394: AI Empowerment for Entrepreneurs- with Chris Daigle

[00:00:23] Lori Highby: Hey everybody, Lori Highby here. Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast. Our show notes are found at socialcapitalpodcast. com. To you, the listener, I want you to know that I appreciate you and I'm thrilled to have you here for another episode. If there's ever anything that I can do to support you, reach out.

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The topic of relationships ties very closely with marketing. That's why I bring on marketing experts with a variety of backgrounds for you to learn and grow from. Today's guest is Chris Daigle. He's the CEO and co founder of chiefaiofficer. com. In these dynamic times of AI enablement or extinction, his purpose is to ensure businesses thrive through AI strategy, crafted by certified chief AI officers, CAIOs, or the use of their education and certification program on how to use AI in their business or their role.

As an early pioneer in SAS, Chris launched his first software company in 2002. And since then has gone on to found several successful businesses where he was able to develop the entrepreneurial and leadership skills that have led him to where he is now, the cutting edge of AI empowerment for small to medium sized businesses.

Chris, welcome to the show.

[00:02:33] Chris Daigle: Thank you so much for the invitation.

[00:02:36] Lori Highby: Absolutely. Super excited to have you here. I know we were sitting next to each other at an AI conference about, you know, well, whatever it was six months ago. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I gotta have you on my show. This is gonna be such a great conversation.

[00:02:50] Chris Daigle: Long time coming.

[00:02:51] Lori Highby: Yes. It's hard to fit, you know, schedules sometimes, but we're making it work. So yeah, well, chief AI officer, that is, that's a huge role. And you know, that was the first time I actually heard of even that kind of title to some extent was at the conference we attended. I'm sure there's a number of folks and we chatted briefly about this before even hitting the record button, but how late are people to the AI game right now?

[00:03:17] Chris Daigle: You know based on what you might be seeing in the media, business owners that I talk to, there's a lot of FOMO, right? There's a lot of an assumption that the competition is already best practice AI deployment.

However, I can confidently say that you're not late, you're early. If you're on this podcast listening to this topic, that's the first step. If you're somebody who already recognizes that generative AI gives an advantage in business, over those who aren't using it, then that awareness puts you even closer to the head of the pack.

But if you're not actively upskilling or engaging with people to bring into your business who are upskilled and can introduce this stuff, I don't know that I'll be able to say that you're early for much longer.

[00:04:10] Lori Highby: So, you know, it's interesting. And you, you see on LinkedIn, I'll post questions about AI or have conversations about it. And even this morning I had a conversation with a gentleman who actually owns a marketing agency, and folks are just kind of shoving it to the side. Like, I don't need to worry about that right now. And I'm just shocked when I, when I see, read that or hear that, like, what is your response to that?

[00:04:35] Chris Daigle: So just for everybody's context, so that you know where I'm coming from, listen, I am not a data science guy. I wasn't leveraging artificial intelligence in my business 12 months ago. What I was focused on was helping small to medium businesses structure growth in their business, like ambitious growth without there being a lot of friction. So we have a process where we come into businesses and we get real clear on what's the big goal. And then our skillset was to make sure that, that the company was able to achieve those big three, five year goals without, you know, burning the ship down in the process.

When I saw that we could, and that process has been proven. There's many models out there, EOS scaling up the stuff that we do. It's a proven structure to get a result in business. When I saw what generative AI was able to do to compress that result cycle, I immediately recognized that this was not to be hyperbolic, but this truly was a game changer for those who got involved early on because the learning curve is not big.

Whatever's got you sitting on the fence right now. If you don't think it's important, please go spend 10 minutes on YouTube and Google, whatever your industry is and type in, you know, marketing use cases for AI and just watch any video. And I think that you'll have that moment where you go, Oh, Oh, okay. Like I need to be like, that was easy. And that just saved me two hours, five hours, a hundred dollars.

You know, what, whatever it is, it's not that, that this stuff is going to come in and you know, you've got robots serving you, giving you your slippers and tea in the morning. It's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about coming in and identifying all these use cases where one little tool or one 15 minute effort or one prompt or one conversation with, you know, somebody that knows a thing or two about AI can result in that part of your business, never having to be touched by a human again, or the involvement of that human in that process reduced 20%, 50%, 80%, whatever it is. But that over and over in your business, again, not complicated.

You don't have to be techie, but the compounding effect of all of these little improvements to process designed around that bigger strategy that I stressed earlier. You if you're if you're the marketing client who's still sitting on the fence, you will not be able to catch up in six months with the person who's doing exactly what I'm talking about here. And I'm not again I'm not like some AI, you know, nerd or anything like that. I'm an intelligent businessman who recognizes the leverage that comes from Investing a little time and learning how to use some basic tool.

