat without creating a handoff document without all the messy stuff in there we don't want in there.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

No that that's actually a pretty interesting piece because I use handoffs a lot with Claude and my pieces but you can only do a handoff at the current point like you can't go you can't go back and say okay I want you to create a handoff just from here and move forward. So that is an an interesting functionality that like again I don't use chat GPT on the chat side I use chat GPT for codecs specifically if that's as uh on the coding side as as an adversarial review that kind of stuff to what I'm doing with Cloth but it's interesting you know maybe have to bring it back in you know what I mean to be able to just test it out you know because things are things change so quickly and I think you know there's not you're you're always going to get a result now you know and and really the difference is unless you're doing something like really high scale for for the majority of you listening like the difference between Claude ChatGPT and Gemini are going to be very minuscule in terms of I think what the outcomes are I think chat GPT is great for easability use for the beginner. Yeah I think Claude is going to be if you want to have like guardrails written and really kind of control a lot of the stuff that is good to output like you can do that with more of your Claude right and your and your like the Claude MDs and the voice and and you know the the sample documents that you want to create all the time and have it in the same format.

Duarne 34:59

I don't think you can have that sort of functionality and sort of design with chat GPT right I don't think there's a it's getting there but it's not quite there yet they are getting better with their skills they are getting better with their plug in capabilities their document outputs are still they're okay but here's what I do I do all the hard lifting in chat GPT because it's

Turning Checklists Into Automation Workflows

Duarne 35:22

much more budget friendly on tokens. Oh yeah for sure then I grab that document throw it into Claude and say brand this to my brand and you know I want you to just make it look professional for this purpose and it goes and just improves the document for me. And then I go yeah that's cool I like that that's why I think that's what you do in bouncing the point yeah love it and it's the same when I don't chat just came out with their version of co-work yes that was a new feature they just introduced as well and I mean here's something else to keep in mind too I was at an AI at work conference that was put on here and it was sponsored by Google. One thing I thought was really quite interesting is there is a lot of AI functionality in workspace that Google supplies now so if you go and you're subscribed to workspace for your email using your Google Docs your expel sorry your sheets your stuff you can just use the built-in functionality and it's actually quite useful it can help with formulas on sheets it can help generate images in your docs it can help generate content you can use that that and that's built in no extra charge outlook has this or Office 365 has the same thing with copilot so you can utilize those built-in functions without even coming to a chat GPT or a clawed and again most of the functionality you're gonna do is probably okay in those from a day-to-day perspective here's the here's one thing that I think here's a use case for for Google as you were just kind of mentioning there right so I have a client and we need to take some information about claims that are being either paid denied whatever so we have it we use Chrome so we have it split up on the split screen but if for me to copy and paste it would have it would have a lot of crazy information I didn't need from the from the information.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

So I have it up on one screen I can use Gemini and Chrome and I say hey I need to grab this information and put it into this other the the sheet right Google sheet I say it can't do it directly but what it does is it takes the information it matches the columns that I'm actually looking for grabs it into the chat and says hey here's your here's the copy table just copy this into the into the into the Google sheet and so it I literally say okay next tabs up and boom now all the information's copied it takes me five seconds whereas before if I had to like go through and copy or type it in it would take me maybe five ten minutes per page or now it takes 30 seconds. And then from there I was able to have it you know because there was a lot of insurance companies suck ass so they'll on multiple claims either pay or deny or you know multiple you know issues for a same service date so I had to like remove a lot of the duplicate you know build amounts for duplicate days that it had on multiple so I just told it I said here here's exactly what I need to go do into this you know 250 lines of data it went and did it it just said oh okay here boom and it so those are the types of things that if you are using a lot of data or you're you are trying to compare different things you have all these functionalities available to you to just try and I think I think so many people don't want to get it done.

