Episode 87
AI Won’t Take Your Job (But Someone Using It Will) | Tom Capone on Sales, Business, and the Future of Work
Is AI coming for your job — or is it creating the biggest opportunity of your career? In this episode of Connect & Convert, Dennis Collins and Leah Bumphrey sit down with Tom Capone, VP of Business Development at Concepta Technologies, to explore how sales leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs can turn AI into their first employee instead of their replacement.
Tom shares real-world stories about how AI is transforming sales research, customer intelligence, proposals, and even entire business models. You’ll hear practical insights on:
- Why the people who learn to leverage AI will replace those who don’t
- How to treat AI as a co-founder and culture-shaping tool
- The balance of “human in the loop” and automation in sales
- Low-cost ways small businesses can get started with AI today
Whether you’re curious, skeptical, or already experimenting, this conversation will help you see why the future belongs to those who partner with AI — not those who ignore it.
👉 Subscribe for more conversations that help you connect better and convert faster.
ai in sales, artificial intelligence jobs, future of work, tom capone, concepta technologies, sales technology, ai business strategy, leveraging ai, connect & convert podcast, dennis collins, leah bumphrey, wizard academy
Transcript
Hey, a warm welcome back to all of our viewers and listeners.
Dennis Collins:This is Connect & Convert, and it's Dennis and Leah.
Dennis Collins:Hey, we're back, Leah.
Dennis Collins:Hey Dennis.
Dennis Collins:How are you doing?
Dennis Collins:I'm good.
Dennis Collins:I, uh, uh, you know, as always in the background, Producer Paul
Dennis Collins:lurking in the background, making sure that we don't mess up.
Dennis Collins:So he's with us too, but hey, I got a question, Leah.
Dennis Collins:It's September and have you guys had snow up there in Canada?
Dennis Collins:Is it snowing already?
Leah Bumphrey:We're having six inches snow, nothing.
Leah Bumphrey:We are having the perfect autumn weather, just it's pristine.
Leah Bumphrey:Oh, farmers are in the field.
Leah Bumphrey:They are farmers in the field.
Leah Bumphrey:There's a big joke that, you know, in the egg community, nobody ever says
Leah Bumphrey:it's gonna be a bumper crop, but wow.
Leah Bumphrey:We are having the weather, even our, our trees, not just the Christmas trees.
Leah Bumphrey:All the trees are still green, so it is
Dennis Collins:No kidding.
Leah Bumphrey:Come on up.
Dennis Collins:Uh, yeah, I may have to get up there because, uh, we're still
Dennis Collins:in full summer here in, in Florida.
Dennis Collins:It's, it's crazy.
Leah Bumphrey:It's always summer in Florida.
Dennis Collins:But I wanna know one thing before we get started.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:We got a great, we got a great guest today.
Dennis Collins:this is gonna be one of our best ever.
Dennis Collins:But I gotta know, Ms. Leah, are you ready for hockey season?
Leah Bumphrey:Oh, are you kidding?
Leah Bumphrey:I was born ready.
Leah Bumphrey:You know that.
Leah Bumphrey:This is Canada.
Dennis Collins:Are you still an Oilers fan?
Leah Bumphrey:You know what?
Leah Bumphrey:Just through association I was born there.
Leah Bumphrey:I have to be.
Leah Bumphrey:But you remember at our house, it's the Leafs I know in the Sens. Oh yeah.
Leah Bumphrey:And between my husband and my boys, I have to walk that delicate line.
Dennis Collins:I, well, just so you know, I've talked to some of
Dennis Collins:the Panthers in the off season.
Leah Bumphrey:Okay.
Leah Bumphrey:And
Dennis Collins:they tell me it's going to be a three peet.
Dennis Collins:They will be the champions again next year.
Dennis Collins:So that's just so you know.
Leah Bumphrey:Well, we're gonna get our bets on the table.
Leah Bumphrey:Thomas.
Leah Bumphrey:We were hoping.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:We are, uh, privileged today to have, we always try to bring our, our listeners
Dennis Collins:the best, the experts, the people in the know, the people who are in the arena.
Dennis Collins:And today we have a guy who's in the arena.
Dennis Collins:He is an expert in helping small businesses and large businesses use
Dennis Collins:technology, leveraging technology to make them more effective, more
Dennis Collins:profitable, and particularly the AI space.
Dennis Collins:How about that?
Dennis Collins:Say hello and welcome to Connect & Convert, Mr. Thomas Capone.
Dennis Collins:Good.
Tom Capone:Good morning, Dennis.
Tom Capone:Good morning, Leah.
Tom Capone:Happy to be here.
Tom Capone:Good to
Dennis Collins:you too.
Tom Capone:We're glad to have you.
Dennis Collins:Just a little background, the good
Tom Capone:introduction.
Tom Capone:I hope I can live up to it.
Dennis Collins:Well, you will.
Dennis Collins:'cause I know you will.
Dennis Collins:I've, I've seen you in action.
Dennis Collins:Thomas is currently the vice President of business development
Dennis Collins:for Concepta Technologies.
Dennis Collins:Tom's been in that space for over 15 years.
Dennis Collins:Uh, he's not only a sales executive.
Dennis Collins:He came from a sales background into technology, but he is
Dennis Collins:now a technology strategist.
Dennis Collins:He has helped not only small businesses, but Fortune 500 companies,
Dennis Collins:uh, level up and use technology to make them more successful.
Dennis Collins:Did I get that right Tom?
Tom Capone:Pretty good.
Tom Capone:You're hired.
Dennis Collins:Well, and Thomas the man, you gotta know a little
Dennis Collins:bit about the man, Thomas.
Dennis Collins:This is a devoted family man, four magnificent kids, a beautiful wife,
Dennis Collins:totally devoted to his family, and a big UCF, university of Central Florida fan.
Dennis Collins:Go Knights.
Tom Capone:Charge On.
Dennis Collins:Charge On.
Dennis Collins:And of course we share something in common that is a long suffering
Dennis Collins:long loyalty that we've been loyal to, uh, the Miami Dolphins.
Leah Bumphrey:I love the Miami Dolphins.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:I used to.
Dennis Collins:Come on.
Dennis Collins:We're in good.
Dennis Collins:We're in good.
Dennis Collins:Well, Thomas is a native of South Florida, so he grew up there.
Dennis Collins:I lived there for 30 years and unfortunately we now are still
Dennis Collins:supporting a team that it hasn't been pretty since last Sunday.
Dennis Collins:Has it?
Dennis Collins:The, the, the news is not good.
Tom Capone:But yeah, Dennis, I appreciate that.
Tom Capone:It, it hasn't been pretty since about 1999, but I still have my Marino
Leah Bumphrey:t-shirt.
Leah Bumphrey:That's true.
Leah Bumphrey:That's, I saw my Marino jersey.
Tom Capone:That's true.
Tom Capone:I can choose to focus on the positives.
Tom Capone:And one thing I'll say is I heard you guys talking about
Tom Capone:hockey right before I jumped on.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:And did you know that?
Tom Capone:Florida is now the new hockey is the new national pastime of Florida.
Tom Capone:We have four of the last six Stanley Cups here in state of Florida.
Tom Capone:Anyway, you're here.
Tom Capone:Rub in.
Tom Capone:We're here
Leah Bumphrey:to talk business.
Leah Bumphrey:Rub it in.
Leah Bumphrey:We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, gonna boldly go.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm all boat.
Dennis Collins:She wants to get off of this and get onto business.
