76 | Transforming Operations and Outsmarting Challenges using AI Solutions with Susan Frew

In this episode of Leveraging AI, Susan Frew, a business leader who embraced AI to turn her plumbing venture into an innovative industry leader. Learn how she's leveraging AI not just as a tool but as a game-changer in operations, customer service, and even in her speaking career.

Discover Susan's practical insights on adopting AI to solve complex business challenges, streamline operations, and enhance customer satisfaction. Her journey from a tech background to leading a successful home services company, and now, pioneering AI integration, is nothing short of inspirational.

In this session, you'll discover:
- How Susan transitioned from tech to plumbing, then to AI, transforming her business.
- The step-by-step process Susan used to identify and implement AI solutions across various business aspects.
- Practical tips on how businesses can start their AI journey, irrespective of their industry.
- Susan's perspective on the future of AI in traditional businesses and how to stay ahead.

Susan Frew is a renowned speaker and business leader who has practiced and embraced the art of integrating AI into traditional business models. Her experience spans across tech and entrepreneurship, making her a sought-after speaker and innovator.

About Leveraging AI

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• Connect with Isar Meitis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isarmeitis/
• Free AI Consultation: https://multiplai.ai/book-a-call/

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Transcript

Isar Meitis: 0:00

Hello and welcome to leveraging ai the podcast that shares practical ethical ways to leverage Ai to improve efficiency grow your business and advance your career This is isar matis your host and I have a really exciting show for you today Many of you approach me on LinkedIn and talk to me and share how much they learn from the podcast. But a lot of people are asking to talk to actual practitioners, people from businesses, who are not just training people on how to do this, but they're actually using this in businesses and learn from them what they're doing and how they're doing it and why they're doing it. And Today, our guest, Susan Frew, is the best example I've met so far of taking AI tools, going all in and really solving really big business problems. Anything from finance to operations to customer service, you name it, she's actually done it and she keeps on perfecting the process. And she's going to share with us exactly what she's doing In multiple aspects of the business. Susan and I have had multiple conversations since we've met. she was a trainee in my course and she is a. Renowned sought after speaker. So she's a keynote speaker on multiple conferences, both in her industry and in other industries, talking about how to run businesses and recently how to run businesses with AI. So we talk a lot about that as well, and we have a lot of things in common and she's a great person overall. So I know we're going to have a blast in this conversation. And so I'm really excited to welcome Susan. Susan, welcome to Leveraging AI.

Susan Frew: 2:13

Thank you, Isar. I am so excited. I have told like everyone that I know that I'm going to be on this podcast. I'm like, I'm going to be on the podcast. I've been following this podcast for so long. And this is oh, star power. I said, it's you're the Bon Jovi of AI. That's the way I described it.

Isar Meitis: 2:29

Oh my God. Now, now I have really really high bar that I need to. to pass but I appreciate that and I really appreciate you and I really think That the stuff that you're doing and I we both speak on a lot of conferences So we meet with a lot of senior people in different industries It's not common to find somebody who's a ceo like you that also gets their hands dirty So you run a large successful company for years that has nothing to do with tech, but it's like a home services company and yet You are you yourself personally are involved in applying and testing and doing all these things which is Not common would be an understatement like literally I don't know any other CEO other than you that does it at the scale that you are doing it

Susan Frew: 3:16

there's a reason for that

Isar Meitis: 3:18

So it's a perfect segue. So how Did this whole

Susan Frew: 3:23

happen? my background is in tech. I was with AT& T wireless for many years and ended up, um, my career as an international general manager of two countries in the Caribbean, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. And I'd started New York city as a, Salesperson, but in the plumbing company, my husband and I started it together and it grew really fast and I kept stepping away because I really love the pull of the stage and speaking and that's just my, what I love to do. And, we ended up getting in some trouble and I had to come back and we turned it around and then I stepped away again and it keeps going back and forth. So this is the last time I'm stepping back in. We are automating everything. And it is going to be a shining example of how you can leverage AI in your business. And then it will be time for us to move on to something else. So that is my motivation.

