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So I'm afraid for the calendar. Its days are numbered.
00:00 - Opening Joke & Brevity Wins 00:15 - AI Adoption Rates Cooling? (Or Just Changing?) 01:30 - Fear and the Psychology of Adoption 03:00 - ChatGPT as a Word Calculator 04:10 - Microsoft + Claude: What's Going On? 06:00 - Skills Over Software: The Real SMB Gap 08:00 - Digitization Before Automation 10:45 - Cloud Tools, Spreadsheets & the Claude Update 13:00 - The AI Learning Journey: Micro vs Crash Courses 15:00 - Using AI to Learn AI 17:00 - Practical First Steps for SMBs 19:00 - Getting on the Train: Why Action Matters 21:00 - Using AI for Good (and Staying Relevant)
”AI Made Easy for Small Business” by Polarity.biz is a lively podcast hosted by successful small business owners, Jim Donio and Jeremy Ryan, offering practical insights and strategies to help fellow entrepreneurs harness the power of AI, boost competitiveness, and drive growth—all with a dash of humor and fun. No prior AI experience is necessary.
Jeremy (00:00)
So I'm afraid for the calendar. Its days are numbered.
Speaker 2 (00:04)
Okay, why?
Jeremy (00:12)
Like that one. It was short and sweet. seems like it's your style. Short to the point agreed brevity.
Speaker 2 (00:15)
I like shorter.
Humor with the brevity would be good.
All right, so let's get into it. ⁓ Looks like there's a big AI adoption rate dip as far as as far as small businesses go. Yeah.
We know that big businesses, you know, run enterprises have been like getting into it, but there's a, an article here that, that popped up about the, with the U S census bureau kind of giving some statistics now that we can necessarily always trust these statistics and they're out and somewhat outdated to a degree, but still some data to kind of back it up that the, the early hype, at least to a degree is starting to cool a little bit, which is predictable. But I think it's actually even outdated because I think more people are actually jumping on now.
in current times.
Jeremy (01:16)
Is this,
so yesterday you sent the plan ⁓ via Podbot ⁓ and I had been thinking a lot about this very topic for about the last two weeks. So for me, this really hit home. Why is it that adoption rates are slowing? Is it the businesses? Is it the people within the businesses? Where is the real answer?
Speaker 2 (01:43)
You're
economy the economy to just in general like crash cash flow just strap people just holding on for dear life trying new things Yeah in an economy like this is definitely what should be being done is that they should be adopting and rolling out things like this But they're too scared and they're freezing up
Jeremy (01:58)
So that's the point that I wanted to focus on. So I do believe that there's a lot of psychology in play here, and I do think the underpinnings of this are absolutely the fiscal aspects, the economy. But I do think the real underbelly of this, the really potentially detrimental thing for small businesses is,
to let yourself be controlled by fear, either fear of getting in or fear of all the misinformation that's happening. So I don't want to spend the entire pursuit episode talking about this, but I do think that it's important to dispel the fears for yourself and to get at the real truth. I mean, is AI going to be the technical messiah that's going to save us all? Of course not. But I do think that there is,
Speaker 2 (02:40)
disagree
or agree without ⁓
Jeremy (02:41)
That's fine.
But I think if we just focus in a little nearer to home, what can it do for us? How can we empower ourselves by using technology judiciously? ⁓ See it for what it is. Is it this magic black box? Actually, I read this week ⁓ an article that somebody put, you probably saw this, ⁓ you were a more ⁓ ferocious and average consumer of technology. You astounded me there.
Speaker 2 (03:05)
And for me, I always
process it.
Jeremy (03:09)
It's amazing how
much you get in and share with me. But I did see this one that you didn't share, so I'll be surprised if you didn't see it though. ⁓ Somebody compared Chat Sheep ET to a word calculator.
Speaker 2 (03:22)
Okay, I didn't see that one, but go ahead.
Jeremy (03:24)
I thought that was really interesting.
