AI Consulting for Higher Education

AI Consulting - Selling AI services & products to universities

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

AI consulting is emerging as a significant trend, especially in educational institutions. Johnny Garcia, founder of The Virtue, shares his insights on selling AI products and services to universities. By leveraging AI tools, curiosity, and understanding individual needs, educators and consultants can develop impactful solutions quickly. Through a mix of personalized outreach and iterative development, Johnny demonstrates how AI can revolutionize educational processes, even without a deep technical background.

Highlights

Johnny Garcia shares his transition from a car detailing business to AI consulting for universities. 🚗➡️🔍
Pickaxe is a versatile tool that enabled many users to earn significantly, even outside its primary subscription model. 💼💸
Understanding the value of curiosity and personalized outreach in developing AI solutions. 🌟
Demonstrating AI benefits through practical examples and MVP prototypes to win stakeholder confidence. 🖥️👍
The importance of transcribing meetings for iterative development and refining AI tools based on real feedback. 📋✍️
Success stories like Johnny Garcia’s show how non-technical backgrounds can thrive in AI consulting through learning and adapting. 🎓📚
Johnny emphasizes the societal shift towards AI, encouraging curiosity and proactive learning as pathways to innovation. 🚀

Key Takeaways

Leverage curiosity to understand unique institutional needs and build tailored AI solutions. 🤔
Building personal connections within organizations is key to successful AI consulting. 🏢
Iterative development with continuous feedback enhances product relevance and user satisfaction. 🔄
Even simple AI tools can significantly impact educational outcomes and processes. 📈
Empathy and personalized outreach are powerful in forging professional relationships and selling AI solutions. 💌
Begin with freely available data to create impactful and straightforward AI applications. 📊
Focus on education and empowerment when introducing AI to non-technical stakeholders. 🧠

Overview

Johnny Garcia, an enthusiastic entrepreneur, shares his journey from detailing cars to consulting on AI solutions for universities. Without a technical background, he emphasizes using curiosity and empathy to develop impactful AI solutions. By asking the right questions and building personalized connections within institutions, Johnny effectively sells AI products and services tailored to specific educational needs.

Through collaborative interactions with clients, Johnny highlights the power of iterative development and real-time feedback for refining AI tools. He shares practical methods like transcribing meetings and analyzing user data to enhance AI applications. His story shows how even simple AI tools, when aligned with client needs, can revolutionize educational processes and deliver significant value.

Ultimately, Johnny underscores the societal embrace of AI and the expanding opportunities within it. He encourages educators and consultants to adopt a mindset of continuous learning and adaptation, enabling them to empower non-technical stakeholders to harness AI's transformative potential. Through this approach, anyone can contribute to and thrive in the burgeoning field of AI consulting, especially in educational settings.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to AI Consulting The chapter introduces the concept of AI Consulting, a field that many might not have realized existed until recently. This involves developing AI solutions or products and selling them to clients. It's a relatively new endeavor that is rapidly growing in popularity. The chapter highlights that this trend is evident among users of 'pickaxe', an apparent reference to a tool or platform related to AI. Emphasis is made on focusing on the functionalities of the product offered in AI Consulting.
00:30 - 01:00: Focus on Product Utility The chapter focuses on the utility of a product, emphasizing the potential financial benefits users can achieve. It highlights the opportunity for users to generate substantial revenue through selling subscriptions via 'pickaxe studio,' a tool designed for monetization. It notes that successful users can make tens of thousands of dollars, with some achieving earnings as high as $60,000 or $90,000. The chapter encourages a focus on leveraging the product's capabilities to maximize earnings.
01:00 - 01:30: Exploring New Revenue Avenues The chapter titled 'Exploring New Revenue Avenues' discusses the practice of customers selling goods and services using the company's tool, without using the studio subscription. The company supports this external usage and aims to enhance the tool's utility, even though they lack comprehensive insights into these activities. As they learn more about customers' actions, they aim to improve their product accordingly.
01:30 - 02:00: Supporting AI Solutions The chapter introduces Johnny Garcia, a customer of Pickax, who utilized their solutions to address a specific problem for a client. The company aims to generate more educational content to guide others in similar situations. Johnny's collaboration with the Pickax growth team, including participation in a hackathon, is highlighted.
02:00 - 02:30: Introduction to Johnny Garcia and The Virtue Johnny Garcia is introduced as someone who has developed solutions for universities and various clients, and he runs an AI consulting firm called The Virtue. He is well-versed in the AI space and known for delivering value. In this chapter, Garcia shares his knowledge, aiming for a collaborative learning experience.
02:30 - 03:00: Johnny Garcia's Background The chapter titled "Johnny Garcia's Background" introduces Johnny Garcia, the founder of Virtue and Course Wand. In this segment, Johnny speaks to an audience, fielding questions and giving insights into his professional background and the companies he is associated with. Johnny collaborates with various companies across diverse industries, indicating his wide-ranging expertise and influence. The chapter sets the stage for an engaging presentation and promises an exciting offer for interested attendees.
03:00 - 03:30: Entrepreneurial Journey The chapter 'Entrepreneurial Journey' begins with a focus on various service industries such as health care, home services, and digital marketing, highlighting their ongoing integration with AI technologies. The speaker proceeds to introduce their background, mentioning that at the age of 24, they founded a company named 'Virtue' in 2019. The goal of this venture was to support businesses in enhancing their service offerings.