Dennis Collins:See, she doesn't wanna talk about hockey.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm more than happy to wax poetic about the Miami
Leah Bumphrey:Dolphins and we can talk Marino.
Leah Bumphrey:I still have the jersey, but let's just move this along.
Dennis Collins:All right.
Dennis Collins:Okay, so here it is, Thomas.
Dennis Collins:I do a lot of study and reading in the small business space, and here's what
Dennis Collins:I'm hearing and here's what I'm reading.
Dennis Collins:Big headlines.
Dennis Collins:AI is coming for your job.
Dennis Collins:AI is coming for your job.
Dennis Collins:Beware Thomas.
Dennis Collins:Is AI coming for my job?
Tom Capone:Woo.
Tom Capone:Doomsday.
Tom Capone:Huh?
Tom Capone:Doomsday.
Dennis Collins:Hey, what do you think?
Dennis Collins:You're in the space buddy.
Tom Capone:Dennis, you know, I take that question and I try to
Tom Capone:think of it from a different angle.
Tom Capone:I try to think of a different angle, and my angle is, how can
Tom Capone:I avoid AI from taking my job?
Dennis Collins:Mm. Okay.
Tom Capone:How can I avoid AI from taking my job?
Tom Capone:Okay, how And
Tom Capone:yeah.
Tom Capone:Right?
Tom Capone:If it, if it was only so easy.
Tom Capone:If it was only so easy.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:Obviously there's mundane tasks that nobody wants to do and mundane jobs
Tom Capone:that people probably don't want to do, that we won't be doing for long.
Tom Capone:They're not here for the future.
Tom Capone:And that's happened over time as every technology has been introduced, right?
Dennis Collins:Yes.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Tom Capone:but.
Tom Capone:I will say the real question is how can you leverage AI to
Tom Capone:be better at your position?
Tom Capone:Because who will take your job are the people that are experts in how
Tom Capone:to apply AI to the role and becoming far more productive by leveraging
Tom Capone:AI than you can be without it.
Dennis Collins:That's an interesting spin, isn't it, Leah?
Dennis Collins:Leah, have you come to grips with ai?
Dennis Collins:You and I have never really talked about it, and we need to talk about it more
Dennis Collins:on this podcast because our listeners and viewers, they wanna know about this.
Dennis Collins:How have you come to grips with ai?
Dennis Collins:Leah, is it gonna take your job?
Leah Bumphrey:No.
Leah Bumphrey:No, but it's gonna take away the stuff I don't like doing in my job.
Leah Bumphrey:Oh, and I, that's how I'm translating what Thomas is doing if when I find something,
Leah Bumphrey:and I've had some exciting opportunities just in the last couple weeks where
Leah Bumphrey:I went, oh no, I have to do this.
Leah Bumphrey:It's gonna take me this much time.
Leah Bumphrey:And then I thought, Hey, wait a minute, why don't I just see,
Leah Bumphrey:and we're talking pretty funda, like pretty rudimentary things.
Leah Bumphrey:Somebody who's really good, for example, at admin, would be able to take
Leah Bumphrey:this template and change it to that.
Leah Bumphrey:That's not my strength.
Leah Bumphrey:It's gonna take me four hours to do it.
Leah Bumphrey:So it's like, oh no.
Leah Bumphrey:And then it hit me.
Leah Bumphrey:Wait a minute.
Leah Bumphrey:And talking with Boomer about this, I went, this isn't
Leah Bumphrey:something that I could ask.
Leah Bumphrey:So I asked the AI platform that I've been, that I've been, uh, using, I've,
Leah Bumphrey:I've been going back and forth between a few and went, yeah, I can do that.
Leah Bumphrey:Two minutes later, I had everything done.
Leah Bumphrey:It was brilliant.
Leah Bumphrey:I was so excited.
Leah Bumphrey:It just gave me a huge lift.
Leah Bumphrey:And then I went on to do the parts of my job that I love, which are the
Leah Bumphrey:creative parts, which are the, the, yeah, the real human parts of it.
Dennis Collins:So Tom, there's an interesting response.
Dennis Collins:Love, I'd love to hear your reaction to what Leah just said.
Dennis Collins:Is this, uh, is this what you're hearing out there in the, uh, when
Dennis Collins:you consult with a client about ai?
Tom Capone:Leah, I think you're spot on.
Tom Capone:I think you're spot on.
Tom Capone:It's gonna eliminate the task you don't want to do.
Tom Capone:The next level to that though is how much more efficient it can make
Tom Capone:you on the things you love to do.
Dennis Collins:You know,
Tom Capone:as a sales, I'm in sales.
Tom Capone:I know you guys are all in sales as well, and one of the things we love to do is
Tom Capone:not necessarily create, but talk about proposals, present proposals, right?
Tom Capone:Mm-hmm.
Tom Capone:And think about the time we invest in creating proposals and putting things
Tom Capone:together for our clients, and how much more effective and and efficient we
Tom Capone:can be by leveraging AI to help us with those tasks and helping us to
Tom Capone:present those proposals with feedback.
Tom Capone:And things like that.
Dennis Collins:So could you I, I like this 'cause Lee and I both
Dennis Collins:work with a lot of salespeople.
Dennis Collins:I have for years.
Dennis Collins:It's one of my things that I've done for decades.
Dennis Collins:I love working with salespeople.
Dennis Collins:I'll tell you what, right now they are convinced Thomas, they are convinced
Dennis Collins:almost to a person that I've talked to that AI could never replace a salesperson.
Dennis Collins:What do you think?
Tom Capone:There are, there are.
Tom Capone:I will tell you there are probably tools out there that are selling to
Tom Capone:you today that will say the opposite.
Tom Capone:However, I think that the salespeople, again, that come with
Tom Capone:the human touch, Dennis, right?
Tom Capone:Human in the loop, AI is what's taking over right now.
Tom Capone:I can't predict what's five or 10 years down the road.
Tom Capone:I think nobody can.
Tom Capone:But for today, and what the near future brings, human and loop AI
Tom Capone:salespeople that can leverage ai, and I'll give you a great example.
Tom Capone:I use AI in my space now as a salesperson for researching my prospects.
Tom Capone:Interesting.
Tom Capone:Okay.
Tom Capone:And I used to spend hours researching prospects and reading through annual
Tom Capone:reports and company structures, and now AI can do all that for me.
Tom Capone:And it can summarize a prospect, but what I could find online in minutes,
Tom Capone:saving me hours and hours of time, and, but that AI still needs me to
Tom Capone:talk with the customer, understand the empathy, build trust, and those kind
Tom Capone:of things that AI can't do by itself.
Dennis Collins:Okay, so question I have, uh, come across, I haven't
Dennis Collins:actually used this myself, but I've heard that AI can simulate a salesperson.
Dennis Collins:Okay, AI can sound like a salesperson, and can interact real time with a customer.
Dennis Collins:What do you think about that?
Dennis Collins:Is that number one, is that true?
Dennis Collins:And number two is, is it real?
Dennis Collins:Is it, is it, does it, is it authentic?
Dennis Collins:Does it sound authentic?
Tom Capone:So, have you ever gotten a call or gotten on a call with an AI from
Tom Capone:a company that's reached out to you?
Dennis Collins:I probably have, but I probably didn't know it.
Dennis Collins:I have, oh boy.
Dennis Collins:That's scary.
Tom Capone:Yeah, I have, certainly seen companies, um, and, and
Tom Capone:tools offering this service.
