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Cyber Crime Junkies

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Cyber Crime Junkies

A.I. to Improve Human Engagement

September 23, 2023 • Cyber Crime Junkies-David Mauro • Season 3 • Episode 1

LINKEDIN TOP VOICE and AI pioneer, Thomas Helfrich joins us in the studio. Thomas is the founder of https://www.instantlyrelevant.com/ a progressive lead generation marketing company leveraging AI to improve human engagement and accelerate humans, not replace them. He has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine and other top national and international media.

Topics: ai to improve human engagement , ai to improve social media engagement , how to increase engagement on LinkedIn, understanding LinkedIn impressions, AI for better LinkedIn engagement, How To Leverage AI for Social Networking, LinkedIn top voice, Thomas Helfrich, instantly relevant, how to leverage ai for your brand, how to leverage ai for social media, new ways to leverage ai for social media, new ways you can engage better on LinkedIn with ai, how you can engage better on LinkedIn with ai, how companies can leverage ai for social media, new ways companies can leverage ai for social media, effective ways companies can leverage ai for social media.

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AI to Improve Human Engagement

[00:00:00] Come join us as we dive deeper behind the scenes of security and cybercrime today, interviewing top leaders from around the world and sharing true cybercrime stories to raise awareness. But first, a huge thank you to all of our executive co producers who subscribed to our Prime membership and fueled our growth.

So please help us keep this going by subscribing for free to our YouTube channel and downloading our episodes on Apple or Spotify podcasts so we can continue to bring you more of what matters. This is Cyber Crime Junkies. And now the show.

All right. Well, welcome everybody. We are excited about today. I am your host, David Mauro, Cyber Crime Junkies. In the studio with me is my [00:01:00] illustrious, always positive, fantabulous co host from my app of insincere things to say to coworkers, Mark. Mosher, Mark, Cory, man, you know, and I always take those as very sincere words coming from you.

So glad to know that you're using an app. So specifically talking about leveraging. intelligence and technology to make yourself look or appear different or move yourself forward through life. We've got a guest on today that is going to tell us all things we need to know. David, who's in the studio with us today?

Thomas Helfrich joins us in the studio to talk about how to leverage AI for your brand. He's the founder of Instantly Relevant, a progressive lead generation marketing company, leveraging AI to accelerate humans, not replace them. And he's been featured in a ton of media, including Entrepreneur Magazine, which he is also a key contributor to.

Welcome. Thank you, David. Mark, I appreciate you for having me, and I can't wait to meet that [00:02:00] guest that's gonna talk about what Mark just did. . Yeah, I know. You know, for a small fee.

For a small fee, I can intro you like that into all your Zoom meetings as you walk into a room or a conference room. So let's talk about AI so, I don't know, but if I was a betting man, I think it might be kind of big. I mean, it, it seems like it's, it's, it seems like it's exploding.

There are so many different organizations using it in a bunch of different ways. Some of it responsibly, some of it not. But you've found a way and you've created this company. I want you to share it with everybody. Walk us through kind of Instantly Relevant. And then after that, I want to get to kind of your background and how you came to, you know, what, what drives you and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, whenever we can lead off as a marketing company with a plug about what we do. Yeah, I figured I'd give it to you right up front, man. Right. Why wait to the last minute to do something? Absolutely. So I found Instantly Relevant com about three years ago. And it's, you know, [00:03:00] we're an agency, but we really focus on leveraging, you know, AI and other technologies to accelerate humans, not replace them in the course of generating revenue.

So what we've come up with is a revenue system and, you know, 99 percent of our customers at this point here in 2023. really come to us first. Our tip of spear is for LinkedIn. We, we leverage technology and a system and people first to teach people and execute for them in a done for you fashion to not just generate leads, but now you've generated a customer.

That's all going to happen in our system. It's how to get into become like a promoter and transcender. And to do that, we leverage a ton of tech, all human led to drive those processes to for better outcomes, better speed, better cost effectiveness and value. Yeah, I mean, you really have a, you really have a unique approach to it, like the way that you're leveraging the tool to actually have meaningful dialogue and begin conversations, which is really what it's all about.

It's not gimmicky at all. It's like you really are able to allow people to [00:04:00] provide their input. on what other people are posting and commenting on, right? At scale. I mean, can you walk us through just a little bit about kind of what it does for, for, for a person who wants to build their brand? Yeah.

It's a person or a sales team or just people are out there trying to generate revenue. I think it's important to understand that it's, you know, How our system thinks and I want you to think about this is when you're going through and we use LinkedIn as the example, just so it's tangible there's really kind of three phases you need to go through and we have kind of three steps you need to do.

