Business Problem Solvers with Eric Alspaugh, Episode 01

In this inaugural episode of Business Problem Solvers, Eric Alspaugh speaks with Philip Topham, Principal for The Savvy Founder. Philip’s mission is to build a better future by helping business leaders build companies that are building a better future.

Tune in to the episode to hear about:

• Philip’s take on the evolution of Generative AI and ChatGPT — how and why it has not taken the main stage
• Why Philip believes the use of AI will substantially increase productivity
• Who and how people and businesses are going to be using AI and Chat GPT — and how they should be using it
• Advice and recommended beginning steps for businesses that want to introduce AI into their workflow

Learn more about Philip Topham:

• Connect with Philip on LinkedIn
• Follow The Savvy Founder on LinkedIn
• Visit The Savvy Founder’s online
• Listen to The Savvy Founder on Apple
• Listen to The Savvy Founder on Amazon
• Listen to The Savvy Founder on Spotify
• Listen to the Savvy Founder on ListenNotes
• Book a no-cost AI Advisory call with Philip

Disclaimer. The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult with a qualified attorney or legal advisor to address your specific legal needs.

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About Business Problem Solvers:

Welcome to Business Problem Solvers Podcast, where legal insight meets entrepreneurial innovation. Are you a startup founder navigating the complex legal landscape of entrepreneurship? Are you seeking practical advice, actionable strategies, and expert guidance to propel your business forward? Look no further. In each episode of Business Problem Solvers, seasoned attorney Eric Alspaugh takes a deep dive into the intersection of law and business, bringing you insightful interviews with a diverse range of industry experts, thought leaders, and successful entrepreneurs.

Subscribe to not miss an episode of Business Problem Solvers:

• YouTube @AlspaughLaw
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect and learn more from your host, Eric Alspaugh:

• Connect with Eric on LinkedIn
• Follow Alspaugh Law on LinkedIn
• Follow Alspaugh Law on Facebook
• Follow Eric on Twitter

Read the entire transcript of this episode:

Introduction to Business Problem Solvers Podcast
Voiceover: Welcome to Business Problem Solvers Podcast, where legal insight meets entrepreneurial innovation. Are you a startup founder navigating the complex legal landscape of entrepreneurship? Are you seeking practical advice, actionable strategies, and expert guidance to propel your business forward? Look no further.
Meet Your Host: Eric Allspaugh
Voiceover: Eric Allspaugh is a seasoned attorney. Based in the vibrant startup hub of California. And he’s thrilled to be your host on this exciting journey.
Podcast Overview: What to Expect
Voiceover: In this podcast, we’ll dive deep into the intersection of law and business, bringing you insightful interviews with a diverse range of industry experts, thought leaders, and successful entrepreneurs.
From intellectual property and contract law to corporate governance and regulatory compliance, we’ll cover the essential legal topics that every startup needs to know. Our guests will [00:01:00] share their wisdom, experience, and practical tips to help you navigate legal challenges, seize opportunities, and build a thriving business.
In today’s dynamic marketplace. So whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, a budding startup founder, or simply curious about the intersection of law and business, join Eric on business problem solvers podcast, as we explore the legal insights and entrepreneurial inspiration that will fuel your journey to success.
First Episode: Introducing Philip Topham
Eric Alspaugh: All right, welcome to our first episode ever of the business problem solvers. I’m thrilled to introduce. My good friend of more than a decade, Philip Topham. Thank you. Welcome, Philip. I’m super excited to, get started on this podcasting endeavor, and I’m super excited to have you as my first guest with all of your vast [00:02:00] experience, hosting the, the Savvy Founder.
And, some interesting things about Philip to get started is I’ve known him for more than 10 years. He’s an amazing guy who has, mentored many, many startup companies in Orange County in California. He served on boards of companies and as an executive in companies that I’ve worked on. And he is a, an amazing photographer as evidenced from, his pictures from around the world as a world traveler.
And he always has fantastic, stories to share from, his amazing hikes, which are no joke. These aren’t hikes that you do, in a park or with your kids. These are real man hikes, take days out in absolute wilderness. So thank you for, coming on, Philip, and I’m looking forward to talking about, generative AI and, [00:03:00] all things technology these days.
Philip Topham: Good to be here. And absolutely, Eric, I’d love to support you and all the things that you do in Orange County and beyond. So we need lots more companies to get from start to finish and navigate the changes that are coming down the pike.
Eric Alspaugh: Awesome. Awesome.