Tom Capone:I've listened in, in a few of them myself.
Tom Capone:The big advantages of it's a becomes a volume play, right?
Tom Capone:So the AI can make.
Tom Capone:Hundreds and hundreds or thousands and thousands of calls per per second.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:And it, it, it brings me back six, eight months ago when we were first starting to
Tom Capone:use AI to create content and the content's not quite as good, but the volume in
Tom Capone:which we can create is pretty good.
Tom Capone:Right.
Tom Capone:That's interest.
Tom Capone:So somewhere along the line there's a, there's, help
Dennis Collins:me understand.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:You made an interesting comment there.
Dennis Collins:The content isn't as good, but the speed is good under, let me understand that.
Tom Capone:Actually, Dennis, I think about this the way I make my coffee.
Tom Capone:I love espresso coffee.
Tom Capone:I love it.
Tom Capone:Okay.
Tom Capone:And there's nothing better than a freshly brewed espresso coffee.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Tom Capone:But you know what?
Tom Capone:I use an espresso machine in my kitchen.
Tom Capone:Yep.
Tom Capone:And it's not as good as an espresso, but I get my cup of coffee in like 14 seconds.
Dennis Collins:Mm-hmm.
Tom Capone:And it's hot and it's what I would call Good enough.
Dennis Collins:It's good enough.
Tom Capone:Interesting.
Tom Capone:Good enough, right?
Tom Capone:Good enough.
Tom Capone:So it meets a demand.
Tom Capone:It meets the demand at a level that's good enough based on the time trade off.
Tom Capone:And I'll say for ai, we have a lot of the same.
Tom Capone:So there are tools that can help you get from zero to good
Tom Capone:enough very, very quickly.
Tom Capone:And then what happens as professionals, it's our job to take good enough
Tom Capone:and bring it to the next level.
Leah Bumphrey:I mean, I can think of times when I've been talking
Leah Bumphrey:to, um, going in the past two, three months, talking to my bank.
Leah Bumphrey:Talking to, uh, booking flights.
Leah Bumphrey:So two very different, different types of apps that I'm using
Leah Bumphrey:and I can tell initially, okay.
Leah Bumphrey:They're trying to figure out what do I need, what do I need, what do I need?
Leah Bumphrey:And they're taking me down the rabbit hole.
Leah Bumphrey:And as long as they're doing it fairly quickly, I don't care
Leah Bumphrey:that I'm talking to a robot.
Leah Bumphrey:But then it comes to the point where I'm freezing it wrong.
Leah Bumphrey:They don't get it.
Leah Bumphrey:They get into this loop and it's like, okay, person, attendant, give me a person.
Leah Bumphrey:I want that right Then otherwise, you know, they're getting a bad,
Leah Bumphrey:they're getting a bad review.
Leah Bumphrey:But that, but there's a point where I'm okay with it.
Leah Bumphrey:They wanna know, you know, what, what, why are you calling this, why, what can
Leah Bumphrey:we take the time to please the, you know, do a survey after, no, I don't wanna do
Leah Bumphrey:a survey, but all of this is regimented ai, I know it and I'm okay with it, but
Leah Bumphrey:when it comes to the point that it can no longer answer my question, gimme somebody.
Dennis Collins:Interesting.
Dennis Collins:So did we lose Tom, are you there, buddy?
Dennis Collins:No worries.
Dennis Collins:One moment please.
Dennis Collins:Hey, I
Leah Bumphrey:heard my rant and it went, oh yeah, this is what, see, this
Leah Bumphrey:is the kind of stuff that scares us.
Leah Bumphrey:I've read Isaac Asimov.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm a hind line fan.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm a science fiction gal. This is what happens every time.
Leah Bumphrey:Really?
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:So when you start talking bad about technology, it screws you.
Leah Bumphrey:It comes to find you.
Dennis Collins:It finds you.
Dennis Collins:Yes.
Dennis Collins:Interesting.
Leah Bumphrey:This is what happens.
Leah Bumphrey:There's, been some great short stories about this.
Leah Bumphrey:Really.
Leah Bumphrey:This is exactly what happens, right?
Leah Bumphrey:Thomas?
Leah Bumphrey:You start dissing on AI and then everything goes, goes.
Leah Bumphrey:It goes to hell in a hand baskets, right?
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:They were listening to us, weren't they?
Leah Bumphrey:Course?
Leah Bumphrey:Absolutely.
Leah Bumphrey:Yes,
Tom Capone:they were.
Tom Capone:Well, where were we?
Tom Capone:Should Let me start over.
Tom Capone:I think you, I think you, I think you said something.
Tom Capone:Oh, go ahead Dennis.
Tom Capone:I'm sorry.
Dennis Collins:No, go ahead, Leah.
Dennis Collins:Finish your thought and then I've got some other, no,
Leah Bumphrey:I was done.
Leah Bumphrey:I wanna hear what Thomas has to say about my little rant.
Tom Capone:Go ahead.
Tom Capone:No, I think you said something so interesting, Leah, because we, we
Tom Capone:all get to that point and there are limits today where AI is, I will say,
Tom Capone:you know, I, I think it's clear we're in the early stages of, ai still it
Tom Capone:doesn't feel that way, but it is.
Tom Capone:you know, the future, we don't know where we go and how we get there, but, uh, I
Tom Capone:agree with you a hundred percent, right?
Tom Capone:AI can do the job like we talked about to an extent, and then that's where the human
Tom Capone:in the loop comes into play to really.
Tom Capone:Take it to the next level and leverage that information we get from ai.
Tom Capone:So AI can help us for the jobs that our customer facing that are personal.
Tom Capone:That personal touch still makes a huge, huge difference.
Dennis Collins:So let me challenge you, uh, and get your response
Dennis Collins:to some, some questions here.
Dennis Collins:Let's say you're a 22-year-old.
Dennis Collins:You have all the AI tools, all the knowledge.
Dennis Collins:What is stopping that 22-year-old from launching your exact business
Dennis Collins:with zero overhead and zero employees?
Tom Capone:Well, Dennis, thank you.
Tom Capone:I don't, I feel 22 sometimes.
Tom Capone:Dennis, this is you have a young spirit.
Tom Capone:Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. This is a conversation that I, I
Tom Capone:have with businesses actually very, very often and a lot of love that
Tom Capone:businesses that we speak about.
Tom Capone:They start looking for ways.
Tom Capone:To use AI to fill gaps in their business.
Tom Capone:How can we use AI to improve this part of our business?
Tom Capone:And that's a great way to look at things.
Tom Capone:But I'll tell you this, especially for bigger, more mature companies, there
Tom Capone:are people that know now what you didn't know when you started your business.
Tom Capone:And they're not looking at your business saying, how can
Tom Capone:I improve this incrementally?
Tom Capone:They're saying, now that I have ai, how can I, starting from scratch,
Tom Capone:knowing what I know now, do this.
Tom Capone:Way better, way different, more efficiently, and more effectively.
Tom Capone:So the whole thought process of the business changes to, how would I,
Tom Capone:do we have to change that together?
Tom Capone:How would I, if I could start over my business from scratch, what would I do
Tom Capone:differently now that I didn't know then?
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:And that, that is a great, great question.
Dennis Collins:In fact, it's a question that I wanted to ask you, so I'll
Dennis Collins:go ahead and ask it right now.
Dennis Collins:You just opened the door.
Dennis Collins:What if you, Thomas, were starting a new business?