And it's not by chance. It just really kind of worked out that way. And I was like, Oh, cool. It's a grid, right? It works. It's prettier for display purposes, but the three phases you kind of go through is you need to set up a core. Foundation. That's very intentional. And to do that, you really have to do the three steps of know who your ideal customer profile is to the profile.

One understand what content you need to create. That's in a what's in it for me format. So it resonates specifically with that profile of one. It's [00:05:00] not like just generally good. It's just, it's really built for the profile one and third, make sure your profile is optimized to, you know, draw inbound interest, answer three main questions.

You know, why should I click on it? What does it do for me? Why should I take your call to action in that order? And if you have that set up, then you're really ready to go start doing connections and outreach. Now, where a lot of people fall down is they use automation AI to just spam the living hell out of people for it's so annoying.

It's so annoying. Like it, like what I, what I love about your organization and this platform is it's not what I see out there in the market. Like what I see out there in the market is we will spam people. As soon as you connect, you're going to, and I get them and I could tell that they're using these systems.

Somebody asked you to connect, you connect, and then you get hit with this long, you know, sales enablement thing is like, Oh, if you're, if you're running, I see you're in the manufacturing industry. And I'm like, I'm not in the manufacturing industry. Like, [00:06:00] like it's so automated. It's, it's, it's crap. Yeah. So it's specifically, so just me as a point of creds, right?

So there's 722 million users on LinkedIn. LinkedIn designated me as top voice for lead generation and marketing strategy. So of all those people, the way we've contributed, the way we've presented our brand, our content, how we interact with their contributed articles, there's a reason they did that. And, and the way that our system works and the way that we teach people to do this, or we do it for you is.

is first a fundamental understanding in that phase of connect of how the social media algorithms are intended to work. So any social media algorithms will typically work on, but specifically in the example of LinkedIn, we're going through, if you take the time to. You know, if you know the ideal customer profile, you're ready to go.

Your profile is looking good. You got some content ready. If you go out there and just comment sincerely with some kind of thoughtful comment and ask a provocative question, you'll drive a conversation in the comments. And if you reply back into that comment in a way that's, you know, also thoughtful and maybe ask them to say, Hey, I'd like [00:07:00] to stay in touch.

And you mean it send me a connection request. They likely will. And if you follow up with a connection request to them said, Hey, I enjoyed your post about fill in the blank. I'd love to stay in touch with you if you'd like to find some time to network. Here's my link. Or maybe you get more specific in that motion.

This is what I do. I'd like to hear more what you do. If you'd like to talk about, you know what I do and we can learn from each other, then grab it. Otherwise, great to be a connection. There's, there's ways to do that. But as soon as you fundamentally have given somebody the vanity first, you first of all, you've gone through what the social media algorithms want you to do, which is engagement.

You could do unlimited engagement other people's posts as long as you're not spamming. You're restricted on. Comments restricted on messages. You're restricted on everything else that could be perceived as spam, but on engagement, that's allowed at a mass level. I do about 6, 000 of these a month. And so, and so it's all inbound.

If you've set these things up where your hashtags are correct. And the things you're posting about are correct. And the things that you offer me, how you talk about in a way that are unique, those things work in tandem. So when people [00:08:00] search for those things, they find you. And if you do it correctly and you actually are an expert, you can become a top voice.

And so there, so what we recommend to everybody is. Stop with the automation. Now there's a place for it that you can leverage it. And I'll explain that, but start on the first, in that phase, when you start connecting, start by giving actual engagement and don't ask for anything, see, and I think that's where you guys are really unique because a lot of those platforms, David, you know, we've, we've demoed several of them that they literally take the human factor out.

Whereas you're injecting the humor factor, human factor in, right? Like, don't make it all automated. Don't make it, like David said, sound spammy or, or just auto populated with, with nothing meaningful. But you, you're actually telling people get engaged, be thoughtful, be mindful, be interested, not just interested.

And the platform simply allows you to do that at scale. Yeah. I mean, that's. It's encouraged. And so, so our starter type of where we bring [00:09:00] people in typically as a customer, we do this about 20, 30 times a day for them, or they will teach them how to do it. And that's enough to make move the needle, right?

So we used to do say, Hey, start at 10. It doesn't move the needle. But if you're doing 20, 30 new second connects and you're out there and you have all this stuff set up correctly from your profile optimization, all that You know, there's real science behind that, right? But if you start doing this sincerely, now this is where the AI piece comes in.

We use AI and we teach people how to use AI to create that thoughtful comment that keeps it to the bounds of your, of the content presented in the post. And it asks a provocative question that can think about it in a way that you won't. And when you make that piece, then you're, you're in there. Actually driving a conversation and the human will almost always reply almost longer than their post.

I mean over 50% of the time. Wow. They'll definitely reply 99% of the time, and you'll be the comment that everyone sees on that post. So anybody who's interested in that kind of stuff is now gonna see you. And well, that's where I find and that's where I really like the platform, LinkedIn personally.