03:30 - 04:00: Empowerment Through AI The chapter titled 'Empowerment Through AI' discusses the evolution and application of artificial intelligence in business practices. Initially, AI was used for creating websites and managing Google ads, which gradually evolved into developing comprehensive software solutions. The need for better lead management systems led to the creation of custom CRMs using tools like Airtable, which provided valuable and efficient systems for clients. The chapter also promises to share effective strategies that have been successful for the speaker.
04:00 - 04:30: Success Factors This chapter discusses success factors in the context of AI, offering tips and a framework that can be applied across various industries. The speaker shares their personal background, mentioning their start with a car detailing business in high school, which grew through referrals, leading up to their current work in AI with a company named Virtue.
04:30 - 05:00: Relevance of AI Knowledge The chapter titled 'Relevance of AI Knowledge' discusses the speaker's journey of turning a business venture into a full-time occupation while still in high school. The business involved hiring people and promoting car detailing services, which led the speaker to frequently skip classes to manage it. Despite this, the speaker graduated and did not drop out of high school, attending just enough to earn a diploma. This experience later transitioned into selling AI solutions to schools, highlighting the importance of AI knowledge and its practical applications in real-world scenarios.
05:00 - 05:30: Webinar Structure Overview In the chapter titled 'Webinar Structure Overview', the speaker emphasizes the accessibility and opportunities provided by the digital economy and tools like Pickax. They stress that individuals from all backgrounds, including those affiliated with educational institutions like schools and universities, can now build and sell applications. This empowerment is a focal point of the webinar, aiming to illustrate the feasibility for anyone to engage with these tools, regardless of prior knowledge or experience. The speaker shares their personal journey from having no prior knowledge to becoming empowered in this digital landscape.
05:30 - 06:00: Importance of Curiosity in Outreach The chapter titled 'Importance of Curiosity in Outreach' emphasizes the value of curiosity and continuous learning in achieving success, particularly in fields like AI and business. The speaker explains that knowledge accumulates in a linear fashion, and by consistently learning new tools, frameworks, or approaches, one can experience significant returns on investment. The speaker also promises to demonstrate how identifying and addressing personal knowledge gaps can provide a competitive advantage and how they managed to sell AI tools without formal qualifications.
06:00 - 06:30: Human-Centric Approach In this chapter titled 'Human-Centric Approach', the speaker emphasizes the key qualities needed to succeed with AI in the future, specifically by the year 2025. According to them, success doesn't require extensive qualifications but hinges on three crucial capabilities: access to the Internet, curiosity about others, and the ability to learn new tools. The speaker personally identifies with these criteria, suggesting that these simple yet powerful attributes are sufficient to thrive in a technologically advanced world. They view themselves as proof of this approach, highlighting that these elements have been instrumental in their own journey.
06:30 - 07:00: Importance of Personal Research The chapter titled 'Importance of Personal Research' highlights the significance of personal research in the field of AI and business. It emphasizes how individuals, whether they are new to AI, currently have an AI business, or have any other type of business, can benefit from learning how to expand and potentially sell their solutions to larger organizations. The chapter is aimed at a wide range of audiences, from AI novices considering starting an AI-based business to seasoned experts looking to grow and possibly sell their expertise. Additionally, it underscores the value of ongoing learning and adaptation in order to achieve success in today's competitive landscape.
07:00 - 07:30: Effective Communication in Outreach This chapter focuses on the principles of effective communication in outreach, emphasizing strategies that are universally applicable, regardless of geographical location or culture. The speaker highlights the human-centric nature of these communication strategies, suggesting that they are adaptable and beneficial for everyone, not just within AI contexts.
07:30 - 08:00: Genuine Outreach Examples This chapter begins with a brief introduction to a strategy or process that the speaker uses for successful outreach. The speaker emphasizes that the approach is simple and proven to be effective for them. Additionally, attendees of the talk are promised access to a favorite sales training video for free, alongside an offer mentioned at the start. The speaker insists this offering is significant. The chapter ends with a reference to popular culture, alluding to the show 'Hot Ones,' possibly as part of the sales training content.
08:00 - 08:30: Outreach Strategy for Large Organizations The chapter explores unique outreach strategies tailored for large organizations by drawing parallels with an unconventional interview format known as "celebrity hot wings interview." In this method, celebrities are invited for interviews where they eat progressively spicier wings while being asked deep, thoughtful questions. The chapter posits that this format offers an innovative approach to sales training, as it emphasizes the importance of asking specific, meaningful questions just like in effective outreach when engaging with large organizations. By being genuinely interested and well-prepared, it becomes possible to leave a lasting impression, akin to the celebrity guests who are impressed and expressive about the questions they receive.
08:30 - 09:00: Email Personalization The chapter titled 'Email Personalization' discusses the concept of using personalized questions in interviews to engage guests. It highlights a specific compilation of interview questions that have been well-received, showcasing the interviewer's curiosity and interest in the guests, providing an engaging interview experience. The chapter notes the popularity of such compilations on platforms like YouTube.
09:00 - 09:30: Virtue's Education Initiative The chapter titled 'Virtue's Education Initiative' discusses the importance of personalized communication, especially in sales and AI contexts. It criticizes the common practice of sending generic mass emails and suggests an approach that shows genuine care for the individuals engaged. The narrative highlights that celebrities, much like potential prospects in sales, are often subjected to repetitive questions. It emphasizes the need for thorough research about guests or prospects to foster meaningful interactions and engagements.