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:Uh, just as you said, uh, you're not tied to what's been done in the past.
Dennis Collins:You're starting fresh and you know how to use ai.
Dennis Collins:How specifically would you design that business?
Dennis Collins:To incorporate the benefits of ai, what would you do?
Tom Capone:Wow.
Tom Capone:Dennis, such a, such a loaded question.
Tom Capone:There's so much that you can do.
Tom Capone:There's the, world is at at your fingertips, right?
Tom Capone:Well, let's, alright, let, lemme
Dennis Collins:make it easy.
Dennis Collins:Let me make it easier.
Dennis Collins:let's take it step by step.
Dennis Collins:One of the things that I read the other day said, make AI your co-founder,
Dennis Collins:not a tool, but your co-founder.
Dennis Collins:What do you think of that Concepta, AI as your co-founder of your new business?
Tom Capone:Yeah, it's interesting.
Tom Capone:I, I often say that AI should be your first employee, and this is
Tom Capone:maybe a very similar Concepta, right?
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Tom Capone:Because we have to first see where AI can help us and
Tom Capone:then see how we can, we can have employees to improve that process.
Tom Capone:The one thing that I'll say is whichever AI tools you're using to start your
Tom Capone:business, and there's a plethora of them for different reasons, right?
Tom Capone:From sales to operations, legal, whatever, to marketing,
Tom Capone:whatever AI tools you're using.
Tom Capone:It is very important to invest in the setup.
Tom Capone:The more information, the more about your processes, about your business,
Tom Capone:about your goals, the more about how you want to sound as a company, that AI
Tom Capone:knows about you and about your business, the better responses you're gonna get.
Tom Capone:So
Dennis Collins:how do you, how do you teach ai, those things you just
Dennis Collins:mentioned, it doesn't know that.
Dennis Collins:They, it doesn't have any knowledge of that unless you give that
Tom Capone:to the ai.
Tom Capone:Right.
Tom Capone:That's a hundred percent accurate.
Tom Capone:And I'll say that teaching AI is, is different depending
Tom Capone:on the AI you're using.
Tom Capone:Okay?
Tom Capone:But the goals are the same.
Tom Capone:And so you, you, you're gonna wanna find a tool that accomplishes
Tom Capone:the tasks you want to focus on.
Tom Capone:If it's sales, find a tool that works in your aspect of sales.
Tom Capone:Maybe it's one that puts together.
Tom Capone:Great presentations and proposals and there's a great tool that I use
Tom Capone:that does that, uh, called Gamma.
Tom Capone:And one thing Gamma allows you to do is upload everything into the
Tom Capone:program before you even get started.
Tom Capone:So I can upload my logo, a lot of information about my company, my website,
Tom Capone:I could upload some design assets, really the tone in which we want to communicate.
Tom Capone:And then everything I create from there on, it has that in its brain and
Tom Capone:it starts creating With that in mind.
Dennis Collins:Now, is that a proprietary AI that's not just going
Dennis Collins:on chat GPT or Claude or something?
Dennis Collins:Are you talking about something that is built just for you?
Tom Capone:This is actually a tool that anybody can access.
Tom Capone:It's similar to a chat GPT or it's similar to a Claude, but it's a,
Tom Capone:it's a sub, a subscription tool.
Tom Capone:Okay.
Tom Capone:And they're actually free versions of it.
Tom Capone:I would say if you're, if you're, still building PowerPoints
Tom Capone:of presentation from scratch.
Tom Capone:Definitely a tool to check out.
Tom Capone:It can make your life so much easier, from anything that you're leveraging there.
Dennis Collins:And
Tom Capone:it's called, the big
Leah Bumphrey:thing is at the beginning, it's a lot of work
Leah Bumphrey:because you gotta be doing this.
Leah Bumphrey:And I've read some interesting stories that maybe you can
Leah Bumphrey:comment on, Thomas, where,
Leah Bumphrey:all this information was downloaded and then it became evident that because
Leah Bumphrey:of what was coming out of AI that.
Leah Bumphrey:The information that they were feeding, how their customer service reps were
Leah Bumphrey:talking and, and, interacting with clients was actually kind of rude.
Leah Bumphrey:Had had a, had a, had a bad flare to it, you know, they were
Leah Bumphrey:talk, if it was a woman, it was, they were talking down to it.
Leah Bumphrey:Maybe it was a minority, but it had the tone of the CSRs, the human CSRs that
Leah Bumphrey:were feeding the information when it came to pitches and answering questions.
Leah Bumphrey:So it was eye-opening.
Leah Bumphrey:They had to shut it down.
Leah Bumphrey:And there's been a few instances of that.
Leah Bumphrey:Because suddenly AI's goal is ramping up and, and standing in just like a
Leah Bumphrey:human with that propensity would do.
Tom Capone:Yep.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:Everything we do at our, at our business, we do with human in
Tom Capone:the loop for those exact reasons.
Tom Capone:You have to have guidelines around it and that setup, but always putting a human
Tom Capone:in the loop, um, can help with that.
Tom Capone:But yeah, certainly ai, look, AI is not perfect.
Tom Capone:It's not perfect.
Tom Capone:It's great.
Tom Capone:I think of AI as, like my scatterbrained employee that is an amazing
Tom Capone:executor, but struggles if I give them a lot of tasks to complete.
Tom Capone:Mm-hmm.
Tom Capone:Right?
Tom Capone:So if there's somebody that's managed closely, they can be your best asset
Tom Capone:and your best employee, but you have to make sure you have them under close
Tom Capone:management and a close eye to, to keep them on track, to keep them moving forward
Tom Capone:and to keep them in the right direction.
Dennis Collins:Interesting.
Dennis Collins:Interesting.
Dennis Collins:So, explain to us what a company like yours Concepta, uh, when you get an AI
Dennis Collins:assignment, what generally is it that you're asked to do by your customer?
Tom Capone:Well, Dennis, what's amazing is at Concepta for years,
Tom Capone:we always helped people leverage technology to right, automate their
Tom Capone:processes and reach more people.
Tom Capone:And we did that with applications, integrations and mobile apps.
Tom Capone:And really, AI is just the next step.
Tom Capone:Nowadays, people are asking us how we can, how can we bring AI into a
Tom Capone:tool we already have, or how can we create this tool and use AI to make
Tom Capone:it even better than we can imagine?
Tom Capone:One of the things we're getting asked a lot, now I, I use this example
Tom Capone:because it's really cut down the, the way you can accomplish this task with
Tom Capone:AI is we have quite a few clients who have some kind of documents
Tom Capone:that they need scanned and reviewed.
Tom Capone:And an example I give is we have one of our clients who
Tom Capone:helps businesses with taxes.
Dennis Collins:Mm-hmm.
Tom Capone:And they have, for one of the tasks they get from their clients,
Tom Capone:they're asked to, they're sent a shoebox or digital shoebox of receipts,
Tom Capone:and they are asked to categorize all these receipts of a year of expenses.
Tom Capone:And you can imagine the manpower that they've put into that for
Tom Capone:these businesses over the years.
Tom Capone:If you get a shoebox of receipts from a pretty big business,
Tom Capone:I'm sure that could take weeks.
Tom Capone:Sure to categorize.
Tom Capone:I love
Leah Bumphrey:that.
Leah Bumphrey:It's a digital shoebox that cry.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm telling all my girlfriends that are accountants because
Leah Bumphrey:they, they cry about the banker's boxes of just random paperwork.