Duarne 39:01

Well here's the fun thing that I learned about Gemini so let's say you've got a spreadsheet and sheets in Google you can use the Gemini AI on the side and ask it to build you a custom dashboard based on the information in your sheet and it'll go and build that and give it the parameters you want to show the type of graphs you want to show and it'll go build it live for you as a live app with its own dedicated link that you can share to people and you can use that in a presentation format. So you can take information from a sheet present that in a custom looking application in a nice dashboard give it to your staff to use give it to you know show it in a presentation give it to a client to view and it's like so quick and easy to do now. Now clearly that information is going to be live because it's a a live mini app that's now running and that's a I thought was very very surprised at the functionality of what it could do. I haven't played with that yet because I haven't had a use case for it but I was watching them live do a use case at the presentation I was like that's cool keep that up my sleeve that's really useful because how many I was looking at it from a point of view if you were a project manager and you were using say a spreadsheet as your to manage your project which some people still do you can run a dashboard that shows the output of your project that you can use in a client meeting as you start to go in that client meeting you can present it and you don't have to be a developer to build that if it's a simple little app that you just need to be able to show a dashboard then you can do that now from spreadsheets which is kind of cool. Now obviously if it shows the wrong information and you're not sure how to get it to stop showing that information you're gonna have probably a bit of a nightmare communicating back and forth with it while they try and figure out how to get the information. So it works best for people who understand the what's in the spreadsheet to start with so once you understand what's in the spreadsheet and the information you want it to actually show then you're gonna have a much more much easier time trying to get the output you're hoping to get from it.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Yeah for sure no I love it so I just want to I mean it's just there's so many cool things that are coming out that you can do but I think don't try to do it all you know we say this you and I we we have been using chat CPT since it came out I think if you're just starting or just trying to get your feet wet like you don't have to go from zero to to a hundred like just pick one or two things that are going to help you again as we just talked about give you back an hour every single week if you can get back an hour every single week that's an entire week and a half that you won't be able to get on that year you weren't able to do before you were wasting all that time and what that could do especially as a business owner like if you give you back an hour a week to do extra phone calls or extra outreach like what would that do? How much growth could you have like that's where you we have the opportunities now to kind of really begin to grow and and use the the AI pieces to be better.

Duarne 42:21

Like obviously there's a lot of things in this world that are not going to be AI replaced you know like the trades you know there's human elements related to everything that you still have to do like AI is not always going to do accounting AI is not going to always do your your tax returns whatever but it can help you be more efficient with what you are doing so you can help more people right yeah um well from our point of view it's a multiplier for what we do right like I just put on a team like I mentioned earlier seven soon and next month it'll be added up to nine which is a development dedicated development team and some people looking at me silly going well why are you going putting a development team of people in now when you could do a lot of that with AI that's like well imagine what I can do with people actually know what they're doing with the tools of the AI that I'm supplying them as well imagine what their output's going to be we've just made a team that can multiply two three times their capability.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Yeah it could be could be essentially doing the work of 40.

Duarne 43:27

Exactly and that's the difference and if you start I had a chat with an accountant client of mine this morning and it was the same thing she said it's a multiplier it helps us be able to help more people faster but also helps us check for accuracy and inaccuracies so the human

ChatGPT Branching To Stay Organized

Duarne 43:47

interaction is very important because and from our point of view we feel it's definitely an important part of it you can't just rely on the AI completely but if you give your staff the tools then it's really really helpful and that it was interesting one of the topics that got raised in that Google conference I went to was they did a study of employees who were encouraged to use AI tools in the workforce. And the general consensus was the psychology or the psychological pushback of the employees was it makes it was a few things I don't want to feel lazy doing my job I don't want to feel like I'm relying on the AI to do my job where instead of myself and the other one that came up was I don't want to let I don't want to be using AI to do more a lot more of my job because it might make me redundant and what they're missing typically is from a business owner's perspective we don't want to replace you because you have a wealth of knowledge typically you have the skills in the absolute we want you to take these tools and multiply your output reduce your stress and basically get better out you know get quicker outputs for everybody enrolled including yourself here here's the thing that in and this is from being in corporate right everybody's like I work 40 hours a week listen I have not met one person who has worked a straight 40 hour week like it's just never happened because you're going to the bathroom right you have your water discussions you know you have your conversations with your your coworkers you never have worked a 40 hour week ever like you've been at work maybe for 40 hours but you're not working 40 hours okay what ai now does is it helps you to get a

SPEAKER_01 45:50

40 hour output from the same amount of work time that you were doing before. Even better. Like even more. Same as better output. Better output, right? You can be more efficient. And if you're worried about becoming redundant, take the information and add more value to the people that you work with that you work for. That's the ultimate piece. You now, instead of you spending time researching and compiling, now you just become the analyst, right? Now you just become the individual that can take the information, understand what it means, and make a suggestion, make an impact. That's how we're able to use AI. And I think I don't remember if you and I are chatted about it, but you know, I'm using the analogy is now lately with AI is that people said the same thing back when uh the encyclopedias came out. Then Wikipedia came out. Everybody was saying, oh my god, it's just gonna make people dumber. It's gonna make people dumber because we have all this information right compiled, and and it just makes it easier for people to get the information. Yet human intelligence has been doubling exponentially faster as time moves forward. So are we getting dumber or do we just get access to more information, more relevant information at a quicker pace? That it makes us able to become smarter, not dumber, right? What's smart? Is is becoming smart and intelligent sitting in a library having to read through 17 different books on a table, trying to get to the right point? No, that doesn't make you intelligent. That fills your brain with a lot of useless knowledge, stress. You know, you're basically just filling up the room, just fill up the room. But but you can go to AI and it could go to every one of those 17 books plus a thousand more books and get you all the relevant quotes and the information from each one of those. Now who's smartest there?