Is it a creative writer? But what is it that computers do really well? Well, they perform calculations at blazing speeds. And if we think about it like that, that it can do these computations, it can create things in terms of calculations, the calculus behind whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (03:44)
Language or images or other and I that data right that's Yeah for most small businesses it probably is so we're gonna jump a little bit though We got into just just a touch on another another article that pop that was kind of interesting which shows how quickly things change right yeah Microsoft and So I were joined at the hip and I mean 50 % owners. Yeah, right things of you know, so they were embedded
Jeremy (03:48)
good starting point.
I was surprised by this.
You remind me money is at the core of all these.
Speaker 2 (04:11)
Intimidly
as possible and they were like, okay, right. Also, we're with Claude now. Like it's like they're cheating. They got a side little side, side piece on like, what are we doing here? Maybe
Jeremy (04:21)
I'm the big influencer now. ⁓
Speaker 2 (04:23)
Claude is
Anthropix. know we talked about all this, but Claude, a lot of people don't use it. exactly. Jeremy's bestie. Claude is just similar to Chachi BT, but it's owned by Anthropix. And we've been talking about it for a very long time and using it aggressively really for a long time because there are lot of aspects of it that are considerably better. So it's interesting that they basically folded this in. for small businesses, what that means is there's choice, but there's also
Jeremy (04:34)
Check.
Speaker 2 (04:53)
complexity. And so it gets more confusing. It's like, wait, I thought I only know chat, GBT. And now Microsoft is telling me like, Claude is an option. I don't even know what that means. Gemini for Google.
Jeremy (05:05)
And for jokes, this morning's joke brought to you by Gemini.
Speaker 2 (05:08)
You rolled it out,
mixed it up a little bit. So again, not to get too deep jokes with a lowercase J. They're definitely not proper jokes. But, when we, when we open here, but
Jeremy (05:13)
These are jokes loosely too, by the way.
Speaker 2 (05:21)
this just comes to the bigger picture of how fluid this whole situation is and the literally globally trillions of dollars that are being poured into it and how much money is at stake because it's first to market and it's first out there and it's dominance and then it's continued aggressive disruption and escalation and that's where we are.
This phase that we're in now is tricky and getting trickier and for particular small business owners, but even every day just people it scares the hell out of them and it confuses them still. And I know that continuity is what we've seen all across from day
Jeremy (06:04)
It's a great
segue into the third news article, actually the one we really want to focus on, is skills over software.
Speaker 2 (06:12)
There's a big
you know, there's a big AI training gap ⁓ and that and that you know This is on tech radar, but it doesn't really matter. It's where it's coming from but the idea is that there was a new survey that shows only 12 % of small and medium-sized businesses have invested in
Formal AI training. want you to let that sink in for a second. We know it's shifting everything. It's now infused in everything you see. Not just of course marketing, right? Because every company now is AI infused or AI powered or whatever. I think Colgate the other day, my toothpaste was AI powered now. like everything is AI powered. That's love coming in, microbes coming in. That'd be great by the way. Let's invent that.
Jeremy (06:52)
little AI nanobots cleaning your teeth for you.
shivers.
Speaker 2 (07:01)
Basically just that that you know that that a lot of small medium-sized business owners can't come to grips with again It's that they're being paralyzed by the complexity of this and it is I mean again You know we stopped a large portions of our lives to to invest our time energy and resources in this space to even start to process What happens next and it is confusing and a little intimidating to us certain days or certain moments of days We get cloudy right sometimes and so you think we?
Jeremy (07:30)
Not after three cups of coffee, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (07:32)
You're getting amped up. But again 12 % that's
Infantesimal that is such a tiny little amount of small medium sized businesses who say they've invested in any amount of formal training or AI for themselves for their staff or for whomever so basically there's just a complete lack of internal skills that's some some data that's coming coming back as well for a lot of these small business owners and Overwhelm right at the pace and intensity and the amount of news and information That they're trying to digest and take in and they can't it's it's not possible for human brains, especially brains
that are as a CEO or owner of a company, small business in particular, trying to just figure out ways to make payroll, deal with these tariffs if they're affected by it, which a lot are, deal with a changing world every moment, and now AI, simultaneously, it is too much for people to process, and it's part of the reason why they are frozen up in power.