Isar Meitis: 4:20

Awesome. So the motivation is there. So really let's look from, and I think it's a great motivation, whether you want to step away or not by everybody who is at the top of the pyramid in any business knows. It sounds glamorous when you're not actually doing the job. once you need to do the job, it's really tedious. And it's really stressful because you are, whether you are doing everything or not, in most cases, you're not doing the things you're still in charge of it being successful. And if it's not, it's your problem to solve. And there's always problems to solve. And so whether you want to step away or you just want to have less stress on your hands, going through this exercise of looking, how can I automate things in my business using AI is a very important exercise. Not to mention the fact that if you don't do this and your competition will, you're going to start losing business to your competition because they will be able to do things faster and better than you and cheaper than you and still do it as good or even better, which means you're going to lose clients. So how do you get started? Like, how do you pick the use cases you want to go after? Because there's a gazillion use cases in a business. How did you get started picking the

Susan Frew: 5:29

right ones? here's my best advice. And this is how we systemize the business. at first writing all of our systems and policies and procedures, and putting them in a AI system that we were able to put online, and that was one of the things that we started with, but we went old school, so we took big flip chart paper and put it around the room and all the people that were involved in all the policies and systems and said, okay, what. Systems do we have what's broken what needs to be refined and what can we automate so you always have to start from that ground floor organic way of doing it and bringing the right people to the table. There's the humanization of that and then automating all the pieces in there that you could in order for to leverage your finances, your headcount, your resources, all of that.

Isar Meitis: 6:22

So I love several things you're saying, and I'll highlight all of them, because they're like a subtext of the things you said, but each and every one of them is very important. One is you don't want to do it yourself. Like one of the things I teach in my course, and you've been there, but you've actually done this before you've taken my course. You want a committee, you want a group of people in your business that will be involved, to help you in the brainstorming, to help you in the implementation, to help you, Delivering this to other people in the business and so on. And so you want to start with that. The second thing is the human part is the most important part. Yes, it's a tech revolution, but at the end of the day, until you have an army of bots doing everything for you, people in the company working with you, and they must be on board. And if you don't do this with them, you try to shove them down their throats. It is going to fail. If they feel a part of it and empowered to actually use these tools to do more for themselves and for the business, then it's going to be a big success. So that's the second thing you said that is very important. And the third thing is, You have to start with actually knowing mapping your processes in the company on a detailed level in order to make these decisions. Otherwise it will be throwing pasta on the wall and hoping some something sticks, right? And it may not be the right thing. So I agree with all of those. What were some of the things, just give us a list of examples and then we'll dive into a few. Some of the things that you've already automated or that you are in the process of automating.

Susan Frew: 7:43

one that's an ongoing thing is the systems because we, in the very beginning, I had written systems, but they were outdated and they didn't work and no one was following them. I put it on a program called Trainiel. And like training and manual together and we started building the systems in here and in there and it was a I assisted, which was a huge help because you know how many of us stare at the screen and we have to write a policy about uniforms and like you sit there and look at it for 30 minutes and do nothing. So this way you just put I need a policy about uniforms. And then you can edit it and keep moving on. It also makes the onboarding experience with employees better. So that was number one. another thing that we did is we added in an AI bookkeeper for, which is. categorizes all of your transactions that does require some training folks. That's not a out of the box. Perfect. Big. It's trading just like any good employee. And then I moved into making some custom GPTs, which you and I have spoken about. One to help me with budgeting, one to help me analyze my financials and my business plan for the next year and did this towards the end of 2023, and that was something that was a great experiment. And I'm still using it. I'm using it all the time. I use Hey, Jen make a lot of avatars for my marketing. getting ready to do another. AI based project for marketing. I have 37, 000 customers in our database and I know that there's an AI solution out there and how to reach them in the way that they want to be reached. So that's still a work in progress.

