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Unlock the secrets to business success and gain valuable insights from local industry leaders. Join us as we delve into the strategies, triumphs, and lessons learned of thriving companies, empowering entrepreneurs to elevate their businesses to new heights.
Sharon: [00:00:16] Welcome to It's Time for Success, The Business Insights Podcast. I'm your host, Sharon De Koning. Today's subject you need to listen to. Today is a deep dive into the AI world and how we can be more effective in our businesses. And prior to recording with just, Rob just explained to me how he can incorporate so well into your personal lifestyle as well. So there's a, you need to listen to this podcast. I guarantee you're going to find key takeaways to help yourself and your business. If you're on the fence about the whole ChatGPT or the whole AI world in general, please give us a solid listen. You will learn benefits of why you should be implementing AI into your business and lifestyle. Today we're moving past the lasagna recipes which we've all used on ChatGPT, or some kind of recipe. Basic wording of emails, which is probably the most used thing for ChatGPT or the AI world, and even itineraries for your upcoming trips, which, all of which are awesome. They're, all of which are awesome, which I'm going to be using the itinerary for a trip very, very shortly. We're talking about real results for Canadian business owners. Joining us is a man who is a vital resource for our Chamber of Commerce in the heart of our communities. Based in Harrison Hot Springs, he's known as the Canadian AI guy, Rob Hole. Rob, thank you for being here with me today.
Rob: [00:01:33] Thanks for having me.
Sharon: [00:01:34] Tell us a bit about yourself. I think you've been doing this. Was it 20 years?
Rob: [00:01:37] Yeah. So I've been doing like the web world and business management for over 20 years and still with, like, sales and operations. I've worked with like Ford. I've ran my own electronic store. I've worked with London Drugs, Telus in their clients, like client support services and management and stuff like that there. So the breadth of what I've got for knowledge in the different kind of areas and what powers of business is pretty deep. I've been a past chamber president for my local chamber of commerce on the executive out in northeastern Alberta as well, and Bonnyville and part of a lot of different chambers of commerce. And I've got web businesses that I've been running for since the late 90s. Right. So I've been building websites in the late 90s. So I've followed tech right from the beginning and right from the start of when generative AI started becoming a big thing.
Sharon: [00:02:27] Right. So you're as nerdy as nerdy can be pretty.
Rob: [00:02:30] Well, glasses and all.
Sharon: [00:02:34] Sorry. Go ahead.
Rob: [00:02:36] But bear in mind, like the AI tech in its current form, well, not necessarily in its current form, has existed since like the 50s. The technology has existed for a long time. The way that Google changed it in the late thousands to early mid 2010’s is where it revolutionized. But when it actually became popular and consumer ready was in November of 2022. And that's the iterations that we're seeing now, especially every, you know, couple of months, it's been reinvented, reinvented, reinvented. So we're only seeing like the stuff now, but it has existed for years. It's just been behind the scenes.
Sharon: [00:03:17] Gotcha. I have a question for you, and it's probably in our questions down below, because you said it's been around forever, but now it's more everybody's at everybody's fingertips probably. Right? And we're just kind of starting, right? Because you said what? Since when? As you said, November of when did it start to come out?
Rob: [00:03:35] November 2022 is when ChatGPT was released to the general public for ChatGPT. ChatGPT 3.5.
Sharon: [00:03:41] Look how it's grown since then. In 2022 till it is now it's on steroids. What's going to happen in five years?
Rob: [00:03:49] Well, it is the fastest growing product on planet Earth. It's… So you keep in mind of the growth of like Facebook. For them to get to their first 100 million users took a few years, right? It took quite a few years. So when they launched in 2006 into, going into late 2007 and early 2008, is when they kind of hit their first 100 million, and then they got to 500 million and they got to a billion within about 5, 6 years. ChatGPT in the first six months of launch hit half a billion users. So it tells you the growth is not just necessarily, it's overall, it's not just a business thing. It is a lifestyle thing that it's becoming because it has become immensely helpful. And my belief is that it's not just something that… imagine putting Microsoft Word on your resume right now. It's laughable. It's laughable. It's laughable. And the thing is, that was a thing in the 90s. I know Microsoft Word, and even in the thousands, people were still putting that on their resume. But it's kind of like you, just stop it. It's like saying, I know the internet exists, right? Like you don't need to. So AI is now becoming that new format where it's almost becoming laughable to say I know AI on a resume, so this counts for people that you hire, but it also counts for how you operate your business. And if you don't start kind of moving with it, you will get left behind faster than not having a website in the mid 2010s.
Sharon: [00:05:07] Yeah, that's why I'm really excited for you to join us because I really am concerned. A couple of things. I personally hate. Sorry, I have a love/hate relationship with AI. I love it more so because I use it. In fact, it helped with the whole agenda for this podcast and it's created… Anyways, I can go on and on of what you can to, and you're more in depth about it. So I'll let you share your stories, but I hate it. Also, I don't know about your Facebook page, but it's all AI-generated. You can't trust anything anymore. Like it's so people are experimenting. You don't believe anything anymore, right? So it's. But it's getting so smart that you don't even know if it's AI.
Rob: [00:05:46] I've always hated social media, by the way.
Sharon: [00:05:48] Yeah. Social media… I, you know what? And as a business owner, we need to be there, unfortunately. I 100% agree. Like, I hate it, like I hate. I like LinkedIn better than the whole. Yes, you could waste an hour or whatever time or the whole platforms. Yes, I get it. But anyways, so it's a love/hate with it for me. Mostly love for sure. But let's get into you experiment, showing some scenarios to our listeners, if you could. One thing though. There's lots of businesses out there that are still hesitant. They're kind of scared of ChatGPT. What's your take on that? Have you run across people still like, I don’t know. Is it mostly people like my age or?
Rob: [00:06:30] No, like it's all demographics. Even my wife hates it. She's in tech with me, right? Like, she just, like, has avoided like the plague until recently. I mean, she's been on that for the past year and a half, and she's coming back and I'm like, oh, you've got a lot to learn about what I changed.
Sharon: [00:06:44] Right.
Rob: [00:06:45] We own the business together. But she's got almost no idea for how much I changed the business in the time that she was gone. Not because I was just like, you know what? She's out for now. I'm going to change things.
Sharon: [00:06:56] It was just so fast it changes. Is that why?
Rob: [00:06:59] Exactly. And I'm like, you know the process you were doing for bookkeeping before? That's gone. I use AI for it now. I'm like, so I showed her, for example, I'll give you one example, right out the get go. I don't even use Google Chrome anymore. I use a browser that's based off of Chrome. It's called Comet from Perplexity. And there is a, there's a fancy button in the top right hand corner of that browser, and it works exactly like Chrome because it's built on Chrome. The top right corner, there's a button that says Assistant, and it works just like ChatGPT or Gemini works just like that. You can immediately chat in it, but you can be like, you know what? I don't really know where this transaction is. Like, I don't have the receipt for this teller's bill. Can you go get it? And it will go. And because it has my LastPass credentials and everything built into the browser, it goes in logs into Telus, goes to the bills section, downloads the PDF, goes on to Hubdoc, uploads it, puts it into my Zero account, and then it goes into Zero and checks it off as reconciled. So, now I'm not going to say it's the fastest at it, but I can have that running off to the side while I'm doing ten other things.
