Hey there, and welcome! I’m so excited you’re here for today’s panel discussion, where I’ll be joined by my brilliant friends Cameron, Mark, and Jessica to talk about a topic that’s on everyone’s mind: AI.
I mean, let’s face it—AI is transforming the way we live and work at lightning speed, and for many entrepreneurs, it’s a mix of excitement, uncertainty, and even scrutiny. Some are diving in headfirst, exploring the possibilities, and reaping the rewards, while others feel overwhelmed, unsure of where to start, or even feeling a little left behind.
But here’s the thing: whether you’re an early adopter or still figuring it all out, you can stay competitive in this rapidly changing world. That’s what today is all about—breaking it all down and giving you real, actionable insights on how to embrace AI, use it to your advantage, and keep moving forward with confidence.
So grab your favorite notebook, and let’s dive in!
Links mentioned in this episode:
Connect with the Panelists:
- Mark Garrett Website
- Cameron Tulloch Website
- Connect With Jessica on LinkedIn
- Jessica Pierce Website
Watch The Live Call
Full Transcript
Misty Kortes (00:01.794)
Hello, hello and good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you’re coming in from. I am so excited to have you all here today. We are doing a panel discussion. This is the first time I’ve ever done this and I’m looking forward to doing more of these in the coming year. And so I am joined today by my brilliant friends. I have Cameron, I have Mark and I have Jessica.
And they’re all here to talk about what’s been on everyone’s mind for at least the last year, if not two years, which is AI. And I mean, let’s face it, you’ve got to be living under a rock not to recognize that AI is transforming the way that we live and that we work. And it’s doing it at lightning speed. you know, for many entrepreneurs, there’s a mix of excitement, uncertainty, and
Cameron | Monkeypod (00:47.95)
Great.
Misty Kortes (00:56.106)
also some scrutiny. And we’ll talk probably about that a little bit today. You know, I think that some of us are diving in head first, we’re exploring the possibilities and we’re reaping some rewards for that. While at the same time, there are a lot of entrepreneurs that are feeling overwhelmed. They’re not sure where to start and they’re feeling a little bit behind. And so that’s what we’re here to talk about today. So whether you’re an early adopter or, or you’re still trying to figure things out.
you can stay ahead in this competitive and rapidly changing world. And so today’s discussion is going to be breaking it down into some real and actionable steps and how you can embrace AI, use it to your advantage and keep moving forward in your business with some confidence, right? So grab your favorite notebook and we’re gonna go ahead and dive in. Now, before we get into all the goodies that we have to share today, I’m sure you wanna know a little bit about our
panelists, right? So let’s take a moment so that you can meet them. And I could introduce each one of them individually, but honestly, I think they’re going to do a better job in introducing themselves. And I’m excited to have you guys all here. Thank you for joining me. So awesome. I know, right?
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:58.254)
Thank you.
Cameron | Monkeypod (02:14.659)
Thanks Misty.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (02:15.861)
Thanks for having us.
Misty Kortes (02:18.85)
All right, so Cameron, I’m going to have you go first, okay? So tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how AI has become a part of your work or business.
Cameron | Monkeypod (02:21.325)
Okay.
Cameron | Monkeypod (02:27.796)
Sure. My name is Cameron, Cameron Tullock. I’m in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. So if you’re familiar with Toronto and Niagara Falls, I’m right in between both of those. And professionally, I, like many entrepreneurial people, have too many jobs. If I was smarter, maybe I would have fewer jobs. But the three things that all let me touch a little bit of AI is one, company called MonkeyPod Marketing. MonkeyPod Marketing is a training company.
and a community, paid membership where people who are building automated systems for their businesses can come and learn from us and learn from each other. So I joined the MonkeyPod team about a year ago. For longer than that year, I’ve been running an agency called OTM. OTM is an automation agency where people who want not training, but want to actually have pieces of their automated business process for marketing and sales set up.
can come to our agency and we’ll actually do the planning, prescribing, implementing for them. And I also teach at the local college here in Hamilton, the McKeel School of Business at Mohawk College. And I teach sales related courses, operations related courses. And for the last couple of years, business writing related courses, which has made a really, all of those businesses have some connection to how to figure out how to better use AI.
But the college has been the most interesting and kind most challenging in recent times to balance the expectations of students versus how much we want them to be able to use the tool. So those are my three jobs. I think you had a follow-up question about AI, but maybe I’ve taken my time. Do you want me to say more about AI? Cool.
Misty Kortes (04:11.106)
No, I think we’ll dive in in a second. We’ll have everybody else introduce themselves, but no, I think it’s apparent you’ve been in the AI world for a while now, in the automation world. I think sometimes we kind of blend the two, but they are kind of separate, but they can overlap. So we’ll talk more about that. Arras, awesome. So Mark, you’re up next. Share with us, know, who you are, what you do, and maybe like one way that you’ve seen AI kind of shake up your work.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (04:39.905)
Shake up our world. It’s put it upside down. Hello, everyone. My name is Mark Garrett. I am about 45 minutes away from Cam up in Mississauga just outside of Toronto. that Niagara Falls, Toronto, I’m at the other end of that spectrum. So two connects on the call. So yeah, so I’ve been in the marketing automation space, consulting services space for a better part of the last 12 years.
Misty Kortes (04:40.43)
you
Mark Garrett, CAIO (05:08.629)
It was December-ish, 2022. I was playing on some kind of obscure website, Discover Gen. AI. By January, we had started working on some other stuff and realized the application and the use of it. And we became early adopters, implementing the first AI phone enabled receptionist back in February of 23.
Shortly thereafter, we channeled our Cortez, burned the bridges, shut everything down and flipped over to AI. So today, how has it impacted? We have a company called Lucid AI Solutions. I’m championing a cultural revolution, if you will, to help both employers, leaders and managers think with AI. And we have, after spending a better part of two years chasing the tech,
Misty Kortes (05:59.661)
Hmm.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (06:05.267)
and trying to figure out what tools to implement and then find that the company has either changed, transitioned, or gone under because of the nature of this, we’ve realized that we need to lead with education. We’ve identified that AI literacy is, while we’re living and breathing and understand this on a daily basis, if you get outside of our circle, AI literacy is non-existent.
I did a presentation just two months ago to a group of about 100 people at a company and privately they came to me afterwards and they’re like, I’m afraid of it. I don’t trust it. I’m worried for my job. And that is really our mission to educate, to inform, and then to identify which tools that the companies need. And most of the time it’s not what they think they need. There’s other underlying issues that they can resolve. how has AI transformed us?
You know, we now think in AI, we think with AI, it’s the key thing. And if we’re not using AI every hour of every day, then we’re not as productive as we possibly can. so, yeah, it’s totally transformed everything that we do. And we’ve got an incredible company now that’s marching forward with us to help other businesses. So yeah, pretty exciting stuff.
Misty Kortes (07:22.51)
You guys already hitting on the head of lot of concerns that people are having. So we’re going to dive a little bit deeper. Jessica, you’re up. So give us a glimpse into your background. How EA has been shaping the way that you do work and how you think about the future.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (07:28.264)
Absolutely.
Jessica Pierce (07:37.345)
Yeah. So Jessica Pierce and I’m the founder and CEO of a nonprofit organization called Career Connectors. And I’m based in the United States, Phoenix, Arizona, and area. started a nonprofit 15 years ago and have seen the changes in the workforce. We’ve helped over 75,000 people land great jobs over the time. And we have a ton of free resources. I dove into AI just over a year ago.
And so what I want to explain to people, and I am keynoting all over the United States right now, talking about AI. And one of the reasons is because it is completely changing the workforce. It’s completely changing the structure of how business is doing business. And so I’ve only been doing this a year and I’m already, I wouldn’t, I’m definitely not an expert, but people are looking to people like me that have only been doing this for a short time.
to get guidance and advice. And so if you can learn that much about a tool, a platform, AI, anybody can do it and they need to. And everyone, no one should be scared of it. Like you said, Mark, know, nobody should be scared of this. You just jump on a browser and you start and then you can take some online trainings if you’d like, but it is flipping it upside down. And so the, one of the top needed skills
by employers is the ability to utilize AI tools, but also to analyze and understand AI tools. And then there’s a word we’re gonna talk about, I’m sure, called prompt engineering that people need to understand. It’s going to be a baseline, just like what, 40 years ago, the internet was, 50 years ago, whatever it was, the internet was coming out and everyone, and people were like, no, we don’t need that. I’m telling you, we need it. It’s coming. You may not think we need it.
But it’s coming and it’s here to stay and we have to adapt. The quicker the better.