Leah Bumphrey:They get a digital shoe now.
Leah Bumphrey:That's fun.
Leah Bumphrey:Anyways.
Tom Capone:It is.
Tom Capone:And so with, programming, this would be an almost impossible
Tom Capone:task or a very lengthy task.
Tom Capone:But with ai, AI can recognize a lot of things on these receipts with
Tom Capone:relatively minimal training and start categorizing them for you.
Tom Capone:And so you think about the manpower that saves and it's just incredible.
Dennis Collins:That's, that's interesting.
Dennis Collins:Let me jump over to, oh, oh, let me, first of all, you mentioned the word cost in one
Dennis Collins:of your responses there a few minutes ago.
Dennis Collins:How much.
Dennis Collins:Are people spending to get AI savvy?
Dennis Collins:Is it expensive?
Dennis Collins:Uh, you mentioned that some of these programs are either free or
Dennis Collins:relatively inexpensive, but I'll bet you can run up some expense on this.
Dennis Collins:Give me a, give us an idea, give our listeners an idea of what it
Dennis Collins:costs them to ramp up with an ai.
Tom Capone:Well, Dennis, like, yeah, like anything else, cost is very
Tom Capone:relative, relative to the business, right?
Tom Capone:Of course.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:I mean, I, I came out of an AI conference last month where I talked to people who
Tom Capone:had already invested, tens of millions of dollars just in r and d in AI and how they
Tom Capone:can create AI to improve their business.
Tom Capone:Now these we're talking about large enterprises that are, you know.
Tom Capone:Finding ways to use AI with access of data lakes full of data, right?
Tom Capone:Massive amounts of data, information, waste to automate
Tom Capone:process at a super high level.
Tom Capone:However, I will say this, one of the beauties of the AI boom and
Tom Capone:I'm, I'm amazed every day at the amount of subscription tools that.
Tom Capone:I think for your audience, for the smaller growing business
Tom Capone:that are available at very low introductory costs, it's incredible.
Tom Capone:It's incredible.
Tom Capone:I mean, I pay for, one of the big chat agents.
Tom Capone:I think it's 1999 a month.
Tom Capone:And I can't believe the amount of time it saves me, again, when we invest
Tom Capone:and set it up properly, invest in that time, uh, and, and in everything that
Tom Capone:I do from my personal life to business.
Dennis Collins:So it, it's not cost prohibitive.
Dennis Collins:It is possible to get involved, uh, fully in AI and not break the
Dennis Collins:bank and have to go out and get a loan or something to pay for.
Tom Capone:And I think you have to, I think it's possible,
Tom Capone:and I think you have to.
Dennis Collins:So let me keep on with this thing about, uh, uh,
Dennis Collins:you're starting a new business.
Dennis Collins:We already talked about, uh, uh, AI as your co-founder,
Dennis Collins:AI as your first employee.
Dennis Collins:I like that.
Dennis Collins:How about customer intelligence?
Dennis Collins:I know when I was in the radio business in South Florida, you know,
Dennis Collins:we had thousands of customers and we really didn't have any good way of
Dennis Collins:tracking everything that they did.
Dennis Collins:It was rudimentary at best.
Dennis Collins:We were just getting started in computer technology, so we had a little bit of
Dennis Collins:information, but we never had enough to really get a good track on customers.
Dennis Collins:What is it when you're designing that new business that you would
Dennis Collins:do regarding customer intelligence?
Dennis Collins:How would you design that?
Tom Capone:Awesome, awesome question, Dennis.
Tom Capone:What I'll, what, I'll turn it around a little bit is I think that I, I
Tom Capone:mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I think the research you can do with ai.
Tom Capone:Becomes very helpful on your prospects and on your customers.
Tom Capone:Of course, tracking customer intelligence depends a lot on the business, the type
Tom Capone:of business, what they're doing with them.
Tom Capone:but where I think there is a, huge opportunity is in
Tom Capone:the research of a business.
Tom Capone:And so I have.
Tom Capone:An AI agent that I created, that anybody can do it.
Tom Capone:I'm not a programmer.
Tom Capone:I've never been a, I've never been a programmer,
Dennis Collins:okay?
Tom Capone:But I have an agent that I created that helps me do research
Tom Capone:on my customers, my prospects first, but then my customers, right?
Tom Capone:And so even when we're engaged.
Tom Capone:And an ongoing contract with customers.
Tom Capone:I'm researching them all the time, and on a weekly basis, I'm
Tom Capone:talking with my AI and I'm finding out what's new in that company.
Tom Capone:What can I find online that's about them or about their industry, about
Tom Capone:their space, and then the AI can even review that and start making some.
Tom Capone:Some recommendations of how I can leverage that to help grow our
Tom Capone:footprint within that company.
Tom Capone:And so now, as a salesperson, of course, I need to use my relationship, my trust,
Tom Capone:my understanding of their business, to then take this and make something of it.
Tom Capone:But it's already given us a headstart, saving a lot of time, uh, in, in our
Tom Capone:relationship with our existing customers.
Dennis Collins:So can, AI make predictive models about, the,
Dennis Collins:the lifetime value of a customer?
Dennis Collins:Can, can it predict stuff like that?
Dennis Collins:Can it take data that you put in and, draw conclusions from that about the
Dennis Collins:value, lifetime value of a customer, the churn, risk, upsell opportunities?
Dennis Collins:Is it capable of doing that?
Tom Capone:Well, that's, that's, also a loaded question.
Tom Capone:So what happens here right, is AI is as good as the data that we have.
Dennis Collins:Okay?
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:And with the right data could do amazing things.
Tom Capone:A lot of the bigger companies that we talk to when they start implementing
Tom Capone:ai, the first step is organizing their data properly from all their systems,
Dennis Collins:okay?
Tom Capone:And getting all the systems to talk together, integrate
Tom Capone:together into a single data source.
Tom Capone:So that AI can read that they understand it.
Tom Capone:So, um, it's like anything else in life, and we've heard this probably a million
Tom Capone:times, but garbage in, garbage out.
Dennis Collins:So the data is the data.
Dennis Collins:The data is the
Tom Capone:data we're gonna get out.
Dennis Collins:So the collecting and organizing the data may be
Dennis Collins:one of the biggest jobs to do.
Dennis Collins:To incorporate ai, Is that like, and
Leah Bumphrey:I gotta ask too, the other thing is knowing what it
Leah Bumphrey:is that you want AI to do, because you mentioned doing proposals.
Leah Bumphrey:Well, to Dennis's point, you gotta put in every proposal and every bit of
Leah Bumphrey:information that reflects accurately how you want to present things.
Leah Bumphrey:As a sales person, as a business owner, this is really important, but.
Leah Bumphrey:First of all, you have to identify, these are the kind of proposals that I wanna do.
Leah Bumphrey:This is the kind of information.
Leah Bumphrey:Then there's the idea of research.
Leah Bumphrey:I know I've loved using AI to explain to me in a very simple way,
Leah Bumphrey:how do I make this work for me?
Leah Bumphrey:Because there's different things and I'm not talking about ai, I'm
Leah Bumphrey:talking about other apps, other opportunity, how, how do I do this?
Leah Bumphrey:And it will come back.
Leah Bumphrey:Okay.
Leah Bumphrey:You do this, this, this, So I know what I'm wanting from it,
Leah Bumphrey:but I'm always struck with.
Leah Bumphrey:I know there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm not asking it to do for me.
Leah Bumphrey:Yes.