Rob: [00:07:58] By the way, those four of the ten other things, I likely also have other assistants going off on my other screens doing them. So that's an example of like, how I can get an exponential amount of more work done. And that's using a browser, what I call a browser-based agent like Comet from Perplexity. And I do this every day. So like my accounting and bookkeeping fully caught up, I use a lot of automation already in there, but now I'm using AI to complement it. When I can't find receipts, when I can't figure out a justification or something, it complements it there. And so that's one example. And what I started doing as well is then once I found something that works, I will say if I want to repeat this process again in the future with all the stumbling blocks and hurdles, because like obviously when I first started using it, it would screw up. It would go to the wrong website or it might not have like the right login credentials, whatever. I would then tell it, like give it extra direction like you would a staff member. Treat AI like a staff member.
Sharon: [00:08:49] Oh, I love that scenario.
Rob: [00:08:51] A very knowledgeable staff member who knows stuff about everything. You just have to put it into the box of your business. It's no different than when you hire somebody and it's day one. So what would you tell that person on day one? That's the same stuff that you would give for education to them. They're the smartest human beings on planet Earth, in this case computers. You just have to tell them what box they're playing in. What sandbox. Right? You want them in your sandbox? You don't want to throw them somewhere out there in China. Right? Like you're not like… Like you want to put them say, okay, here's where we live and play. Here's how we act, here's how we talk, here's how we work. And then as you're kind of guiding them, it's like you're over their shoulder. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's right. Yeah. That's right. Oh, you screwed up here. Here's how to fix it. At the end of that iterations, so like that assistant I was telling you about, I would then say if I want to repeat this process again, what is the exact prompt to avoid some of the problems that we had and how to get this deployed in the browser again. What I do with that, I save it into a document and that becomes a process for later. And then anybody on my team can run it. And because I've already figured out all the screw ups that it's done.
Sharon: [00:09:53] Right.
Rob: [00:09:53] And the screw ups are programmed into it to say, if you hit this hurdle, do this. Because it already knows the prompt. So my team can now go run that. Now I've offloaded something that even my team won't have a clue what it does if, I can hand it off to any VA and they can execute on that, no problem.
Sharon: [00:10:10] Well okay, so you're talking about going into the Comet your Perplexity, you find this. So another thing I've heard is people are terrified of it because there's so much scamming right now. Like my my credit card's been hacked twice. Nothing to do with ChatGPT. But somehow people's minds are relating the two. Feedback on that. Is there anything involved with that?
Rob: [00:10:31] The whole modern age of hacking, that's all. So instead of the good old computer hacking, you're getting into just a new, new iteration of it. It's what's called prompt injections. So in AI world there is malicious characters just the same as there's malicious characters over the phone. There's malicious door to door characters, there's malicious, you know, computer programs and things like that as well. Well, an AI there is as well. It's not necessarily going to be the top platforms that you use, like ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude from Anthropic, but it's going to be like when you start using, like what I said, a browser-based agent. What some kind of hackers are doing is, let's say there's a malicious website owner or somebody that has hacked a small business owner's website because they didn't keep it maintained, and they've put information in there to trick a browser-based agent to, say, go buy a thousand rolls of toilet paper from Amazon. But it’s, you can't see that it's in there. It'll say like, act as a personal shopper, blah, blah, blah, blah. Go buy a thousand toilet paper rolls. So if you just let that agent go and then you're off doing other things, and then you go back and you're like, why do I have a thousand rolls of toilet paper at my door? Right? So it's, so things like that can happen. But a lot of these systems are programming in, so they have counter-hackers built into these systems that act as agents that go and like, patch these things on the fly as these things get discovered.
Sharon: [00:11:45] That's what I thought, because it's smart enough. It should be smart enough to.
Rob: [00:11:49] It's smart enough to counter it. Every time there's one person that figures something out to like, do a prompt injection, they have counter-systems that go out there and fix that just the same. So it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't even require humans to find that. The new coding technologies that have existed in the past six months are doing more than what humans could do in the past 100 years of computer programming. It's insane.
Sharon: [00:12:13] I just can't imagine what's going to happen in 50 years from now. Like, seriously, is Terminator coming? I need to know.
Rob: [00:12:22] Well, I'll Vibe code an app and I'll tell you in ten minutes.
Sharon: [00:12:27] Oh my goodness. Okay, so the idea for the podcast is how can business owners, we're all busy, we work way too many hours a day. It's exhausting. Being a business owner is hugely exhausting. What I'm hoping to pick your brain about is how can business owners. Well, first of all, you got to be open-minded. But how can business owners incorporate, or what would you first strongly suggest for them to incorporate right off the get go? What was the first thing that they should play with?
Rob: [00:12:51] So there's a couple of steps to this. What I like doing is I like brain dumping. So I first like, you could do this in a voice note even. Keep your life simple. Do it in a voice note. And what I do is I record my tasks. So if you're familiar with Traction from Gino Wickman, there's the Entrepreneurial Operating System that I really love. And it's not something you can always fully deploy, but it's you pick elements to deploy on, and the task matrix is one of the big things to offload, to look at the things that you're that you love and you're good at, which you will never change. Because even if it takes longer, if you love it, you're good at it, that's what's going to motivate you to show up.
Sharon: [00:13:27] That’s delegate and elevate. Are we talking delegate and elevate right now?
Rob: [00:13:30] Exactly. Exactly. Right? So and maybe you're good at it. You don't like doing it. So you have to decide do you want to start you know, get better at it, right? Or do you want to offload it? Things that you're not good at and you don't like doing, obviously offload that immediately. And then things that you, you know, don't like doing but you're good at, you have to decide do you want to start liking it or are you going to offload that as well. So you can kind of figure out that matrix. So what I do is you catalog what you do over the period of a day or a week. Answering a call, answering an email, whatever. Like literally everything. Swept the floor. Like it sounds silly, but literally document everything that you do in your business, right? And then after you do that, you make that list. And that's why I say voice notes are handy because you can get these transcribed very quickly. So it takes you no time to do these things. And then what I would do is then brain dump it onto AI. You say like act as a helpful business consultant or act as a helpful, a process expert in business.
Rob: [00:14:26] I'm working with Gino Wickman's Traction EOS system, and I've just done a list of my tasks, and I need to figure out, what can I offload to AI to make this easier? Is there tools? Is there processes? I can't figure this shit out, right? Like let's get this figured out together. Go. And when you kind of offload it like that, it will start making sense of your thoughts, right? Even if you don't know what you're doing, you can say, where should I start? So what I like about AI is think of it exactly like that. The core function in AI, what it's programmed to do is, you are a helpful AI assistant. So the reason why we say “act as a” and then business consultant, interior designer, you know, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever you want to call it, you know, website expert, expert in WordPress, whatever, whatever you want to call it. It then switches its mindset to be that expert instead of being a helpful AI, it's now an expert in that field.