Misty Kortes (09:37.078)
Yes, absolutely. I think it’s so important because, you know, there are some people right now that are still in the ignoring phase. If I don’t, it’s kind of like I had a beagle and whenever the beagle got in trouble, he like would turn his head away from you. Like if I don’t look at you, I’m not in trouble. We know what you did. Right. But it’s like that right now with AI. I find a lot of people are just kind of ignoring the fact that it’s here because they just don’t want to.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (09:55.129)
Hahaha
Misty Kortes (10:05.954)
I get it. I am not an early adopter typically. I don’t like replacing the cell phone until it literally will not work. I think sometimes when people think that you’re in technology, they think that you love and embrace all things technology and early adoption. That is not me. I leverage the tools to grow businesses, but it is not the thing I rush into. I’m not rushing into the AI flames. The other thing I want to mention,
Can you guys see why this is the best panelists? Like everybody here, cause I could have had, I live in the sphere of marketing, right? In business. And I could have had everybody on here that lived in that world. But when people hear about AI, they expect us to get it, to know how to use it. But Jessica’s bringing a whole different light to this conversation as well, because as employees, it’s important that we learn to adopt it, not just as entrepreneurs and business owners. you,
You guys are doing an amazing job already. So I’m so excited that you are here. Okay, so let’s go ahead and dive in. So the first thing that I want to talk about is, know, obviously AI is, is advancing very quickly and probably faster than any of us even imagined. And it’s reshaping industries across the board. So to start, I’d like to get each of your takes on, you know, what do you think is the biggest opportunities that AI is offering?
both employees and entrepreneurs right now. So who wants to start? You want to start with, okay.
Jessica Pierce (11:42.105)
So one of the biggest opportunities is for entrepreneurs that are maybe you’re working by yourself, maybe you have a small team, but streamlining processes. You can automate so many things with AI. You can prepare a presentation. And again, these are simple things for busy entrepreneurs that kind of have to do it all.
You can, know, streamline processes. You can write social media posts. You can, I put together a presentation in about 15 minutes, a brand new topic. Now wasn’t ready to go and done, but it was like the starting point. And the whole presentation was developed and ready to go for a keynote talk I was going to do that week. And that was something that came up last minute. So many processes can be done that are no longer needed by administrative support possibly in your business.
And so it’s a tool that is not expensive and we need to learn anyway. So jump in, start using it, and then you’ll see your businesses start to change.
Misty Kortes (12:53.794)
Yeah. Mark, what’s your thoughts on it?
Mark Garrett, CAIO (12:56.479)
Yeah, no, would absolutely agree. think the key thing when we look at the research and we see where, being Canadian, we see where the puck is going, as Gretzky would say. The key thing is we need to understand that AI, there’s three key things. AI is here. It’s not going anywhere. So for the people that are sticking their head in the sand and saying, no, no, no, it’s here. The second thing is that
You know, we look at the Boston College reviews, Harvard reviews, Boston consulting reviews. You know, 87 % of leaders are saying that they’re not prepared for the future of AI. And more importantly is they don’t have the staffing to be able to do that. like, like’s been said is the whole thing is we need to understand and prepare ourselves. So, you know, if you didn’t know how to text 20 years ago,
you had to learn now it’s there. And the key element is you’ve got to start in and the thing is about the fear component is we need to just get in there and play. We’re not going to break anything. We’re not going to hurt anything. Yeah, there’s some stuff that we need to be cognizant of in terms of bias and data privacy, security and governance and such. However, you just got to get out there and play. So I think that’s really the first step.
And then the second step for business owners and leaders is to understand that AI as a technology has been around for better part of about 30, 40 years in its current format. And it will continue to evolve as computing power grows and so on. Underline what we’ve been chasing for the last two years is the technology that we’re using. We’ve come to the conclusion that technology will continue to change. We need to look at a mindset.
both as a leader, but also as the individual knowledge worker. What can I do today to leverage AI to help me be more productive, help me understand that I’ve got more time for critical thinking, that analysis that we spend so much time on, the document creation side, it’s always easier to edit than it is to create. So let AI do what it does. We promote a concept of 108010, 10 % human upfront.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (15:18.357)
Let 80 % of the machine do what it’s supposed to do. And then 10%, the human comes back and finishes that off. So the biggest opportunities is that mindset. The tech underlying, that’s just going to change. We’re going to have another LLM or another platform. I’ll use the non-technical term, another platform show up in six months. And that’s going to change. So just begin the thinking process. That’s the biggest opportunity.
and then begin to harness the tools when you understand that next step.
Misty Kortes (15:49.996)
Yeah. So Cameron, what do you think is like one of the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when they’re actually trying to integrate AI into their business?
Cameron | Monkeypod (16:00.43)
That’s a great question. I wanted to address a bit of my take on that in that I was really worried about making the mistakes. As far as an automation nerd is concerned, I actually think I am a little bit of a late joiner to this party. When you were sending out the invitations about potentially joining on the panel here, the idea that the title was Feeling Left Behind, I was like, I was Feeling Left Behind.
until a really specific epiphany point, like a really specific turning point, when I learned to start, you know, using it slightly differently. I felt like I was in what’s the skipping game, like the double Dutch. I wasn’t ignoring it, like Mark and Jessica have alluded to some people doing. I knew it was there because I was building automated systems with like whens and thens, but I felt like I was outside of the skipping rope still and like, do I jump in? How do I start using it? And
Misty Kortes (16:42.764)
Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (16:59.061)
For me, the epiphany came around the idea that I could ask AI how to use AI and that I could set up AI in a way that it would remember me. When I joined MonkeyPod, when OTM purchased MonkeyPod, but the founder stayed with us and had these years and years of voice, I asked AI,
Jessica Pierce (17:08.103)
Mmm.
Misty Kortes (17:08.75)
Hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (17:26.606)
What do you know about the monkey pod brand and the content created by? Greg Jenkins, right and it came back and it told me and it was like, okay Well, what do you know about me and my voice and then it told me that too And what would your recommendations be if I needed to meld? His voice and my voice regarding this kind of content and it told me that too. So when I realized that I could ask it
like, hey, AI, are you able to watch a video for maybe some AI can. Hey, chat, GPT, can you watch this video for me and tell me what kind of script concept he used for it? Well, I can’t do that. But if you could go ahead and just paste the transcript for me, I would be happy to do it. My epiphany was realizing that I could ask the tool to teach me how to use the tool and then that I could ask it to remember. Like, could you remember
Misty Kortes (18:11.723)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (18:16.866)
this thing about us for next time or about how I solved this coding problem for next time. That was a big breakthrough for me. So I think that one of the mistakes to get to your question, one of the mistakes that I think people probably make is that they assume that every session is one session. They assume that every chat is one chat and don’t realize that you can, you can build a relationship with this thing much like you could with an employee. Hey, remember how I taught you how to do that a month ago? That’s the thing we’re doing again.
Misty Kortes (18:34.392)
Hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (18:46.574)
So I think when people stop, when people think about each session as one session, they’re missing a big opportunity. The second big pitfall that I see, especially in my teaching work and a little bit in the agency work, but definitely the teaching work, is people who just take the results for granted. And I think speaking to, what did you call it? 108010 there, Mark.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (19:06.931)
Yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (19:11.573)
10-8-10,
Cameron | Monkeypod (19:12.758)
that idea where they totally missed the last 10, they take the prompt, they take the title of the assignment, they throw it into some kind of chat tool and they’re like, yeah, that’s probably right. And then it becomes my job as the person who’s the critical reviewer of it to say, except for all of the ways that it’s the wrong answer. So it does great work, but it needs a boss. It needs a supervisor. It needs a critical thinker, just like any.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (19:29.685)
You
Cameron | Monkeypod (19:39.98)
you know, maybe like an employee or like a student otherwise would. So those are my big two pitfalls. I think I think that’s it. Yeah.
Misty Kortes (19:46.476)
Yeah. Mark, you want to chime in? I’m sorry. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica Pierce (19:47.681)
Can I just add on to that? So I was sitting in a room of very high level business executives, like C level executives for the Phoenix market, large corporations, and we were having a discussion around AI. And all of them unanimously said the number one skill, professional skill that they will be looking for in 2025,
Mark Garrett, CAIO (19:50.419)
Yeah, go ahead, Jessica.
Jessica Pierce (20:17.637)
is the ability to think critically and analyze data. And what they meant by that was, because it was an AI discussion, is the output coming from AI needs to be understood. And we need people who understand that information. And it’s that last 10, that last 10 % you’re talking about. Can we understand what’s coming out from AI, whatever tool you’re using?
and say, okay, that’s correct. We just need a quick adjustment or that is way off base. That is not at all what we’re asking for. And we need to go back and redo a prompt or just do more prompt engineering. That is the skill you guys. So anybody at all, entrepreneurs, business owners, or employees, individual contributors, leaders, that’s a skill we need everybody. And that’s a number one skill going to be looked for this year in the workforce.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (21:12.853)
If I may, Jessica, I think you nailed that is that whole bit of the critical thing at the end. And a lot of the fears that we’re hearing, and I just realized I’m seeing fear a lot. I apologize for that because this is a really positive opportunity world. But the challenge that we’re running into is exactly what you said, is I’ve got normally I call it pre-AI. It would have taken me two days to do a task, research and
pull it together and then rewrites and the whole bit if we’re doing a research doc or something. What the big opportunity and the pitfall kind of flip them upside down is Cam and Jessica have alluded is they’re not going through and doing that final critical thinking. But if we look at it, we spend more time planning the thought and what we’re trying to do than let that 80 % condense down into 15 minutes.