Isar Meitis: 9:25

So let me touch on a few things that you mentioned. one, you mentioned budgeting. The other, you mentioned GPT. So those of you who don't know what GPTs are, I'm going to dive and actually show you how to develop some of them. But GPTs are like a mini, very detailed version of chat GPT. And instead of saying, Oh, it can do the universe. You actually give it instructions on something very specific you want it to do. And then you can share it with your team or with other people that can then benefit from that custom version of chat GPT. And that's it. And so we're going to show you, or Susan is going to show you how she's using that for budgeting. And I find it brilliant. Another one is Haygen. And I will share links to these things in the show notes. So you have access to those as well. Haygen is probably the best tool out there today. There's a bunch of them that allows you to create avatar based videos of either generic avatars, and they're getting better and more and more human, but you can generate an avatar of yourself or other people in your business. And then just. Upload script to them that either you write or Chachapiti writes for you or anything else, and then it will say that so you can use it for product description, you can use it for marketing, you can use it for customer service, you can use it for training inside your organization, like literally any video you want a person talking about something, you can do and you don't need a camera, you don't need a lighting, you don't need a studio, you don't need to edit, you don't need any of these things, and you can pop out even personalized videos that will say the name and the name of the company to every single So it's a very powerful

Susan Frew: 10:53

tool and 36 languages, which you can now speak, which is

Isar Meitis: 10:57

awesome. Absolutely. It's absolutely amazing. It's one of my favorite demos. And it's one of the most jaw dropping demos that I do when I speak is I show people how I can speak whatever language they choose. And, but let's really start with the GPT about finance, because that's something I actually haven't seen anybody do before.

Susan Frew: 11:15

and I am not the financial wizard and that is why this was the first one that I needed to create because I needed an assistant, so what I did is I created a virtual CFO. So the way I built it, and so I like to look at these, like they are a customized search engine. So this little GPT is a search engine. That's going to do just this one thing for me. And I'm treating it like it's an employee. It's my CFO. And that's how I built it. sunshine is the name of our company. So sunshine finance navigator. And so here, if we go into edit GPT. This will show you how I built it. So basically,

Isar Meitis: 11:54

just for one second, for sure. For those who are listening and not sharing the screen, let's stay with us. You're probably either driving or walking your dog and doing dishes. So you can't watch the screen, but there is a YouTube version of this that you'll be able to watch afterwards. And the link to the YouTube video is going to be in the show notes as well. But the way you get to GPTs, those of you who don't know how to get to them, you go to chat. openai. com, which is the regular chat GPT, and you click on the GPT store, and then you can click on create or new or something like that on the top right corner, and then you can create your own GPTs, and then you get to the editor in which Susan is going to share with us what she's actually doing.

Susan Frew: 12:35

I, I believe this is the beginning of the app store and, I miss the dot com millionaire boom. So I'm trying to take advantage of this time. I feel like if I, as a business owner, I'm having challenges. figuring the stuff out for my finances, probably other business owners are as well. So what I did is I went into the back and I told it just like you hear in really good prompt engineering that it's role is a CFO, chief financial officer of my company. And I asked questions like, how can I improve my debt? What are some strategies to reduce debt? How should I set financial goals for 24? Analyze my financial reports for insight. And then I was able to upload them spreadsheets. I uploaded business plans, and I asked it to analyze. Now, at first. I said, analyze this spreadsheet for future cash for 2024 budget. It says, column a is not equal to column B. So it analyzed the spreadsheet. So now we have to say, analyze the data in the spreadsheet and always saying you are the CFO. Which now I built in there and you are going to analyze this data inside the spreadsheet and produce these questions that I have for you. And that's exactly what we did. And, I actually have a new product that we're going to start demoing. So I'm in the process of writing a business plan for that and I'm having it help me to create that process as well.

Isar Meitis: 14:07

So I want to jump back to something and show me just before we started recording. One of the exercises you did with this, which I find absolutely brilliant is you've uploaded last year's numbers. So the actual outcome of last year, together with a plan for this year, order to allow it to help you create a budget for your plan. And again, this is maybe not a professional CFO or an accountant. But like you said, it's not starting with a blank sheet of paper. Do I have to figure out how to do the budget and it can get you. It at least gets you think on a lot of things on aspects of this that you may not think about yourself. And this is absolutely amazing.

Susan Frew: 14:51

Yeah. It's been a really fun exercise in order, to work through this. And it's been really helpful to me because this isn't my background. I don't have a CFO background. I, you're not really a finance person. I'm learning to love the numbers as many of us do, this has been just incredibly helpful out there. And that it's just been something that I've been using. for the last couple months, and I'm really loving it.

Isar Meitis: 15:14

And the data you uploaded to help you create the budgeting, it was like a CSV file exported from whatever accounting system as far as your last year's numbers?