Diving into Generative AI and ChatGPT
Eric Alspaugh: So I had kind of thought of some topics that, I thought my audience would be interested in.
I myself have been. exploring chat, GPT, and, some of the, newer features and apps that are available and it’s just, it’s a little bit overwhelming. And so I wanted to see, where you’re at in your journey with, generative AI chat, GPT. I know that’s a really broad topic to start out with, but, hopefully we’ll get into some more specifics [00:04:00] and nuances and.
I don’t know what I don’t know. So please tell me.
Philip Topham: Absolutely. I, so, so chat GPT sort of overnight seemed to jump on the stage and it has the record for the largest number of downloads and users of any website technology. Ever. it just phenomenal. It was one of the technologies it’s the 20 years plus in the making.
You could argue it goes back to the fifties when this crazy idea was developed. The technology finally came to the point where, Hey, it’s useful. And I started watching everybody. I jumped in the bandwagon, started using it, and I just realized that there’s a lot of people talking about it. But I was getting the advice [00:05:00] secondhand, so I really decided to do what I do, and that is dig deep, right?
You can’t really do deep, you know, good, good strategy unless you know deeply what’s happening at the ground, and then you can abstract it to the strategy. And so let me share my view of why this technology is so phenomenal. First, I liken it to Thomas Edison and finally figuring out how to make a light bulb.
He did not invent the light bulb He figured out how to make it last sustainable And that’s what chatGPT. They didn’t necessarily invent the original technology, but they made it last Like that so as much as nice as the electric light bulb was It wasn’t until we created the electrical grid You That we lit up the night sky.
[00:06:00] I think of chat GPT just like that.
The Impact of AI on Business Productivity
Philip Topham: Once we connect all the various tools and workflows and AI possibilities together, it will light up productivity around the world like we have never seen. So that’s what, that’s where I, that’s kind of what got me at, I’ll just say. Over 40 You know part of the discriminated, you know the protected class of people now to to literally dig deep And i’ve even committed to writing articles 100 articles in 50 weeks I’m on an article 24.
I just wrote article 23 or 24 this morning. And I became a certified developer so we can talk all about that sort of stuff. But that gives you a sort of a why? Why? I wanted to understand and I can share what I’ve learned beyond there.
Eric Alspaugh: Awesome. Awesome. It’s [00:07:00] amazing. I love the analogy.
To Edison, because we always credit him as the inventor, but yeah, he didn’t invent it. He just made it work. And oftentimes, we miss that, you know, people have great ideas, but getting the ideas to actually affect the market or change the market . . . is really amazing.
Practical Applications and Case Studies
Eric Alspaugh: So, I see you mentioned that you were into some app development or some specialized certifications.
What’s really going on with ChatGPT or other AI tools that are available for developers?
Philip Topham: Yeah, great question. First off, ChatGBT, if people, you know, some people have used it, not used it, for those that have [00:08:00] not, I’ll just say it’s a chat bot, and so I can literally type or prompt into the, into the chat and ask it a question, and it uses all of the knowledge of the human race that has been scraped into it to come up with a, you know, a good answer.
So if you ask about how do I create a startup, it will give you an outline that’s very cogent and that sort of stuff. Wonderful, you know, but you know, That’s, that’s sort of that chatting, but when you start digging into it, you start hearing about the whole, you know, the problems when you, you know, the, I wrote an article, what do you do when the CI, you know, CEO says, I want AI, and, or what happens when you suddenly give the entire company chat GPT?
Eric Alspaugh: Yes.
Philip Topham: And you, it’s, it’s like giving them a calculator before a math test. And you never taught them how to use a [00:09:00] calculator So a lot of companies You know, there’s people that are very good at chatting and getting the results that they want and then there’s others use it and they they’re like This didn’t answer my question or the facts were wrong and they get Pissed off.
And so now you have a company where there’s people using it and people that are mad about it. And somewhere in the middle is the truth, but ultimately that failed to introduce it and chatting is a skill. And so using an, you know, they figure that out. And so then the companies suddenly go out and they say, Oh, this didn’t work.
Let’s go buy an off the shelf product.
Eric Alspaugh: Well,
Philip Topham: Man, you can go to the AI directories. Thousands and thousands of companies going, I’m AI, I’m AI. I [00:10:00] have, you know, 90 percent of those companies are going to be gone in a few years. Right. Because they’re, we’re going to be wanting some other solutions that are working for us and we’re in this, you know, the world’s in this discovery phase.
So I, and, and you’re going to spend a lot of money as a company. So I realized that. What you really need to do is go on that journey as a company to learn a little bit like riding the bike. And so don’t just rely on somebody else. The tools have come to the point where you can do your own workflow.