Leah Bumphrey:How do I find out what I should ask?
Leah Bumphrey:So I've asked ai, what can I ask?
Leah Bumphrey:And depending on the platform, you get different things.
Leah Bumphrey:So it's like this candy shop and it's like, well, what do I want?
Leah Bumphrey:I like dark chocolate with cashews.
Leah Bumphrey:Dennis, I know you like your, you, you're kind of a milk chocolate guy, aren't you?
Dennis Collins:Milk chocolate.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:I know you're not gonna
Leah Bumphrey:join me in black licorice, but I know the stuff I like and negative.
Leah Bumphrey:But you should, well, anyway, that's a whole other question.
Leah Bumphrey:Well, is
Dennis Collins:that a Canadian thing or something?
Dennis Collins:Black licorice?
Dennis Collins:No, it's, it's,
Leah Bumphrey:it's a senior flavor thing anyways.
Dennis Collins:Oh, okay.
Leah Bumphrey:But knowing what it is, you wanna, I'll note that.
Leah Bumphrey:I'll
Dennis Collins:note that.
Dennis Collins:I'll ask AI whether I should have that
Leah Bumphrey:well for when I win, when I win the hockey pool this year anyways.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:Good luck.
Dennis Collins:I'm, I'm safe.
Dennis Collins:Sorry, Leah.
Dennis Collins:Love you.
Dennis Collins:So
Tom Capone:I, I love that, Leah.
Tom Capone:I love that Leah, and I do that too.
Tom Capone:I ask, I ask, not only what can you help me with, but how do you help me?
Tom Capone:How can you help me, right.
Dennis Collins:Or give me the questions that I haven't asked
Dennis Collins:you, that I should ask you.
Dennis Collins:Is that Yes.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Yes.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:These are all things that.
Dennis Collins:Our, business owners can do today.
Dennis Collins:Right.
Dennis Collins:What are the things that I need to know that I ain't smart enough to ask you?
Dennis Collins:Tell me what those are?
Tom Capone:A hundred percent.
Tom Capone:A hundred percent, yep.
Tom Capone:It's the a AI could be the best coach.
Tom Capone:It could be the best coach.
Tom Capone:And how do you use ai?
Tom Capone:To be the best coach.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Coach me on how to use you.
Dennis Collins:Right.
Dennis Collins:So I wanna move, oh, I'm sorry.
Dennis Collins:Go Leah.
Leah Bumphrey:Just a quick question.
Leah Bumphrey:Tell me if I'm crazy, I can't help myself when I'm working with ai.
Leah Bumphrey:I speak the way I would talk to Dennis or the way I talk to Paul or you.
Leah Bumphrey:Like I say, thank you.
Leah Bumphrey:I how, I do business in forms and I find that AI is kind of nice to me.
Dennis Collins:You thank your AI box.
Leah Bumphrey:Yeah, you
Dennis Collins:thank your AI bot.
Dennis Collins:Yeah, thank you.
Leah Bumphrey:I do.
Leah Bumphrey:Okay.
Leah Bumphrey:And this is another one, and I don't wanna take this too far,
Leah Bumphrey:but when I was in Austin recently, I was calling for an Uber.
Leah Bumphrey:Called for an Uber and I just went for the least expensive one.
Leah Bumphrey:I was downtown Austin and what came was this vehicle, and it's telling me that
Leah Bumphrey:you know, that my vehicle's unlocked.
Leah Bumphrey:I was afraid that my vehicle in Saskatoon was unlocked.
Leah Bumphrey:Someone broke into it at the airport.
Leah Bumphrey:Then we, then my son and I went around to get into the vehicle.
Leah Bumphrey:Here.
Leah Bumphrey:It's one of the, the, self-drive, like driverless vehicle.
Dennis Collins:Oh, yes.
Dennis Collins:The Waymo, which I have, I
Leah Bumphrey:would never get into
Dennis Collins:the Waymo cars.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:I didn't know that's
Leah Bumphrey:what it was.
Leah Bumphrey:Yeah.
Leah Bumphrey:Yeah.
Leah Bumphrey:So I went in and very polite in talking and Fletcher and I had a very, like,
Leah Bumphrey:I. That to think about going into that vehicle, but that's total ai.
Dennis Collins:Did the car talk to you?
Dennis Collins:It
Leah Bumphrey:did.
Leah Bumphrey:And it was, and she was wonderful.
Leah Bumphrey:And she even reminded me, reminded me to bring our leftovers, which I've promptly
Leah Bumphrey:forgot because I was too busy, you know, uh, recording the whole period.
Leah Bumphrey:Wait a minute.
Leah Bumphrey:How would
Dennis Collins:it know you even had leftovers?
Leah Bumphrey:That's the question, right?
Dennis Collins:Uh oh.
Dennis Collins:I think that's more than ai.
Dennis Collins:Leah.
Dennis Collins:I'm getting a little nervous about that.
Dennis Collins:Ah, it's knows a little too much about, you did know what
Dennis Collins:you did the night before.
Dennis Collins:I,
Leah Bumphrey:I, I'm, that's all I'm revealing.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm just saying, okay.
Leah Bumphrey:That I went for it and I was very happy with it.
Dennis Collins:I'm gonna go check out and see if it can tell
Dennis Collins:us what you did the night before.
Dennis Collins:That's all.
Dennis Collins:Thomas, let's back to this new business you're building.
Dennis Collins:I am a big fan of having competitive intelligence.
Dennis Collins:You know what I mean by that?
Dennis Collins:I, I wanna know about my marketplace.
Dennis Collins:What's going on in my marketplace?
Dennis Collins:What are my competitors doing?
Dennis Collins:How are they pricing?
Dennis Collins:Are they, how are they positioning?
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:I know you're gonna probably tell me it's about the data, but is
Dennis Collins:AI useful to develop competitive intelligence with the proper data?
Dennis Collins:I.
Tom Capone:I've asked AI questions about my competitors all the time.
Tom Capone:I love it when, piggyback a little off what Leah said, when AI replies to
Tom Capone:me and says, wow, what a great idea.
Tom Capone:Nothing's better than getting a compliment from my ai.
Tom Capone:And it says, yeah, I can really help with that.
Tom Capone:Do you believe those
Dennis Collins:compliments just outta curiosity?
Dennis Collins:I take them to
Tom Capone:heart.
Tom Capone:I take them to heart.
Tom Capone:I do
Dennis Collins:forms the whole day.
Dennis Collins:I have four children, absolutely.
Tom Capone:I have four young children, Dennis, I don't get,
Tom Capone:I don't get complimented often.
Dennis Collins:Really.
Dennis Collins:How about your wife?
Dennis Collins:Yeah, she probably does.
Dennis Collins:She probably compliments you a lot, Bella.
Dennis Collins:We won't go there.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:but yeah, in, in, in a very similar way, the way you can research your,
Tom Capone:your clients and prospects, you can research your competitors using ai.
Tom Capone:And one thing that is super important.
Tom Capone:If you're starting a business and whatever type of research you're
Tom Capone:trying to do is invest time.
Tom Capone:Of course we, we talked about investing time in the setup, but
Tom Capone:maybe the next step, maybe even before that, but invest some time and take
Tom Capone:a class on a prompting framework.
Tom Capone:Ah, okay.
Tom Capone:Google has very simple prompting frameworks.
Tom Capone:One of them, they, they call, uh, PTCF, like it's persona, task, context, format,
Tom Capone:and it shows you how to talk to an ai.