Susan Frew: 15:23

Yeah, I pulled it out of QuickBooks into a spreadsheet. I'm sorry that I can't, it's not, I'm not able to show it to you right now. I'm not exactly sure why not. but, what I was able to do, with it is I was able to take my last year's, my last year's numbers, the concrete year to the end of 2023, and I put it in a spreadsheet and I threw it in there. And then I said, For 2024, we want to adhere to these percentages. So I feel like we weren't as successful financially as we wanted to be in 23, because we were overspending in some areas and not spending enough in the others. Just every business owners struggle. And I told it to create the budget. towards these targets

Isar Meitis: 16:07

of these percentages of spent on HR versus spent on CapEx versus spent on marketing. Yes. And it help you build the budget based on X growth based on last year's numbers and then the new percentages.

Susan Frew: 16:20

Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So that was, it saves so much time. I can't even begin to tell you. And we're starting a new product. We're going into, I want to make dog washes in people's garages because we're plumbers and we can bring the hot and cold water out there, the drain, and then we can build you a dog

Isar Meitis: 16:39

wash. do you need like a guinea pig? That you want to test this on? I would want beer

Susan Frew: 16:43

I know. Isn't it a great idea? I think that the market is ready for that. I think people are gonna love it. And, I had chat GVT create a, an amazing logo for me, which of course was Fel drunk, but I popped it into Canva, AI and I fixed it. and it's called Sunshine Dogs, D-A-W-G-S, which was Oh cool. Really cool. And that was. that's our next thing. So I was also having me help create the marketing plan for that.

Isar Meitis: 17:11

That's fantastic. Okay, cool. So one GPT helps you with finances and planning and accounting and budgeting. What other GPTs did you create that helps you regularly in the

Susan Frew: 17:24

business? here's one. so I'm a member of National Speakers Association and I live in Colorado. So I'm part of NSA Colorado. So I built this one I'm really most proud of. Cause this is like the one that I had learned the most after all the other ones that I had created this one, I really knew what was happening and I was able to customize it in a better way. So what I, Why I built it is, speakers, professional speakers are usually always looking for places to speak. They want to improve their talk. They want to find different audiences, lots of different things that I knew a fair amount about. So when I built the GPT, I put in there and I said, exactly what we wanted to do is to find speaking engagements for professional speakers. And then I added these cues in there. How can I improve my presentation, locate speaking opportunities, compare speaking styles of industry leaders, content ideas, social media and blogs, which we know a lot of people use AI to do creative ideas with social media marketing and marketing out there, space, places to speak paid and unpaid. And then I went through and I found as many articles and documents as I could possibly find and I put them in there so that I'm now training the search engine to be able to use that information and to go out and find speaking engagements for people and everyone's are going to be different. And another thing I put in there, which I thought was really important was analyze my competitors and not that you want to like go dog eat dog with your competitors. I wanted to do that for 1 reason, because 1, if you analyze the competitors, you might know the competitor and you can say, hey, can you recommend me for next year? Or you could also, find out, do some research on them and see maybe why they got in the engagement and maybe you could pitch it in a different way or a similar way or whatever that looked like. So I thought that was a really good way of figuring it out. So this one I love, and I just keep continuing to create them. I haven't made any of them public yet.

Isar Meitis: 19:38

I want to generalize for a second, the one you did for NSA, because NSA, not the NSA people usually think speaking association, that kind of NSA. I want to touch on three different aspects of this. One is, Regarding what you said, those of you who don't know, you can upload reference documents to the GPT, which becomes quote unquote training materials for that GPT, and this could be anything. It could be your employee handbook. If you want to allow employees to ask questions about how do they get PTO days? This could be a reference materials on how to write specific, scrum procedures, if you're in a software company, this could be, a the actual segments off the book traction on how to run EOS properly, like literally any reference material you want. And then the GPT can use that information in order to answer the questions and to have a very specific conversation with the person. So this is something people need to know. The other thing that I find, that is really helpful, and that's something you did at scale here. is you can define these conversation starters instead of again, letting people get the GPT and kind of figure out what you want it to do. You can define these initial conversation starters. Like you said, in this particular case, how do I find more speaking gigs? How do I find my competitors and maybe what, where they spoke or how much they make, these kinds of things. Yeah. You can generalize this to any other thing you want people to use the GPTs for. Which then, like you said, you can give it to anyone. And then those people, and this, anyone could be people within your business or the world, and then people can benefit from that particular tool.