That’s what caused me to become this developer of a tool, mindstudio. AI. Where you are in control of the chatting.
Eric Alspaugh: And . . .
Philip Topham: You get the results that you want. So you take the best people that are the best at writing Chatting and getting [00:11:00] results you build that into the workflow and now everybody has the best chats Nobody’s nobody’s held back for not knowing how to chat or know how to do that So that’s why I use the tool because it can be customized And For just any industry, any situation, not a generic one.
And then you can add your own data and all sorts of things. So that’s long winded, a little long winded, but gives you a flavor of why I think that, that kind of tool is the interim step to a long term and it’s embeddable in whatever, you know, you’re not going to go out and replace your, your CRM or your, your big software you have now, you want something to add to it to make it better.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay. Very interesting. I need you to help me bridge. I think it’s interesting.
Challenges and Considerations in AI Adoption
Eric Alspaugh: You’re topping for an enterprise or a corporation, a [00:12:00] CEO providing a tool to employees and, you know, with the idea of Improving communication or productivity. I’m hearing something like you might want some training or education.
How does that fit in? How do you do that? When, you know, to me, the A. I. Bots that we’re working with now are a lot more. essentially just chat boxes right now. Very rudimentary. But there are so many different applications that are available. Should, should employees, should we as individuals be exploring those tools and figuring it out?
Or is it something that should be from the top down, Just for a cohesive strategy. A
Philip Topham: couple of questions in there. First, let’s [00:13:00] level set on the AI concept first.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay.
Philip Topham: So, if you’re using Microsoft’s Outlook, or you’re using Gmail, or you’re using your phone, and it finishes the text for you. You start typing and it finishes it.
That’s a kind of AI, right? Is predicting what you’re going to write these, that basic capability is at the heart of generative AI it’s predicting words based on topics and project management. So I like to think of. That is this is this is all the conversations and knowledge that we as humans have had Any place in a company where humans have conversations?
Or work with information and and massage it and change it [00:14:00] or or deal That’s where the chat works. Really really well. Let me Really really well. Wow That’s surprising.
Eric Alspaugh: That’s really surprising.
Philip Topham: Okay, so and it And it can augment you. So I’ll give you a random example. I was asked to review somebody’s grant proposal.
So this is the your I don’t know if your audience is familiar with the small business innovation research grants. This is our federal government giving dollars to small businesses to have an innovative technology Move towards commercialization. So helping scientists Get their technology out of the universities and into commercial use, right?
They’re huge. They’re monster pains. You have to find a writer and that sort of stuff. I had a scientist, He wrote his first grant. He looked at it. He did it. I literally [00:15:00] used the technology to say . . . Here’s the instructions from the NIH, National Institutes of Health, about what is an SBIR. Here’s what the person wrote.
Please provide feedback on how to make this a very good document. introduction to his grant. Okay. Right. Well, as most scientists do, they describe their technology in great detail. Okay. And they missed the complete, in the chat, the, the AI. Realized they didn’t talk about innovation and it actually gave him, here’s the language you might try to rephrase your grant.
That took all of 30 minutes to accomplish. Right. The hardest part was finding the specific place on the website where the [00:16:00] information was located. Okay. Right. So that’s a human, human, you like, I could have been a reviewer, I could have read the website, I could have served as a copy editor and given feedback.
That’s where the AI fits because it’s a human, human kind of activity.
Eric Alspaugh: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The AI is still in its infancy in a way, except it has amazing talents, but it still needs a very hands on direction.
Philip Topham: Absolutely. You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t hire, you wouldn’t hire an intern to run your marketing program for your company, right?
Eric Alspaugh: Yeah,
Philip Topham: Some people might, you know, if they’re if they’re if they’re if and and just let it rip. But most people would hire the intern look at it and And [00:17:00] certainly, overview, you know, take a review of what’s going to go out and test and make sure it’s right. And that’s what people should do with anything that’s that chatting capability.
That’s where the workflow comes in because the workflow can be built. to create some quality to ensure that it’s at least, you know, a two year, you know, person with two years of experience or three years of experience. You build the experience into the model. Chat by itself, I think it produces answers like an intern if the person doesn’t know any better.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay, well, I don’t know what other, other topics, but I am, I’m very interested in this and, you know, what kind of Practical education or how much education is available currently, or is it just it sounds like [00:18:00] experience like most things is on the job training. You’ve just got to get in there and get dirty with it.