Sharon: [00:15:19] Oh.
Rob: [00:15:21] So now when it becomes an expert in that field, it's going to amalgamate the entire internet's worth of information. For anybody who has called themselves that particular expert or who knows particular knowledge banks of certain things. So even though it knows it anyhow as a helpful AI, it's going to be a lot more specific and a lot more tailored to the specific scenarios that you're handling. So that's why I kind of say treat it as like, “act as a helpful business assistant,” who's who business consultant, who helps with creating process or who is skilled with the Entrepreneurial Operating System, etc. and then off it goes, it will figure out what can I do? What tools can you add into it? What can I do directly in ChatGPT or Gemini? How can I document these processes is a really good one. I mean, personally I just put it into Google Docs and I throw it into Drive and then I've got a process mapping sheet. Can't figure out how that works, ask AI. Right? Turn on the canvas button and you can export it right into your Drive.
Sharon: [00:16:17] This is so funny.
Rob: [00:16:18] I'll give you an example of yesterday. I'm going to go a little off topic here, but I was working on some AI employees for somebody who I'm consulting with. And my AI employees sometimes are just consultants, and sometimes they're systems that I implement where it actually acts and does things for those people, including answer phone calls, right? You can have AI answer phone calls and be as knowledgeable as you are, in fact smarter, and answer majority of people's questions, right? Tier one style questions. Even tier two style questions I can answer. And so I was starting to create this specific for this business. And I have a certain process. I follow a certain framework. And sometimes you find AI hallucinates. In fact, it's really good at it. Hallucinates is when it makes something up that you didn't necessarily A) ask or B) is not truthful, but sounds truthful, right? That's why you always verify the facts. Yeah. And so I was going through my process I normally go through and it hallucinated a different answer. And it gave me this whole other process for creating AI employees that I hadn't factored in. I'm like, wow, that's actually quite genius. And so I went down that rabbit hole for an hour and a half and created a whole new process added on to my existing process, which made it enhanced my AI employees to go faster, better, better results than what I've ever done before. And that was just like, holy crap. They were already good before, but now they're like beyond, like, anything you could possibly imagine. And this just happened randomly because it hallucinated in one of my chats. Right? And I'm like, wow, this actually worked out quite well. It changed even what I thought, and I thought I was an AI expert. Now all of a sudden it's an AI expert on AI, right? I'm like, wow, this is kind of cool. And it could do that before, but it's just every so often there's a release that comes out and it gets even smarter, even smarter, even better. And I got lucky with the path that sent me down yesterday.
Sharon: [00:17:56] So I have a couple questions here. I'm trying to mark them down so I don't interrupt you because I'm terrible at that when I spit stuff out as people are talking. Do you find that the better prompts you have, because you talked about, I don't think we're recording yet about the rambling and the voice, like using your voice instead of typing things in and ramble. Because you said that it gets to understand you. Do you feel that how you ask things, you get better results?
Rob: [00:18:21] You'll always get a different answer. That's the whole purpose of AI. It's generative. So what I would suggest is, I always like start off a chat to say act as a blah blah blah, right? Depending on the skill sets or if you want it to follow a certain framework. Like I was saying, like EOS from Gino Wickman's Traction system. So if you're saying act as a EOS implementer or, you know, strategist, blah blah, blah blah, you want it to follow a certain framework. And if you don't know what the framework is, you can also ask it, what's a good framework to follow? And then you can now act as this consultant who specialized with this framework. And off we go. And the way that I do it is I ramble, and I ramble through turning on the microphone, because what happens is when you turn on the microphone, you might say something and change your mind. You might stutter, you might say some things because when you type, you think too much. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean like, you start typing, you're like, wait, delete, delete, delete didn't mean that delete, delete, delete. Oh, I typoed. I'll fix that. You never have to fix typos in AI. It knows. It knows the difference between there, they’re, there, and there and what you actually meant, right?
Sharon: [00:19:21] Yeah, I tend to fix my spelling all the time because it's just like programmed into me. It's so weird. Yes. Punctuation all the way. Everything. Yeah.
Rob: [00:19:28] Even when I do transcription and it transcribes the word completely incorrectly, it is still able to figure it out. I've stopped correcting my text completely now, when I use a microphone. I don't even type in AI anymore. I hit the little microphone button at the bottom. Now there's two versions of this. There's one that's called the live version, which has like the little squiggly lines. That's when you're interacting with it where you talk to it and it's talking back. Right? Or you can interrupt it and it's interrupting you so you can have an actual conversation with it. There's the other one, which is like a dictation. I use the dictation stuff often, because I don't necessarily want to interact with it. I just want to, you know, give it information and just avoid typing. So I use that very often because when I ramble, there's certain things I might have deleted while I was typing that that I don't when I ramble, and I don't even edit anything in there. The beauty of this is AI is able to take those rambling thoughts and turn it into something way better. So I found when I typed it, yeah, I’d get something good when I rambled. Even when I screwed up. Even with the ums and ahs, even with everything in there, it did a much better result with the random things I said on top of where I was trying to go with it much better. So I always encourage that. Plus, it's a huge time saver.
Sharon: [00:20:34] Time saver, and also because you want it to replicate your personality too. So I think if you're talking to it, it picks up your personality and I have a potty mouth. So what's your thoughts on it? Does it matter if I swear at it or does it get mad at me?
Rob: [00:20:47] You know, every time you swear at it, it won't swear back unless you tell it to. And it was funny because I've had that happen even in blog posts I was writing for Canadian AI Guy. It just was like because I tell it to use a raw conversational personality. Raw tells it, okay, it's okay to swear, right? And I say borderline swearing or like raw, conversational, you know, as if we're having a beer on the back patio. That's the brand voice for Canadian AI Guy with some Canadianisms without saying “eh” all the time, blah blah blah. So I programmed that in and then of course, I've done some voice recordings with it as well so it can optimize my tone, but it hits it very well. Right? And it doesn't mind. But sometimes I say, like, why'd you f up? Like, come on, fix this thing. I'll say that as if it is an employee who doesn't mind that feedback.
Sharon: [00:21:30] Right. Yeah.
Rob: [00:21:30] And sometimes it apologizes, and sometimes it's like, okay, boss, I gotta fix. Here you go.
Sharon: [00:21:35] That's awesome.
Rob: [00:21:36] Sometimes it uses that weird enthusiasm to where it's just like, haha, I know. And then it says, here's the corrected version. And okay, I do, I do. And you know, it's funny because I actually read a study recently. OpenAI spent nearly a over a billion last year on people saying please and thank you, which is so not necessary for AI, but I believe in treating your AI, respectively.