Susan Frew: 21:15

and another one that I created, this spark of awesome. So I did a keynote weekend for a client and then the theme of their, conference was spark. So I took my book and Pete on awesome, not on price. And I completely, I didn't show you this early, but I completely changed the cover with their logo. And I let them meet. I met the person who was running the conference. She wrote the foreword and then I created two additional chapters and they're using AI. I self published it on a AI site called, Book to digital, I'm forgetting it. I'll give, I'll send you the link to draft to digital. That's what it is. And I was able to produce the book for a variant for 2. And then I created for the same conference, a, their own GPT on how to deliver better service and everything else for that conference. So then you can do that. You can totally customize the conference experience now for your clients. So I want to,

Isar Meitis: 22:17

first of all, I find this absolutely brilliant like everything else you do, but I will say something again to generalize this. The age of AI, one of the things, one of the gifts it gives us as business people, as marketers is personalization that wasn't possible before. You can personalize everything. think about what Susan just said. She personalized a book for a single conference that happens once in a lifetime, right? But she created a book that had additional chapters, printed the book and brought it to the conference, an actual physical book, but it's a one off, right? It's a variation of the books you already created that is customized to this conference. I teach in my courses how to create one of brochures. If you have a client you really want to get, don't give them the general brochure you give them. Create a brochure for them that will talk to their pain points, their needs, their industry, their drives and motivations. Historically, that was cost prohibitive. That's why we didn't do it. And it took a very long time, so it just didn't work. But now you yourself, whether you're the CEO or the salesperson or the head of marketing, or doesn't matter what you are, You can create a high end professional looking brochure that will be customized to the specific needs of a specific client and walk with it to the meeting without investing three weeks and$6, 000 to create that brochure. And so the ability to create customized things that Really make you stand out. Like I've never seen anybody show up with a book customized for, for anything. Could definitely do it for one conference. And so I find this absolutely brilliant.

Susan Frew: 23:59

thank you. I thought it was pretty cool too. and it was a lot of fun and I definitely do think that will set me apart. And now. I also don't know if you can see this one, granny GPT. So that's when I start getting a little too old to be hitting the conference scene. I can use that one. I can create my avatar, but I look like now. and so granny GPT, I'm joking around with it, but not really create it's a GPT to help the older generation. Be not afraid of AI. That's fantastic. Where can I get more coupons? where is my AARP card?

Isar Meitis: 24:36

I want to say something about this as well. And this is where I really like the platform that they've created. It allows you to experiment without taking any risks and while having fun. And as you're doing this, I'm like, Oh, GPT that will do whatever, doesn't matter. Like you're saying, how do I find coupons? And when you do that, you're going to learn how this thing works. And you can experiment back and forth and there's no risk it's a it's half joke half I'm actually helping other grandmas but In the process you're going to learn how gpts work which will allow you to actually implement this for other stuff in your life And in your business could be personal life as well Like planning trips like we like taking trips as a family creating a trip planner gpt And i'm sure there's a gazillion of them already But you can create one for yourself that is customized to your needs, to the age of your kids, to the stuff you like to do. And then it can help you find trips in your budget, in the types of things you want to do. So don't be afraid. Off this thing, literally go ahead, play with it and have fun. Yeah,

Susan Frew: 25:40

it's gonna be a wild ride. I'm really excited. I love making these GPTs. I always say like i'm not a creative person like I don't do crafts or so or anything But this is my creativity and I actually told my neighbor that a few weeks ago, she loves to sew and she sits in her house and sews for hours. I'm like, okay, AI is my sewing because I will sit in here and watch videos and I'll create things and make, and it's just so much fun. And I just really want to encourage people not to be afraid of it. Like dive in there a little bit at a time, baby steps. look at the human element first, see what you can automate, see what you can then free up. So you have more time to go and do more powerful things and serve the world in a better way. I want to