Or what can people do to, You know, speed up the process of understanding and working with these tools.
Philip Topham: So, yes, there are lots, with this, with this huge shot heard around the world, there are people scrambling, everything you can imagine. There’s Wild West, you, you can go on Udemy and, or Coursera, and there’s people offering 1, 000 for an all, you know, All inclusive, prompt engineering program, and I was just blown away by the prices they were charging.
And, you know, realistically, the universities have open class stuff, so you can learn a lot. It’s back to you as a person, right? Are you like a little [00:19:00] kid? Do you like learning stuff or, you know, then, then you’ll be the early adopters and you’ll be helping the company. You’ll be trying it and figuring it out.
And you’ll be wanting to figure out how to teach other people to use it. That’s kind of how I think back to companies. Right. Okay. You know, find your, find your enthusiast. Give them the tools, help them teach other people, because you’re, it’s, it’s gonna be pointless. I think I, this is my, this is a Philip opinion.
Like, I’m not gonna send everybody to, you know, to school for a thousand dollars class on ai, on a chatbot, because. It’s a waste. You know, some of those people don’t even want to be there. You know, that’s not important to them. It’s not relevant to their what they do. They don’t want to figure it out. They want somebody to figure it out for them.
So match your learning to your own personal style. match the learning of the company to the company’s organizational behavior. Don’t, don’t just go on a YouTube, [00:20:00] Netflix, YouTube binge watch unless you like that.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay, that’s real practical advice. I want to circle back to this. I want to keep moving on, but I, I am going to have a question about the intersection of This digital technology and the humanities of which I, I was not a great, student of the humanities, but what I’m hearing from you is the, a liberal arts education or an interest and curiosity in the world and society.
Lends itself to a person in their strategy to learn and make use of A. I. It’s grammar, literature, how to ask questions, how to reformulate questions to adapt and see what kind of [00:21:00] responses.
Philip Topham: Yeah, somebody with a humanities critical thinking skills, you know, you as a lawyer with critical thinking skills and legit, you know, well, well reasoned to do things.
You do not need to be a programmer. You know, like computers forced us to learn, you know, if this, then that write these weird little codes to get boxes, the chats are serving as this interface. Yeah. And there’s a huge frenzy of new sites that create websites for you, create logos for you, and you just create pictures with words.
Yeah, so it’s words telling the com what would’ve been a com programmer, what to do. You we’re, now the words are telling the computer what we want. And so, absolutely, but the critical thinking skills, you, you can’t, like, you, [00:22:00] like why, why hire the intern and just let ’em lo loose? You still have to be critical thinking and, and, and go, maybe I should check
So, you know, basic, I I say common sense. But sometimes sometimes sometimes the new shiny technology causes people to forget they they kind of And so my my advice to people is to go back to what you already know You know play with the technology and ask yourself How’s it like what I know and how’s it not like what I know and hang that on your own?
Knowledge tree and then you’ll never forget, you know,
Steps to Integrate AI in Your Business
Eric Alspaugh: so From the, you know, from the CEO and an investment and a return on investment perspective, are these AI tools expensive? Can they be expensive? Are they expensive if they end up [00:23:00] wasting your, your employees, time, energy, resources? and yeah, let’s, you know, how much of an investment is needed from a chat GPT or an AI.
Philip Topham: So, so, so this is where there’s a lot of confusion created in the internet right now, because you hear about the NVIDIA’s, the, the Metas with the Llama, Anthropic with the cloud, you know, their model, Gemini, Google’s Gemini open AI with their chat GPT. So those companies are making the models. And they’re spending billions, right?
Billions, right? To create this stuff and it’s a and some of it’s open source some is so it’s a race to build a the most powerful, I don’t know, uh all purpose tool and then to use the tool [00:24:00] They’re charging 20, you know, ChatGPT is charging 20 a month for a user, right?
Eric Alspaugh: That’s kind of nominal. Yeah. So the
Philip Topham: physical use of the, of the cost of the compute, the computing power is tiny.
Okay. Where the cost is, is back to the liberal arts and the, you know, what do you want to use it for? How do you want to use it? So if you’re if you’re a company that’s thoughtful about how you’re going to use it and you’re thoughtful that I need to train people Like I’m not going to get immediate return.
I’m going to teach them and put them out fantastic you’ll you’ll absolutely Get your roi and you’ll find places that you didn’t even think that’s the that’s the good That’s sort of the good side of things that I also think about though It’s a tool that can be used to augment and enhance our human creativity You [00:25:00] And speed up our the drudgery get rid of some of the drudgery so we can do the thinking and the creative parts easier Sure.