09:30 - 10:00: Revisiting Education Experience The chapter "Revisiting Education Experience" delves into the importance of making individuals feel recognized and valued, regardless of their status or location. It highlights an outreach method based on genuine curiosity, emphasizing that everyone desires to feel seen. It suggests starting with curiosity as a strategic approach when engaging with large organizations or any audience, posing questions to guide who or what to be curious about and the reasons for such curiosity.
10:00 - 10:30: Building Solutions for Education The chapter titled "Building Solutions for Education" emphasizes the importance of engaging with various individuals in your daily life, such as baristas and plumbers, to uncover potential applications for AI solutions in education. By consistently asking questions, you can identify the problems others face and conceptualize where you could create valuable applications. Note-taking, whether mental or physical, is encouraged to assist in capturing ideas and insights for innovative developments.
10:30 - 11:00: Navigating Startup Emotions This chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding the emotional landscape in startups by actively listening and addressing the problems people face. It suggests writing down notes regarding people’s challenges as a method to develop effective solutions. By engaging directly and paying attention to individual needs, entrepreneurs can create fast and meaningful solutions, making people feel understood and valued. Tools like pickaxe can be employed to swiftly develop applications tailored to specific issues. The process not only resolves problems but also fosters a sense of being truly seen and cared for, contributing positively to human connection and business success.
11:00 - 11:30: Overcoming Educational System Gaps The chapter focuses on addressing the gaps in the educational system by highlighting the importance of curiosity and conversation. It emphasizes the power of engaging in dialogues with diverse individuals as a strategy for entering and understanding a new field, like AI or solution development. The chapter suggests that, despite appearing simple, these interactions can significantly impact one's ability to be taken seriously and succeed in unfamiliar areas, stressing the importance of acknowledging the knowledge and expertise that subject matter experts hold.
11:30 - 12:00: First Steps in Educational AI The chapter titled 'First Steps in Educational AI' delves into understanding the importance of identifying unknowns in the field and leveraging questions to build applications. These questions translate into requirement lists for developing solutions targeted at users. It touches on the challenge of selling AI solutions to large organizations by recognizing that such entities are made up of many individuals. Hence, the approach to engage and sell to them involves human outreach and understanding the collective needs of the organization's constituents, whether dealing with one person or a large group. This sets the stage for how these insights play a critical role in educational AI.
12:00 - 12:30: Framework for AI Consulting The chapter discusses a strategic approach for engaging with large organizations in the context of AI consulting. It emphasizes the importance of performing deep research on key individuals within the organization, utilizing tools like ChatGPT to gather information. This research is intended to help understand the prospect's needs and establish meaningful conversations that can lead to selling or developing AI applications. The underlying idea is that impactful solutions can be scaled effectively within large organizations by targeting the right individuals.
12:30 - 13:00: Building with Intent The chapter 'Building with Intent' discusses the process of engaging with various stakeholders within an organization. It highlights the importance of seeking input from different departments, understanding their needs and challenges, and navigating through multiple decision makers. The chapter emphasizes the value of obtaining approval from even a single key person, as it can lead to widespread adoption of a solution across a large group of users, potentially reaching 20, 50, or even 100 new users from just one agreement.
13:00 - 13:30: Research and Development in Education The chapter discusses strategies for rapidly growing user adoption for applications, particularly in an educational context. It emphasizes the excitement and benefits of fast adoption and feedback, highlighting their role in ensuring product quality. The transcript suggests reaching out to organizations such as universities or healthcare systems and connecting with individuals interested in technology to achieve these goals.
13:30 - 14:00: Product Development The chapter on 'Product Development' discusses the subjective nature of understanding an individual's or organization's openness to adopting new technologies. It suggests leveraging LinkedIn activities, such as posts they like or comment on, to gauge this openness. It emphasizes that while influential figures within an organization may drive this adoption, any team member with a robust understanding of workflows may contribute significantly, highlighting the collaborative nature of product development.
14:00 - 14:30: Prototype Demonstration The chapter 'Prototype Demonstration' discusses the importance of thorough research and genuine outreach when engaging with potential clients, particularly in the field of AI consulting. It emphasizes the need to learn about the prospect's processes and offer help. The chapter suggests that showing genuine interest in assisting others should be reflected in outreach efforts, even if the research process is time-consuming. It concludes with the idea that these actions can be scalable.
14:30 - 15:00: Iterative Development Cycle The chapter focuses on the importance of thoroughly researching potential clients or audience to understand what resonates with them. It emphasizes not being afraid to spend ample time delving into YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms to gather insights. The dedication to this research sets you apart and showcases genuine interest in the person's work. An example given includes using a tool like Pickaxe to aid in this iterative development process.
15:00 - 15:30: Value of Transcribing Client Meetings The chapter titled 'Value of Transcribing Client Meetings' discusses the importance of documentation during client interactions. It highlights the use of slides with comprehensive information about prospects, which can be supported by a tutorial link to understand specific features better. The chapter emphasizes easy access to shared resources, including slides and supplementary information, allowing team members to use tools like a knowledge base to consolidate all available information, such as a government website in the discussed example. This approach helps in effectively managing and utilizing client information.