Tom Capone:Like Leah said, you gotta talk to an AI like it's a person.
Tom Capone:But if I was asking you to do a task for me, Dennis, as wise, intelligent,
Tom Capone:and expertise you have and good
Leah Bumphrey:looking, he's good looking too,
Tom Capone:and good looking as well.
Tom Capone:Without the right context, without the right ask and without understanding
Tom Capone:the why behind what I'm looking for.
Tom Capone:You probably would do, I hate to say this 'cause I don't know
Tom Capone:how you could do an average job.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:But if Dennis, I know agree that if you know a. The persona, who
Tom Capone:you, why you're researching, who you're acting as as a researcher.
Tom Capone:What is the task you're trying to accomplish?
Tom Capone:Some background, context, and the format in which I want that information back.
Tom Capone:That's that Google framework, persona, task, context, format.
Tom Capone:You're gonna, I know you're gonna provide me back a better result than not
Tom Capone:only you would've before, but probably that anybody else in the world can.
Tom Capone:Right.
Tom Capone:That's 'cause that's you.
Tom Capone:That's Dennis.
Tom Capone:That's Dennis.
Tom Capone:Colin.
Dennis Collins:Wow.
Dennis Collins:That's an interesting thought, isn't it?
Dennis Collins:P, how do you say this again?
Dennis Collins:PTFC.
Tom Capone:PTCF is one of the frameworks.
Tom Capone:Oh, I got it.
Tom Capone:Backwards P. Yeah, there's course summaries.
Tom Capone:C-F-P-T-C-F, persona, task context, format, and there are some Google even
Tom Capone:summaries if you don't wanna take the whole course that are like 30 minutes
Tom Capone:to an hour long, but you could take a much, far more in depth course.
Tom Capone:Okay.
Tom Capone:Which really helps to prepare the ais.
Leah Bumphrey:What I find is there's so many courses being offered right now.
Leah Bumphrey:Thomas and I sign up for them or, or it's a masterclass or
Leah Bumphrey:it's a, and within 15 minutes, sometimes they give me 20 minutes.
Leah Bumphrey:They are hardcore selling me on their system course.
Leah Bumphrey:Yeah.
Leah Bumphrey:And.
Leah Bumphrey:Maybe they're the best in the world, but as a salesperson, salesperson,
Leah Bumphrey:that turns me off completely because I got sucked into some, and I
Leah Bumphrey:don't mind paying for knowledge and paying for the opportunity to learn.
Leah Bumphrey:But there's so many and they're so vast, and they're all telling
Leah Bumphrey:me the other ones are stupid.
Leah Bumphrey:And some of them are even smart enough when I unsubscribe to figure
Leah Bumphrey:out how to resubscribe themselves.
Leah Bumphrey:I don't like that either.
Leah Bumphrey:So I, I love hearing from a professional like you.
Leah Bumphrey:Okay, here's something.
Leah Bumphrey:This is valid.
Leah Bumphrey:This is something that I can learn with, but how?
Leah Bumphrey:How do you navigate this?
Leah Bumphrey:I guess that's why you, yeah.
Leah Bumphrey:That's your business.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:No, I, I'll say that I, I get that a lot.
Tom Capone:And actually nowadays, I feel like any amount of research that I'm
Tom Capone:doing online tends to come with an ulterior motive and a bias, right?
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:So it's difficult sometimes.
Tom Capone:Uh, but I mean, who, who else can you trust in Google?
Tom Capone:I'm sure they have plenty of things to sell, but probably there are tools for You
Tom Capone:and me are the smallest of their worries.
Tom Capone:But I actually, I actually do a lot of, I'll find some experts
Tom Capone:who are summarizing these courses.
Tom Capone:And, and you know, depending on how deep you want to get, you can
Tom Capone:get a course summary in 30 minutes.
Tom Capone:Um, from a course that might've been a three or four day long course, right?
Tom Capone:Mm-hmm.
Tom Capone:So there's, you could get the highlights or the cliff notes, so to say.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Tom Capone:And that's another thing is, you know, you can also then throw that into
Tom Capone:AI and start asking questions, start asking your own questions about it.
Tom Capone:Yes.
Tom Capone:I do that a lot.
Tom Capone:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Take a cut.
Dennis Collins:I learned.
Dennis Collins:Take a transcript from something that you like, right?
Dennis Collins:Take a transcript, put it into AI and say, give me the top 10
Dennis Collins:bullet points from this transcript.
Dennis Collins:What are the findings?
Dennis Collins:What are the conclusions?
Dennis Collins:what's the point of this whole, conversation?
Dennis Collins:And give it to me in bullet point summary.
Dennis Collins:Have you ever tried that, Thomas?
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:I love it.
Dennis Collins:I actually did it yesterday.
Dennis Collins:I said, give me the top seven books ever published in a certain area.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:I want the top seven books.
Dennis Collins:I want a 20 point bullet point summary of each book.
Dennis Collins:I want the finding.
Dennis Collins:What is the core finding of that book?
Dennis Collins:And then I want you to take all of those seven books and give
Dennis Collins:me what they teach in common.
Dennis Collins:Whoa.
Leah Bumphrey:Okay.
Leah Bumphrey:I don't care what the topic was, but share that with me.
Leah Bumphrey:That sounds
Dennis Collins:no.
Leah Bumphrey:Fabulous.
Leah Bumphrey:I'm
Dennis Collins:not That costs money, Leah.
Dennis Collins:Come on.
Dennis Collins:Proprietary prompts.
Dennis Collins:Yeah,
Leah Bumphrey:proprietary prompts.
Leah Bumphrey:I love that.
Leah Bumphrey:We can't
Dennis Collins:leave this conversation.
Dennis Collins:Oh, is that producer Paul Chiming in.
Dennis Collins:Producer Paul, by the way, has just written a book about the secret.
Dennis Collins:Yeah, but I just wanna tell him you have written the book and I am going to provide
Dennis Collins:him with a copy as soon as it's published.
Dennis Collins:The Secret Formulas of Artificial Intelligence.
Dennis Collins:So, uh, boomer is not only our partner and our friend, but he
Dennis Collins:is, uh, also in the AI space.
Dennis Collins:What do you, I'd love your comments, Paul, on, on what we've talked about so far.
Dennis Collins:We're getting towards the end here.
Dennis Collins:We gotta wrap this up.
Dennis Collins:But what are you thinking about what we've talked about?
Dennis Collins:Yep.
Dennis Collins:We're gonna
Dennis Collins:have, should we have it?
Dennis Collins:We should have him back.
Dennis Collins:Huh?
Dennis Collins:When Tom writes his book, we're gonna have him back to promote his book.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:Excellent.
Dennis Collins:I I, I don't think we can leave this conversation though, without talking.
Dennis Collins:You brought up the, P word.
Dennis Collins:Well, there's two P words.
Dennis Collins:Preparation.
Dennis Collins:I. Paul Boomer and Thomas Capone, and the other P word is prompts.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:Those who are just trying to get, you know, people that tell me, yeah, I use ai.
Dennis Collins:I know all the prompts.
Dennis Collins:I know how to do that.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:Well, when you dig into it, you find out they don't.
Dennis Collins:What is the role of the prompt in getting the proper output,
Tom Capone:Thomas?
Tom Capone:Dennis, the prompt is the heart and soul of the output of your ai.
Tom Capone:Okay.