Right, but in some situations companies are going great. Let me get rid of people and I like to call out IBM as one of the worst because they took 700 people and replaced them with chat and ended up with 50 people a 90 percent reduction in people, right? Okay, so I think that’s a bad corporate, you know, a world citizen, you know, you know, they could have done so much more to improve productivity for the world, but instead, you know, they’re, they’re going for the quick win and quick stock boost on the bottom line.
So I think, but the flip side of that is the startups. You know, you can now get 10 times the productivity for one tenth the cost, 100x productivity gains. Okay. So you can [00:26:00] compete with companies much bigger than you by learning how to automate these processes. You don’t have to, you know, you’ve got a 100 person company and you want to act like a 500 person company.
Great, you know, learn how to use the tools.
Eric Alspaugh: Do you, without disclosing anything or any clients, do you have any anecdotal, stories of, seeing this, these productivity improvements or any, any clients? Yeah,
Philip Topham: so most clients are just getting used to doing that with their, with, say, blog posting or sales and sales collateral and customizing it and chat stuffs.
And there’s lots of, case studies out there on the internet where, you know, a small company has suddenly, been able to [00:27:00] post content in all of the social media, not just one, like before they could maybe only post in Facebook and now they’re able to post everywhere, or it used to take 20 hours to do, you know, we’re doing podcasts and now there’s tools out there that cut out the ums and ahs of podcasts.
this can be true. This podcast could be translated into a foreign language, right? We could take the English and the AI can immediately convert it. Okay.
Eric Alspaugh: Right.
Philip Topham: Looking, in fact, I was playing with a technology this morning that I’m going to put on my website. I can create a human avatar Okay I type in the text and a human Avatar speaks it with emotions and says i’m glad you came to my website.
The world is changing really fast You’re probably being held behind come give me a call right and and the ai is computer generated All I did was type and it produces that that You That [00:28:00] thing that’s that gives me as a small company tremendous power. Okay, right?
Eric Alspaugh: Oh, that’s amazing,
Philip Topham: right? Yeah, so that so to me the biggest of the mid sized companies that are kind of Starting to slow down in their creativity.
I think they should be worried the the family offices The second and third and fourth generation companies that have they’re the family Rallying around the business and being central and all the ideas coming from the family and the connections They should be scared And they really need help figuring out how to change and embrace the new absolutely
Eric Alspaugh: Wow That’s, that’s a really important, market and, area of business I really hadn’t thought of.
And I, I think of, [00:29:00] fast food, automation, robots, self driving cars. These technologies are evolving and yes, replacing lower level workers, replacing honestly, lawyers and accountants. I believe that there are AI technologies that, are very quickly becoming better than lawyers and it, assuming that the, the user Is using some critical thinking and asking the right questions.
That’s seems to be the biggest limit limiting factor on the technology and those evolving in specific fields. So you’re, you’re, I mean, waving your hands. This is a tremendous flag. Hey, middle market companies. If you’re in [00:30:00] the a hundred revenue, a hundred million dollar revenue, plus or minus. your innovation scale, the way you’re protecting your, your distribution, your market will be impacted by AI and, smaller, smaller, leaner companies should, should these, I’m going to call them middle market companies for lack of a better term, should they be considering considering.
developing AI on their own, incorporating it organically, or are there services out there that they could acquire or bring in house?
Philip Topham: Yeah. Great question. So, so first, I’d say here’s, here’s a couple of steps that they should do. The, the first thing they should do. [00:31:00] Is really a check their own attitudes around technology change, right?
Right, and what I mean by that if there’s some people that wait for technology, you know, we all saw the the iPhone come out and the smartphone and there’s people we knew that had a flip phone way after the smartphone came out and you’re like you know some closely held companies have their own attitudes to how fast they adopt technology You And so if they, and when they’re second and third generation, they recall when we used to go to the store to buy shrink wrap software.
Right. And they recall I was in control of how fast I bought software. Okay. And now I have software as a service and I’m forced to pay monthly and they changes it. But guess what? AI came on the scene, and it just put [00:32:00] the world into hyperspeed. So if you’re kinda, you know, gonna wait, you’re gonna be passed by.
And I mean, I do mean that. You are passed by. The best analogy I use, imagine going to the gym, and you normally, and go on the running machine. In the past, you could control the speed and software as a service came along, you no longer could control the speed and it was, you could keep up with it now.
Somebody with a big finger called AI has pushed the fast button on the on the treadmill and you either speed up or fall off. Okay, that’s the first thing check your attitude around technology and technology option. Wow, right?