Duarne 47:48

I would say research is yes, the most relevant.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

So I think you can become smarter exponentially by implementing it in every piece of your life. I think students, we've talked about this before. I think students need to be trained on it. How do you search better using AI versus hey, you gotta go to the library and use the Dewey number system to find all your, you know, your books? I mean, I probably date myself when I talk about that, but still, you know, students should be trained on it, every single employee should be trained on it and given some tools of how they can efficiently you know utilize it to make themselves more impactful in their job. Embrace it because it's not going away, that's for sure. How do you just help?

Duarne 48:37

Like I said, all of your standard email platforms and incorporate and business have incorporated it. Most project management tools have incorporated it. Even Grammarly has incorporated it. Like Grammarly just used to help you get your grammar right, right? As an app. Now it helps you write things, helps you write the way you like to write. You know, they've embraced it. It's there, and I think yes, it's a tool, but it's also a multiplier. Look at it as the multiplier to help you with your output. If you want, if you're currently working an eight-hour day as a and you want to try and reduce that down to six hours a day, spend more time doing something else, or working on a project that's more interesting to you, it's a great way to get those extra two hours back, to use those to generate a way to find those extra two hours. Like creating a contract. A contract can be very monotonous. And yes, you can probably generate it yourself, but then proofreading that contract. What if you had a temp standard template and you dropped your version of the contract in and said, review both contracts and advise me if this new variation of the contract has any deviations from the original? And let it go through and do that. I mean, that can just save you. And while you're doing that, go and grab your coffee. Right? Have your chat by the water fountain, then you come back and like, guess what? I was doing something. You know, we're seeing it in the IT industry a lot. So, from an IT point of view, it's been identified by a large population of the MSP providers out there that we're gonna see the drop of level one support from being a human to probably being a lot of automation and AI. Because a lot of that information for level one help desk is really capable of being handled by an AI now. And then the level all the level ones will start leveling up to level two. They'll get pay increases because they're now level two, and more response, and they'll be get more responsibility on their roles, and they'll be able to then main manage and maintain the level one systems while doing a you know more interesting role, right? And more projects and things that are a little bit more interesting for them. So it's not going to replace, and it really comes down to if you start looking at like when machines came in to start replacing people in a workforce, people started doing other jobs in the workforce. So I don't think it's going to be an instant you've lost your job, you're out. No, it just means that from a small business point of view, small business owners can be more competitive with larger corporations with larger budgets and larger staffing pools, because you now have a lot more tools to help multiply your output. Yes, larger corporations, it definitely is probably gonna see an impact to them because where they had 50 people doing the job of what you know, 30 people with some AI tools can now do, or 20 people with some AI tools can now do, they're probably gonna make the choice to make people redundant or choose something. But if we look at companies that are currently trying to do that, people like companies like Uber, they spent way more than their budget allowed for for AI. They blew it in under six months, they blew their annual budget. We look at companies like MyOp, I think it was one of the ones we talked about. Oh QuickBooks, sorry, they tried to do a full AI support system, they end up firing back a lot of their people after a period of time because they realize the customers didn't want to deal with the AI support. So the companies that are rushing in to replace people with AI, a lot of them are failing at the moment. The ones that are doing really well are the ones that are combining the human and AI elements together at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

Let me ask you this, then we can kind of wrap up. But but do you truly feel like moving forward, a lot of these companies or even small business owners, do you think that they're going to continue using things like ChatGPT or Anthropic and Claude, or do you think a lot more are going to be heavily reliant on localized LLMs, especially when they're trying to do like full workforce implementations, and then that way they know their information is not going out right to the cloud.

Duarne 53:11

That's an incredibly interesting conversation. I've had this conversation with quite a few MSPs and system integrators just recently. And the truth is, I started making shifts towards this probably about