Tom Capone:We mentioned earlier that AI struggles on long tail complex
Tom Capone:tasks, so I would say break things down into clear, smaller requests.
Tom Capone:This is where AI excels.
Tom Capone:Okay.
Tom Capone:Start small test, expand on it if it works.
Tom Capone:AI is the most powerful when it's practical and when your ask is specific.
Tom Capone:Specific and
Dennis Collins:practical.
Dennis Collins:Okay, good.
Dennis Collins:Got it.
Dennis Collins:Specific
Tom Capone:and practical and, prompting is everything.
Tom Capone:Prompting is everything.
Tom Capone:Asking the right questions,
Dennis Collins:and as you said, there are a lot of resources out
Dennis Collins:there to help you with your prompts.
Dennis Collins:Right.
Dennis Collins:I don't think a day goes by in my feed that I don't get 10 different ads,
Dennis Collins:as Leah said, you know, they're all ads, they're trying to sell something,
Dennis Collins:but there's inform, hey, hey, do you need the next 150 best prompts?
Dennis Collins:Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Dennis Collins:They're out there.
Dennis Collins:And I guess the, key is, uh, getting the ones that you really need, and
Dennis Collins:yes, sir,
Dennis Collins:of course.
Tom Capone:Yeah, great.
Tom Capone:Great question and I'll say that, um, you don't always
Tom Capone:necessarily need a prompt engineer.
Tom Capone:Like anything in a business, as you grow, need to become clear.
Tom Capone:But what is important as a business is protecting your information.
Tom Capone:Protecting your IP and protecting your company, right?
Tom Capone:And so rolling out AI to your staff, it's, a culture and it's a culture that requires
Tom Capone:guidelines and guardrails, as you know.
Tom Capone:So it becomes letting the staff know what tools we can use, what we can use it
Tom Capone:for, what we shouldn't be using it for.
Tom Capone:And how to use it.
Tom Capone:And so just like there's sales training, just like there's all
Tom Capone:kinds of training in your business, your AI philosophy as a company, I
Tom Capone:think needs to, from my perspective, needs to be, progressive thinking and
Tom Capone:forward thinking, but also needs to come with guardrails and with, yes.
Tom Capone:Uh, I wouldn't know, know if I'd say caution, but with a strategy.
Dennis Collins:That's interesting.
Dennis Collins:Yeah.
Dennis Collins:You and I have talked about certain companies that have not had the
Dennis Collins:training and the cultural updates, and they throw it at somebody and say,
Dennis Collins:do this, this is what we're doing, and they have no idea how to do it.
Dennis Collins:So, uh, I think, a, key warning is you cannot just say, this
Dennis Collins:is now part of what we do.
Dennis Collins:Just do it without assimilating it into the culture.
Dennis Collins:Would that be fair to say?
Tom Capone:I would agree a hundred percent.
Tom Capone:I would agree.
Tom Capone:A hundred percent.
Dennis Collins:Hey, before we, we, I have one last question, but
Dennis Collins:before we leave, I wanna remind our Connect & Convert listeners and viewers.
Dennis Collins:We are brought to you by the Wizard Academy, right?
Dennis Collins:Leah Bumphrey.
Dennis Collins:Tell us about the Wizard academy.
Leah Bumphrey:Wizard academy.org.
Leah Bumphrey:One of our favorite places, right, Dennis.
Leah Bumphrey:And it's because.
Leah Bumphrey:Really it is, it combines the cutting edge of we're talking tools, the cutting
Leah Bumphrey:edge of tools that businesses need, along with the, traditional wisdom of
Leah Bumphrey:imagination, of music, of writing, of what it means to connect with people.
Leah Bumphrey:That's why I love the classes there.
Leah Bumphrey:I mean, they're not afraid of getting into ai, uh, what it, what it means,
Leah Bumphrey:what it should mean, any kind of tools, but also in concert with, wait a minute.
Leah Bumphrey:What makes you, you, what's your origin story?
Leah Bumphrey:Why is it so wholeheartedly?
Leah Bumphrey:This?
Leah Bumphrey:This is a, this is a a Wizard academy.org sponsored event here with Thomas, because
Leah Bumphrey:it absolutely calculates all those things.
Dennis Collins:Thank you, Leah, and uh, thank you Thomas.
Dennis Collins:I have one more question.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:One last question.
Dennis Collins:Let's leave our audience with.
Dennis Collins:Some words of wisdom.
Dennis Collins:Uh, we always like to close our podcast with some action steps, okay?
Dennis Collins:With what can we do today?
Dennis Collins:Monday morning, actions, what can we do, Thomas, if you were advising
Dennis Collins:our small business owners, our business leaders, our founders, our
Dennis Collins:sales leaders, sales managers, what.
Dennis Collins:If there was one or two things that they should do if they're not already doing
Dennis Collins:it, one or two things they should, they must do to get on board the AI train.
Dennis Collins:What would those things be?
Tom Capone:Dennis, I think that for the business owners or the business
Tom Capone:leaders that are not currently leveraging AI or don't know how,
Dennis Collins:yes,
Tom Capone:the first thing that I would do is what we talked about a lot today.
Tom Capone:Is, invest some time in learning, invest some time in learning prompts, and
Tom Capone:from there, invest time in the setup of the tools that can work for you.
Tom Capone:Right?
Tom Capone:And you know.
Tom Capone:Mr. Paul mentioned earlier that it takes time to do all this stuff, but this is
Tom Capone:one of the things you'll do in life that will give you that time back tenfold.
Tom Capone:You'll be so much more productive, so much more efficient in your business and your
Tom Capone:personal life and, moving forward if you can leverage these tools for yourself.
Tom Capone:So invest time, it's a guaranteed payoff.
Tom Capone:There's not a lot of guarantees in life.
Dennis Collins:Wow.
Dennis Collins:I like what you just said, guaranteed payoff.
Dennis Collins:Folks.
Dennis Collins:Did you hear that?
Dennis Collins:Here's the expert in AI who works in the space every day.
Dennis Collins:Spend time, figure it out.
Dennis Collins:It's a guaranteed payoff.
Dennis Collins:I love it.
Dennis Collins:There are no guarantees, but Thomas just made one.
Dennis Collins:Okay, Tom.
Dennis Collins:Hey, I can't thank you enough for being our guest today.
Dennis Collins:ladies and gentlemen, you've been listening to Thomas Capone.
Dennis Collins:He's Vice President of Business Development for Concepta Technologies.
Dennis Collins:Okay.
Dennis Collins:You can find him on all the social media.
Dennis Collins:If you're looking to get in touch with Tom, he is on Facebook
Dennis Collins:on this one, on that one.
Dennis Collins:He's everywhere.
Dennis Collins:He's everywhere.
Dennis Collins:And uh, and if you can't
Leah Bumphrey:find him as ai, AI will track him.
Dennis Collins:Yeah, AI will find him.
Dennis Collins:Ai AI knows exactly where he is at.
Dennis Collins:So ai.
Dennis Collins:This has been a stimulating conversation, I knew it would be.
Dennis Collins:Thank you for adding to, uh, the knowledge base of our listeners and viewers.
Dennis Collins:Uh, we're gonna have you back, buddy, and, uh, thanks.
Dennis Collins:Thanks for a great show.
Dennis Collins:Uh, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode.
Dennis Collins:On behalf of Leah, I'm Dennis and goodbye For now, tune in
Dennis Collins:again for the next episode of
Dennis Collins:Connect
Dennis Collins:& Convert.