15:30 - 16:00: Importance of Client Feedback This chapter delves into the significance of client feedback in enhancing engagement and preparation. It discusses using a 'pickaxe,' a tool crafted with comprehensive information about a client, which allows representatives to conduct virtual Q&A sessions. This aids in identifying knowledge gaps and preparing for meetings, as well as designing effective outreach strategies. The chapter emphasizes the efficiency of this method compared to traditional self-study.
16:00 - 16:30: Successful Tool Launch The chapter discusses the concept of successful tool launches and emphasizes the importance of personalized and effective communication. The best outreach scripts are identified as those that are genuine and truthful. Numerous slides provide examples, such as emails that received positive feedback. This highlights the effectiveness of authenticity in outreach efforts.
16:30 - 17:00: Importance of Passion in Projects The chapter discusses the importance of genuine passion in project endeavors. It emphasizes the value of authenticity in communication, particularly when reaching out to others online. It suggests that the best approach to scripting or messaging is to convey what is genuinely true about oneself, what is truly interesting about the other person, and how actual shared experiences or locations can create a connection. The idea is to make cold communications feel warmer and more personal, highlighting the human connection rather than just business interests.
17:00 - 17:30: Importance of Knowledge Bases This chapter discusses the difference between 'cold' and 'warm' emails, particularly in the context of engaging potential customers. 'Cold' emails, characterized by their impersonal tone, focus on portraying the company and its products as the best option for the recipient. In contrast, 'warm' emails incorporate more personal connections, such as referrals or mutual acquaintances, making the outreach process more effective and engaging. The chapter emphasizes the value of these 'warm' introductions in building successful communication and increasing the chances of a positive response.
17:30 - 18:00: Exploring Knowledge Base Applications The chapter discusses strategies for making outreach efforts more effective by developing trust with potential contacts and making cold outreach 'warmer'. The text emphasizes the importance of finding mutual references to create initial connections, ultimately aiming to create interactions where the recipient is genuinely eager to engage, beyond just booking meetings. The strategies shared have been refined over an eight-year period of personal experience in outreach.
18:00 - 18:30: Finding Solutions through AI This chapter discusses leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find solutions in various domains. It begins with a personal anecdote about starting a car detailing business. The speaker explains how writing a thoughtful and engaging email can lead to unexpected business opportunities. By reflecting on personal experiences, such as learning to drive in the same area where a potential client is located, the speaker was able to connect with the client on a personal level. As a result, a simple email yielded immediate detailing contracts for 8 to 10 cars and future work for many more. The overarching theme is the importance of communication and personal connection in business.
18:30 - 19:00: Building and Validating MVPs The chapter titled "Building and Validating MVPs" focuses on the importance of making cold outreach more effective. The main point is that regardless of what you're building or selling, it's essential to turn cold outreach warm. This is achieved by taking the time to research and understand what you have to offer, without being overly committed to your initial idea or offering. This approach is particularly important for AI Consultants who create personalized systems, as it allows flexibility in what they deliver to clients.
19:00 - 19:30: Collaboration with Insiders This chapter explores the importance of being open to building custom solutions for potential clients, even if you have a core product offering that you are attached to. It emphasizes adapting to the specific needs and problems of prospects in real-time to create value. The chapter also mentions an Outreach school group that provides more detailed insights and is available for free, inviting interested individuals to join.
19:30 - 20:00: Encouraging Custom Solutions This chapter discusses the author's personal and professional experiences after moving to San Diego in 2021. The author was enjoying life, particularly surfing, while also focusing on growing their business, Virtue. They were exploring AI solutions, which was going well. However, the author felt something was missing despite the enjoyment and satisfaction from work.
20:00 - 20:30: Handling Rejection The chapter discusses the empowering feeling of being passionate about a career while acknowledging the lack of complete fulfillment. The narrator reflects on how everything seems fine on paper and in reality, yet there is an inner pull towards something different. They recognize that their initial motivation for starting businesses was to help people, specifically clients, customers, and friends.
20:30 - 21:00: Reflections on Learning and Growth The speaker reflects on their journey of personal and professional growth. They discuss their desire to set an example for others, including clients and family, by demonstrating their capability to achieve more than what might have been expected. Despite past academic struggles, evidenced by poor attendance, the speaker has matured into a functioning adult. They acknowledge the fortunate circumstances that played a part in their success and growth.
21:00 - 21:30: Taking Action and Continuous Building The chapter discusses the challenges and guilt associated with the public education system in the United States. It reflects on personal experiences of not doing well initially but eventually finding a successful path. It highlights how not all students may have the same opportunity and how poor academic performance can lead to life paths that might not align with one's desires. The chapter emphasizes the importance of allowing young people to pursue what they want with their lives.
21:30 - 22:00: Educational Impact and Legacy In the chapter titled 'Educational Impact and Legacy,' the speaker reflects on the responsibility society has to solve prevalent problems, emphasizing the importance of taking action rather than only discussing issues. Motivated by this mindset, the speaker decides to seek out solutions and makes a proactive step by reaching out to their high school English teacher. The purpose was to observe and learn, signifying a transition from merely developing software and serving businesses to engaging directly with educational environments.