But I, I find a lot of value. I learn a lot of things from it. Right? Because when there's a topic, and it could be anything, like no matter what [00:10:00] vertical you're in, no matter what industry you're in, when there's a topic that's being discussed, you're able to, there's, there's something about to play in the LinkedIn space.

You have to be professional. You have to have a professional courtesy. there, right? And so it's, it doesn't devolve like Facebook can, right? Or, or, you know, it's not all about like narcissism, like some of the other ones, right? It's really, it's really, really. Good. And so you can kind of get a, you know, what I like about it is some news breaks and there's some comment on it and you see one side, you see the other side, and then there's like this dialogue back and forth.

And I'm like, this is like watching point counterpoint or crossfire back in the day. Oh my God. Do you still carry a diners club card? Oh my God. Yeah. I love crossfire. Like, you know, there was, there was a topic in here, like the Democrats on one side, the Republicans on the other. And you're like, okay, I agree.

Okay. I agree. Like they're both got good [00:11:00] points. Like they can't both be right. Like it's, it's really interesting. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. So it was really kind of cool. I, I, I love the platform. So we will have a link to it in the show notes. We encourage everybody to check it out.

We'll circle, circle back to it throughout this conversation. But how did you get started in this? Like, how did you Fine. Like, was there an event? Did you grow up surrounded by technology? Was, were you a gamer as a kid? Were you, you know, what was it? I mean, listen, I had original Atari, Nintendo. That, that does not make me a gamer.

It makes me somebody who goes back now and goes, I have no idea how to use this controller. Right, right. Why is it so small? There's like 50 buttons on them now. I mean, also I'm like, I can't, ow. Fun . So that's like, I don't, we have an Xbox anyways. That's not how it started. So maybe go back to, you know, I've always liked technology and, and how it works.

I'm, you know, I'm born out of.com time. I definitely remember myself being a better developer than, [00:12:00] than I was. Mm-hmm. Just plight of something in their forties, like, I was so good. You have to be. See me in my, in my, you could have seen me clicking away back. I was so smart in my twenties. Oh, I knew everything through my thirties started getting dumber in my forties and now I'm successful.

Side note, the other day I'm walking through this area of Alpharetta, you a Ferrari there and

the license plate says GPA or 2. 1 GPA. 2. 1 GPA. God bless

you. Like I'll share a quick story. When I was younger, I used to trade at the options exchange. And you go down there and it's all guys like that. They're like, I don't understand. You're going to like grad school? You're like, why? Like, I barely got out of high school. And they're like getting in their jet to fly to France later that day.

You're like, how? Like only in America can that happen. [00:13:00] Right. It was just crazy. I would definitely speak slowly to them. Hey, I really like , but, but I mean, like, but I'm I, sorry. And he'll be like, get in your minivan, sir. I'm like, yes, sir. . Yep. Okay. Unaligned, new tires, minivan. Do you see how my number one skill's taken over?

I can derail any meeting if allowed. Oh, yeah, too. It's all I do. Oh what was the question actually, I forget now. Oh, the background? Yeah, like an event, a trigger. Like is this Yeah, no. It's progressive. So com that fell apart, did a startup back then on marketing and, you know, around credit services and, and, and mortgage and that kind of morphed into owning like a mortgage company.

And, you know, and then that fell apart. So got back into, you know, technology got headhunted to run you know an agile team for the cyber command for DOD, you know, through Accenture. And that took me back on the exterior. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. You're on, you're on Cyber Crime Junkies.

You can't just like that. Walk away. I did a little thing. Yeah. I did a [00:14:00] little thing for the Department of Defense through Accenture. Like. What was that? How's that for a question? Or can you know...

Some visual representations to do tactical administration of the global information grid for the warfighter So when they're in theater having issues, there's different things that pop up You know, one of the use cases was, you know, networks are going down to get up, you know to get up updated Whatever is to determine if one of the things they had a big problem with you find a predator mission It's going through multiple, you know Networks.

Very, very fast sometimes, and some there's, there's also command and control above it that's even going faster. How do you keep all that in line? And if a circuit goes down, do we want to know if it's part of a maintenance schedule that was a oops, forgot, or did it get taken out? And so knowing that in real time and showing that these things were kind of coming, hey, this is about to go down, that's a grid pre route, pre map.

That, that's what we were doing. So we were doing some cool stuff with just enabling Warfighter, and it went on beyond [00:15:00] that. That's the, that was pretty nasty to do that. Is that like, you're just walking, you're like at a bar and somebody goes, Hey, would you want me evaluating the real time grid for, for, for our fighters?

No, that's, that's I mean, that's one of the bursts of discovery of, of, of maybe where I am now. Right. Is because I got a small story. My boss at the time is now a personal friend of mine. He said, Hey, I need you to go down to Barksdale air force base and talk to the Colonel of the base. I'm not from this world.