Eric Alspaugh: That’s like a movie or causing an a mass extinction event is what i’m hearing from you
Philip Topham: I I believe that to be true That’s why I kind of been been in the small business [00:33:00] startups because I think middle america small businesses that aren’t you know The backbone of america backbone of the world and they really do need to not You Just believe Google and, you know, the FANG, the Facebook, Amazon is the future.
Just
Eric Alspaugh: to add some emphasis to this and not downplay, I mean, this, this, we’re really looking at something that could cause a mass extinction, For lots of businesses if they’re not thinking about this and changing their attitudes Like now
Philip Topham: absolutely and and it’s a great opportunity for all the zoomers that are going i’m i’m in i’m a three person company And a three person company suddenly competing with a 30 person company.
They’re competing with a 40 person company So this is the thing that people have to understand about the techno But what’s and these are all this ChatGPT is just the surface of all the changes You know, the [00:34:00] ai is being used for material sciences is being used for vaccines and and And DNA and chemistry and, and all sorts of things.
It’s what you can see. So back to companies check their attitude around technology. Number two, remember that how you change, how you do change in a company, go back to basics, change one on one, you know, you know, don’t change all your plans. You already have a strategy. Learned about what it can and can’t do adopt it a little bit, you know If you’re bringing in something new test it out.
Make sure people are comfortable with it use it Now you got to do it a little faster than you did in the past, but you still have to do that part once you kind of get a sort of people comfortable, now you can really dig into, now you have enough knowledge to go, what can my strategy be? Okay, you can’t make a strategy if you don’t know what the tool can do and [00:35:00] you need to learning part before you can really redo your strategy.
Eric Alspaugh: Great. I love that. So that’s, you know, on us, we need to refocus, reexamine ourselves in light of this technology and technology and see how can we leverage it and, you know, really look at ourselves because we’re going to be a big limiting factor.
Legal Implications and Ethical Concerns
Philip Topham: Yeah, there’s a lot of places where, you know, on the legal profession where You know if I want to open a corporation and and have You know two or three holding company and two or three companies and all the paper The ai knows how to fill in all the forms from all the comp all the states.
Yeah And and they’re already building those those tools to push button Launch and launch a a stuff. which country? Oh, man, I can’t I cannot remember But there is a company that’s, [00:36:00] there’s a country that’s allowing AI’s to incorporate.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay.
Philip Topham: So, and, and obviously that’s for, you know, small country. I can’t re, I’ve got to look it up.
I’ll have to remember. Okay. I’ll make
Eric Alspaugh: a note. I’m interested in that. So, you made reference to, Gemini, Meta, and that there’s different being, there’s different chat, GPT. Artificial AI and we’re moving towards artificial general intelligence. so I’m curious what. What are the main, I don’t know, the competitors that are commercially available, reasonable?
Is there, an Excel spreadsheet that people can look up, like Google, look for information about? To compare and contrast what these various AI strengths and weaknesses are. [00:37:00] Is that important?
Philip Topham: segues to a great question, right? So hence why I picked MindStudio as the workflow application.
Eric Alspaugh: So the
Philip Topham: basic chatting, like here’s my question, you know, Create a sales person’s persona from this profile, right?
That might be by prompt general instruction, right? That tool allows me to use any of the big models and just with a click, change it. So if a new model comes out, they update it and I can change the tool, but I didn’t have to change my prompt, right? I just get a better answer. Yeah. Or. If one of the companies is having a cyber attack and or too busy in capacity, they, it says busy, come back later.
the tool does automatic failover. Awesome. So you, you can have the [00:38:00] best of all worlds by using a tool that’s focused on building the workflows. Okay. Rather than going to the companies that are trying to be You know, build the models and, and be all things to everybody because they, let me analogize
Eric Alspaugh: this.
So this would be like, your house is grid tied to electricity, but you’ve got some solar, you’ve got a generator backup. And these, a AI services Yeah. Being met, they are the energy sources. And so you could build your, your homestead, your structure, your business with, very specific tools that are supported by the AI energy.
And there’s redundancy built in. If something fails for whatever internet bandwidth, that’s a.
Philip Topham: [00:39:00] Yeah, I like that. And actually imagine these four companies are all building a power plant and, and they’re all in a race to build the best power plant, rather than you being locked into one, you just, you know, put a transformer at your house.
You build a, you know, use a workflow tool and now you have, you, you choose whoever’s the best. You don’t have to worry about it and they they only charge by compute usage. They don’t they don’t charge You know so they can choose. Oh, this is my latest model. So i’m going to charge a little more for this This is my older model.