Jeremy (08:29)
But I think that there is a real remedy here, which is, or at least the beginnings of one, which is start with what you know. Yeah, the basics. But forget about AI for a second. There's thinking earlier episodes, things we've talked about before. All of the core components are there for you to tackle and win with this technology. Start with what you know, right? What is it your business is? What are you already an expert in? And then slowly start to bolt on the things you need to know in order to amplify those skills with AI. you don't need to, like, there's a real
fear here like if you just throw a whole bunch of free tools at things you know not absolutely but if you instead if you think you know according to a framework
Speaker 2 (09:02)
Not the right
Jeremy (09:08)
What do I need in order to improve my day to day? What should I take in stepwise motion? What are the types of skills that I'm going to need in order to really ⁓ bolt on the types of software that I need and then begin the process of finding software or building with automation and AI tools to get you there. You don't have to do it all at once.
Speaker 2 (09:29)
No,
there's steps in this journey and they do vary for each business and each person, but some commonalities that we've found, right, not just for ourselves or for everybody we've worked with, ⁓ regardless of scale or industry ⁓ or competency or tech savviness, there's certain consistencies. And some of those consistencies are, first, figure out the system that you have in general. take a little tally of
what you're doing ⁓ and start to get a feel for how you can digitize that. Take some steps to say, okay, if there's manual processes that are written, how do we digitize them? Just digitize them, not automate. Just get them to where the data and the information is held digitally somewhere. Because while that sounds so basic, these small businesses don't know to do that first. So then they're trying to automate something that's completely manual and they're starting, and I have a lot of experience in this with not just my own companies from back in the day, or companies I've acquired.
or been involved with, but that were very manual, profitable, or some very profitable, but very manual, and that had to transition to just basic digital presence. Once that's done, it's magical what can happen next. Now, because all these tools can pick up on that digital data, pull it together, organize it, assess it, be very predictive. You saw that we're gonna probably talk about that next week, I think, but where Claude now has the capability of creating ⁓
Spreadsheet, Excel and did you see this or no? I. So they can, so they can now basically not just like give you data back, but actually create and work through their own spreadsheets that they're creating.
Jeremy (11:01)
Well,
So
I thought that was the impetus behind ⁓ Microsoft diversifying.
Speaker 2 (11:16)
Yeah, well that's
what I'm saying. I think it's all starting to infuse. That's interesting that you brought that up. Yeah, logically, right? You think it's intertwined, but that rollout just happened. ⁓ So again, once you have some of this data, whether it's in Word documents or Google Docs or whatever it might be or spreadsheets.
even just digitally in your notepad in your phone, something held somewhere visually, if it's pictures and you deal in e-commerce, let's say, and you're now, instead of taking your pictures just on a, let's say an old school digital camera that you hold offline, figure out a way to get it onto the cloud, that data and that history, right? They're basic steps. ⁓
Jeremy (11:54)
What
I think you're sort of poking at a little bit and I just wanted to distill it even further, which is unusual for me because I'm enamored with complexity.
Speaker 2 (12:04)
for doing the
most basic functions. I'm like, right. Also, we could just turn the light switch on. Like we don't need 8,000 steps in this.
Jeremy (12:12)
I'm like that I'm I feel you feel sometimes
like I'm the dad in gremlins remember that old movie like making all the liquor I love to think okay so what I do think here is there is ⁓ a real opportunity but back up so I get two types of ads regularly in my feeds across all social media they have definitely pinpointed things on my brain the one is like 30-day fitness challenge learn Tai Chi you're over 50 you know
Speaker 2 (12:20)
Yes. ⁓
Womp. Subtle, very subtle.