I have no idea what this means. I don't even have a CAT card, which is your access card to get on base. I had security clearance, so I thought it was cool. So I show up to the wrong address where all private contractors are allowed with a CAT card, because I was told to go there. And they had me sitting there, and I'm like, hey, I'm here to meet the colonel, and I can't, for the life of me, I can't remember, but he runs the base.

And they're looking at me like, And this is like the CEO of a company and Barksdale Air Force Base, by the way, has cyber command nuclear missiles, like it's, it's a big deal. Like it's got all the buffs, you know, the big giant. And you're like, I'm here to see the colonel. He's like the. Boss guy [00:16:00] here. I mean, he's like, you don't get time with him.

He's months booked. I mean, these things have the buffs, like the big, ugly, fat, like that, that land, that's what they're called anyway. So I'm sitting in the guard booth and they're like, they don't have to do with me for four hours. And they finally put me on a Jeep that takes me to the colonels. Cause they don't know what to do with me.

And they hand me off to his CEO. And he's like, do you have an appointment? I'm like, no, I'm just here to tell him what we could do for the war fighter. And I'm there for another four hours. And he comes in, he looks at me one time, goes in his office, comes back an hour later, it comes down and goes, what the.

Do you want, I got 2 million and I'm here to build something for your, for your war fighter. And he's like, come in here. And then his demeanor changed. And so I got put in. Great. And so we just talked and he was describing all these problems. Like I said, I have 2 million, not a billion. I was to all of my consultants and sales teams.

Did you see that drop in that he did? He just showed up. Had some value to give up front, stuck around. I'm telling you, they gave it Mark. I I could have been arrested. , I'm telling [00:17:00] you're not supposed to be there. And then pronou out. Really nice officer. The arrest could be arrested. That's what it's about.

It's hilarious. The CO anyway ended up is still still a friend of mine and we became friends over time. And as you get to know them, just. That's consulting. So, so from that, my background has been consulting professional services for the, you know, KP, KPMGs of the world, kind of like and I specifically developed an expertise about 10 years ago around intelligent automation AI.

So this is when Watson was getting a lot of press and this thing called robotic process automation was coming out and it's more of an intelligent automation. And my point of view of this is specifically that you leverage these technologies to accelerate humans. And automate parts of process you shouldn't do, but not replace them.

So these technologies should be human led because they're very powerful. And they're there for us, made by us to make us do more important things. I took those, you know, and that, that took me up to, you know becoming a chief innovation officer of a billion dollar services company in the U S. The ironic thing, as you mentioned, I've never been promoted a whole way, whole [00:18:00] different story.

That's why there's a book and a website or a podcast about it, but we're not going to get it today. But that's that whole, we are, we are a little, we are a

little, well, it's a great story, but Okay. So that's kind of how you, how you got to that. Yeah. And then, you know, you get, you know, you go through the cycle of, you know, you're a CXO and it's your first time and you get laid off and they'll let you go for, you're doing great. And all of a sudden they're like, Hey, we don't have value here anymore.

Like what? And then you're like, next, you know, it ends with you being home repair guy in the middle of COVID, you know, Shooting some trim up from the camera. She just hung and then you put an 18 gauge nail through the middle of your finger. And I do mean directly in the middle of your finger. And you're like, and that's not the epiphany moment.

It's when you pull it out and you don't bleed. That was the aha moment. That's that, that it's not what it's in there. And you're looking at it going, yeah, that's right in the middle. It's when you pull it out and you don't bleed and you go. Why did you throw a nail in my face? I must be made of, I must be made of cheeseburgers and [00:19:00] Gatorade.

I don't know what happened. I thought I'm soulless. I know all this stuff about AI. And then I was like, I got to think of something. I got way too much in my brain. And that's, that's I started with this idea that AI could accelerate content. So I started AI Nerd. The YouTube channel. And then as that evolved, I saw that a big problem of marketing existed, that there was just so many people in marketing and they produce so little for how much money we spent over time.

And I was like, I think I can use the principles of intelligent automation in marketing. And then we just kept, I just kept niching down. So this is a big thing for entrepreneurs and people who listen to this, right? Keep niching down to what the hell it is you drive the highest value for. And then leverage technology accordingly to accelerate the whole idea.

And that's how I've gotten to where I am, just high level. And that's how we've built this system and that's what the three phases kind of take you through to go do that. So when you were first engaging with AI, were you working with like open AI or anything? West or how, how, how did you engage, like what platforms of AI were you first experimenting with?

Yeah, absolutely. So open AI for [00:20:00] sure. So we got early access to beta almost three years ago. It's been, it's been way ahead of everybody else. And so we, I quickly, you know, this is actually one of those things in business where we pivoted the company as soon as we got access. Cause we were like, Hey, we want to build a content creating machine for long form and make people.