Don't go and be a pro. You don't have to go and be on the lecture circuit about AI. Figure out how to do a couple of things with it, and then your brain will start to make the shift where you're like, Oh, you know what, I could probably use GPT for that. Oh, you know what, let me Google and see if there's an AI tool that builds a slide deck that automatically builds a customer service bot, all of these little things.

And you start today. You see immediate, the first time you try it, you're like, Oh, benefit. Do that, teach your team to do it, whatever has to happen. But these little moves, and again, do it in a structured way. Don't just go Wild West in there. You turn around a month, three months, certainly six months down the road, and you realize that anybody who is doing business the old way, dinosaur. It's just, it's sad. Like the future's not, and I'm, I'm not trying to be a fear monger. It's just. You know, why would you try to do business without having using the internet? Yeah, right. Yeah. I'm sorry We only do direct mail. We only do newspaper advertising and billboard. Great, however, there's a better way, right? And that's what this is.

[00:08:30] Lori Highby: Yeah, one of my favorite kind of life mottos, I guess I try to strive for, is to do something your future self will thank you for, right? And I think this is something that, you know, do something right now that's going to have a positive exponential impact on your life down the road.

And this is one of those things that it's worth taking the time to invest in now. Yeah. you know, it's interesting. I think I shared with you a little bit again, before we hit the record button that I have been speaking a little bit on this topic, and I was brought into a fairly large organization to speak to their leadership. And they came to me with the really wanting to talk about AI as like a, do not use this mentality. And I got them on board to say, proceed with caution to their team, which I think is a good way to approach that because they have a lot of confidential proprietary type information, but I, I, you know, they were thinking like the message to share with everyone in their organization was don't even consider, which is not the right approach. And because of what you're saying, you know, you're going to be a dinosaur if you don't start to evolve right now.

[00:09:39] Chris Daigle: You know, you bring up a good point. And at the conference that we went to Paul, the main guy over there, he has been a big advocate of An AI use policy, like a simple document that outlines the charter under which everybody in the organization, Hey, if you're going to use it, here's what it is. You don't do this. You don't do that. You run it by legal, whatever the things may be. But you know, I guess I'm just so comfortable with the tools and don't see the risk and don't see like anything fearful about them that that perspective. Was outside of my box. But I'm glad that you shared that with me because you know, you just, you kind of get in the bubble and you just assume every, oh, everybody knows you can do that, but I guess not.

[00:10:23] Lori Highby: Yeah. So those that are listening, I'm sure they're asking, okay, so there's use cases for all industries, all roles, all types of things. How do I get started?

[00:10:32] Chris Daigle: I mean, listen, there's free tools out there. Everybody's heard of Chat. If you haven't heard of Chat GPT, that's probably the most accessible interface for you to very naturally engage with artificial intelligence. For those of you who do have an account, you can get some impressive outputs with the free version, right? If you want a more powerful version of Chat GPT, it's 20 bucks a month. And that seems to be the standard pricing across other models like Claude that do this similar things, natural language interface with an AI model.

You know, where I would get started, I wouldn't look at it like Google. I wouldn't go there and type in the same type of input that you would in a search bar. I have people that tell me, oh, I tried it. And what would you do? And they, you know, they essentially said they went there and did what would be a google search, and that's not where the models shine. Google's fantastic company when it comes to indexing the internet. Perplexity is better in my opinion, so go there with a question that maybe you would want to ask your boss or whatever the last, it doesn't even have to be a business thing, but whatever last business book that you read. Bring your problem or your, Hey, I'm a small business. I have a bakery. I have a delivery service. I drive Uber. I have, you know, 500 employees at my manufacturing facility, whatever that answer is, give it some context and ask it some questions about my industry. What are some challenges I should be thinking about?

There's two sides of it. You can look at it like a, like an assistant that needs very clear instructions in order to get you the output you're looking for, but you can also, I can act as Warren Buffett and give me some advice on, you know, here's what my IRA is. Here's what my investments are. What would you do?

And so you don't even have to like do anything terribly clever with it. You just need to start playing with it. And I can tell you that it's kind of a little joke, but the role of chief AI officer, which is the role that we certify people in, it's abbreviated C A I O. And I want you to picture this. I want you to picture yourself sitting in front of the computer, beating away at the keys with frustration. Somebody walks over, they lean over, they type a few things on the keyboard, and then they say, see AI, Oh. It, you need to have that, Oh, moment, right?

Yeah.