So i’m charging less and You you can choose How to spend what you want to spend into practical terms.
Eric Alspaugh: So, you, you’re referring to workflows and I think I understand it at a very basic level. The workflows are the kind of, automated processes that [00:40:00] are really tailored to your business. That could help you do client intake, develop some processes, facilitate organizational, I don’t know whether it’s inventory management help.
Exactly.
Philip Topham: Exactly. So, um. A workflow, think of it as both the, the, if I had a conversation with a chat and it lasted many times of typing back and forth, that could be a component of a workflow. But what do I want to do with it? Right? So I might say, One common thing is, sales crafting, custom responses to sales objections.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay.
Philip Topham: So, perhaps I’m a company and I have the recordings or interview notes of all my past customers and I, I have this. The chat [00:41:00] GPT type technology can very quickly, Go through that and say this person was objecting to price this person was objecting to The features and sort them now you could take that and say oh 50 worth price Now marketing and sales can craft the objection overcomes, right?
This is why we’re better value And so that’s a repetitive task But it’s tedious, right? It’s tedious to read these documents and summarize them. The AIs are easily summarized documents. yesterday, somebody was asking, well, can it take this, And translate it to French, and I go, great, what’s the biggest French newspaper?
I took the article in French, I put it into English, and it translated it beautifully, better. She goes, that’s, that’s right. And so, the world, you don’t have, the world’s languages are available to you. And then I said, [00:42:00] turn this into Indonesian, and it translated immediately Indonesian. All in the same chat.
Wow, right and that’s for pennies pennies pennies I didn’t have to have a translation service. I didn’t have to do that So think of all the times where you need translation and you don’t you?
Eric Alspaugh: You
Philip Topham: don’t need you know bulletproof translation like if you’re for those that might be doing Food and drug administration where they’re still in the risk verse world and everything has to be Checked and cross checked Wait, wait until the fda says okay before you go change the process
Eric Alspaugh: Okay Sure, sure, but wow, that’s amazing.
Philip Topham: Um Yeah, the speed is again. The speed was so fantastic. I said I couldn’t I couldn’t Just sit back and sit on a beach and drink [00:43:00] margaritas.
Eric Alspaugh: Okay. let’s see from even startup companies and, you know, we’ve had, we see this, this meteor, you know, NASA has alerted us, there’s a meteor it’s coming. It’s going to cause this mass extinction.
And I’ve decided, you know, what, I’ve been comfortable where I’m at in my business. We’re generating revenue, but. Gosh, I don’t know, you know, somebody could, could improve in my area and I don’t want to get wiped out. So I am going to reach out and try to augment my business, and, and improve my business by using AI.
What are kind of some practical steps? We’ve talked about, you know, looking and reflecting at ourselves and thinking about, [00:44:00] am I a conscientious person? How do I feel about AI? Now that we’ve understood AI is here, it’s coming fast and we kind of …. got to adapt for lack of a better word. What are some, some more practical . . . theoretical steps?
Philip Topham: Yeah, no, there, there’s, there’s some practical steps. The first that I do say is, is Do sample a bunch of the demos from different companies and different places, all the, all the sales demos saying that you can do this, you can do that because you need to go through the all you can eat buffet and sample a bunch of things to see what sparks your interest.
Situation for your business now, you got to know what’s available Right if you don’t know what’s available or you need to hire somebody that knows what’s available to help you So but I suggest if [00:45:00] if you look a little bit yourself or within your company When it’s done yourself even with guidance, like if I come into companies You know, I’ll give them homework to go do that stuff because then they internalize it.
Sure. It’s now part of their journey and, and I can speed their journey. That’s really important. Once they kind of do that, then it’s back to basics. What is my workflow? Let’s, let’s look at like, like if it’s a tactical thing, I created the tear model, T E A R, you know, what are you going to do? You’re going to, what types of projects can you do?
You know, are you doing a transformative project? You know, are you doing a project just assists you with something?
Eric Alspaugh: Are you . . .
Philip Topham: doing a project that enhances what you do or are you doing a project that revolutionizes your work, right? That’s the hardest to do. So I’ve got a two by two matrix one on one of my articles So you can start [00:46:00] usually with the assist part, right?
What am I? Where in my business? Do I have workflows? Things that people are doing all the time, answering questions on the internet, you know, chatting, answering objections, writing sales proposals, any number, writing articles, trying, you know, chatbots are phenomenal because they go on the internet.