And that's how we started off as a company. And then once we kind of got access to open AI, we saw the playground. Of it, we were like, Oh gosh, this, I was like, this is going to get commoditized very quickly. And what's going to matter is what you do with the content and how you leverage it in the context of actual human interactions.

So I saw a rebound of people wanting more human interactions in the future that are supported by technology to. Express your, your value, your express, whatever you want to say better less so than just spam me because it's no longer an advantage once you have the ability to create it unlimitedly. So it's what you do with it.

It's going to matter. So I saw that a couple years ago and pivoted the company to be what matters in marketing, which is generating leads that become revenue, and that's how we positioned everything else around that [00:21:00] sense. That's phenomenal. So the story behind Never Been Promoted. I've just never been promoted.

Actually, the book's never been published yet because it's still with me on third round of publish, but it's, it's a, it's close. I'm really, but it's 50 Lessons I Wish I Would Have Known About Life and Entrepreneurship Before Becoming an Entrepreneur. It's, you know, the subtitle is Unleash Your Entrepreneur.

And if I had done these things, or if I would do the things I'm actually writing about in the book, I'd be a better human, I'd be a better life. And so, but these are things that it's something that I didn't even consider and never knew what the impact would be. Cause when you're an entrepreneur in particular, everything's amplified.

You know, when you go to W2 job every day, you feel it's secure. It's not, that's the reality of it. It's, you can be gone at will in a second, especially in the U. S. And if you've ever been through that, it's, it's hard. And if you've been through it, you know, about six times like me, it's easy. I have been asked to leave.

That's probably my second book asked to leave, or worst employee ever. But but that, but [00:22:00] that's what it is. So I wrote the book about that to help entrepreneurs in their journey. And the podcast is really gonna, it's, if you know, it's launched, it's out there at never been promoted. com. The, you know, we're recording the filmings for it now.

And it's really about teaching. Where you went through your, you know, that unraveling part of your journey to the unbounding where you kind of figure it out and you're, now you're unleashed and you're on your own and everyone's got a story and everyone knows the pain and where you're crawling up in a corner going, I'm going to, you know, and you're going to take a nap and next thing you know you're like happy and you're sad and it's just now 11 a.

m. Right? Right, right. You've run the whole gamut of emotions before. Oh, like four or five times by lunch. Right. And you're like, that's every day. And then the afternoon too. So. Well, it's, it's good. It's it looks like you're, you're using Buzzsprout as well to to kind of distribute and host the podcast.

That's, that's what we use. I've tried almost all of them and it's just really good. Not a plug for them necessarily, but it's, I'm, I'm a happy customer. So they're, they're, they're quite good.[00:23:00] Yeah. The, the tenets around never been promoted what kind of inspired you to kind of come up with the concept and, and share it with people?

Is it, is, is it just about that entrepreneurial leap, that leap of faith from, from, you know, what people always deem is secure, even though it's not? It's a little bit more than that. That's the last step. A lot of it is about The, the feelings that start when you first start your career where you're happy making money and then as maybe you've, maybe you've gotten promoted or maybe you have it or you've taken new jobs and you know, you've jumped 30 percent or 80 percent salary and you're in there.

Then every six months it feels like you're just bored out of your mind and you really hate working for someone else's dream and you may fight it cause you got kids. You may fight it cause you got too many debt, too much car payments or whatever you have in your life that you just kind of, but you always had an idea of doing something else and it's always itching at you and aching at you.

What's happening over a career is you're losing out specifically to people who have passion for what they do as a W 2, they are happy in that, they love working for somebody, [00:24:00] they love the order of it, and they have, and they're talented, and they're passionate, and they're trained, you're going to lose, it's going to become very evident in your mid 30s and 40s that you're behind, and it gets, and I see this all the time of entrepreneurs who are like, They just have like their midlife crisis or whatever you want to call it or entrepreneurial crisis.

And they break out because they knew they never fit. And now they're just, they have maybe enough money saved or whatever, whatever they are in their journey that now they're ready to go out. That's scary as shit where you go making maybe hundreds of thousand dollars a year as an executive or a. And you're like, Hey, I'm going to go not make any for a few.

And, and, you know, like at home sometimes you're asked to leave and you're, you know, but it's about that. And it doesn't mean you have to be that person, but he, cause like the idea for the book is it helps people in their jobs anyway, if you think like an entrepreneur, where you're taking action, you're thinking through problems, you're, you're trying to solve stuff and your organization rewards that thinking you're in a good spot.

You may want to, that might, you can't get much better than that. What I found was every time you're creative or aggressive with an [00:25:00] idea, people are threatened, left and right, who are in that and they're good. They're great with being the cog in the wheel and they're hoping one day they, you know, get the upgraded wheel, let's say.