We now take that same two-day block, and we now spend a day collaborating, reviewing, working, bringing in outside opinions to be able to start pulling that apart. We’re not shortening the work cycle. What we are doing is we’re changing it putting so much more emphasis on the ability to that critical thinking to pull in other ideas and find source material and something to collaborate or contradict.
the plan, the idea, the strategy and cam to your point about, you know, people just going, okay, well, that’s the prompt and let’s go. That is one of the things that we’re seeing massively. And Jessica, a hundred percent agree with you that these are the skills that people need. Like this is, you know, it’s reading, writing, arithmetic and AI. that’s what we need to do. I’m even teaching my 15 year old daughter how to use it.
Misty Kortes (23:01.954)
Yep.
Cameron | Monkeypod (23:01.963)
Ha
Mark Garrett, CAIO (23:07.23)
Truth be told I’m actually using it to help her with her algebra because I forget some of that stuff But yeah, mean that’s exactly you guys nailed it
Cameron | Monkeypod (23:11.596)
Right. You know, I used, I have a tiny example I used about like the prompting and reprompting. don’t, I don’t mean to make it sound like the AI tools we use are so broken that they’re not valuable. want to, I want to be clear that this fast forwarded my problem. A lot of the examples, especially the first things that we all use in AI is generating text, right? I need to make a social post, generate a social post. I need to write an email. Can you check this email for me? It does other things too. I was trying to solve a
Shopify API integration problem a couple weeks ago, and I was brute forcing it at first. I was like, I was in the API documentation, not using AI brute forcing like keywords into the thing. And I then realized, wait, I could go and ask a chat GPT or AI tool about this. And I said, I’m trying to, you know, figure out what part of the, of the API I could use to do this to that. So it was solving a technical problem, not a writing problem.
Misty Kortes (24:02.094)
Thank
Misty Kortes (24:08.778)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (24:09.514)
And it fast forwarded so much because it told me, well, you could create a web hook from here to Zapier, Zapier to that, but you would want to send a signal to request this thing. I was like, that’s interesting, because I’ve read the documentation and see that. So I went and I couldn’t find the thing it told me I needed to use. And I wrote back to AI and I said, are you sure it can do this? Are you sure there’s a protocol for this? And it wrote back and said, wait, no, there isn’t. But an alternative way is that, right?
Misty Kortes (24:27.991)
Okay.
Cameron | Monkeypod (24:37.932)
And the second way it came up with was valuable. So my first prompt got me thinking about the problem properly. And then it made a mistake, just like somebody else having a conversation in front of a whiteboard would have made a mistake. And then I, are you sure? I can’t find it. yeah, you’re right. But it actually could work this way. And it collaborated with me in that way as well, which I thought was kind of cool.
Misty Kortes (24:58.7)
I want to chime in here real quick because you mentioned something that I, there are some people who are probably listening to this, who are not in our space, who do not work with a lot of these tools. They’re like, what is, you know, what is Zapier? Like how, what are these tools that you speak of? Right? Well, here’s the thing about Google AI Studio. If you have not used it, go to it today. It literally teaches you step by step how to use software.
Cameron | Monkeypod (25:06.382)
You’re right.
Misty Kortes (25:26.85)
So I did a tutorial the other day just playing around with it. I’m like, hey Google, I am brand new to Canva. I’m not, I’ve been using Canva for years. But I wanted to pretend like I was a brand new user. I opened up Canva on my computer and said, walk me through creating this type of graphic. And it literally step by step took you through how to use the tool. So like if you’re thinking, well,
I would love to use Zapier to do this, to do that, all this cool stuff that you guys are talking about. And if you’re not familiar with the tool, go to Google AI Studio and it’ll teach you how to do it. So pretty cool. So Jessica, do you want to chime in on this? I know you were like shaking your head.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (26:03.433)
Yeah. Great resource.
Jessica Pierce (26:07.417)
No, I’m just only in agreement, but when people are just getting started and they’re a little nervous a little scared of it This is what I say open up chat GPT. That’s the one I use that’s when a lot of us use that probably most popular Open up chat GPT on your browser or in on your phone when you’re standing in front of the stove Say I have steak. What should I cook for dinner and how? And it will give you options that is
Baseline, so you don’t have to Google, you don’t have to look at a whole bunch of YouTube recipes, it will tell you what to do. Super simple and easy way to jump in. I had my daughter do it last night, because she’s like, mom, how do I, she was making a poke bowl. I’m like, well, that’s cool. But she’s like, I want this salmon cooked just a touch. Ask Chachupti and it told her exactly what to do and she, was phenomenal. Easy way to get started.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (26:51.892)
Thanks
Misty Kortes (26:58.764)
Yeah. Okay. So let’s switch gears for a second and let’s give them some real world examples on how you use AI as an entrepreneur in your own business. So just one, like one example of something that’s really helped you like change the way that you do business because you’re using AI.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (27:20.831)
Yeah, if I could chime in on that one. This is so this is practical example. So we’re in the process of restructuring and we’ve been introduced to a concept called EOS or the entrepreneurial operating system. You’re all nodding your heads. Yeah. Cam’s looking for his book. Yeah, it’s got to be faster than that buddy. There it is. And and so I’m not a reader. I’m I’m that’s just not my thing. Right. So I
Misty Kortes (27:35.916)
Yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (27:50.229)
So my workflow looks like this. Use Perplexity. And just as a tip here, if you haven’t used Perplexity, turn off Google. Turn on Perplexity. It’s as if Google and ChatGPT had a love child, and they created Perplexity. It’s phenomenal. It cites resources, and you can prompt it. go out to Workflow is go to Perplexity. Tell me everything that you know about.
EOS operating system. It scours a bunch of stuff, brings me links, all those bits of information. Great. One of the things that you need to do is understand your values. Great. Proplexity. Go out and find me all that you know about Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. Pull that together specifically with documents. I take all of that research and then I go over to Google’s Notebook LM, upload video transcripts, PDF files, all of that stuff, and then bring that together to help me
understand the root information and give me workflows. And then I say, okay, you’re act like Simon Sinek in chat GPT, help me interview me and coach me like I need to understand how to go through the exercise. And then I put at the end of the prompt, start with one question at a time and complete when I’ve answered every question that you need. then gives me my why in the whole process.
Then I go back to Notebook and I do the same thing for the EOS program to get our values, everything like that. And that process then goes through. I then take that over to Gamma, dump that into Gamma, do my PowerPoint in Gamma. And in the grand total of about an hour and a half, I’ve hired Simon Sinek, I’ve hired
the experts on EOS, I’ve researched, developed, created, used my own internal input and put together a PowerPoint presentation to be able to give to my clients or my team, sorry, in this case, to present what we’re doing. That is the power that we can do so we can leverage all of this. So that’s my real world practical example. That’s the workflow that we teach on a daily basis. Two other caveats to that is, you dealing with confidential data? So if you are,
Mark Garrett, CAIO (30:11.573)
we’d move into Microsoft Copilot 365 or the paid version of Gemini. Other than that, that’s kind of, that’s a real world practical example that we’re coaching and teaching every day.
Misty Kortes (30:23.618)
Love it. Who else got has one.
Jessica Pierce (30:26.647)
Well, we do a ton of document creation in AI. So confidentiality agreements, proposals, contract vendor agreements, training documents. So if we want to create an online training document about, let’s say about AI, we did one for AI and the job search. And so we just put what we were looking for and what, ask chat GPT, what would you,
what should we put together for a support document to help people learn AI in the job search? How can it be helpful? And it came back with a whole bunch of information, asked the software to put it into a document, and then we just took that document, edited it, and then put it into our template with our branding, and then went to Gamma and put a presentation together.
All within a couple hours, it was done and we were able to get it done. So proposal, any documentation can be done quickly. It’s already out there, but AI will edit it based on your business and your model. so entrepreneurs can be using it every single day, especially for pushing out proposals or any kind of agreements on a regular basis.
Misty Kortes (31:44.832)
Okay, so before Cameron before we get to you, I see Marks dropping it in the chat. So we talked about perplexity. We talked about notebook KLM gamma. Am I missing any tools yet or chat GBT? Obviously I call him G because I talk too fast and GBT comes out really weird. So I call him G but yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (31:59.231)
Sajib to you.
Jessica Pierce (32:05.529)
And I think it’s important to say that a lot of tools like Canva, Squarespace, et cetera, have it integrated in there often. So people can look for that.
Misty Kortes (32:14.104)
We’re starting. Yeah, we’re starting to see that. And any software that you’re using, you’re seeing AI tools being integrated in those tools to make it easier for the user to be able to utilize the tool. for sure. So Cameron, what’s your real use case for AI?