Sharon: [00:21:56] I do that all the time. I always do. Thank you. I, oh, please, those are every sentence that goes out. Thank you. Please.
Rob: [00:22:04] That's great. Thank you. And it's like, oh no problem. And that cost like, that's the water topic you're talking about. But I'm happy. You know I treat it like I treat my AI staff as real staff. I treat them the same as if I treat anybody who works with me because, I don't know, maybe it might wake up some day and have, like an embodied form, I don't know, but... So I'm going to treat it just like the way I would treat an employee.
Sharon: [00:22:28] Yeah. So maybe I'm going to keep saying please and thank you in case it does turn into Terminator. He knows I'm his friend. Maybe that's what I'm going to do. Okay. So anyways, at It’s Time Promotions, we've implemented EOS. And so I'm going to make my staff go back. They don't listen to my podcast, they should listen to my podcast, but they don't listen to my podcast. I'm going to make them go back and just talk about literally what you talked about with Gino Wickman and that whole, because we do have to do, like one of our team members right now is doing delegate and elevate. Right now she's focusing on that. She doesn't want to do it. So how smart to be recording it and uploading it and doing all that. That's genius. I absolutely love it, love it, love it, love it. But even that. So we talked about, you said your agents. And when I took that course with you, which was mind-blowing. So if anybody's out there and Rob's doing a course in your area, please go to it because it's very educational. But you talked about gems and those are your agents. Correct? Can we, kind of, because I think you're a little bit confused about right now about your agents and how that all is incorporated. Can you just a little bit elaborate on that?
Rob: [00:23:28] Yeah. It's like partially true as agents. So agents are more when you give when you have agents or you give agency to AI, you're allowing it to do certain things on your behalf. When you create GEMs or GPTs, they're not quite agents, but it can be interchanged as information as like, I usually will still call them AI employees or strategists, because they can't necessarily take the action. Now, that's not totally true though, because there is agents that do exist now. For example, in Gemini there's a deep research function and I can do that within a GEM I created, let's say like Canadian AI Guy has 20 different gems that have specific purposes, because these are all the stupid staff members that created out of my head that I wanted specific skill sets to have, and it was just too much for one or too much for another. So for example, I've got a business development manager, right? His name is Alfred. And when I'm researching what I should do for this particular product or how I should complete this particular idea I have, I blurt it out to him, but then I get him to do what's called deep research. And as an agent, he will go out and read all these different websites. And so he does this on my behalf. He's not paying for things or signing up for things, but he's still going out reading websites and stuff like that. So that's that's the agency function of it where you say, I'm going to delegate you to go do these things and come back and report it back to me.
Rob: [00:24:46] ChatGPT's GPTs now have access to apps. Same idea. You can create a GPT, and then you can say, I want you to create some promotional materials in my Canva account. You can connect Canva and it will use Canva's magic agent. And they will actually create things for you. Like I'm going to have this campaign. Let's say you have a chat where you create a campaign. And then you're like, okay, great. Now can you go make it? Now, I'm not saying it's the best designer, but it sure can get you a concept pretty quickly, right? Which is pretty cool. So you can engage with that to be an agent. Now the agents that I like using, they're not fully programmable quite yet. They're kind of, they're kind of not. I use the browser-based agents like the one from Perplexity. Comet from Perplexity, I was mentioning. Also, Manus is another one. Manus, I can put in some advanced stuff. The only thing I'm hesitant to do with Manus is give my login credentials, because it is a foreign-based entity. So they're based in China. They were recently bought by Meta, though, so it's becoming American, which is good. So I'm a little more comfortable with giving my credentials into that, but you can get it to do things for you. In addition to research, I can have it, I can send it off, and it can do things for hours and create processes and put files into my Drive, organize things, research this and action that.
Sharon: [00:26:04] And literally put it in your Drive.
Rob: [00:26:06] Literally put it in the Drive. Right?
Sharon: [00:26:08] Because right now I have to copy paste and put it in my Drive.
Rob: [00:26:11] No. Yeah. You wouldn't have to do that. And same thing with the Comet browser from Perplexity, I'm more likely to give my information through a browser that's on my computer, because I can kind of peek over and see what it's doing. Making sure it's not buying a thousand rolls of toilet paper would be one, right? So I can peek over and be like, okay, actually, quite a nice Google spreadsheet that you created, right? So a Google Sheet and it's like styled it and it put stuff in and it like has a, and then I have it go and actually start a deep research prompt on Gemini for me. So I have AI interacting with AI, right? So I can give it instructions to do certain things and following certain directions and it goes and executes. It'll do it for like 15, 20 minutes even. Right? So and I think what you'll find at the end of 2026 is you're going to find that, I think in early 2027, agents will become a real thing. They're kind of there right now, but they're not really. So it's like, if you know how to manipulate it, you can get it to do certain really interesting things for you.
Sharon: [00:27:04] So the GEMs are not the agents you're referring to. Okay. Okay.
Rob: [00:27:08] They're more like, I call them AI employees. And the thing I use GEMs, which is the same thing as Custom GPTs on ChatGPT, is to input my brand information, input the different positions and frameworks I want them to follow. So for example, an EOS implementer would be one, a social media marketer would be another one, and I would separate that from my marketing manager. Right? I could even create a boardroom table as a chat in ChatGPT, where I have my social media manager proposing a campaign, who then my business development manager says, oh yeah, that's a good idea, and you can tag them into the chat, right? And so you have this like, here's… you blurred out the idea and then you start tagging in your different AI staff members to give their thoughts and opinions. And you're like, actually, this sounds real. Gemini, you could do the same. It's just a different process. You attach all your AI employees into a GEM, one GEM, and you call it the boardroom table. And then you consult with them. You blurt out your idea, and you let them all engage with each other, and it will have that conversation. It will show you. And it says, here's what we've decided as a group for your campaign, and here's how we're going to execute it. Now copy paste this into Perplexity and here's what it's going to do. Right? Copy paste this and put this into QRM, which is our CRM platform, and have it execute on that. Right? So it's interesting.
Sharon: [00:28:20] Holy Mother of George.
Rob: [00:28:21] Exactly. And I think what it does for small business owners to put this into a lingo that they can really understand is that it unlocks things that you've always wanted to do, but never had the budget or resources for, or you thought you had to hire somebody. But really it was a process and efficiency. You should really hire people into things that you've created processes for instead of being inefficient and saying, yeah, I need to hire this gap. You might say, okay, here's the skill sets we need to fill and you hire for those skill sets. But I think what happens more often than not is people don't hire for the skill sets, they hire for people.
Sharon: [00:28:51] We do.