Right. That's the wrong spot for you to be in and you're going to be asked to leave or you're going to leave yourself. So it helps people navigate that journey to unleash get out and, and just speak, I think the world needs more entrepreneurs. Like that's what our country, at least in the U. S. I completely agree.

My first, yeah, my first time I did it was. 26 years ago and left a really good paying job and like got space and did it myself. And it was kind of, you know, consulting type thing. And I just remember sitting around talking with my, like other self there going, yeah, this, this phone's not gonna ring, is it?

Like, we gotta go make it happen like it is. It was pretty, it was, but it was feeling of like free falling. Right? It was this feeling of like free falling where you still knew you were doing the right thing. And, [00:26:00] and I agree with the niching down 'cause it's exactly what we did. And then it started, it got traction, built a floor, got traction, just kept going and going.

And it's, it's, everybody sold that one. I mean that. That's it. Yeah. And you probably know, and it's okay, you're gonna go through that as a journey, right? You're gonna, I can do all these things, which is the a d d entrepreneur. And then it's focusing down to what makes money and is repeatable. The repeatable you get scale.

I'll give you an example this year in our business, you know, we're three years in revenue. We've already surpassed last year and we were almost out of business on January one of this year because we lost, we had a, we had a. A cliff of the truly like the winners coming from Game of Thrones. Like, you, you always have people who leave in the winter because they're going to go do something else in the spring and then you have a whole influx, but they don't come on until February, March and our products and services just weren't driving the right value then.

And we were like, I was like super cash crunched. I mean, we were like, holy, I was like, holy shit. Like, I'm sorry. Well, you can, we'll edit it out later. Don't you worry. Holy moly. [00:27:00] Batman. I mean, and I, and since then though, we have. You know, our MRR is, is we, we just crossed 50K this month. And, and we're on target to go to a hundred K MRR this month.

And it's because I, I just got super focused, niched down. I stopped doing things for AI nerd for my other podcasts. I even put the book on pause until I just wrote the book. Like, you know, two months, I spent the whole year. I was like, nothing else is doing except us figuring me figuring this out. And I niched down to a repeatable set of processes and products.

And we got super focused on LinkedIn because 99 percent of the people were coming to us for us because of how my profile is and how I did it. And I was like, you know what, just own that space. And once we did, I was so scared the opportunities would go away. This is like the plight of an entrepreneur.

So we had a good onboarding form for our previous podcast. It was kind of manual, whatever else we moved it all to an automated piece. It starts with the type form that goes to colony and it starts sending all the things you need to do. And by the time we get to the thing, they've got, they have had sponsorship packages put in front of them.

They, [00:28:00] it goes to the right, it's all automated now. And then it gives me plenty of contact time to work with them. The same thing on the business side is, you know, automating the onboarding as much as you can, bringing people in. So it's just more effective, efficient, repeatable, then you need less people to deliver it.

They know what they're doing more often. It becomes an assembly line of some sorts that allows for higher personalization because. , they're not busy scrambling around doing things. They're focused on delivering personalization for our customers, and that's great. The customer retention went up from maybe 60 to 90 days to now, well over seven, eight months for each customer.

Wow. We charge more. We charged probably 140% more than we did last year, and we add more value and we have higher amounts of customers because we're just doing it better and we're thinking about it better, and it's always evolving. So we're continuing probably in our practices and getting the feedback for the customers, but we've created the systems in place to.

I love it if we take some, it was also part of what's trending at the time, so mm-hmm. , if you mix trending content mixed with the hashtags, you talk about. That's now relevant to a group you're doing, you're going to get found, you're going to get viral, [00:29:00] viral content and actions.

And that's a science and that's what we do. And to do it at scale, you have to use tech, but you got to do a review and make sure it's human. Now, 6, 000 comments a month, but I'm only in LinkedIn for an hour a week. And that magic, you know, it's going to require you to do a little one on one meeting with me.

Now there's a ton of intentional behavior that goes on behind that. And that's, you just can't, anybody can't do it.

And so we're, we're testing the algorithms based on trending, how it works with your hashtags, how it works with your network's expectation and how you can bring that together with visual and comments. And I, and I consult with a lot of good, you know, really top end, high end. Influencers on LinkedIn who have like half a million, four million followers.

And so we're, we all kind of talk and I learn a lot from them.

So I, I find that the technology and the backside for production. So something like this I would take the whole transcript, dump it into, you know GPT, let's say, and say, hey, summarize it, create the product. What was the salient points of this, you know, long winded dude talking? But

that, that kind of [00:30:00] stuff, taking, you know, video clippets and making your social media immediately from it, that's fine. And there's like, there's, I mean, it's endless. I won't call it AI, but just Calendly. Let's say from Scheduling to Buzzsprout for the fact that I can in five minutes have a website up for a podcast.