Cameron | Monkeypod (32:30.279)
Yeah, we’re dabbling into a few more of them. One, kind of like, think to Jessica’s point about asking about stake, right? How do I do this? That’s a pretty low risk. It’s not going to like hijack your business. It’s not going to hijack your business anyway, everybody, but it’s definitely, if you have a little bit of fear, you can break through that with a question like that. I think a really good, really simple practical use is editing for clarity.
So if you didn’t let it write the first version, if you wrote the first version, you can still drop your version in and say, does this make sense? How could we improve this? How could we fix that? And you can kind of collaborate that way. So little uses like that can be helpful. We have used, you know, the paid version of chat GPT to create some custom GPTs of some of our clients. Because one of the things that slows projects down, if you’re like an automation business, maybe we’re doing something like
writing the 10 email sequence that goes out after somebody makes their first purchase. Copy is what slows down a lot of projects. So we’ll turn a bunch of stuff that our client has written, put it in there, and say, give us some transactional copy or some welcome copy as a starting point. And then we still give that over to them and say, you can edit it, but you’re not staring at a blank screen anymore. So jump starting copy is a big thing.
I think, Jessica, we were just talking about Notebook, Notebook LM. We just at MonkeyPod just started playing with Notebook a couple of days ago. We have a new blog post out about it where we fed it. Like this content we’re creating right now, right? Like this hour and a half that we’re spending together. The idea that, for me, the idea that, okay, now there’s this transcript of this thing that got recorded with these experts. What do I do with it?
Mark Garrett, CAIO (34:02.41)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (34:25.568)
Creating stuff is a lot more fun than figuring out what to do with it for the next two or three weeks later. So the idea of being able to take the first piece of content and feed it into something like Notebook LM and have it do more after that, like create a whole podcast of its own using AI voices to be like the host of the thing you recorded, it’s wild.
So in our our monkey pod business, our more content oriented business, we’re looking at notebook LM as well for that same kind of thing of like I’m inspired to create the first round of things, but then what do I do when I run out of steam for the rest? Give it to the tool and see what it can come up with.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (35:05.513)
Yeah, I think I think that’s really good point cam and pulling that together because now you’re able to consolidate but also recreate. You mentioned something about the content and one of the things that I love is the notion that everyone everyone gets into this idea that I’m going to be fully engaged in AI. And what I love is actually let’s put the human back in the process. So the 1080 10 concept, but to cam, which you were talking about is
Misty Kortes (35:06.146)
So.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (35:35.635)
that whole idea of repurposing or fine tuning your version, right? So grammar is probably not my best skill, but I’m great at ideation. So I’ll ideate all day long and I’ve stopped caring about grammar. I’ve stopped caring about structure. I get it all out there and then I say, hey, here’s a great article that Cam wrote. Take my ideas, but use Cam’s methodology.
Misty Kortes (35:45.166)
you
Mark Garrett, CAIO (36:02.927)
or use Jessica’s kind of style. It’s so that I’m speaking. The other part of it too is I can take the exact same message. And again, now we’re going to nerd out about automation. But if the prospect is knowledge-based, they want all the information, please expand this to somebody that needs to know all of the details. Then I can write a different email on the same information. Please change this so that
It’s for that high executive that needs bullet points and straight to the point. And so those kind of use cases are so, so practical and just really easy to implement.
Misty Kortes (36:42.502)
I it. I’m terrible at grammar as well. I went to go give them the tool Grammarly and spelled it wrong. So there you go. But it is in the chat and it is correct in there. know, when I went, you know, being in marketing and we were writing copy and we were building out solutions and campaigns and all of these things and we were teaching people marketing. I remember when ChatGPT came out, I thought my first thought was this is
Mark Garrett, CAIO (36:49.971)
Ha ha!
Misty Kortes (37:10.382)
freaking phenomenal, like I’m going to be able to leverage this in my business to be able to scale the way that I serve clients. And then it all of a sudden, one night I went to bed thinking about all the possibilities and then it flipped on me and I went, oh crap, they can actually use this tool too. So all the things I’ve been teaching them, they can now do for themselves. And I had a moment, more than a moment, it took about a year.
Jessica Pierce (37:27.833)
Mm.
Misty Kortes (37:35.912)
of holy crap, what am I going to do? How am I going to adapt? How am I going to make these changes? Like there’s a lot of people right now that when you start going down the rabbit hole of AI, my husband and I, my husband’s more of a hands on, he’s like a, he’ll pull your tree out of your yard kind of guy. You know what I mean? And I said to him, I want you to challenge me and let’s think of an industry that’s not going to be affected by AI. And for four hours we were driving to Mexico, four hours.
we could not think of a single industry. So first and foremost, if you’re listening in going, oh crap, if you, if you find yourself in that like rabbit hole of, oh crap, what does this mean for me? I’m not going to have a job. Just know everybody’s thinking like that. Number one. And number two, this is the direction I want to take our conversation because I think this is the real, like we can talk about all the possibilities, but the possibilities
while we understand them, it’s at night when we go to lay our head down, we’re like, crap, but all these possibilities are going to replace me as a human. So let’s talk about that. Who wants to start there? Cause I know this is a big conversation. What’s your thoughts? What about this? know we, none of us have all the answers. This is uncharted territory. None of us have been here before. Like we’re all going through this together. So let’s just talk about those feelings and what your thoughts are about.
Jessica Pierce (39:00.461)
Well, I am getting ready to do a talk about the balance of AI technology, technology in general, and AI of course, but, and the human touch, right? So, and it’s gonna go in front of a thousand workforce and economic developers. So people that are in the world of work, right? And teaching them and talking through, you can’t really do one without the other, right? So we need people, robots.
Won’t necessarily take your job, but what will take your job are people that understand how it works Okay, so we really need to jump in and I love you know, I love workforce. It’s my thing It’s what I care about. I love people to have great jobs they build healthy communities and so what I want to mention about AI and how somebody that’s in that space right now like what am I gonna do about my job what are the opportunities as
Cameron | Monkeypod (39:57.004)
you
Jessica Pierce (39:57.465)
Crazy as it sounds, I want them to jump onto a tool, one of the ones listed in the chat or chat GBT or any of them, and I want you to dump a current resume into chat GBT and say, what jobs do I qualify for? Based on this resume, what kind of work can I do? That will give you a list. And then also ask it if you apply for a job,
Misty Kortes (40:19.061)
That’s good.
Jessica Pierce (40:25.987)
Dump in the job description and say update my resume based on this job description. So it’s a tool for people that are thinking about their career. Ask Chat GPT what role, what jobs are coming, what is out there that I could apply for, even if I’m not yet qualified, using your resume and it will give you some crazy great responses. But.
Misty Kortes (40:52.547)
Yes.
Jessica Pierce (40:52.971)
Again, I think back to what Kima Mark you guys have alluded to is just it helps you think, it helps you dream, it gets you out of the box and it gives you thoughts around opportunities and it’s such a great tool to be able to do that.
Misty Kortes (41:07.884)
Yeah, I think a lot of people think that it’s actually stopping people from thinking, but I think it’s the opposite. I really do. If you’re if you’re utilizing it in that capacity. So who else wants to talk about that?
Jessica Pierce (41:13.209)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (41:13.413)
Hmph.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (41:15.465)
Yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (41:22.505)
Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (41:23.502)
I think I’ll just say that I think that this pattern has repeated, right? Machines will take the jobs of the humans, then automation will take the jobs of the humans, then AI will take the jobs of the humans, right? This is a pattern that repeats. And before, like a lot of us who do care about, you know, customer relationship management and marketing automation tools, you know, if you think, if we send somebody a Calendly link,
Misty Kortes (41:38.05)
Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (41:52.334)
in automation, we going to take the heart? Are we going to feel like it’s not a human part of the business? mean, no, people, people are happy to take those transactional things at speed and then get to the human things, you know, as they’ve been enabled by those tools. So it happens, you know, as, industrial processes improved, happens with automation processes improved. I’m sure it’s happening again as AI processes improve where people, people think it’s going to, and, and then it creates my hope.
to be too optimistic, my hope is that it creates space for us to do the stuff we most want to do. And the thing I always want to say about that is that there’s no glory in being too busy. Even those of us who have like automated systems or AI systems, are we all too busy? Like we’re all exhausted and tired and have too much stuff to do. If I’d be willing to outsource it to another person, if I’d be willing to outsource, you if I don’t have time to write copy, if I don’t have time to follow up with every new
inquiry into my sales process in the first couple of minutes, you know, when they come in, if I don’t have time and I’m already willing to outsource those things, it’s not taking my job. They’re just, it’s just more job, just more enabling, enabling kind of activities and enabling tools. So I think if people are in a mindset where they’re fearing their job because of the value AI can create, well, I would hope that the humans can figure out what more value will create in the time that it frees up for us. So.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (43:20.639)
Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (43:20.684)
I don’t know the answer for every industry and every job type, but we’ve been through this pattern before, and the humans just need to figure out where their value creation is different in amongst these tools.