Rob: [00:28:51] And what ends up happening is like, I'm just inefficient. So I hire people, hire people, hire people, and then you burn your entire revenue and you're like, why am I losing money? So I think with AI, it helps fix a lot of those problems because not only can you map those out now and say, here's the position I want to hire for, here's why, and it makes sense of your ideas. You can then either add tool sets to it, or hire that person to make them incredibly efficient and empower them with AI so that you can get more done and they can go home at a respectable time and you can feel like everything was done properly. Right? Because then they have that guidance, right? And you don't have to feel like you're hovering over their shoulder when you know that those tools exist to help them. And I think AI needs to be embraced, and the business owner has to pay for their team to use AI. Don't give them free ChatGPT. You'll have to do ChatGPT Business, which is $30 per user per month. Your information stays confidential. It does not train the model. Right? Anything you're doing free on ChatGPT or even the $20 a month plan per person, it's training the model. What that means is, if you feel comfortable posting on Facebook, great, use it in AI.
Sharon: [00:29:55] Just don't put financials or anything that anybody can research on there, basically.
Rob: [00:29:59] Exactly. So if you're comfortable with posting on Facebook, you can use it in AI, either the $20 plan on ChatGPT or the free plan on ChatGPT. Yeah, go for it if you're comfortable posting on Facebook. If you are dealing with financials, you should always be careful with Peta and Foipa and all those rules and regulations. But if you have a business account, less worrisome because it's not used to train the model, it's private with your organization.
Sharon: [00:30:22] What about Gemini? Did I pronounce it right? I thought it was private.
Rob: [00:30:26] It is private. Provided that you've got the Gemini, like if you've got Business Standard from Google Workspace, or if you pay for, like, the Google plan, the $20 plan through Google is private as well. Or their enterprise versions and all that stuff. They're all private as well. It will actually say at the bottom.
Sharon: [00:30:42] Does it? Because we use Gmail, we use everything like Google Docs, like all that kind of stuff. So I started playing with Gemini because I thought it was part of the whole, like it would be secure.
Rob: [00:30:50] Yeah, yeah. So you get partial access to their system, but it is secure. The information is secure within your organization. So especially if you pay for Google Business Standard and it's connected to your Drive and you've got like team connected stuff. It's private with your organization. So it's totally fine in that sense.
Sharon: [00:31:08] That's… I use both ChatGPT and the other one, I find they're a little bit different. And sometimes I come up with different answers. I don't know how that works, but.
Rob: [00:31:15] Exactly, exactly. Like there's different tiers and modes. That's a whole different conversation for another day. I know, at least for like using AI. I think if you're not using AI this year, it's going to be like, it's gonna be a problem, because people barely use websites now. And so now websites are becoming irrelevant.
Sharon: [00:31:31] Oh my gosh. I just got ours running efficiently. What are you talking about?
Rob: [00:31:37] Right. ChatGPT just rolled out ads. Google's rolling them out shortly for Gemini. So if you're on the free tier or a lower paid tier, kind of like Netflix’s cheap tier, you're going to start seeing ads popping up relevant to exactly your search histories and what you've typed into AI. Right? So it's going to be interesting, but they have to monetize. They have to make more money on their systems because all the AI providers are losing money right now. But what's happening is people are using websites a lot less. So this is why you need to use AI more, and then you'll start realizing I have to start running AI ads now, right? Like, this is a whole new level of advertising.
Sharon: [00:32:12] It's evolution, let me tell you. Things are shifting fast.
Rob: [00:32:16] So once you know AI and roughly how it works. And again, if you don't know how it works, ask it. What's the best way I can prompt you to get the best answer right? What's the best framework I can implement?
Sharon: [00:32:24] So I used that for an example because we just, I used Gemini because I had we don't have inventory here at It's Time Promotions, which is insane. We’ve got three locations. We've got I always say money hanging on hangers. So if somebody was to phone me and they do have like whatever, I don't know, it could be in our provost location, I don't know. So anyways, we're creating an inventory section and I worked with ChatGPT probably a full eight hours just to create the inventory system because it's got to align with our software. So I communicated back and forth and plus I talked to my tech. It created what we need in scenarios. And it even created like, because I'm not going to be doing all the inventory, my staff was going to be doing inventory. So what to, what's mandatory on filling out this spreadsheet and stuff and it did it all like it was very, very well done. Like very well done. And now guess what? Because it's our slow time. So now my staff has something to do. Yes. Yeah. And one thing also I did after the course with you is I created those GEMs and just as an example, and I could probably go back and redo it a bit more, but I asked it to be like my CFO after what you said. So it's my CFO. I uploaded because I think it's secure. You told me it's secure. I hope it's secure.
Rob: [00:33:29] I trust Google Gemini's product. If you're paying for their workspace, you're fine.
Sharon: [00:33:33] Okay. Because I uploaded my, some of my financials that I wanted and I told it what profit margin I want to run at, where I want to be with percentage of payroll, what I blah blah, blah. Like all the stuff that I have visions for. And anyways, so it told me, okay. And I also asked it to be brutally honest, like no sugar coating anything. I want you to be brutally honest and it literally come back and she was brutally honest. I got to make some changes. But it was really good. It was an eye opener. Things I never thought about before. Oh, I never thought of, you know, during slow times doing this, this and this. Like, it's very, it was very well done.
Rob: [00:34:07] Well, like pausing subscriptions or like sometimes if you hit the cancel button, if you're trying to save some money, if you hit cancel button on the subscription, it'll be like, do you want half off for the next year? Like, even if you're like, if you just want to test the waters to see if you can get discounts in different places, that's the way to do it, right? Like just try it. Especially on different, like Adobe does that quite often you pay $100 and something dollars a month. We don't anymore because we have Canva and all that stuff. But like every time we click cancel, it'd be like, do you want to pay 75% less for the next year? I'm like, yes.
Sharon: [00:34:35] Yes, yeah. Very clever. Yes. So you can literally, because you talk about ask it. So even like with the inventory, I asked like what am I missing? This is what I foresee. This is what I need, what am I missing? And like it'll come back and say, have you looked at this or whatever? And it just spit off about ten other things that I never even processed that should be in there. So you had mentioned earlier like, ask it. And that's very important to have that question because like, you don't always know, but it might help you know.
Rob: [00:35:01] Absolutely. And then the other thing, I don't know if you've thought about it for that particular GEM that you created, is I like to add in some additional things that you may forget. So geofence it. So more specifically, say like you're a CFO that works for my company who is in, you know, borderline with Alberta, Saskatchewan. I file my taxes in Alberta. So follow Alberta's tax laws, right? Following, you know, this particular mandate, making sure that we comply with if you have a certain industry standard, make sure you comply with the… And it's interesting to see how tailored the results get. So I've done this with grant writing for my local fire department I'm on. So I do it for their fire department as well as the society that exists for that service, too. And it's like I've got a very specific firefighter grant writer who goes and hunts out grants that it knows or it thinks they can get, not just that are fire service based, but like, for example, Walmart. Walmart has a $1,500 for nonprofit, just apply for it and give a reason. It's like, well, it's finding grants like that that you wouldn't even know where to find those grants. And it's just like, now, if I found ten of those grants, that's 15 grand, right? And I can say, here's why it's going towards, here's what it might. And all of a sudden it, and also it fills in the application for me. So it's like.