And so those things. Really easy to do those, those kinds of assistance things. So you just, you just start. Does that answer your question for you? Cause I wanted to give you a framework.
Eric Alspaugh: Yeah. don’t want to even try to restate it. There are practical steps, getting comfortable yourself, reaching out to people, doing a tear analysis.
And looking for resources now, I’m [00:47:00] sure people like you are available. I want to give you a plug in a minute, but I got a question, a selfish question. In working with AI, most people in my space, we work with Microsoft Office Word, we’ve got some databases, we work with Outlook email, things like that.
In my experience with AI is primarily in the chat boxes. Are there APIs, tools, or are there already, AI that know what Microsoft Office is and interfacing can help you output information into a usable form. Or is that something that you have to develop,
Philip Topham: A great, great question. So that’s where with, with, with Microsoft sort [00:48:00] of purchase of open AI and the creation of Bard, the Bard and their copilot is being integrated into many, many of the Microsoft tools.
By simply having the Microsoft Office, You’re starting to see the business version of it. You’re starting to see some of those tools come in Okay, so those tools so if you have those tools you have them available to you. You’ve got to remember Microsoft’s a tool manufacturer, right? They produce a word processing program.
Eric Alspaugh: Yes,
Philip Topham: Right They don’t in your case. They don’t produce a legal brief writing program Right, right, you know or a legal brief filing program, right So that’s maybe a repetitive task that you do all the time and so you want not only the AI to produce maybe the outline stuff, you then review it, you do the edit, and you then approve that sort of [00:49:00] stuff.
And you probably, depending on the jurisdiction, you know, I’d say depending on your jurisdiction, you’ve got to see whether or not, the courts would even allow that to occur, right? There’s some courts that are saying zero usage. You can use the AI. For your own discovery Summarizing documents, but you can’t use AI to produce documents, right?
Eric Alspaugh: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah that’s I mean, the first lawyers have already been disbarred and I think even attorneys that are quite famous in the mainstream media have been hit by Submitting briefs where they used artificial intelligence to generate citations, which it turned out to be the AI generated fake case law to support their position if they’ve already been busted and disbarred. So, yeah, it’s [00:50:00] a cat and a mouse game.
Philip Topham: Yeah, it is and that brings up the thing. That’s that’s probably where people are most dismissive of the Of the generative AI,
Eric Alspaugh: Okay.
Philip Topham: And that is on the perfection of fat. Okay, if I just walked up to a random human and asked them to start quoting the specific URL to a case law with all the numbers and everything the likelihood of a person getting it perfectly right Probably not good.
Eric Alspaugh: Yeah.
Philip Topham: Right. So so if a human probably is getting a very detailed fact wrong That AI will likely get it wrong So, but, but, you know, it says 27%, you can go look up to 27 percent and say, Oh, it’s actually 29 percent put it in and it’s the, everything else stays perfectly good.
Eric Alspaugh: Great.
Conclusion and Contact Information
Eric Alspaugh: So, I’m not sure how I wrap up a [00:51:00] podcast. I haven’t done this before, but can you tell me how people can get in touch with you? I’m sure we’ll get some sort of a Transcript and get some links for some ways for the people to get in touch with you. But if you can quickly give me your contact information or a plug for those listening.
Sure. Absolutely.
Philip Topham: So, so first off, you can see my name on screen, Philip Topham. So you can go to LinkedIn, Philip Topham. There’s, there’s only one in, in California. There’s only one called the Savvy Founder. You can find me there, text me, you know, LinkedIn Connect with me. There’s the booking link on there as well.
So it’s, savvyfounder. Youcanbook. me and always do a no cost advisory if somebody’s faced with what they’re trying to do with AI Always help them out with that. Yeah, those are those are probably easiest ways and then I’m publishing all of my My articles on the website and that is the savvyfounder.com [00:52:00]
Okay, and uh love to hear from you You got a question. I’ll write an article about it.
Eric Alspaugh: Thanks. Thank you so much, Philip. This was educational for me and I appreciate you so much. And I can’t wait to have a follow up in a few months and see what kind of companies have had. Mass extinction events.
Philip Topham: It’s going to be a wild ride. Absolutely. It’s only been a year since, ChatGPT Really?
Eric Alspaugh: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you
Philip Topham: Thank you so much. Pleasure.
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Business problem solvers podcast is proudly brought to you by Eric B. Alspaugh, APC, [00:53:00] providing comprehensive legal solutions for startups and entrepreneurs visit our website at www.Alspaughlaw.com to learn more. Disclaimer. The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice.
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