22:00 - 22:30: Q&A Session Announcement The chapter 'Q&A Session Announcement' starts with a person sharing their experience of being new to the education sector but having the opportunity to learn by observing a class, thanks to Dr. Zerin's invitation. They reflect on this initial stage of curiosity and information gathering, which occurred about a year ago, and some notes from that time are displayed on the screen.

AI Consulting - Selling AI services & products to universities Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 AI Consulting it's something that a lot of you do even exist um as as much as like two years ago and basically it's just developing AI Solutions or AI goods and then selling them to people and it's a totally new thing and it's getting big and it's going to get bigger and it's what a lot of people on pickaxe they're doing and when people use pickaxe a lot of people focus on what our product does
00:30 - 01:00 and it does do a lot but I find that not enough people focus on what you can do with our product and what we see running pickaxe is that plenty of people make you know thousands of dollars selling subscriptions in the studio which is the mechanism we give you to make money with but when we start to see people who are making like tens of thousands of dollars uh whenever I talk to someone and I hear they're making like 60 ,000 or $90,000
01:00 - 01:30 or $20,000 they're usually selling goods and services outside of our product so they're using pickaxe and whatever sort of system they have but they're selling it not through our studio subscription and that is totally cool with us um we want to support that we want the tool to be a useful tool uh we just don't have as much insight into it and as we find more and more of our customers who are doing this sort of thing and learn more about what they're doing and make our product
01:30 - 02:00 better for doing that uh we want to create more educ educational content around that we want to tell people um about how to do that and today we have Johnny Garcia and he's been working he's a pickax customer he found us as a solution to a specific problem he was uh developing he's trying to solve for a client and he's been working with our pickax growth team recently and in particular I've gotten to know Johnny well because we did some hackathon at
02:00 - 02:30 universities and he's developed a really cool solutions for uh universities and a host of clients um and he runs a AI consulting firm or I guess it used to be a consulting firm now it's an AI consulting firm called The Virtue and he's just always up to really cool stuff he's super fluent in what's going on in the space and he really knows how to deliver value to people so today he's basically just going to uh share what he knows and we're going to all learn together uh at the end there might be
02:30 - 03:00 some time for com for questions um and if you have questions too feel free to throw them in the chat I'll keep an eye on that and then at the very end we'll have a cool little offer for anyone who's interested so without further Ado I'm gonna turn it over to Johnny thank you Mike that's a awesome introduction uh yeah I'm Johnny I'm the founder of virtue and course wand and then through virtue I work with a lot of different companies that do a lot of different things I imagine that people in this group might be in verticals ranging from
03:00 - 03:30 Health Care to you know home services and maybe even you know digital marketing or or areas that have been around for a while um but are now kind of having this influx of AI being added to the services list so let me share my screen and so yeah without further Ado um what we'll cover today is a quick introduction on me which just went through um a little bit more background I'm 24 years old I started virtue when I was 2019 with the whole goal of helping business with services that they
03:30 - 04:00 couldn't do themselves and so at the at the time it was a lot of websites uh and a lot of Google ads and that kind of morphed into a more software focused approach uh meaning building software for companies and clients uh that was mostly due to necessity because a lot of clients we were getting leads for now needed a way to manage those leads track those leads and so we'd build crms and use air table you know really simple tools that made super valuable systems for our clients uh and so today I'll show you what's been working uh for me
04:00 - 04:30 uh in the past few years um in the AI field and then also some actions to take that uh hopefully regardless of what vertical you're working in you can you can take some of these tips uh and use this framework uh to approach people in your space so um a little bit about me in 2018 I before I started virtue I actually had a car detailing company that I started in in high school and what went from basically is just cleaning a friend's car of mine snowball just via referrals
04:30 - 05:00 into a kind of a full-blown business and we were hiring people and I ended up skipping tons of class to run this business and detail cars and uh promote it uh so much so that I became Trent and that's actually my um that's actually a screenshot of my attendance report uh from high school and so I kind of stopped going to high school I ended up graduating I didn't drop out but I kind of stopped going uh and went enough to basically just get my degree um or my diploma I should say and get out of there and now uh selling AI to schools
05:00 - 05:30 and not just schools but universities and so I think I I really want to drive home the point that no matter who you are what your background is today's digital economy and with tools like pickax you can build and sell applications that just years ago none of us would have even been able to think of selling to any anybody uh and so the goal of this webinar is to hopefully give you that empowerment um and just show you that it's totally possible so I started with absolutely no knowledge um
05:30 - 06:00 you know I I was a total beginner at all of this um but knowledge Stacks really linearly and I found that just by learning one more tool or one more framework or one more approach um you start to get these huge increases in returns uh that you're spending uh your time with so today I'll show you why your own knowledge gaps that you have right whether about AI or just business in general will give you a huge Competitive Edge um and also I'll show you exactly how I've sold AI tools without the quality qualifications to do
06:00 - 06:30 so if you do have the qualifications that's awesome um and this will still apply to you um so in 2025 all it really takes in my opinion to succeed with AI is access to Internet a curiosity about others and the ability to learn new tools and the reason why I I really think that these are the only three things that you need uh is that one I feel as though I'm a bit living proof of this um because I I have access to Internet I'm curious about others and I I have the ability to learn new tools um that's really all it's taken for me to
06:30 - 07:00 be able to go out and sell applications to organizations or anybody that really needs this kind of solution or Consulting work done so we're all here together again whether you're new to AI uh and you're here because you've thought about building or selling AI or maybe you already have an AI business or just a business in general uh that doesn't have anything to do with AI and you're just here to learn how to grow your company and maybe sell to some larger organizations or you're a longtime expert uh in Ai and in in that case thanks for being here um and maybe