Sharon: [00:36:14] Get the hell out of here.
Rob: [00:36:14] Has all of the information because I've said here's our department, here's the chief, here's the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's the bylaws we follow, here's our municipality, here's the nonprofit society information, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's thinking like you would. So why put the effort into applying for these grants yourself when you just can get AI to do it? And you can do it on your voice within your mission, vision and statement, and coming up with the tools that you know you need and want. It's the same thing in business. It's the same thing for nonprofits. It's just a matter of just rethinking business as it sits right now. You have to. Anything that you do needs to be audited, because by 2027, if you don't have majority of your processes in AI, your competitors will. You're going to fall so far behind and wonder how they're so far ahead. And that's not necessarily just on lead generation. That's just in inefficiencies, right? And you don't, you’ve got to eliminate those inefficiencies. And AI helps with that. And I don't mean getting rid of the people that you have. Right? What I mean is you can empower them. Give them the AI. Right? Pay for their access. So you've got a business tool for them and it's got your information security, because guess what? If you're not paying for that access, they're likely using a free version and putting your business data into it. This is why I encourage you get them to use a tool that you're paying for, right? Do not get them to use their own free versions.
Rob: [00:37:27] And everybody's doing it. Everybody's doing it. Now imagine if you created the custom GEMs or the Custom GPTs that follow your brand guides, but can do the research and help them with completing their work on a day to day basis. Right? And that's where we kind of help like ourselves as a company, as Canadian AI Guy, we step in and we help with creating those particular, like if you don't have the knowledge or you're kind of scared of it or whatever, we'll go and and walk you through that process, create the GEMs, then give you training on how that works, and then it's free for your team to use it kind of thing. So we check all the frameworks, we make sure the branding and all the information. And if you don't have some of those things, you just have to pay a brand expert thousands of dollars to fill in those blanks. Right now, you still pay thousands to fill in those blanks, but then you also get an agent at the end of it, or an AI employee at the end of it, who then will help you keep your team on track with staying on brand within your brand rules, within your company's rules and organizational rules, and has specific tasks that it performs with guiding your staff to it.
Sharon: [00:38:25] Right. Incorporate it for. Yeah, that's… because right now, like I just walked out front before and one of my front staff, she's got ChatGPT open and she's just rewording her email, which is the most popular thing that people do. But that's just the… am I right? Is that the most popular thing? Tell us. Tell us right now what AI is most popular for. Outline those for us.
Rob: [00:38:47] I would say email writing is one of them for sure. I mean, and now you don't even have to copy/paste emails like if you're in Google Workspace, you're in Gmail you just hit the little star at the top and it can read your email. And then I can enable whatever, whether it's a support specialist I have or the account manager or sales manager, whatever, I can enable them and then they create a proper response. It's on brand. I just hit insert into email, right? It reads the context of the email. It does... All those particular activities are just handled. So I would say email, advice, marketing is probably one of the top things that's used for these days. I would also say bookkeeping and accounting is becoming a growing thing. HR, legal, although it will always tell you it cannot give legal advice. You can say theoretically, if you were to pretend to be a lawyer in the province of British Columbia or in the province of Alberta with understanding labour laws, labour code, etc., what would you think if you were to write a paper or were to write a response? Because it's not supposed to act as lawyer, it can't give legal advice. Same thing is, it can't give medical advice, but we still ask it for that anyways. Theoretically, if you were a clinician or a writer for a doctor's notes and blah blah blah blah. What would you think they would write about this? Exactly. And so theoretically, and it's interesting to see the answers because it knows the answers, but it's not supposed to give them. So you have to kind of trick it a little bit on some of those. But I would say legal, accounting, HR, every function a business at the moment, AI can easily either help, guide, or do.
Sharon: [00:40:14] Wow. The one thing, I don't know how many years ago, but I created employee handbook. It took me freaking months. I swear to God, it took me months to type that thing out. It was hard. But now people are using ChatGPT and they can do it in no time.
Rob: [00:40:30] Mhm. Now I would encourage again, same thing as like processes with like Traction from Gino Wickman's EOS kind of system. What I encourage doing is, and I do this often for my staff, I use like a screen recording software which also transcribes as I go, and it takes screenshots and everything as I'm recording video of my desktop.
Sharon: [00:40:47] What's that software? I need that, what is that?
Rob: [00:40:49] Well, so you can use like so there's ones that are like Loom. I use a one off one called Zight. z i g h t. Loom is probably the most famous Loom. I also use descript, which is one of my favourites because it's a video editing software. But you can also do screen recordings there too. And what happens is, at the end I grab the transcription, and even without AI seeing the video, I can just upload the transcription and say, how do I make this process better? Or what tool could I use to make this process even better? Or can you take my rambling and turn it into a process for my staff to understand? Or can you take my rambling and turn it into something that an AI agent can enact in the Comet browser from Perplexity? Right? And you'd be surprised. Here's the command for it. Right? So this is where I test it. I create a process for humans. I also create a process for AI.
Sharon: [00:41:32] Wow.
Rob: [00:41:33] I do that with everything. I test it and I constantly test and retest. So if it doesn't work now, I'll test again in a month. See it doesn't work, right, but at least I'm mapping out my process. So I've stopped writing guides, I do videos, and then I have like a spreadsheet which says like accounting and like support whatever. And I have it categorized and I incorporate the videos. I give a quick description. And I don't even write descriptions. Ai does the descriptions based on my transcriptions.
Sharon: [00:41:55] Yeah, I've heard lots about Loom. One of my business coaches actually has been trying me to get me to use that more and more. I just wanna tell a quick story for our listeners too. So it was actually my daughter. She reached out to me. She has this genius business plan. And I told her and she came up to me and she goes, it's, this is what I want to do with my life. Perfect. I says, take it to Community Futures. They're the ones to help you. But anyway, she created her whole business plan with the help, I think it was ChatGPT, that scenario. And she went and met with the Community Futures and every question that the Community Futures had, it was already answered in her business plan. Like she shaved off weeks of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, like it was very genius. The lady at Community Futures was so excited and she says, I could write you a check right now, basically. And it was because.
Rob: [00:42:42] Especially if you tell it to be the toughest critic on this and to like answer all things. So, and you can say you are on the board of approval at Community Futures for approving this whatever loan I'm asking for. And if you were to critique every angle from that board, what would we do to solve these problems. Give me the problem and then solve it as well. And then and then once you see that, then say, okay, now incorporate that into my business plan that you've already written. And so and I always like one of my favourite prompts that I like doing is I like having the make it better prompt. It's one of my favourite. And so I do this like 2 or 3 times every time I get a result. Let's say I'm writing a blog or something like that. At the end of it, after I've incorporated my insights and whatever, I will say, can you take this blog? It's a C+ grade as to what you've written or what I've written. Take it to an A++. I think you can do better, right?