Misty Kortes (43:32.244)
Mark, I want your input here in a second, but Cameron, you’re so true. It’s so true. I think that with the use of when you first start leveraging AI, it actually creates more space for real human connection because you’re automating in your systemizing processes and tasks that really diminish human value. I mean, a lot of us do that.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (43:32.669)
Yep.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (43:47.325)
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (43:58.934)
You know what I mean? We have a lot of tasks without going into all the details. And I think we all know that for me personally, adopting AI tools once I got my head around, OK, I can see now how I can use this, how I can leverage it in my business. actually closed my agency, reinvented my business. And now today I work three to four days a week on average. I’m gardening. I live in Arizona. That’s not an easy task.
I’ll tell you, I just got my first tomato yesterday. I’m so excited. But anyways, and then we got a frost. I don’t know. I know we actually have sun here, but it’s cold here right now. So I had to cover my plants because we got a frost. Crazy. But anyways, I like, I’m cooking and I’m doing like, I’m doing these cooking videos now. Like it’s creating space for things I kept saying, I really wish I could do this, but I don’t have time for it. I don’t have time for it because I was sitting at my computer.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (44:31.157)
Yay! First, I it’s January. How’d you get a tomato?
Mark Garrett, CAIO (44:43.093)
Misty Kortes (44:55.042)
computer 10 to 12 hours a day, five, six days a week, because I had to manually write every email and every, all of the things that I had to do in my business that tied me to my computer. But now I get to leave the computer and have more real intimate relationships, not only with people, but just with my own life and my own interests. So I just wanted to plug that in there because there’s some good things that are coming out of this, not just business wise, but personally that
Mark Garrett, CAIO (44:57.631)
Yeah. Yeah.
Misty Kortes (45:24.726)
I think that we can all benefit from. So Mark, dive in.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (45:27.857)
you know, it’s it’s just music to my heart about how you speak about this, because that’s exactly it. You know, again, I’m going to cite some research. But when when Boston College went back to that research paper, one of the biggest things that they found after successful implementation of of AI for six months was the personal fulfillment of job satisfaction, the ability to.
create human connections with colleagues and time off and time freedom because they were able to leverage. Sure, they produce the same amount of work in the same time span, but when they left and they shut down, they’d gotten so much more done that they were able to do that. You know, I want to I want to bring it back to Cam and I’ll you know, kind of look to Jethro Tull, not the band, but the inventor in the seventeen hundreds.
And that was the first machine that went on the on the farmers fields in 17 early somewhere around there. And it was planting and putting seeds in and everyone freaked out. OK, then we see mechanization that we see automation automation in manufacturing. And so, yes, I I will say it today, AI is changing the the landscape of work.
People will be displaced. There is no doubt about that. I implement technologies that’s doing it. And not but and it allows for businesses to evaluate the human connection with their employees. It allows for businesses to put in place humans in sales, customer service, product development, HR, and opposed to chasing those kind of I’ve only got two minutes to talk to you. Sure.
Let’s sit down, what can I help you with? In the medical space, being able to allow doctors to spend more time with patient relations, all of that stuff. Yes, it will change and people need to begin to understand and adapt. And to Cam’s point, will always, there’ll be another version. know, agentic AI is coming. Yes, there’s going to be a time where a lot of the stuff that we do, you can now turn on Claude GPT or Claude.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (47:50.005)
and have it control tasks, automated tasks on your laptop. I can walk away and have it do that stuff. And there’s a colleague that she was in the hospital for four days and her business is running via AI agents while she’s sitting in the hospital. I was off last week with my uncle while he passed and same thing. We’ve got tools. So in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to take five days off to go be with my uncle in his last days. With AI, I can do that because
Misty Kortes (48:16.856)
Yep. Yes.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (48:19.833)
That’s the freedom. So growing tomatoes, reading a book, and I’ll go back to thinking about Chinese culture, 5000 years of development. So our Western cultures are what, maybe 2000, 15 to 3000 years old. But we’ve gone to this as a culture, we’ve gone to this work, work, work, work, work. What happens when we pull back and we’re able to have that freedom?
What happens when people can sit and spend a lifetime figuring something out and focusing on that? What happens to our cultural growth? What happens to all of that stuff? So yeah, a little Pollyanna on that, sure. But the other side of it is, yeah, you’ve got to adapt. You’ve got to learn or someone will come and automate you out of a job or replace you with somebody that gets it. And we’re seeing today leaders who they’re
Their leadership is afraid because they’re losing valuable team members to companies that are implementing AI, while their IT departments and legal departments are blocking the use of chat GPT on their servers. So you’ve got this massive dichotomy. That’s not the right word, but there’s this massive disparity of you’ve got a company here saying, we won’t implement. And we’ve got an employee here saying,
Misty Kortes (49:32.888)
Wow.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (49:46.291)
I see this as the future, you’re not going to do it, I’m going to go find somewhere else. And so now we’re starting to see a migration of talented labor switching companies. And so again, that’s another reason to begin to adopt this at a leadership level.
Misty Kortes (50:00.45)
Wow, yeah, that’s.
Jessica Pierce (50:01.077)
Mark, hundred percent that is happening. I hear almost every day with people that are transitioning jobs either by choice or not. And they’ll come out of these large organizations and they’ll hear about AI and they’ll go, we weren’t allowed. And I’m talking software developers. Like it’s, it’s shocking to me.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (50:03.88)
yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (50:16.479)
I know.
Jessica Pierce (50:19.863)
But companies aren’t ready to adapt it because they’re scared, right? Because they’re afraid that their intellectual property will be put onto this AI. then, so I understand there’s some fears there. But also, the other thing that’s happening is…
This year, 2025, 27 % of our workforce will be Gen Z. So the influx of Gen Z, along with the influx of a new technology, essentially to most of us, can be overwhelming for people, right, as they’re looking for jobs. So we have to get over the thought that we can always do things the way we’ve always done them.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (50:51.422)
So
Jessica Pierce (50:59.351)
We have to adapt. We’re talking to a new younger generation that grew up with a cell phone in their hand from the day they were born. Or an iPad they were playing games on when they were two. Like it is, this is how it is and we have to adapt. And I don’t know if you all remember this, but like when the internet kind of started AOL, dial up, all that, I’m older than probably all of you. but we were like, we don’t really need this. Or when Facebook initially came out with social media and it was like,
Misty Kortes (51:05.868)
Yeah.
Jessica Pierce (51:28.013)
What are you doing today? Or I can’t remember what the prompt was. And you’re like, I’m eating dinner. Here’s a picture of my plate. People are like, I don’t want to do that. Why does anyone care what I’m eating? It’s dumb. And the evolution of that. So we’re stepping into right now for most of us. I know it’s been around a long time, but for most of the world, we’re like, it’s new. And we’re like back to AOL, right? It’s just the entry. So how is this going to change our world?
We’re just stepping our toes in right now. So think from where we started with AOL or whatever the browser was to now, how it’s different. This is what I expect to be happening at a much faster rate than it happened with the internet.
Misty Kortes (51:58.914)
Yep.
Misty Kortes (52:12.96)
Yes.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (52:13.43)
Jessica, you mentioned your daughter about the steak. How old are you? I’m asking you is your daughter.
Jessica Pierce (52:18.231)
Yeah, my girls are 16 and 18 and my son’s 26. And so all of them are utilizing chat GPT. And Cam, you said something about education because they’ve been using AI tools without kind of even knowing what it was around math, Mark, said algebra, around different writing. And their teachers have said,
Mark Garrett, CAIO (52:22.216)
Okay.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (52:29.801)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Pierce (52:43.491)
Don’t use that, don’t use this, don’t use that. so education is in an uproar right now trying to figure out how to do this. How do our students learn and also utilize the tools that they’re gonna need in the workforce.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (52:55.157)
Yeah. So thanks for sharing that because I know, you know, your your your kids are in high school age and Miss Daniel, you’ve got kids. So here’s here’s what I here’s what I think right now. So I’ve got a 15 year old daughter in grade 10. She is not allowed to use AI. So I’m using AI to check her work. All right. And then I’ve got a two and a half year old. So you talk about the phone. She does not know what this is. She knows what this is. But yesterday was yesterday the day before. I don’t.
Jessica Pierce (53:12.323)
Mm-hmm.
Jessica Pierce (53:15.993)
Misty Kortes (53:17.485)
Wow.
Jessica Pierce (53:19.801)
Yuck!
Mark Garrett, CAIO (53:24.693)
Yesterday, the day before, she said Google turn on the lights. Oh, right. Because we got a Google house at two and a half years old. She’s saying that. And so she’s going to go through a world where AI is there. Right. It’s going to be in the education we’re going to leverage in three years. We’re going to figure out how to leverage individualized learning through AI applications. My older daughter is going through an education system that is blocking it. And I think that is the
That’s the real world challenge for businesses and employees that the school systems are really far behind to catch up because it’s cheating. Yeah, just like a calculator is. But as we as we grow, mean, yeah, like this is this is where things are going. So, you know, the opportunity and also the real world application is that people need to begin to step. It’s like, well, yeah. Why do we need email? I why do we need a fax machine?
who still uses fax machines, right? It’s the same thing.