I mean, come on, like it's unheard of. So there's, there's so many, I mean, it really gets into what so many organizations have been driving for decades and that is leveraging advances of technology. Right. To, to help organizations. And we haven't seen that much advances, right? Unlike the last year, at least in the, you've seen it for the last three, four years, but for the general public, it's, it's really been in the last six months to a year.

It's really, it's accelerating. To the, where intelligent automation was born from RPN AI and this stuff. So I feel like I've been around a long time, but I'm very conscious that I'm in the middle of the forest and still trying to see the forest. Right. And then, and it still blows me away when, you know, I find people who haven't heard of GPT and I'm like, [00:31:00] okay, that one, I understand it's new, but it was like probably one of the biggest announcements from out there.

But I understand where these technologies work in everyday business is it's been, I've been around a plenty long to know that the. That it's very hard problem to solve. And that's why I think the, what they did with opening eye stuff is amazing. Cause they made it in a chat so you can talk to somebody and that's right.

That's brilliant. I really liked the way that you guys. have found a way to, to not just leverage these different components, but to, it sounds like, like actually feed one to the other, right? Like you've got LinkedIn, you've got Calendly, and you've got chat, and, but they're, one's feeding the other, is feeding the other, and you've, you've networked them and meshed them together In a really unique way, man.

That's some, that's some really powerful stuff. That's the technology of Zapier. So we use Zapier quite a bit to help trigger different things. If you've not used Zapier, it's amazing from APIs, just, you're going to trigger one event that can cause another, and you can create workflows that do that.

You can create workflows that trigger other Zapiers. The, and, and so there's one of the things we don't really talk about here with a little bit though, is, you [00:32:00] know, one of our customers is, a cyber security client and he won't use some of those texts because they don't meet his cyber security level.

So this is right. And this, this comes down to corporate versus maybe small, medium business and personal is this is where the technology sometimes break down. Because if bigger companies have a lot more riding on their shareholders, they have lots of data and they have lots of money and fines for losing that data.

They have a different level of culpability, honestly, to, to make sure the technologies they're leveraging are. are appropriate to the security level of their company and their shareholders or their owners expect. And used in the right way. It's not even just about the technologies themselves, but whether they're actually implemented.

There's a lot of discussions that we have about the responsible use of it. Right? Appropriate approved use of AI is even a thing nowadays. Well, you know, one of the first things that hit out of the gate was like Samsung, right? There's a pretty sizable data breach allegedly. Because of some people putting source code in there to idiot, [00:33:00] right?

They were like, can you, can you fix this bug in the source code? Not realizing, right? That it's part of the model now. Like, hey, guess what? So imagine going, hey, can you create me an application that maybe Samsung would use to, and he goes, oh sure, here's a, here's a revised version that we've been working on for two years as an AI that they don't know about.

Right. But think about the potential of that if you had your own LLM, right? Right. It, it has, it has, and there's lots of, you know, LinkedIn's making their own and like they're, Google obviously has BARD and some others, but I think that, I think, I mean, a topic, if you guys have the time, a little bit to touch on is the transparency, the explainability and the reduced noise and bias of how AI makes a decision.

So these models and, and, and algorithms, all these little things that are out there, right? Like just to keep it simple, they're based on our perception of the world, who writes it and who puts the data into it. And a big problem with any big AI system. So true AI, where you need massive amounts of data. A lot of that data becomes synthesized.

[00:34:00] So you, cause you don't have enough. And at the synthesized data models data, that's already prebuilt bias into it. And the algorithm right there and the models that come out with their recommendations aren't explainable. And there's not transparency into why they do this. This creates a problem and potentially situations where, you get some really unfair things. So like, I think some of the the, the classic examples so far are, you know, credit being extended to a white male and not to an African American male who have exact profiles, only demographic difference in the data was Democrat, was there, was there a race and that's happened or where they lived it by zip code even, which was predominantly, let's say a certain race color.

Right. Right. And so that's happened for sure. And they're trying to, you're trying to limit that. Now, if you extrapolate that beyond, let's say just us markets, Where the rules and laws say in this country, you can do that, like, Oh, you, by the way, I can say by law, let's say in some central Europe countries, you cannot have a loan after 50 for a house.

that happens. [00:35:00] Mm-hmm. . So that's insane. You're making the most money you ever had. And like, I can't get a loan, but that's allowed, that's legal here. Hell no. That's not legal. Right? Right. And so, and then let's go maybe to another part of the world to say Middle East versus us on what's allowable for fair.