Jeremy (12:42)
by the way, I would
love to learn Tai Chi. I just think it's fantastic. ⁓
Speaker 2 (12:46)
And what
are the other ones because I don't know that that's that well, but yeah the other
Jeremy (12:50)
Fitness
was like 50 of them I get served like 30 days invest in this and you'll be like a hot dad. Not true. You could give me 300 days and it wouldn't happen. The other 30 day thing is the 30 day AI challenge. Like we'll teach you 15 million tools in 30 days. And I think that that's a real disservice. I'm coming out. I'm coming for you.
Speaker 2 (13:09)
like Coursera or whatever.
Jeremy (13:11)
No, no, these are
just like the randos on Instagram and Tik Tok piping up their 30 day challenge starting tomorrow. Yeah, starts tomorrow. And I think that there's a real disservice to
Speaker 2 (13:24)
limited
time.
Jeremy (13:25)
the
overwhelmed business owner here who really what they should be thinking about is micro learning. You were saying it before. What's that one thing you want to get your photos off of like what is it that one thing that you want to achieve and there are tons of great micro learning courses out there. We have a bunch on our website. Don't just use that go anywhere you want and find.
Speaker 2 (13:44)
YouTube there's
a lot of great options, but the people don't know where to start
Jeremy (13:48)
Back and I
and I think that that's where some just general AI knowledge Really comes into play and here's the best part you can use AI to teach you that general AI knowledge. Wow, I know that
Speaker 2 (14:00)
And
good business knowledge for the most part to practical business stress
Jeremy (14:03)
so
you can be learning about the tool while using the tool. And that's really where I wanted to, for me that's where I wanted to end today, in my contributions to this episode. If you, I'm learn by doing kind of guy. So for me, if you are too, and you're listening to this episode, I think that you can just literally open up a browser.
Go to Claude, Anthropics Claude, go to OpenAI's Chat CPT. If you're a Google shop, open up Gemini and literally just ask it. Here's your prompt, here it is. I am new at AI.
I would like to understand the basics. Literally, you're typing this out in a dictation. will put it in the notes. Just copy and paste. I would like to know what are all the fundamentals that I should learn. Before you ask it what to learn, ask it what you should learn and it'll give you a list. And then from that list, ask follow up questions. Great. Now give me an intro. Great. Now teach me about how to transform my spreadsheets. Great. Now whatever that is that you would like to learn about.
If you are using the tool to learn the tool, you will learn it that much more deeply.
Speaker 2 (15:12)
Yeah, absolutely. And there are a ton of learning options out there. So you can either choose to do none of them, which is a choice. You can try to do all of them.
Jeremy (15:22)
In which
⁓
Speaker 2 (15:26)
You could try
somewhere in the middle where you can again you might pick a couple bad ones and you might even get some bad advice along the way. But you could get some.
Jeremy (15:37)
I've
every day I'm picking bad ones and good ones.
Speaker 2 (15:39)
some
bad advice or you could or you could try a completely different strategy. You probably didn't see this on the way in, but on the way in as I was walking into the building today here at the headquarters in Manhattan where our studio is,
Jeremy (15:49)
polarity, global health.
Speaker 2 (15:55)
down in the lobby that we're just standing outside the entrance with someone with a sign holding up saying ⁓ AI workshop this way. it's up at the floor below us, by the way, which we're going to go down and say hi to everybody while we're here. So you could also just randomly be walking on the street and be like, there's an AI workshop. Let me go in and go check this out. I'd say that maybe not the persistent random guy holding a sign. It was a very attractive sign. I mean, you know, it got my attention. ⁓
Jeremy (16:22)
And you still ended
up here at the podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:23)
Most
stuff on the 15th floor, just a peeker, because you know, mean, the curiosity does, but I was already, you know, several, quite a bit of minutes late. So, but no, really there's basic steps you could take, like just.
taking any step early at this point would be best. But doing the deep, you know, just kind of jumping into the deep end, ⁓ probably not the best move because you're going to get frustrated and more confused and then probably give up. It's kind of like taking a crash diet, you know, and thinking it's going to change your life. It's probably not. That's probably too much all at once. You need a lifestyle change and build some habits. Those habits can be like we talked about some basic steps in the journey, like just starting good first step start.