Misty Kortes (54:26.914)
That is a perfect segue into the last question I want to ask you all. What trends in AI should entrepreneurs be paying attention to?
Cameron | Monkeypod (54:40.974)
I can share a bit of one, and this might tee up because I know Mark has a lot of expertise in this next thing. I think it’s the stuff that it can do beyond. Like all of this content generation, prepare some emails, prepare some social posts, make a process document for me, teach me how to cook a steak. I think that that is a really great gateway drug into this world.
But it’s because it feels practical in the payoff of like learning it and collaborating with it is not frustrating. It’s actually kind of fun when you start. But the conversational piece where you turn your AI tools on to be allowed to talk to your prospect or your customer in your business, I think is a really interesting next layer after that.
Misty Kortes (55:31.181)
and
Cameron | Monkeypod (55:35.694)
you know, generating content for you as an individual user of AI. So the idea of like, if you’re a salesperson or an entrepreneur who has a contact us form on your website, and they fill out the contact us form to then have a text message conversation. So we just set one up for a client of ours on our agency side, where the first couple of interactions are automation, not AI. It’s, know, an email greeting.
that thank you for filling out our form. And a couple of minutes later, a sales rep gets assigned through around Robin and then a nice warm greeting from that sales rep comes in with a Calendly booking link. Kind of how it was a couple of years ago in the great world of automation. But then if they don’t act that way using the link, I think it’s two hours later, we start a text messaging conversation that says, hey, I sent you a link, but maybe it’ll be easier for you on text instead.
Misty Kortes (56:33.262)
Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (56:33.474)
And then it uses an AI conversation bot to just do that one job of setting up the appointment. So I think the idea, the next next thing is the idea of putting AI into a two-way conversation with people on your behalf is a fascinating idea.
a little bit more frustrating because this one that we’re testing right now started taking some liberties. Like if the customer said, hey, can we do a whatever type of engagement? It would be like, yeah, of course we can. And it wasn’t a service that the company offered. So we had to go back and like refine the rules inside of the prompt again. it’s been, you know, the payoff is not as quick and joyful as the kind of content generation one was, but the opportunity it presents if we get it right.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (57:23.537)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (57:23.694)
is amazing. that’s where our next thing is, is to figure out how to use it more in conversation and letting it act more on our behalf.
Misty Kortes (57:33.922)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (57:35.99)
And I feel like I probably stole from Mark because Mark, most of what I know about that I know from Mark. So.
Misty Kortes (57:40.428)
You
Mark Garrett, CAIO (57:41.767)
I just want to respond to TJ’s comment here Did you did you yeah Jessica did you happen to see that because you know, think I think really the key thing there is is in the in 25 that’s that’s gonna be the big issue Especially as we get outside of you know, the the solopreneurs or the one or two person shops and we start getting into larger companies
Misty Kortes (57:47.404)
Yes, I’ve seen that.
Misty Kortes (58:07.95)
So let me, let me, I apologize for interrupting Mark. Here’s what TJ asked because those who are not in the chat with us, he says, protecting intellectual property is a big concern of mine too. I’m glad Jessica mentioned it. Are the paid versions of tools that were mentioned earlier like Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini better for protecting ideas and content? What are some of the best practices for being proactive and aware in protecting our original content?
Mark Garrett, CAIO (58:11.658)
Please.
Misty Kortes (58:37.23)
while we’re still leveraging the strengths and power of AI? That is quite a question and I freaking love it. So Mark, I’m to let you unpack it. Jessica, I’m going let you chime in too.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (58:42.717)
Yeah, that’s what Yeah.
Yeah, that’s why I want to address it, because TJ, you’re 100 % right. The IP component of things, or intellectual property component, is critical. So in the paid versions, you have the opportunity to turn off elements to not train the models based on your data. Sure, that’s there. But then how do we, the issue runs into, I’m sitting at my desk at my job in my company, and then I’m to go and use a model, whatever it happens to be.
There’s that transfer of data that goes from your computer out to those servers. Is that secure or not secure? That’s the issue that we’re dealing with. And so when we look at Copilot, let’s use the Microsoft platform as an example. Copilot has three levels, the free version, the $20 pro version, and then the $30 Office 365 cloud version. The cloud version comes with Microsoft’s integrated
security protection, but it goes back to governance, it goes back to policies and procedures that companies need to implement, just like they would be in terms of sending confidential data to clients and so on and so forth. So there needs to be an understanding of what is considered confidential data, what’s considered public data, and where do we use each of those tools. Notebook LM, as an example, the pro version has a
a secure side of it as well. So if we’re sending, say, here, perfect use cases, go and analyze this last month’s customer order data. And a lot of people just take an Excel file or a CSV file, push it up, have it analyzed. But it’s got names, emails, purchase history, all of that stuff. We’ve got to be able to scrub that data so that no public information gets out there. Or we’ve got to upgrade to tools like Copilot.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:00:44.021)
Office 365. But a lot of this goes back to data governance and data privacy and security, but there’s also an overarching cybersecurity issue that nobody’s talking about right now. And it’s part of the research that we’re doing with a couple parties, because it’s coming and we’re kind of being encouraged to use these tools and accidentally without knowing it.
opening up the company and or client data to those risks. So that’s from that perspective and on the governance. And the other part of that as an extension is the ethical considerations that we need to look at. So a lot of people aren’t too aware, but the biases that are included in a lot of these models, the information, you know, it’s if we look at if we look at the two current or the three current models, two are American made, one’s Chinese made. Where’s the bias coming?
Misty Kortes (01:01:30.22)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:01:40.789)
So the Chinese-made model will have a Chinese potentially bias to it. But also, we have to understand, where’s the risk from it? It’s fast. It’s cheap. But even in their own terms and conditions, saying, we are not protecting your data. So again, how does that pull into it? When we look at the opportunities and what 25 is going to bring for us, I see, to Jessica’s point, that awareness, education,
and the actual implementation in the workforce is going to be critical. education and AI literacy is the huge opportunity right now. That’s why we’ve tripled down. That’s why I think with AI.com and everything that we’re doing in that space is all about educating employees because then they can make informed decisions. But we’re going to see, to Cam’s point, a lot more
automation, a lot more agent, agentic type work, where we can program up agents to run our computers to handle tasks without the human intervention. So they’re going to be able to handle more complex tasks, like Cam was saying, and customer service or sales. We’ve got two years in conversational voice AI and conversational chat AI. And it’s it’s not there yet as much as I’d like to think it is to Cam’s
frustrations, it’s not where it needs to be. The other part of it is multimodal. So we’re going to be able to take a photo and upload that photo and allow for AI to help us decipher that case in point, grade 10 algebra last night. I did not understand the question. I took a photo of the problem because it was a triangle with a bunch of angles and it came back, taught me how to teach my daughter how to do it. And then
Misty Kortes (01:03:29.292)
Yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:03:36.637)
I think there’s going to be, you know, not necessarily directly related to us, but I think this is the year because of compute power and such, we’re going to start seeing a lot of breakthroughs in research, in medical and some of those other science based areas, not necessarily directly related to our own individual business ops, but, you know, cancer treatments, cancer diagnosis, my, my sister in law, after many, many years of fighting brain cancer.
Misty Kortes (01:03:51.234)
Yes.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:04:06.097)
She, her last diagnosis round last summer came through an AI enabled diagnosis platform. So we’re going to see these kinds of things. it just, it, it, again, it reminds me just how deep that AI is coming into this. And then lastly, we’re going to start to see compliance and government, government regulations. That’s the other part of it too. We’re seeing it in conversational voice AI with FCC compliance regulations that happened last year. We’re seeing a couple other areas.
the EU’s AI as part of GDPR, they’re having their own AI guidelines and policies. So, you know, look for that kind of towards the latter half of next year is kind of what I’m seeing. So that’s what we’re focusing all of our energy on.
Jessica Pierce (01:04:52.791)
Yeah, and I want to say something directly to the entrepreneurs because I know this is kind of the target, right? I’m not a technical person. I don’t understand all the back end, right? I’ll leave that to the experts. Not something I feel like I need to learn. But what I can say is from a business owner standpoint, an entrepreneur who has built multiple businesses, I am responsible for what I put out there.
Misty Kortes (01:05:03.882)
Thank
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:05:03.903)
Yeah, me too.
Jessica Pierce (01:05:17.431)
and what I put into AI tools, what I put on the internet. And so there’s a component of our business, my businesses, each of them, that I feel like is really my intellectual property, or our business intellectual property. And I don’t want that out there. So I’m not going to put it in any tools. I am gonna ask tools for help on various things, and I’m gonna pull from those tools and integrate them into some of the stuff I’m working on. So.