Gemini And Workspace AI For Dashboards

Duarne 53:27

five months ago, where I started collecting localized LMM systems to start building my own local LMM solution for my team to work with. Because there's a combination of problems with the current frontier models. Yes, they're incredibly good, but they're also very, very subsidized by venture capital at the moment, which means that eventually, once the population's on them and they hit their saturation point, those venture capitals want to make money again. They don't want to be spending it, they don't want to be burning it. So they've got the customer base, so they need to make money. And the other way to make money is to charge more or reduce the cost of operation or reduce the amount of output to reduce the cost of operation. Then you've got the security aspects. These are private companies in the most case. So your data's going offshore, there's no data sovereignty. Having it localized, you get a lot of data sovereignty. We just took a lot of MSPs and a lot of businesses just took everything from inside their office, their old servers, their file servers, email servers, and they stopped buying them. They put everything in the cloud. Now, what we're seeing is potentially with the introduction of localized AI, is a lot more servers going back into business sites because they want to use those local models with the security and the data sovereignty of the, you know, under their own premise, their own control. So I think it's going to be a Guardian revolution.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

You coming up very soon. For a few months, right? How would somebody get started? Like if they were like, you know what, I get it, I want to just have something that's that's local, I don't have to pay for every month. Now, uh there's still there's still usage charges, right? For localized, or how does it work?

Duarne 55:18

No, there isn't. No, so the way localized works is you run a local model and you just talk to that local model and it produces the output. So you pay for the compute. So you pay for the computer up front that does the output. So like I've got sitting next to me a Apple Studio, Mac Studio, that's got a 32 gig of memory and a fairly decent processor in it from Apple, and I can run a reasonable model on that for coding or for general chat or document creation locally, and I don't have to pay for any licensing. What I do is I run a free model, like Google has a model, OpenAI has a model. You wouldn't be able to run the OpenAI model on this because it's quite a heavy model, but you could run Quen, which is a Chinese model, Deep Seek's got a model. There's a pile of different models out there that can be ran locally, and you'd be very surprised what they can actually do. They are not going to perform at the same levels of Fable or Opus. You're not going to be able to generate entire websites or applications with them at this point. And the only reason is because the context window is too small because everything gets loaded into the memory or the virtual uh the video memory of the devices, and that is expensive because it's in demand. And like Apple is one of the cheapest ways of doing it, but you need at least a 32 to 64 gig or 128 gig device to do it, which means you're sitting at a point of you know anywhere between four and twelve thousand dollars US to get a device like that, and that's only good for like one or two people to communicate with it at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Yeah, I was gonna say so it's like it and until it becomes more mainstream, right? It's it's not gonna be a small business. A small business owner probably still benefits from the clouds, the chat GPTs, but making sure that $100 a month on the top plans is probably still a great model while they can.

Duarne 57:28

100% and the other thing to keep in mind, and the other thing to keep in mind there, Dave, too, is when you start using localized models, you have to take into consideration the power draw, the failure potential for the devices, the maintenance of the device, the maintenance of the LMM. These LMMs are getting replaced so quickly that they might be replaced in a couple of weeks, and you might go to the new version, and it's a bit like when you patch your Windows machine and it has a fault or a bug, and then you have to roll back to the previous version. I think you're gonna start to see some businesses start to use localized models, probably more related to agents. So they're gonna have localized models with agents running on them, so love rather than the individual employees using those models, they're gonna have the agents doing the work instead using the local models because then they don't have to worry about well, that's slow, that's annoying. Companies like GMK Tech have just released, like for about $4,000, an extremely capable AMD model that produces and you can run a big model locally LMM on does some great work, but people like me and you, we jump between different systems, we're doing different things at the same time. A bit of coding here, a bit of documentation.

SPEAKER_01 58:48

I would not be able to do what I do on a local LM, that's for sure.

Duarne 58:51

You would need multiple LMMs. Yeah, you would need to be running multiples, which is what I'm

AI Fears At Work And The Multiplier Mindset

Duarne 58:56

configuring and setting up here to try and accommodate. But I mean, it's a big investment, it's in time, technology, and hardware. There is some really cool devices coming out, like there was a pocket devices that are about 1500 to two grand that plug into your existing computer and let you do stuff uh offline on them and produce output. And those and they can switch between different models. So from a hobbyist point of view or just an individual point of view, they're great. But I think we're probably a little bit too early on the local LMM scene at the moment. The only people who are really going to start jumping shit to local LMM are probably coders for the average business owner. Stick with trying to get his your best bank for the buck. I mean, there is plenty of really good frontier models. You've got Kimmy, you've got Anthropics Claude, you've got LM, what is it? GLM 5.2 from Z.ai, you've got Minimax, you've got ChatGPT with OpenAI, you've got Gemini, Grok is at from SpaceX, and Twitter is actually a pretty decent platform, and they're all reasonably priced at the moment. So take advantage of it. But I think it's a little bit like they're trying to give you a taste right now, they want you to get hooked on it, and once you're hooked on it, then you have to make the decision whether you want to keep it at a higher price, or if you're if you're a heavy user, that's your only option. But if you're a light user, it's still not too bad. But then it comes back to that question you raised earlier. If you can save one or two hours a week, how much is that worth to you? If you're billing $150 an hour to a client or $100 an hour, then maybe spending $100 a month on a piece of a subscription to a Frontier model is not such a bad thing to get an extra hour back.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