07:00 - 07:30 you're here because you love learning uh but regardless um whoever you are whyever you're here the process and the strategy that we're going to go over today uh will serve you because this isn't a framework that's necessarily AI specific uh when I think about what I've done it's really human specific and so as we uh saw early on that everybody was kind of from all over the world uh in this in this webinar this doesn't apply to a certain region or state or a country I really do think that all of this can can can be used for uh people
07:30 - 08:00 no matter where you are um so what's the processor strategy that I'm going to actually go over well it's just what I do it's not you know that crazy it's just what I found success with so um not only that but by being here today you'll also get access to my favorite sales training video that's ever been made uh for completely free along with the offer that Mike said at the beginning of the video and so this is a pretty big deal for us to give this out and um that sales training video is this um so I don't know if you're familiar with the show hot ones uh it's a show where
08:00 - 08:30 celebrity guests are interviewed and are asked increasingly hot questions while eating increasingly hot wings uh and so in the process they get asked you know really specific questions um and it's an interview uh but the reason why I think this is the best sales training video that exists uh I can actually just play it and then explain why afterwards what's special to you about the Jaa theater center in rockchester it seems like that town literally the greatest questions I've ever been asked seriously like I'm Blown Away by I don't know
08:30 - 09:00 who's working for you but don't fire him what would you say distinguish so what this is is a compilation of all of the best questions that the interviewer has asked and you can see that this is volume six there's tons of these volumes on uh YouTube uh that people make that are mashups of the best questions that the interviewer asked and you can see from these interview questions that the guests on the show are absolutely Blown Away by the the the interviewer's care and curiosity about them and I think that this is is so interesting uh in the
09:00 - 09:30 sales context because so often we get into this habit of sending you know a mass email and and wanting to just get the biggest scale possible but what really works is if you actually show that you care about the people that you're engaging with um and and in this case celebrities are really accustomed to really repetitive questions uh as are a lot of prospects that you're likely dealing with in whatever use case or application case that you're working in uh in regards to Ai and so he actually researches his guest Way Beyond the
09:30 - 10:00 surface level um and then he makes the subjects feel truly seen right and everybody no matter whether you're celebrity uh whether you live in the United States France or Australia everybody wants to be seen uh and so my Outreach method is all based around that simple fact uh and so the first part of this framework uh when selling to large organizations or really anybody is just to be curious um and so the first question you might have is well who are we going to be curious about or what are we going to be curious about or why would we even need to be curious well I would recommend that you be curious
10:00 - 10:30 about everybody that you meet ask everybody everything whether it's a barista um you know your your plumber uh and just get into this habit of asking everybody everything if you already do this awesome uh you can apply this exact same tactic you could call it or just approach to finding out where there's applications you could be building for uh in the AI space right because the more questions you ask the more you're going to be able to hear problems that people have and then you can take notes whether the those be mental or you're
10:30 - 11:00 actually writing down notes uh about what people are dealing with and what they're struggling with and this is going to allow us to go out and actually solve the real problems that people have um and and if you do this on a onetoone basis a lot of times what you'll find is you can hear a problem and you can build an application really quickly using tools such as pickaxe and you can go and show the person that had the problem uh this solution that you made for them and there's really not a better way I found to make people feel truly seen and cared for uh which really is just a good
11:00 - 11:30 business practice in my opinion so you'll end up through being curious just about having more and more conversations with more and more people and again this might sound really simple but it's going to be hugely impactful especially if you're breaking into the space and you're wondering wow how how do I as somebody that doesn't know a lot about this specific space being AI or Building Solutions for people how do I actually get into this um and kind of be taken seriously if you could um say and and I think the way that you do this is understand you don't know what the subject matter expert knows that you're
11:30 - 12:00 approaching but what you do know is what you don't know and so you can ask questions that frame um what you don't know and allow you to build the application and these will become the requirements list for the solutions that you're going to end up building for people um with that being said this is a webinar about huge organizations and selling to them and so also what does this you know human Outreach have to do with AI well realistically huge organizations are just comprised of a lot of people right whether you're selling to one person or a huge organization with tons of people uh
12:00 - 12:30 you're still going to be engaging with people so my best approach that I've found through approaching large organizations is finding one person uh or multiple people that I can really do deep Research into and when I say deep research you could literally use deep research with chbt to find the most information you can about a prospect or a person that you want to engage with and ask questions about and potentially sell or build AI applications with and for so impact scales at a large organization
12:30 - 13:00 there's going to be you know way more people that you can actually ask questions about the processes um that they currently have you can find way more departments that might have different needs and challenges and then there's way more decision makers way more people that could actually say yes or no uh to what you're building and then if you can even just get one person to say yes oftentimes that means that they will release your application or your solution to the entire team and then right away just by getting one yes you now picked up you know 2050 100 users and I found that that's a great
13:00 - 13:30 way to really grow really rapidly um when you're trying to get users onto an application and if you're a builder here and you've always built applications and you've always thought always thought to yourself wow I would love it if other people actually use this um it's really exciting when you can get that kind of fast adoption and fast feedback and it it really helps to make sure that the product is really good so start looking at an organization that you want to approach right whether it's a university whether it's you know a Health Care system and find somebody there that has a tech interest so this is you know a