Isar Meitis: 26:26

piggyback on the last two sentences that you said, because a long time ago, I had another podcast that was called the Business Growth Accelerator. And in there, I interviewed a woman that had a She's a psych psychiatrist and she had a psychiatry business, like she had her own clinic and people and so on. When she started, she was just on her own, and she said that one of the first things she did as the business started growing is she drew a chart of all the things she did not want to do and then next to, and it's like a, it's like an org chart, right? It's like an org chart that has titles. And things like tasks that needs to be done and a number underneath that. And the number was the budget she needs to have in order to hire a person, she doesn't have to do it. And I found that I still remember this. This was like three or four years ago, because I thought it's a brilliant approach for a solopreneur starting to grow a business. That's the way to think, because that's your only way to grow. Like you cannot do finance and accounting and marketing and sales and the actual job on your own and scale, just not doable. So she basically said, if I hit. 50, 000 in cash, like a free cashflow. I'm going to hire somebody to do this. Then if for the next a hundred thousand, I'm going to hire somebody to do this. Now you can do this. Without the 50, 000 to 100, 000, you can literally have AI automate a lot of the things that you don't like to do, or that's just efficient at, or like you said, that you can bring value doing other things and just follow the list. Just go from top to bottom, the things that you either hate the most or that waste the most amount of your time and just automate them one by one. But don't look at it from a personal perspective, look at it from a business perspective. holistic perspective. What in the business can we automate to save everybody time and make everybody more efficient?

Susan Frew: 28:14

I've been able to track, we're going to save 120, 000, in our budget, and that's a lot for a 2 million a year company. That's a lot of money. but what I also think, and I think this is, people listening need to remember this is that your competitors are going to start doing this too. And they already are. if you want to take a wait and see position, you're going to get lapped and you need to get out there and start using some of the things because if I can cut this much cost in my little company, imagine what bigger companies can do. and, and it's just people doing more like the, it just expands what you're able to produce. And that's really the key using it as a helper. And the word co pilot's already been taken, but it basically is, that's what it is.

Isar Meitis: 29:04

Okay. I want to ask you, I think, like I said, I think 120, 000 a year in savings for a company that does 2 million a year is insane. Can you break this down to me, at least the big buckets? where most of the savings are coming from, because I'm sure people are asking themselves the same question.

Susan Frew: 29:20

Yeah. do you want me to show, Hey, Jen, or do you want me to turn this off?

Isar Meitis: 29:23

let's talk about, the savings and then maybe we can, Okay.

Susan Frew: 29:28

yes. so here's the savings. So one of them is on the, was on the bookkeeping. So we, our bookkeeping is pretty complicated because, eight trucks times three transactions a day, times. So what I was able to do is I use a program called Bookie, B O K dot AI, not to be confused with the bookie that I had in New Jersey when I was growing up, teasing, but anyhow, so that helps to categorize things. I don't know if that's working all that great yet. That's definitely a trainable thing, but I was able to then find someone on Upwork to do the other portion of it. So instead of so the AI did part, and then I found someone, in Indonesia that could do it and they were trained in my program. So it was perfect. we were definitely able to save a fair amount on the marketing with, using HN using, different scripts, using all kinds of, funnels and things like that, that we are now doing ourselves, we're able to write our own ads that way we were able to save over 2, 000 a month on the answering service. Because now we're using the AI answering service, which is a work in progress. We're getting there, but it definitely was a huge savings. and we continue to just keep finding things like That's going to continue because we were paying about 10, 000 a month in marketing. and we can't compete with the really big players on pay per click. So we need to be finding alternative ways and creative solutions to capitalize on our existing customers already like us. And be marketing in, in a more organic way because the pay per click market for us is really out of reach.

Isar Meitis: 31:05

Yeah, I agree with a hundred percent when I was running the travel company, just to, to tell you how much I understand what you're talking. I was a relatively small travel online travel company. And it's when it's relatively small, we're doing a hundred million dollars a year. That's not really small. That being said, Expedia is doing 70 billion. Yeah. So their budget again, now real numbers of six years ago when I was still in that business, they were spending 2. 5 billion a year on marketing. 2. 5 billion on marketing. So obviously I was not able to compete with them. So you have to find smart ways. And if you can find ways where I can help you, that's incredible. I want to ask you specifically about the answering service. So first of all, which software are using air or using something

Susan Frew: 31:53

else? Zyra talk, Z Y R A talk.