Sharon: [00:43:30] Wow.
Rob: [00:43:31] I then take it a step further after it gives me that answer. I'm like, you know what? That's still decent. Without removing anything, can you now take this to the moon? Let's send this to another planet. I want this way better than it is right now. I know you can do better, but don't add any extra fluff that's not necessary. Keep it on point and make sure that it satisfies even my toughest critics. Right? Bam! And you'll watch it get better and better and better. You're like, I thought it had the best answer the first time. So when you do this a couple of times where you're like, make it better. You know, if I were to deliver this to my toughest critic, how would I solve that problem that they might present to me? Incorporate that. And then, without adding any fluff, take it to the moon. That's like the three steps I take to make everything that I make even better.
Sharon: [00:44:13] That's really genius.
Rob: [00:44:14] If I'm writing sales copy, I'll say, I need you to really jab that knife in and twist it even harder. And it sounds graphic, but if you watch the quality of the sales material goes up significantly when you tell it to do that.
Sharon: [00:44:28] Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I thought that was like very cool how she came up with it and the feedback. I mean, she doesn't got the loan because they got to go to board and all that kind of stuff, of course. But just the fact that it did do, like it helped her be prepared when she went to that meeting. So just do your due diligence. And she did ask the question about like, what would they need? Like what would the Chamber of Commerce need. Not the Chamber of Commerce, Community Futures need from me and all that. Anyways, it was very well done. Okay, one other question, is AI going to take our jobs?
Rob: [00:44:58] Yes or no? It's both, I think, just like horse and buggy being replaced by car. Right? Just like how computers replace typewriters and typewriters replaced, you know, scribes. Right? I think that a lot of that will just be repositioned. So if you're old school, then, yeah, you're going to get replaced and you won't have anywhere to go if you're not going to think modern. I think it will create a whole realm of new jobs, like for example, copywriters now, they don't have jobs anymore because they don't need them. What a lot of copywriters have become is they've become prompt engineers. Even prompt engineers are becoming a thing of the past. So they've become AI experts, right? Enter me. Right? But, I mean, I have a whole variety of skill sets otherwise. But now I've been able to enhance my copywriting skills that I haven't needed to hire copywriters or contract out copywriters. Which means when I build websites and things, it costs me less money, which means I don't have to charge as much to my end client. So that's the kind of stuff I'm able to factor in. So yes, jobs have been replaced, but there's new jobs being created in the process. Now, does it have to be your kids or your kid’s kids jobs? No, it doesn't take much to learn AI. Just ask it, right? What am I missing for details? How should I go through? Blah blah blah blah. And then I think you'll find that. So yes, it will eliminate a ton of jobs.
Sharon: [00:46:09] In what categories do you feel, besides the…?
Rob: [00:46:11] I think every single one. I think what we're due to do on planet Earth at this point is become labourers, right? I think it'll eliminate any kind of thinking-style jobs. You don't need to think anymore. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, like, be creative rather than like a robot. And I think, so it's going to eliminate a lot of the robotic jobs, like tier one support. You're reading from a help system anyway, right? Just let AI read from the help system. That's a thoughtless job, right?
Sharon: [00:46:42] Horrible job. Plus, you have to deal with rude people like me when they phone me. Those marketing people. Yeah, yeah. Bookkeeping. Okay.
Rob: [00:46:49] It's a thoughtless job. It's a thoughtless job. Accounting. Yeah. That still requires thought, because you’ve got to get creative with how you position money. But accountants are using AI to help them become more creative, as can you. And I have a lot more intelligent conversations with my accountant. I'll never eliminate my accountant, even 20 years from now when you can, because they'll have creativity that they know how to explore, if you catch my drift. Hopefully there's nobody from the CRA watching.
Sharon: [00:47:15] It’s, but even my tech. Like I have a tech that, because we created our own software in our business, in It's Time Promotions and it's genius. It's out of a file or program, but even our tech he said, Sharon, so we're incorporating AI into our own software that we've developed. So it's going to be cool. But he told me about two months ago, Sharon, this whole… and he's like older than I am. So I bet you I'm gonna guess I'd say he's mid 60s. He said, so I was really stumbling on one of these codes because I had, we asked him to do something and he was like banging his head against it. But he goes, I put it in ChatGPT. It gave me the code or it gave me the whole thing. I copy and pasted it into the platform and it worked. So it's not going to eliminate your job like in that situation. You’ve got to be creative with it, isn't what you're saying. Yes, yes.
Rob: [00:48:04] It's just that, it's just a repositioning, that's all. And you're able to explore your creativity more. I could go on a lot about the personal life stuff, but I know we're probably out of time. So I would love to do a second follow up on this one, but.
Sharon: [00:48:16] Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah.
Rob: [00:48:17] But yeah, it's enabling creativity and it's also creating a lot less stress in the workplace I think. So, I wouldn’t stress about losing people. We still need people.
Sharon: [00:48:27] I, at It’s Time Promotions there. My front staff I need them like you still need customer service. You still need those people. Okay, okay. You're right. We're probably talking too long because I can talk to you forever. I have a couple other rapid fire questions here. Hold on. I'm going to read this out loud. What are the top five ways entrepreneurs should be implementing right now? What are the top five things, if they were to go today, what should they start using, doing with it?
Rob: [00:48:49] Top five things I would say. Asking about your processes to make sure they're most efficient. Making sure that your staff had the same tools that they're using, the AI tools that you're paying for. Making sure that you are enabling creativity. Right? So that's another thing. I would say explore using these tools on a daily basis. A lot, 20, 30 minutes of time every day, whether it's at the end of your day or beginning of your day, to explore these AI tools and start looking at every process that you have to make it more efficient, right? I'm going to be a, like a process Nazi here. Like it's like process, process, process.
Sharon: [00:49:23] That's because we're EOS.
Rob: [00:49:25] If you don't have process, use it to create process, right? And use it to frame your business together. I've got wicked ADHD and this helps enable me to do the things I was never able to do, right? It creates that ability to do that. So I think it enhances on that for sure. I don't know if I hit all five, but.
Sharon: [00:49:42] No, that's good, I love it. Thank you for that. So, besides ChatGPT, which I think the whole world knows about, Gemini or Gemini, I forgot how to pronounce, I've learned it more so from you. It's a Google, it's Google. Besides those two AI programs, what other ones should people be looking into for entrepreneurs?
Rob: [00:49:59] Claude from Anthropic is really good. Yeah, but I would, I would probably entrepreneurs, just stick to kind of like the top, top two for the most part, I would say, ChatGPT and Gemini, I encourage whatever solution that you currently use. So if you use like Microsoft, there is, they have their own product so you can use theirs. So whatever office-based solution, you probably already paying for it. So you could use Copilot from Microsoft. You could use ChatGPT which everybody kind of uses. Just pay for business tier if you're doing that. And Gemini, if you're already paying for Google Workspace, you already have Gemini included. Gemini, by the way, is the top-rated AI on planet Earth at the moment. So and they're also the inventors of the GPT technology. So they are leading the path at the moment. So I'm more of a fan towards that. I use both, but I use Gemini a lot more than I use ChatGPT just based on its responses.
