03 | The AI Business Revolution: Unleash Efficiency, Boost Performance, and Transform Your Business - Expert Tips with Karl Yeh for company wide implementation

0:00In this coming episode, we're going to have the amazing Carl Gay and he's going to share with us how to take AI ideas and tests from individuals to a company-wide successful implementation. And it is based on his actual real-life success in doing so. But if you missed the previous episode, we had the amazing Adi Vaxman, and she is sharing a list of all the best tools that she, in her business, and her clients are using right now to dramatically improve their efficiency. It's the most important shopping list you're going to have in the immediate future. So if you missed the previous episode. Go back and listen to that one.

0:34And now to Carl Yeh. Hello and welcome to Leveraging AI, the podcast that shares practical, ethical ways to leverage AI and improve efficiency, grow your business, and advance your career. We are going to talk about today how to introduce AI tools and strategy into your business. This will, not may, but will make or break businesses in the next two to three years. And so it's a really, really important topic. And our guest today has done this in his organization and has developed a strategy and a step-by-step process on how to find the right tools and introduce them into your business so your business can be more successful.

1:17Carl, yay. Welcome to Leveraging AI. Thank you very much, for having me today. Carl, if I'm an employee of a business, whether a senior employee or any level of employee, and I'm very passionate about AI and I understand the revolution and the disruption that's coming, what are the steps you recommend I would follow in order to introduce these tools, this revolution into the business in a way that has the highest chances of being successful? Throughout my journey and how I've introduced it into our organization, really the first, you know, there's a couple of steps you follow, like a couple of things that you need to do.

1:54But I think the first thing is gauging the temperature and the perspectives and the level of knowledge of AI in your organization, right? There will be people who are heavily using it and interjecting it directly. It's part of the workflow, part of the processes to the people who they don't use it at all, or they've heard about it, but don't really have time, or it has no really value in their daily lives. And so understanding that level in your organization from the executive level to the departments. And from there, understanding, hey, wait a minute, is there an opportunity to leverage AI into wherever, you know, these departments or for these people?

2:33And I think once you gauge that level of knowledge, then you go into what are some of the low-hanging fruits or easy things that we can really improve, two big key things, and, you know, it's still a business. So how can we improve efficiency? And how can we improve performance, right? Will it lead to more sales or better customer service? Will it lead to our employees having less time doing the mundane work, taking meeting notes or sending multiple emails? Can we reduce that time so they're better used in more creative or more strategic thinking? Like, what does that look like? And understanding that each department will have probably different uses for AI.

3:17You know, the marketing may be more focused on the content creation, while the software engineers focus more on the coding aspect and maybe improving how fast they can do things. Then the next piece is, can you look at these really three big things? Is the functions or tactics or things happening in the organization, are they data-driven? Is it repetitive? And is there prediction involved? Because if there is one of these things, there's significant AI opportunity. But if it's two or more, that's a huge opportunity, but also likely cause for disruption. So these are the items I look for to identify basically low-hanging fruits on what to go after first.

4:04Correct. Correct. Okay. Awesome. And then from there, it's really who are the people in your organization that have an interest or are using AI? And then it's more about trying to find these people and then start testing some potential tools that you can use to improve, again, back to the efficiency and back to the performance of the organization. What are some of these tools? Knowing that the tools themselves could be cannibalized by a new tool the following week or a massive tool like a Microsoft or a Google or a HubSpot or Salesforce would come out and release something that would, you know, hey, I'm already using Salesforce.

4:44Why do I need to buy another writing tool? So understanding that aspect. And then from there, once you've identified some of these tools, it could be an opportunity. You have to really think to yourself, is it really, if that tool went away tomorrow, will that have a massive impact on the workflow? Or will my workflow really improve from that tool? Because if the answer is yes, maybe it's time to invest a little bit of dollars to it, right? So maybe a month or two subscription. We're not talking a year long because AI in a year, who knows? We could be in AGI territory by next year, right? Artificial general intelligence.

5:25But understanding that, take a couple months, see if it really works. And then once you have those set of tools that we can live without and we haven't really seen a disruption by these big companies, maybe it's time to, you know, make that, take it up to your leadership teams and maybe make up that, like inquire about an actual investment, you know, for the organization that you've outlined that, you know, it's improved our efficiency and it's going to improve our performance and it's going to provide some sort of return on investment. What other factors you include in the presentation to leadership that is not the stuff that you show your coworkers that needs to test it in order to make the business case?

6:10You said ROI, but I'm sure there's points, like key points that you want to present in order to make your case. Again, it depends on the tool, but it also important to understand the perspectives and besides the knowledge level, the business objectives and where that is. Because if your organization is really focused on, hey, I need to get a bunch of revenue because we're really suffering here, then the tools that you'll want to present have a pretty close direction to that versus some other tools like how would a mid-journey, an enterprise mid-journey subscription actually help with driving revenue?

6:47That's a very tough sell if the focus is that. But you know what is an easier sell is, hey, this connection to, let's say, Google Sheets or Excel that costs$10 a month, that'll significantly improve the analysis of our finances and so on. So kind of understanding, knowing your audience and knowing what you're trying to deliver as well. And when we talked about the return on investment, sometimes it's hard to make that direct, we're going to invest 10 ,000 and we're going to get a hundred thousand return. But I think that's where in your presentation, it's about, you know, you go back and you understand, is it efficient?

7:25Is it making me more efficient, which is a big piece, or is it directly improving performance? And you're going to have to think about in your presentation how that works. Carl, this was really, really great. We've recorded a much longer version of this that is like 35 minutes diving into the details of each and every one of these components. So it will come out after this one. You should check it out if you like this one. Carl, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your knowledge and your experience with my audience. And thank you. Thank you very much, Isar. Carl is just fantastic.

7:58I love the fact that he's able to integrate street smarts and the ability to use all these amazing tools together with really good understanding of how a business actually runs and put them together to bring success to the business. Now it's your turn to do this in your company, in your organization. But don't go anywhere because our next guest is Joe Applebaum. Joe is an absolute rock star when it comes to growing businesses, rebuilding relationships on LinkedIn, and he's now integrating it with incredible use of different AI tools and processes. It's extremely powerful, and you definitely do not want to miss that.

8:30And remember, there's also that surprise guest that's coming up later. So don't go anywhere.