13:30 - 14:00 bit subjective but you can do this by looking at people on LinkedIn and seeing what post maybe they've been liking or what comments they've been leaving on what kinds of posts and you can start to get a feel for whether or not people are open to technology looking to adopt it um and they should also have an influence in that organization somewhat of a poll uh but they don't necessarily always need to have that right they could just be somebody that's a really strong team member that's working at the organization that that needs some help with uh whatever their workflows are
14:00 - 14:30 then just research the heck out of them right research everything you can find about that person and then reach out and ask questions that show you care just want to learn about their processes want to see if there's any ways that you can help them um because if you're in in the space of AI Consulting you want to do this then you probably do genuinely want to help people so let that come through in the Outreach that you're doing in the way that you're approaching people um and really find everything there is to find about the Prospect and if it takes you a lot of time to do this that's okay right you can scale these kinds of
14:30 - 15:00 methods uh and there's tons of ways to do that but initially to find out what's working and what's resonating with the type of people that you're going after don't don't be afraid to spend you know a whole day looking for YouTube videos and Linkedin accounts and and socials uh and you know doing really thorough research on a person because again it's really going to come through and set you apart and show that you care about what they're doing now one way that I actually have done this with pickax is I've built a pickaxe
15:00 - 15:30 with all the prospects information on the slides for any of the slides that I'm going to mention pickaxe and times I've used it there's also going to be a link to a tutorial on exactly how to use the certain features that I'm referencing here so when we share all the slides you'll all have access to this as well as everything else in the deck as you can see in this pickaxe I just used the knowledge base to upload the entire um uh all the information I could find of of the prospects information which ended up being the entire house government or the government website for um the House of
15:30 - 16:00 Representatives as well as a Wikipedia page and some tweets that this person had made and so once you once you actually make a pickaxe with a bunch of information about somebody the reason it's really helpful is that you can ask questions of the pickaxe that you made that you would potentially ask that person and you can start to practice and play around with knowledge gaps that you have and you can prepare for the meeting and even help design Outreach that's really helpful this is a faster way to do it like maybe than you know reading all of this to yourself NE necessarily um but
16:00 - 16:30 it's just one step in getting to this more customized and personalized and thorough way to approach people so um I guess we have two of the same slide so the best script that I've found you he a lot of scripts from a lot of people that do Outreach there's always these scripts on LinkedIn oh buy my get my script this is the script that always works the best script is just what's true um there's a few screenshots in this slide deck of you know different emails I've sent that got really positive responses from people who are
16:30 - 17:00 you know really not necessarily people who should be responding to just a random person on the internet but I think that the reason why is because um the the best script is just what's actually true what's true about yourself what's true about what you find interesting about them how you might have connections and this can be really anything locations um or or past experiences that you might share and oh and I would just find ways to make cold emails warmer right so usually cold emails are uh you know cold it's
17:00 - 17:30 like hey this is what our company does and this is why we do it and this is why we're the best and do you want to do you want to buy our stuff right and there's something actually you know cold about the tonality of that kind of email um and so when I say make cold emails warmer I really do mean the actual tonality warmer but when you have a warm introduction to somebody uh and to define a warm introduction that might mean that you have a referral or somebody that is a mutual friend um it makes cold Mills a lot easier um it makes them a lot more or sorry makes warm emails just Outreach in general a
17:30 - 18:00 lot easier because you have some sort of trust already developed so if you have a cold email that you're sending or a cold piece of Outreach if you can figure out ways to make that warmer um whether it's finding a reference that could then get you involved with them um that's always really helpful and hopefully you'll get responses that says hey this is a great email and sure here's my calendar link that's what we're all I think aiming for not just meetings booked but getting on meetings with people that are excited to meet with us so this approach is nearly eight years in the making I've been sending
18:00 - 18:30 these kinds of emails since I started uh the car detailing business and uh in this specific case I actually had grown up in the uh same area that this Office Park was in and I learned how to drive stick shift while I uh was growing up in that area and so I sent an email and I ended up getting eight to 10 cards that needed detailing immediately from this contract and then uh 20 more over the next few years and so this ended up being an email that was generating thousands of dollars and all it took was me sitting down and really thinking about what I wanted to say um and how might apply to the people that I was
18:30 - 19:00 reaching out to so it doesn't matter what you're trying to build or sell but just find an excuse to make cold Outreach warm um and so if you can think about all the Outreach messages I just showed you the thing that they all have in common is that I took my time to do my research and I also knew what I had to offer but I wasn't dead set on my offering so I think it's important distinction especially as AI Consultants where you're going to be building personalized systems for people that you know what you're capable of offering but you're not necessarily tied super you know tightly to what you make um and if
19:00 - 19:30 you have a product offering that you love to offer and you are tied to it that's okay um but there's a lot of opportunities to build custom solutions for people uh and so I'd really be open to that depending on what the prospect or person you're talking to has and what their problems are in in real time so um let's see uh if you're interested more on Outreach check out our school group it's free uh we go more into detail there and the link will be in here um and yeah it's been cool so far to to have that group we started pretty
19:30 - 20:00 recently so in 2021 I moved to San Diego uh and I was having an absolute blast I was loving living there um and surfing a lot and just really enjoying it and at the time I was also building virtue and growing that um and we were starting to dabble more into AI Solutions and yeah everything was going fantastic um I do have to say around that time I started to really um consider something and this was that I was missing something I I was enjoying the work it was really fun it