said, start with digitizing what your processes are and then taking a first course or using chat GPT or Claude or any these perplexity or for ⁓ to ask some basic questions about where you should start in your journey. A little bit about my business. There's a little bit about me. There's a little bit about ⁓ what I'd hope to do. What are the first steps I should take? Now we've come up with an interesting way to kind of craft this tighter and using our own knowledge base that we've
you through all the experience we have with all the businesses we've worked with. But you can do it at least in a completely free way on your own. Absolutely. And there are ways to do it. But I don't know. mean, will people do it without coaching or mentorship?
Jeremy (17:51)
Remember
like, oh, was it three, four, five weeks? It seems like a lifetime ago. Last week might as well have been last year. But a couple weeks ago we did an episode where we talked about a bunch of different courses, like the Harvard edX course, there was a Coursera course. So if you're the type of person that, no, I don't wanna just learn through sequential prompting on my chat agent. I want a formal course with a formal teacher. There are great things for that too. Just go look in our archive a couple episodes back and you'll find those.
where you can take a free edX course or something, you know, six to eight weeks long. And if you want to upgrade and buy the certificate for your LinkedIn profile, you can do that too. ⁓
But this is a way if you want that structured learning model that you can get that too. There's no wrong way to do it and I would just argue that the wrong way is not to do anything.
Speaker 2 (18:44)
these
big companies, let's say the big corporations are slowing down a bit or taking their foot off the gap. Exactly, this is where small business owners can now step up, lean in a little further, get at least caught up and maybe eclipse what the big businesses are doing because they did not, most of them statistically, did not adopt AI strategies well.
Jeremy (18:50)
Eat their lunch.
Speaker 2 (19:06)
You can break that cycle for yourself as a small business owner, but you can only do it if you get started. And again, it's what we continue to preach relentlessly to anyone in person. You gotta jump in. Again, not the deep end, but you do need to get into the water at some point. And if you don't, you wait much longer. Unfortunately, you're gonna get left behind and you're gonna find you and your business.
Jeremy (19:15)
we will be seeing this week after week.
Speaker 2 (19:30)
are irrelevant and once you and your business are irrelevant and that's not as a person as a human being you'll always be relevant. We'll always love you but you do need.
Jeremy (19:40)
You'll be
swimming in somebody else's pool water.
Speaker 2 (19:43)
You're
gonna need to be relevant in your industry, in your profession, in whatever it is you do. if you don't get on board here, again, could be, I talk to people every day about how scared they are or angry they are about AI. And I'm like, great, you can't change that. What you can do is you could either figure. Yeah, do, well you guys usually do.
Jeremy (20:03)
Do you give them a hug? Tell them to
store their baggage in the overhead compartment. The is taking off.
Speaker 2 (20:09)
story for
But I do ⁓ try and calm them down and say, great. Also, you can't control that AI is coming. It's a train. It's coming. And you can't stop it. What you can do is decide to get on or stay at the station. I would not recommend that anybody stay at the station. I'd recommend everybody get on the train. Yes, it could end up destroying society as we know it. also, could end up being a wonderful tool that levels the playing field and maybe does change society, but maybe for the better. We don't know that.
Jeremy (20:31)
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:41)
get to control that the powers that we are way beyond us.
Jeremy (20:45)
do think,
look, I was gonna let the episode end, but now I gotta jump in on that, I'm sorry. I do think that, my mother-in-law says this, if you wanna change something, anything, join it. Right, you be a part of You have to be a part of it. And I think that here is where, you and I talk about this all the time, some of the things that we're building that we're hoping to launch soon, we intend to be an.
a change agent for good, not for bad. And these tools are neither good nor bad, you know, at their core, usually. And but but all the things that we talk about on this podcast are neutral. It's what you do with it that really matters. So I do think that there is a real chance here for anyone listening to affect positive change in the world, in their own world, just by using these tools for good.
Speaker 2 (21:30)
Agreed.