Because it is, it is as simple as see AI, like it, it's not anything to be intimidated by. So if you have that, Oh, moment. Something changes and you never, you never not consider how can I use AI for this? How can I, could AI help? Right? It just becomes this thing to where you're not going to go knock on your neighbor's door and ask them what time the movies are, right? You're going to go to the internet. You're going to use that tool. It becomes that default behavior.

I mean, certainly you can do stuff at lifestyle, like, Hey, here's my weight goals. Here's the equipment I have at my house. I'd like to lose this much weight over the next 15 weeks, come up with a, you know an exercise plan. I don't like walking. I do like swimming. And you know, I have a busy lifestyle and GPT can give you all of that stuff, but you have to think about that way.

I do a podcast too. It's called Using AI at Work. And guess what we talk about? Talk about case studies where individuals are sharing, oh, here's how we use it. Oh, here's how my HR team uses it. Here's how my marketing, right? And it's just, it's, it's an opportunity for people to hear these use cases, these, Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that, right? And I know this stuff, Lori, like I use it like crazy and have for a year, thousands of hours on this. And every time when I do this podcast, somebody says something and it's not, it's not like rocket science. I'm just like, Oh yeah, you could do that. It's just, it's, it's fascinating. But the sooner that you, I call it sooner that you start thinking in AI, the sooner the fear goes away, the intimidation goes away, the comfort level that you have in introducing it into the business and saying, Hey guys, no, let me show you. So this is something you do every week, Jane, let me show you. Right? Cause once people have that, Oh, moment, the fear goes away. Now there are issues with concerns about companies uploading financial information to the models and it being used to train, and those are all valid. So, I would again, encourage companies and look, if you're at a company and the bosses aren't doing it, go up to them and suggest, Hey, I heard about this thing called a generative AI use policy. I Googled it and here's a template, we should probably think about doing this.

You don't have to be the boss to introduce, good behavior into the business and what that will do is that will open it up because where the big wins are, it's not like, oh my gosh, I discovered the eternal question of the universe. It's, oh, I figured out how to do, to not have to do this thing that I didn't like doing.

I do it in five minutes instead of five hours now. And that, like, just for your own enjoyment of what you do on a day to day basis, you should be using these tools. Sorry for the ramble, but I'm a big evangelist.

[00:15:44] Lori Highby: No, I mean, I'm, I'm team AI all the way. Sure. No doubt about it. How do we make sure we get it right?

[00:15:52] Chris Daigle: I think that what we just talked about is a good start that there there are known and unknown risks, so have a framework in place that- look, if you're a solopreneur or whatever, you don't have to worry about that stuff too much. However, if you're in a business where there's more risk, that should affect your behavior. And I think that an AI use policy is a good start for just a general acknowledgement that nobody in this company can go free Willy, right? Like there's some rails. We need you to stay in them. I'm a big fan of educating myself. And if you're familiar with the Colby Index, I'm a high fact finder.

So I would encourage preparation by. Watching some demos and there's plenty of free content on LinkedIn. It's on Twitter, it's on YouTube, so you don't have to spend a lot of money to get some familiarity with it. Once you do, you'll pick up, oh, this is how you, it's called prompting, but this is the best way to put My question in so that I get the, the closest answer to what I'm looking for without having to go back and forth.

Like you learn those basics and I mean, it's not like you, you get the keys to the car, like there's been some driving, driving lessons in the parking lot or whatever before you take off. So that consider it, consider that the same thing you're going to see how other people are using it. Maybe you'll have that, Oh, moment and you'll go, Oh, like I get it. Right?

I think that starting with a search specific to your role or your industry will give it more context and will open the door for you to watch a five minute video and go, you know what, I'm going to do that tomorrow morning. Cause it's important to have, when you're getting started, some education on how to get the most out of the tool or else you're going to go, you're going to treat it like Google and you know, you're going to see somebody and they go, Oh, you tried AI. Yeah, I tried it. It's no good. You did it wrong. If it's no good, right? Do that so that you don't have that disappointment. Cause it's a, it's a thin veil between AI illiterate and AI literate.

[00:17:57] Lori Highby: And it's, it's constantly evolving right now. So even though, I mean, there's, but the more that you play with it, the easier it's going to be to kind of stay on top, stay in the know of what's happening and what its true potential is. Yeah. And that's why it's so important to, you know, make it now, do it now. Even if it just, yeah, create a free account on a ton of different platforms have the freemium versions that are out there that'll give you enough playground to just experiment right now. Man, I bet we could talk about AI for a long time, but I want to be conscious of the time of the show.

So we're going to switch to some fun questions here. Chris, if you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of less of or differently with regards to your professional career?