Right. So yeah, I mean it it is a it is a question and a consideration for people to and it's why I wanted to bring it up. I mean, I think I I see bigger companies doing it, obviously they have the money, but you're talking investing a million, two million dollars into their future, right? And then uh ongoing you know, maintenance and things like that to keep it updated. So for the average business owner, I think we're even still maybe five, 10 years away of having a good localized model, maybe where people can run. I'm sure the models are gonna be there. The problem is gonna be the cost and then they actually having the equipment right.

Duarne 1:01:37

End of the year is gonna be a bit of a turning point because then video released their Spark technology, which, if you go back a few years ago, that was a data center rack. Then it dropped down to a tower, then it dropped down to the Spark, which is the size of about a Mac Mini. Now it fits in a laptop, and that model has progressed over the last three to four years down to that size. So once they get the pricing in line with that, we're gonna start to see people with laptops that are very capable by the end of the year running like an AMD AI 395 chipset, right? Running on a local machine with 64 gig or 128 gig of RAM for about three to four thousand dollars. That is a localized AI LMM device. That's not too different for a lot of companies that are spending that sort of money on a corporate laptop now for their employees. So they may start seeing individuals start to pick up and use these local models a bit more on those devices that become more consumer level. But you've real it really depends on the security policies that are get put in place as well with these corporations. So when you say a million-dollar investment, for example, for a for hardware, that's basically 10 tower spark units at the moment, which is probably good for about 20 to 30 staff each on a fairly consistent draw and use case. So that would probably be good for about what a few hundred people in a corporate environment, but then you have to hire the technicians to support it or outsource

Local LLMs, Data Control, And Real Costs

Duarne 1:03:17

that, worry about maintenance-related issues, so you can't have 100% capacity, you've got to scale that back to you know to accommodate for downtime. So I think you're right. I don't know if it's gonna be as far as five to ten years. We could see it as soon as two to three years from now. AI is moving so quick. That's the that's the problem, right? The technology is moving so quick. AI is such a buzzword. There is so much investment, there's so much venture capital going into it right now, that if the right amount of money goes in, I think the focus needs to be at the moment is having the ability to use less or smaller hardware to produce better output on the current models.

unknown 1:04:03

Right.

Duarne 1:04:03

If they can work on that, and and that's what DeepSeek have been doing. Deep Seek have been creating models which use lower hardware to produce the same quality instead of building newer models that produce better quality outputs. So they're actually going the way that I think is the future, and I think a lot of these other companies are probably gonna start to go that way as well because it costs money to generate power, it costs money to build data centers, and places like Australia just said, no, we're not gonna give you any space to build a data center to places like Twitter and say, you groc, we don't want you here. You know, we're not gonna give you, you know, an island to go and build your data center, and other countries have said, well, we'll do it. So there's a lot of resources required to do and to build these devices to do it, the hardware. And if you look into the e-recycling at the moment around the e-waste, hardware from three to five years ago is ending up in e-waste already from the beginning of the AI revolution. Right and that stuff's pretty much useless and redundant for anything for the current models. So I think hardware is gonna hit a peak. Then it's gonna start getting the app software to the point where it actually works better on that same hardware. And that's where we got to with computing, right? Hardware's pretty much hit the peak for the most part, homed computers, and the software just keeps getting more and more efficient.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

Yeah.

Duarne 1:05:42

My personal opinion at least.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

No, I mean, I mean, I completely and you you're definitely more into that than than me for sure. So I thought it would just be interesting to kind of get your uh your feedback.

Duarne 1:05:53

Sorry, I I probably hopped on a bit more things.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

You're good, but I love it. Well, for those of you, uh you know, it's been about an hour. And Warren, thanks for joining us again today. I'm gonna go get ready for hopefully something today from baseball. But with that, I hope you guys have a wonderful and amazing rest of your week. Again, we go live every single Friday, 8 30 a.m. If you're in business owner, you're interested in joining us. There's a link down below uh you can request to join us for a future episode, or if you have any questions, feel free to drop those down below as well. But until then, we love you. Hope you do all that fun algorithm stuff, you know, fun, you know, like, subscribe. Hopefully, there's one or two things that you got out of today's episode that you can take with you and begin to implement in your business. So, Darren, thanks again. Have a good weekend, and everybody we'll see you guys. Uh we'll see y'all in the next one. Have a good one. Thanks, everyone. Take care. Bye-bye.