Right. And, and, and that the notion of fair versus Western culture from maybe a Middle Eastern or eastern culture even is completely different. And so, yeah. How those models that leverage the algorithms, so the algorithms are, you know, fed data that creates a model and it's, you know, it comes out with a prediction or an answer or a recommendation that is like to govern that.

Is like, that's where the world's going to move to is the responsible side of this and explain the billable side of it. And then the transparency, that's why I'm always like transparency being I'm writing a book called never been promoted. I use GPD four as my editor and recommendator and not just ghostwriter.

I give it all my personal stuff and say, can you help me make the elegant pros in this format? And it comes back and I'll modify it. But it is absolutely my ghost writer. In parallel, I've written a book [00:36:00] with an actual human ghost writer, and I like the one that GBD4 is doing for me. It's my stuff. It's better.

It really is. But it's nothing that's not public data. It's not anything that's... You know, proprietary to somebody else. It's just my viewpoint expressed with better words and tonality and consistency. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's still your ideas, right? These are your ideas, your experiences, your feedback, your insight, and you're just feeding it in.

How do I communicate that in a way that will resonate better with someone else? But I'm transparent that I'm doing it. Transparency is the key. We use AI to do, you know, some of our quotes or comments and things like this and, but it's, it's human led, meaning humans doing the posting, humans reviewing it to make sure it's not too AI ish or too out of character, like, how the hell would anybody come up with that question?

Right? Really? Like, right. No way. You have to work for NASA to know that question. And so we do that to make sure that it's, it's realistic, realistic and too bad. But that be, anyway, you have to do this because what you're going to get in situations of, you know, Are I mean, from the crime standpoint, right?

You're going to [00:37:00] have some real atrocities towards groups. There's a thing called AI narrative manipulation. So it's narrative manipulations where today we have, we have an election coming, let's say, and we're coming really quickly, but let's say eight years from now, four years from now. If you start disseminating mass amounts of information to influence a population or an area that's SEMI-TRUE, meaning it's based in truth, verified to other pieces of content of which you've created by AI that is not verified, but it looks verified, oh, specifically four years from now, it'll look verified to a bunch of resources.

Oh, right now you're creating a disillusioned fake news, if you will. I don't wanna use that term specific to one side of the world, but incorrect. It's a bias, right? It's a bias. You're steering the bias. The narrative manipulation and it's done. There's, there's companies who do this now for three letter agencies in our world.

And and they do that to influence geopolitical and it's, it's, it's known. Look, he couldn't even take it. He took it. I know. He, he ran off. Like he knew about it. He was, his, his, his, his narrative got got For those [00:38:00] listening, Mark just went off camera. Yes, exactly. Anyway, so that, that's happening and that, that's irresponsible AI.

Right. Because, you know, so I think there'll be some things in the future of blue check AI. There's like, you know, like, like, you know, this is blue check verified, just, just, just like in social media accounts. Right. Exactly. And hopefully a few steps past that, but exactly. Maybe it was really as difficult as getting a blue check in Twitter.

That's hilarious, but there's, I mean, there's a lot there. Well, that's phenomenal. What, what's on your, what's on your horizon? What's coming up next for you? Finish the book with the publisher. There we go. I got it. Are you going to self publish or what are you going to do? Yeah. So I have a publisher who's going to help me.

We're going to do it through Amazon for the first one. You know, The book I'm writing, I listen, it'd be awesome if it's a bestseller. I have no false beliefs of what it is. It's going to be, you know, if that, if somehow I've written something that's so awesome, I'm I'll be tickled [00:39:00] till I poo myself.

Right. The reality is I wrote it to help entrepreneurs, but specifically I wrote it for three people. My kids, I want them who don't know me now, but I hope if they could look at it at one point and say, Hey, this is how my dad thought about entrepreneurship and what was going on in his life in his forties.

When We were kids. I've accomplished everything I want with that kind of outlook and motivation. I have no doubt this would be a bestseller. Absolutely. We'll see how AI does with it. I was just going to say, I think you might be able to leverage advances to like, there may be some technology. It comes down to like promotion, right?

That's phenomenal. Well, Thomas Helfrich from Instantly Relevant link will be in the show notes. Please check it out. And find him on LinkedIn. Because your content and the way, just even looking at your profile is phenomenal. Like there were several of us who changed ours after reading yours.

We're like, this is really, well, because you still ask the right questions. Like you take it from the perspective of [00:40:00] somebody that's looking at it. What do they get out of it? Why would they call? Why would they be engaging with you on your call, on, on your call to action? All of those aspects. Phenomenal.

Just absolutely phenomenal. Wish you nothing but the best, not the last time we're going to talk because things evolve. I want to check in with you again and see how things are going. It's my pleasure. I would love it. I appreciate the time today, guys. I really do. Thank you so much. Awesome, man. Check them out and we will talk to everybody later.

Thank you so much, everybody.

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David Mauro

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