Isar Meitis: 31:57

Okay. So there's a bunch, for those of you who don't know, there's a bunch of services out there right now that allow you to train a call center. And the call center sounds like a human and it connects to a data set that you need to train it with. And then it can be a call center. And knowing some of these companies and some of these tools and where they even are right now, I would be really surprised if call centers exist. Five years from now, because there's going to be absolutely no reason for them to exist. How was your experience so far? Did you just get started? You're not sure yet.

Susan Frew: 32:29

Yeah, we just got started. and there's a few hiccups and I was watching it over the weekend because I could see the conversation as it was happening. and I was like, yelling at it, no, say this. But, course I really couldn't get in there. It's just, Observing, like a panicked helicopter mom over the whole thing, but, I think it's trainable. It definitely is trainable. we've only been using it for three days. I can't really make a determination, but, I think there were a lot of calls that were booked. That was for sure. and now we need to go in and answer some questions it didn't know that you couldn't pay invoices on our website. Yeah, so we need to go in and change that. and there's all different ways to change it. So it's us adding all that information in, and I feel like it will continue to get better. But once again, you have to systemize the routine and humanize the exception. And as the person needs to jump in there, when it starts going sideways a little bit, which is what I did, I picked up the phone and I called that person and apologize for that silly answering service that we had. Didn't tell her it was AI. She didn't know it was AI. She just knew it was aggravating her and I could watch the transcript live as it was happening.

Isar Meitis: 33:43

So I love that. And I want to, again, just generalize this and talk about something very important for all these tools. You're never going to hit gold the first time around, whether you're just starting to use chat GPT and trying to prompt creating GPTs or training a answering service that is AI based, like it's a process that keeps making you and the AI better and better. And the way I like to explain this to people is think about you hired the most capable intern ever. It's still an intern, like if you tell it and go write my business plan for next year, it's not going to end up very well. But if you think about it like an intern, you said, okay, if it's actually an intern, I will spend an hour now, an hour sitting with her or him or it's depending on the situation and explaining everything they need to know to do this particular task because it's an intern. But then because it's the best intern ever. In this particular case of AI, it's going to do an amazing job. And every time you give it a comment to make it improve, it's going to take that into account and do a better job next time when humans sometimes would and sometimes wouldn't. So think about it as a human, as a new employee, and think about how much you would invest in a new employee to get the best out of them. If you do that, you'll be just fine using it.

Susan Frew: 34:59

there's a site and I think I've heard you mention it on your, on the podcast or maybe in the training, there's a website and a newsletter called there's an AI for that. And I love that site because you, the cool part is I like the count on the top because it, it keeps like a rolling count of how many different AI programs there are in the world and how. They're ranked and how many people are using them. And I'm not a hundred percent sure how accurate all the info is, but it helps you to find I want to automate this process. So just go in there and write that. And all of the AI's in that topic will come up. and I especially like the Gen Z translator GPT, cause that was really fun to play with. I love that for parents everywhere. You have to get that

Isar Meitis: 35:47

one. yeah. And by the way, for those who don't understand how many we're talking about, I just looked it up. It's close to 13, 000. Yeah, tools that are there right now. So the number is endless. And there's always, as you mentioned, somewhere along the talk, I'm sure there's a tool that does that there is a tool that does that you just got to find it and find that it's right for you. It could be not for you, because of your setup, your background, your company, your personal needs or skills, but there are AI tools today, almost for anything. Susan, this was Susan. Absolutely phenomenal. I had a blast. lots and lots of value. If people want to follow you, invite you to speak, learn from you, connect with you, work with you, what are the best ways to connect with you?

Susan Frew: 36:29

Susan Frew Speaks. Just remember that. And Frew is spelled F R E W. You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. my website is also Susan Frew Speaks. I also have susanfrew. ai. Yes. I got it before GoDaddy raised the price on the domains. so yeah, I would love to connect. And as I have a prediction, you and I are going to be on the same stage one day. We're going to speak at a conference. I don't know which one, but if you're a meeting planner, listening to this, you need to hire both of us, opening keynote, closing keynote.

Isar Meitis: 37:04

I would love that. And I think we go up together, we tagged him this, it's going to be the best keynote ever, probably. That's right. I really appreciate you. I really appreciate the time you spend to share your experience and your business experience with us. And thank you so much. Thank you.