[00:18:47] Chris Daigle: I'm very entrepreneurial and entrepreneurs in general suffer from shiny object syndrome. And I think I would have educated myself on the fact that, look, pick something, master it, and all that you seek will be here before you know it. You can't jump it around. You're always going to be a novice.

[00:19:06] Lori Highby: Yeah, but it's so fun to learn and try something new.

[00:19:10] Chris Daigle: I still do it now, but I know what I'm doing at least. I'm aware that I'm doing it.

[00:19:13] Lori Highby: Yeah. Oh, that's great. Okay, so I'm going to put the, the chief microphone in front of you and give you the opportunity to interview me. What's something you'd like to ask me?

[00:19:23] Chris Daigle: You know, I, as I mentioned, I started a podcast and I don't know that this will be applicable to everybody, but Hey, everybody listening, guess what you can start a podcast.

I'm no broadcasting pro is just something that I felt would be good for my business. So I would like to ask a question specific to the craft of podcasting. This is something that you've been doing. You've got multiple podcasts. What advice would you give to somebody like me who's just getting started?

[00:19:50] Lori Highby: Oh, there's lots of things. We're just getting started. I'd say get clarity on the audience and the message. And it sounds like you've got some of that. It's about AI and who the audience is. There could be some level of time sensitive content, but I would try to batch record as much evergreen content or stuff that's going to have a longer shelf life so that you can maintain a consistent production and publishing schedule because you're, when you're building an audience and a listenership, they have expectations.

If you're saying every Tuesday at 8 a. m. Eastern time is when the new episode is coming out. If you miss that, you're going to start to have attrition with your audience. So consistency, and that's why building kind of, a backlog of episodes is extremely beneficial. I think those are the critical things I always recommend.

[00:20:39] Chris Daigle: Okay. Good. Nothing too complicated. Thank you.

[00:20:43] Lori Highby: Yeah. Keep it well and leverage AI for maximizing efficiency of producing the show.

[00:20:48] Chris Daigle: Yeah. It's been pretty cool what we've been able to do. It's pretty cool.

[00:20:52] Lori Highby: Yep. Totally. Yeah, thanks. That was a fun question. So any final words of wisdom that you'd like to give our listeners?

[00:20:58] Chris Daigle: This role of chief AI officer, you're going to start noticing it. Doesn't mean that you have to become that person, but it's important that you understand who not how. Yes, AI can, you know, transform your small business or your solo practice or whatever it is, but you don't have to be...

A better question for you might be who can do this for me, right? Because some of you may i'm not techie or or I don't have time or whatever it is. That's fine. You don't have to learn this stuff, but at least be aware that this role exists That it's a person who comes in and understands your business and says, oh, you know what? We're gonna plug in AI there there there there and there give me, you know, x number of days weeks, whatever, and you'll have result because you don't have to be an early adopter to be successful with this.

However, the sooner you get started with at least understanding how it works in your business, how to use it in your business, the less behind you will be when you get ready to get started, because as you mentioned there's entire podcasts that are built around this week in AI.

There's so much happening. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So and let me tell you something, this AI thing, I think it's going to stick around. So the sooner you, sooner you get on deck I, the sooner you get to enjoy the benefits of it. So yeah, that'd be my closing remarks and you can find us at chief AI officer. com. We've got education and content and all kinds of stuff for you over there.

[00:22:31] Lori Highby: Yeah. Great. Any other channels where folks can reach out if they're interested in connecting with you?

[00:22:35] Chris Daigle: Like you LinkedIn is, I, I find the conversation in LinkedIn to be more in line with my interests, where I am in my career and life at this stage.

[00:22:44] Lori Highby: Sure.

[00:22:45] Chris Daigle: So LinkedIn's a place where I'm much more of a lurker than a poster, but I'm there and check my messages. And then if you are looking to kind of get exposure to how other people are using AI in their business our podcast is called Using AI at Work, and it's using aiatwork. com. You can check out a couple episodes there.

[00:23:06] Lori Highby: All right. We'll include all that information in our show notes. All right. Chris, this is great. Thank you so much for being on the show.

[00:23:15] Chris Daigle: I'm glad that I got the invitation. If I can ever be of support to you or your folks, I'm I'm at your service.

[00:23:21] Lori Highby: Absolutely. All right. This wraps up our episode of social capital.

Huge thanks to Chris for taking the time to connect. If you've got a burning marketing question or relationship question, reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show as mentioned before. Let's connect on LinkedIn, connect with me, connect with Chris. Definitely looking forward to hearing from you. I hope you enjoyed today's show and I want you to go out there and get noticed.