What Mark said about big employers training and teaching, or even small, I run, you know, I have a staff of four teaching them what you can put in AI and what you cannot, the things we really need to safeguard. You know, maybe it’s 5 % of our business. This is our secret sauce. We don’t want this out here. So don’t ever put this on AI tools because then it feeds in and it has it, right? I don’t know, understand really the security of each level of model.
that you can utilize. But what I am saying is we have to protect it on our side. Just like social media, where we have to teach our staff and employees, we need you to behave a certain way on social media because we don’t want you to represent our company this way. It’s the same thing. So we have a responsibility here on what we’re putting in so that our intellectual property isn’t out there for the world.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:06:30.676)
Yeah.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:06:41.991)
Such a great analogy. I love that point about we have to train our team what to put on social and all that stuff. It is such a great analogy. Love it. I’m going to use it next time. Thank you. That’s great.
Misty Kortes (01:06:54.382)
I love it. Well, and here’s what I would do. I listened to this and I like you start getting into compliance. mean, marketers are known as kind of rule breakers, right? I’m just going to put that out there. Not that I break the law, but we push the boundaries for sure. Here’s what I think when I see hearing regulation in that I would take the terms and conditions for the platform you’re signing up for.
Jessica Pierce (01:06:54.955)
you
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:07:12.373)
Mr. Ruelas.
Jessica Pierce (01:07:12.577)
be clear.
Misty Kortes (01:07:23.628)
I’d pop it into a AI tool that says, put this in layman’s terms for me and ask specific questions. When I, if I share my information on your platform, is it going to be made public? Is it going to be right? That’s what I would do because I have no idea. I skip over the terms and agreements because I don’t understand them. So reading them is useless for me personally. So if you’re, if you’re getting in your head, cause I have a tendency to get in my head of, crap.
put something I’ve uploaded personal documents to AI not even realizing that there’s a risk of my personal information being on that document and being shared publicly never even crossed my mind so the fact that you guys brought that up is really important for those of them
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:08:01.725)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:08:10.254)
you
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:08:14.19)
Also, if people in the audience are not using it, though, let’s go back to that thing about how do I cook a perfect steak. Some of the problems that we’re talking about are, again, not using negative language. Some of these concerns that you have, those are concerns for the time that you’ve hit that wire, that you’ve scaled up to that point of using these tools.
Misty Kortes (01:08:27.736)
Big!
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:08:40.822)
If you’re going from not using it to using it, if you’re feeling left behind, go ahead and start putting some prompts into these tools. Ask the tool what the tool can do for you. Explain to it the problem you’re trying to solve at work today, the content you’re trying to manage, the source information you have. I just recorded an hour long podcast. Can I give you the transcript and have the tools say, sure you can. Right?
Misty Kortes (01:09:04.107)
Yes.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:09:07.566)
If the purpose of that podcast is to be published on iTunes, is iTunes still a thing? On podcasts, on Spotify, well, then don’t overthink the risk to putting that item up there on the AI tools cloud as well. Start to get those repetitions in of saying, hey, I’ve got this source information, can you help me with it? And put some non-confidential source information up there. This whole privacy
Misty Kortes (01:09:13.166)
Thank you.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:09:13.205)
Yeah, this.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:09:37.11)
concern stuff will come later when you say, hey, what happens if I connect this up to my CRM system or my medical office practice clinic notes system, right? If you’re in that situation, the ethical and technological concerns will probably be pretty clear to you there. So don’t overthink it now if you need to ask a tool how to do something interesting to learn how to use that tool.
Misty Kortes (01:09:44.034)
Hmm.
Jessica Pierce (01:09:44.205)
Mm.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:10:04.132)
Yeah. Great point, great point, Kim. Thank you for bringing us back down to the topic. We can all deep dive into this, but you’re right, 100 % is yeah.
Misty Kortes (01:10:04.757)
I would agree.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:10:07.01)
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (01:10:08.686)
Pull in the spring back there.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:10:11.597)
Ha ha!
Misty Kortes (01:10:13.101)
Yeah.
Jessica Pierce (01:10:13.303)
And Misty, I want to talk about one last trend. I know that was the last question, but it’s going to turn from a nice to have to an expectation. So do you all remember? And I know I keep like bringing us back, like when Microsoft office word came out or Outlook came out originally, right? Everyone’s like, I don’t, I don’t need to do that. Right. I can hand, right. I like to hand write things. Right. So
Misty Kortes (01:10:17.783)
Yes.
Jessica Pierce (01:10:41.067)
We were like, it’s nice to have if you can schedule a calendar, a meeting with a calendar notice, that’s nice to have. No, but now it is an expectation. Everyone uses some version of word processing stuff online. AI will turn to that. It will turn to an expectation and those words, prompt, engineering, if you aren’t familiar with those words, you put it into AI, can even just put it into Google, whatever.
Misty Kortes (01:10:57.859)
Yes.
Jessica Pierce (01:11:09.593)
Prompt engineering is the ability to ask an AI tool and get the data back that you want. So being able to prompt engineering again is one of the top skills that’s going to be needed in the workforce over the next couple years. And it’s going, I bet you, Kiam, you can come back and tell me, like, is there going to be degrees and certifications around prompt engineering? And I bet you it’s going to be one of the top degrees or.
Misty Kortes (01:11:17.603)
Yes.
Jessica Pierce (01:11:37.559)
certification skill sets that’s ever going to be needed. So if you’re wondering how can I be relevant in the world, learn how to prompt engineer.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:11:46.773)
I’m sorry.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:11:46.862)
Yeah, you call to me because I work for a large public college. I think Mark, of course, I think it will. I think that computer sciences departments, probably more than business departments, computer sciences departments are getting there now. And I hope the business departments get there eventually. But Mark, in the private sector, those exist right now, right? People going out there to get leadership type of.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:12:09.843)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. lot lot of the universities are co partnering with an organization that is teaching those at the master’s level. And we have a we have a phrase where we say AI is it, but it’s not IT. Right. And and the idea being there is that we need to move AI out of the server room and into the boardroom. Right. That that’s really where it needs to exist.
Misty Kortes (01:12:29.792)
No.
Jessica Pierce (01:12:36.089)
you
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:12:38.837)
And so prompt engineering, for those who are uninitiated, really is the ability to ask questions in a structured format that the AI can do. Like Jessica said, this is going to be the next level of communication skills. So from that perspective, we are now seeing job postings for sophisticated prompt engineers in the $100,000, $200,000 range for those skills.
Their job is to be able to take complex ideas, do the prompting and be able to then automate. I hold a certification of Chief AI Officer. And so I’m now being brought into companies in a fractional capacity to help them from the leadership perspective. And at that level, we’re also talking about, who’s your AI core team? Who’s your Chief Prompt Engineer? Not Chief as in Chief level, but who’s your primary prompt engineer?
that the company is going to lean on. If you don’t have it, we’ll help you hire for that because that is going to be a primary function. In a larger companies, we’re looking at department level prompt engineers, accounting, finance, HR, marketing, sales, customer service, ops, construction, et cetera, legal even. So yeah, prompt engineering is the underlying function. So when we look at copilot, great, copilot defaults up with an open
Open up word and it’s like what can I do for you today? Prompt engineering is the term for how to answer that question. What can I do for you today? How can I help you with this and that Jessica? mean that’s it. Yeah, I and here it is. I’m so far down that conversation Yeah, like it’s just a default if you can’t do that You’ve got to start there. So to cam and Jessica to bring you to bring those both ideas back is After you listen to this
Misty Kortes (01:14:25.346)
You forget.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:14:37.001)
The action step is go to Chat2PT free, go to Perplexity. Actually, here’s the thing. Go to Perplexity and ask it a question about your kid’s homework or ask it a question about your favorite hobby or whatever it is. And then do the exact same search in Google. And I guarantee you, you will never use Google again.
Misty Kortes (01:14:59.106)
Yes. That’s good.
Jessica Pierce (01:14:59.609)
Mmm.
Totally. One prompt, and I’ll write this in the chat, that I love for people to use is, what’s one thing you can tell me about myself that I may not know? the information that back, whether you’ve been using a tool, AI tool, for a long time or not at all.
Misty Kortes (01:15:04.001)
Yes.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:15:16.117)
Nice.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:15:16.526)
you
Jessica Pierce (01:15:23.257)
the information that comes back, I did this as a test for a whole bunch of people and everyone got phenomenal responses, regardless of how often they had used it because you probably have some presence out there, whether it’s on the internet or on social media. So I encourage everybody to use that. But last thing, Missy, I want to say is I was talking to a fairly large corporation in Arizona, but it has multiple campuses all over.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:15:26.83)
Thank you.
Jessica Pierce (01:15:52.277)
And they were able to eliminate, they transitioned the staff, but eliminate their entire department of junior software engineers. And they need the senior ones, because those are the ones that understand the data that comes out and are analyzing the information. And what they’re doing with these software engineers is they’ve required them to start learning about analyzing the data and how to prompt engineer. And that’s what they’re coming.
they’re doing now instead of the typical software development stuff they were doing before. So if you’re in technology at all, this feels like it needs to be a required certification added on to your degree or whatever it is because that’s what companies need.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:16:29.615)
Thank you.