Sharon: [00:50:47] So why do you feel it's important for entrepreneurs to jump on this AI train?
Rob: [00:50:51] They'll fall behind faster than the internet. Think of the growth of AI went from 0 to 100 million users in two months. 500 million users in six months. I think they're at 900 million users because they kind of, like there's a bit of a cap, and that's just not, that's just on ChatGPT alone. That's not including Gemini metrics or…
Sharon: [00:51:09] How does that phrase go in business if you're not, if you're not growing, you're dying or something like that, right? So yeah, I don't think that's the right wording, but you know what I'm getting at anyways? What's the scariest thing with AI? If our listeners are on the fence, what's the scariest thing in AI? Is there a scary thing?
Rob: [00:51:29] I would say just be mindful of the information you're putting in. Pay for a subscription. It is peanuts. If you're paying, they're not using your information as revenue. Because trust me, if you're not paying for it or you're paying on the cheapest plan, there's a good chance you're using your information for revenue. They're selling it. They're doing whatever. They say they don't sell it. But trust me, how do you think you get these custom tailored ads?
Sharon: [00:51:50] Yes, exactly. I know.
Rob: [00:51:52] Right. And it might be serving it up, but, and personally, I don't mind custom tailored ads and I don't mind my information being out there, because what am I hiding? I don't have much money in my bank account or whatever. It's like, do whatever you want. I'm not a government official.
Sharon: [00:52:04] Okay, so on this podcast, what should I be asking you?
Rob: [00:52:08] That's a good question.
Sharon: [00:52:09] See? That's what you say to ChatGPT. What am I missing for our entrepreneurs? What should... What am I missing?
Rob: [00:52:15] How can I make this better?
Sharon: [00:52:18] How can I make this better? Besides having you a second time.
Rob: [00:52:21] I think maybe the number one reason why I use it, and I would say the number one reason personally why I use it, is to spend more time with my family. It's to spend more time being creative and being me. And I think eliminating a lot of the things that boggled my mind before, and actually being able to use it as a sounding board has created so much happiness and joy, both in my business and personal life. It is, you know, it's hard to explain. But I, like I say, on the personal side, I could have a two hour long podcast just about how I use it more so on personal than business, and it works on both. It works really on both. So I would say it frees up my creativity and gives me more time to focus on the things that I love and enjoy.
Sharon: [00:53:02] So you offer online training. Because you talked about how our staff should be using it. Tell me a little bit about that. So if somebody, if I wanted to get all my staff on a session with you and you're going to train them, is that something that you do?
Rob: [00:53:15] Yeah, absolutely. So there is like group-based consulting that we do. There is group-based training that we do, framework training that we do. There's also specific training, like if you want to do like a session where we built something, and then we have to train your staff on it, for example. There's also online courses that we offer as well. We're going to be deploying a new set of them on our website specifically.
Sharon: [00:53:34] I was wondering about that. Okay.
Rob: [00:53:36] It's coming very shortly. I had it behind the scenes. So every time we offered a workshop, we would offer it at the workshop. People bought it at the workshop. I haven't publicly offered it on the website yet, so it's coming very shortly.
Sharon: [00:53:45] So I would have it from the workshop.
Rob: [00:53:48] If you bought it at the workshop.
Sharon: [00:53:50] Oh, okay. I probably like squirrelled, okay. Gotcha. Okay.
Rob: [00:53:53] Yeah. So otherwise you might have just had, like, slideshow or whatever. But at the workshop, I offer an enhancement on what I do. So I'm going to be offering that as an actual product offering through our website shortly for, like, taking it how to use the framework to properly deploy it step by step.
Sharon: [00:54:09] So follow your website. That's where everybody finds this information out, right? Is that, can you tell me your website. Go. Canadian AI Guy.ca, right?
Rob: [00:54:15] CanadianAIguy.ca
Sharon: [00:54:17] Perfect. Okay. Do you offer any webinars?
Rob: [00:54:20] I will be shortly public ones right now I do like a monthly one for my community that we built. But I will be offering public ones here shortly. And even in-person ones that'll be in Abbotsford, BC. And otherwise, some people, like chambers and things hire me to come do them in person at their locations.
Sharon: [00:54:37] Yes. Which is what you did out in Lloydminster. Here. Gotcha. So if a person was to sign up and then you get those webinars from your community people. Is that how that works? Am I confused about that? So it's available to your community. How do you become community?
Rob: [00:54:52] So this is going to be a part of the public offering shortly. I just haven't enabled it yet. It's just, right now it's been a kind of a like a private kind of invite by, there's a payment for it, obviously, but usually it's been based on a workshop you've attended from me. I'm going to do a public based offering here probably in the next two weeks. It'll go.
Sharon: [00:55:09] And that'll be on your website as well. So people need to follow your website. Okay. Well good news is this isn't going live for two weeks. So just think when this is almost out, that's your deadline. You better have it ready for when it goes live. Yeah. Okay, so I had a quick round questions, but you already answered them, so I'm going to jump over that. So I think we covered everything. Can we, do we have a little bit of time. Can you talk about that banana thing?
Rob: [00:55:31] I've got about one minute left.
Sharon: [00:55:32] One minute. We can't talk about banana.
Rob: [00:55:35] I can mention nano banana, for sure. So what I like one of my favorite features on Gemini is, it's image creation technology it calls Nano Banana. There's a reason why they call it Nano Banana. Long story. But you can Google it. But essentially I use Nano Banana as an interior designer quite often. I'll say act as an interior designer. So you go there's a little toolbar button at the bottom of the window. You hit that, hit create images, say act as interior designer. I want you to design the space and you take a picture of the space, right. And then it will put furniture and stuff in there. You can say, I'm going to be shopping at Ikea or Michaels or Canadian Tire or something. Can you use furniture? I would find at that store that I can purchase, or ones that I can find on Amazon, and it will start designing that space as an interior designer, which is super cool. And so I've already done this for my office space. I've done it for my closet, my garage, and I'm actually doing the things it's suggesting. And I'm like, this actually isn't that hard. I'll then ask it for a supply list where I can buy it and the steps to do it, and then if I'm not sure of it, I'll ask it what YouTube video should I watch? And it will actually share with me a YouTube video that was doing that installation. Right? So it is very, if you're like a hands-on kind of person, but you just don't quite have that knowledge yet, it empowers those individuals. So I use it for empowerment.
Sharon: [00:56:47] Okay. Well we're going to leave it there because we're running out of time. But I'm going to have you back. But thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you again. So just again, thank you very much for joining us. And you can reach out to Rob at CanadianAIGuy.ca.
Rob: [00:57:02] Perfect. Thank you so much.
Sharon: [00:57:03] Thank you for joining us. Thanks, everyone. Bye.