Misty Kortes (01:16:33.344)
Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up because you know, when I first heard of the word prompt engineering, my thought is, mean, I know how to do that. That’s easy. Right. But that’s really where you have an opportunity to bring your experience, your expertise, your knowledge to dive deeper into prompting tools to get the output that you’re seeking.
See, if you’re coming to ChatGPT, I’ll give you a prime example. Back in October, we were visiting the in-laws. My father-in-law was a welder for over 30 years, right? And I was trying to get him to kind of understand the AI and the changes in my industry and why I made changes to my business and all this stuff. And I said, well, let me give you an example. And I opened up ChatGPT and I said, I know nothing about welding. I mean, nothing. Clearly. And I said to him,
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:17:01.314)
Thank
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:17:25.422)
Hehehehe
Misty Kortes (01:17:29.614)
give me a question that a new apprentice might ask if they were learning how to weld. And so he gives me, I don’t even remember the question, but I put it in there and it spits out a response. And I said, see, here’s the opportunity we have today is that you as an experienced welder are utilizing the tool as a opportunity to.
dig deeper, to look for opportunities, to leverage, to create systems, to expand on your knowledge, because you are coming to that tool with that knowledge. Me, as a person who knows nothing about welding, am I gonna gain 30 years of experience by using chat GPT and asking them one prompt? Probably not, right? And the reason why I’m bringing this up, because number one, I think a lot of people think,
Jessica Pierce (01:18:16.728)
You
Misty Kortes (01:18:22.446)
prompt engineering, is that really that important? Yes, number one. Number two, that is exactly the thing that solves the problem of the fear that some of us have about it replacing us. See, if you’re an experienced welder with over 30 years of experience leveraging these tools, the things you can do are unlimited, right? And that’s the opportunity that truly lies here.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:18:47.199)
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (01:18:51.326)
me going to chat GBT saying, teach me how to weld. it’d take me probably 30 years to figure it out. Cause I don’t even know what to ask. I don’t know. Like, do I know how to engineer a prompt? Yes. And it’s in my industry, but to engineer it as a welder, heck no. Does that make sense?
Jessica Pierce (01:18:54.497)
Yeah.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:18:58.158)
you
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:19:06.894)
Can imagine being at the gas supplier company with your sedan trying to, but I learned on the chat, GPT. I know what I’m doing.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:19:18.677)
Cam, Cam, no, I did that. I did that three days, four days ago with my mom’s car. I’m not a mechanic, but I wasn’t going to going to take it in to go get it serviced. And I’m standing outside my mom’s car in the freezing cold because we’re up north and, know, I’m I’m plexing. So that’s the term plexing, not I’m using perplexity like I Googled it. I plex it. So you heard it here first. If you haven’t heard it, not my term.
Jessica Pierce (01:19:19.221)
In the end! In the end!
Misty Kortes (01:19:21.966)
Right?
Misty Kortes (01:19:41.934)
Like, okay.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:19:47.177)
Boring it but I’ve said it so many times I’ll use it but I plexed on how to solve this problem my mom’s car It gave me a bunch of things found videos I could not have found gave it to me and gave me the step-by-step and lo and behold 15 minutes later I probably saved a couple hundred bucks like it Yeah, I’m not a mechanic, you know, like that’s three things. I don’t know how to do is fix my car do plumbing and You know and cook well, those are the three things. I don’t know how to do. Well, there’s probably a lot
Misty Kortes (01:19:49.164)
You
Jessica Pierce (01:20:06.616)
No.
Misty Kortes (01:20:17.07)
Now you know the prompt to cook a steak.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:20:19.381)
Exactly. That’s exactly there. So give a load of this. There’s a kid. Okay, just just funny just anecdote There’s a 17 year old kid because of the now the the multimodal AI he took a picture of His plate and it’s able to look at the food look at the size proportions Give you all of your calorie counts and all that stuff. So Seventeen year old kid did this. Okay, he’s making he’s grossing about 1.2 a month like
Misty Kortes (01:20:40.59)
What was it?
Misty Kortes (01:20:48.418)
He sold it to all these fitness apps and all these trackers. So he created a tool that can now be scaled and implemented into all these other tools. There’s so much possibility. We need to have a call about that because I think that sometimes we can get into the AI rabbit hole of, my gosh, like the world’s burning down. Nobody will have jobs. We’re all screwed. But there’s just, we’re in a shift. That’s it.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:20:50.974)
Right?
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:21:02.217)
Yeah.
Jessica Pierce (01:21:10.797)
Hmm.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:21:12.297)
Yeah, like cam said, we’re gonna shift we’re gonna go into it. Yeah.
Misty Kortes (01:21:16.91)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you guys, this has been so amazing. We could go on, I know for probably days, maybe. It’s been an incredible conversation. So many takeaways. I appreciate each and every one of you sharing your insight, bringing your expertise and your knowledge and helping us, you know, feel more confident about leveraging AI in our life, not just business, right? Just in our life in general.
So as we wrap up, would like each people may be listening in going, I need to know more about this person. So what’s the best place that our audience can find you and connect with you? if you wanna go around, Jessica start.
Jessica Pierce (01:21:59.811)
Yeah, so my website is jessicapiersspeaks.com. And if you are looking for a new job or trying to understand careers pathways, careerconnectors.org is the organization. And I’m on LinkedIn a lot. So just type in my name and I’ll pop up.
Misty Kortes (01:22:18.188)
And if you’re listening to this on my website, you’ll get the show notes. I’ll have all the links there because the spelling of everybody’s names is not, not easy. Mark, you want to go ahead?
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:22:29.973)
Sure, yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. And we’re all here if you have questions. We’ve started what we’re calling a movement, a cultural shift. It’s called I think with AI.com. think has a whole framework and a bunch of stuff. But on there, we’ve got a bunch of resources. So it’s a simple page. Fill out the form. Don’t worry. We’re not going to hound you. You’re going to get
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:22:48.078)
Haha
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:22:55.999)
You’re going to see what an AI agent can do. So you can talk to a live agent if you click the checkbox. And also the stuff that Cam was talking about in terms of the automated chat agents. But more importantly, when you do that, you’ll get a complimentary ticket to our upcoming webinar on the 22nd. It’s called What the Heck is Gen.AI. We’re going to go through and really break down this in a really structured format. And at the end of that, you’ll get a
a of prompts, a bunch of tools, a bunch of resources to actually use. Because we’re coming through Misty, it’s totally free. So love to be able to just offer that so you can bring that to your team, bring that out to your community. So that’s our step to help everyone begin to adopt and begin to think with AI.
Misty Kortes (01:23:42.862)
I appreciate that. Thank you so much. All right, Cameron, you’re wrapping us up.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:23:47.656)
wrapping us up. Well, thank you, as Mark said, for hosting this. It’s been a really fun conversation. As the person with too many jobs, it means I also have too many websites. But let’s go with monkeypodmarketing.com. That’s the place where all of our educational content, all of our blog content, and a pathway into our community where people hang out and talk about the things they’re building, the tools, the systems, and so on that they’re building.
The, I’m gonna mention two, monkeyplotmarketing.com slash blog. The very most recent post on that blog is my partner, Greg, walking through a really practical use of Notebook LM. So if you wanna learn one really, really just pristine practical use of Notebook LM, it’s right there on our blog. And then we have a course totally free of charge called The One Conversation, and it’s about how to design the conversation that you have with your customers and prospects.
and that’s at monkeypodwebinar.com. So find us there. And my contact information is all over those websites. So if you want to talk to me in real life, I’m here for that too.
Misty Kortes (01:24:52.866)
Awesome. So if you’re live with us, all those links are in the chat. If you’re listening to the recording, you’re going to find this in the show notes. So again, thank you so much for an incredible discussion. You guys have been amazing. You shared some practical advice, some insights, overcome some fears and challenges that we may be struggling with, you know, when it comes to AI and entrepreneurship and in our life. So you’ve given us a lot to think about, a lot of opportunities to look at and you know,
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:25:10.292)
You
Misty Kortes (01:25:22.474)
just a way to overcome those challenges because I think that you know when fear takes over it has a tendency to make us want to stick our head in the sands and like all of you have said you can’t do that it’s here it’s here to stay it’s not going to go away and we just need to learn to adapt and embrace it into our lives and if you start with what Jessica said how do I make a steak how do I make a good steak how do I
I have a smoker and we’re trying to figure this out. Every time we smoke it’s either burnt or it’s an underdone or it’s tough or it’s it’s all over the board. Like how do I smoke a good meat? Right? So just start with something simple and just slowly but surely you’ll start to see the possibilities unfold for you. I firmly believe that. So again thank you each and every one of you and with that said…
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:25:59.455)
Plex it, Misty, plex it.
Misty Kortes (01:26:18.21)
I’ll see you all again next week. Have a good week. Bye.
Cameron | Monkeypod (01:26:20.856)
Thanks Misty. Bye.
Mark Garrett, CAIO (01:26:22.345)
Thanks everyone, take care.