20:00 - 20:30 was actually empowering I was passionate about it but I had this nagging um suspicion that that I wasn't necessarily fulfilled in all the ways that I could have been um and it's interesting when you're at a point in life where everything's going well on paper even in the real world you know life's going well but you have this kind of pull towards something else and I was starting to get that um and I started to realized that you know I had really started businesses to help people um and the people I was trying to help were my clients and customers of course friends
20:30 - 21:00 and family if they were my clients or customers and also to show them that they could be able to do exactly what I'm doing and I was trying to help myself to show myself that I was capable of doing something more than than maybe was expected of me or or currently feasible so I had also went from being a terrible student as you saw by my attendance report to a somewhat functioning adult in society and um when I was starting to think about that more and more um I was realizing I was probably just one of the lucky ones right that got out of uh the
21:00 - 21:30 the public education in the United States and and didn't do that well at it but then kind of landed on my feet and and was okay and able to establish some sort of trajectory that that was helpful um and I was really starting to realize that there's some guilt that I had about this because I don't feel like that's the case 100% of the time um a lot of times when students don't do well in school the rest of their life can be set on paths that they don't want them to be set on um and there's no right path to be on but I I at the very least think that if you're a young person you want to do something with your life we as a
21:30 - 22:00 society should do everything we can to make that possible um and so around the same time uh you know I started thinking okay I should look for the solution to this problem uh and not just you know maybe talk about how it is a problem I should actually apply myself and figure out ways that I could make this better um because I have the power to do that um and so I immediately sent an email to my high school English teacher and I just said hey can I please sit in on a class it would be great and by by the way at this point I'd only Built software and served businesses uh
22:00 - 22:30 that were outside of the education space so super new to education uh as far as building applications for it um but I sent this email and my uh her name is Dr zerin she said yeah come sit on a class and kind of see what's going on and so at this point I was just in that curious phase right I was just taking notes on everything that was going on and this was I guess almost exactly a year ago today um and so at the time time uh some of the notes I took are on the screen
22:30 - 23:00 right now you can read through them um but really I was trying to take note of everything that was going on in the school and remind myself of some of the reasons because I I remembered why I didn't really it didn't really sink into my brain but I wanted to experience it again with kind of a different perspective and go back in because I think that I could be more objective and and a little bit less emotional towards the environment if I was to do that and so here were the notes that I took um that day and I hadn't built anything yet for this application I was still in this
23:00 - 23:30 asking phase and I think that's important right you can go and ask and that can be the first thing that you do but also you can sometimes build something before if you have some sort of premonition about what's going on so either one is fine I would swap out ask and build in the in the process um pretty interchangeably um but as long as you're asking people about what they need and as long as you're building uh pretty closely together I think you're going to find that selling which kind of the third component that I uh will talk about in this framework is really easy so I get this question a lot and it it it's always how do I sell Ai and you can
23:30 - 24:00 swap out AI here for really any product that exists in the world and I think if you think about not selling first if you just drop the drop the point that you're going to need to sell something if you can just ignore the fact that yes this will need to be sold and just kind of understand that that's implied and you can handle it later what you can focus on initially is just being curious and just building for the people that you are serving and so if you focus on this to be honest with you the selling just does it self the second part of this framework
24:00 - 24:30 is going to be building with intent um and when we're talking about building with intent uh I'm going to go through one to one to many or what I'm now starting to call B Tob to C which I did not invent I'm sure um but I've just started saying that a lot recently um building nvps uh that actually are not just MVPs but kind of blow people away um and then the stack that I use to do uh all of those um things so how do we do it well first um as we saw in the first stage of the framework we're going to take notes of the problems that we hear um and then we're going to build
24:30 - 25:00 and again if you want to build a little something first and then go and take notes and then ask people that's totally fine um but really the more notes you have and the more you can be cognizant of the problems that people are facing the better you're going to be uh when you're building the software and the more effective that it's actually going to be so all the while I was also through thinking about and after sitting on this class I had some notes about the education space um that that you know I thought were helpful and good start but I was also starting to get curious to
25:00 - 25:30 people that maybe were just a student and never a teacher or maybe were a principal and ask them questions like you know what did you love or hate about school what was your favorite class who was your favorite teacher and why um and so just stayed in this mind frame of of asking as many of these questions as possible um and and just allowing my brain sometimes if you if you get curious enough about a subject sometimes you'll wake up and know the answer to a question that you had when you went to bed if you can put your focus on a topic or a niche this will start to happen and if it's kind of one of the magical components of uh human brains that that
25:30 - 26:00 I don't really know um obviously I'm not a subject matter and um but it's really interesting uh the more that you can focus the more that the answers will start to just kind of fall down around you so I then realized that I wanted to you know talk to more and more people and so I just found the director for charter school and I reached out to him and again I didn't use any scripts here I just sat down and I really thought to myself okay what is interesting about this person what is cool about what they're already doing and how could we
26:00 - 26:30 complement that how could we Aid them in their their mission and and help them along their process right and so again the more honest you can be the more vulnerable you can be in these pieces of Outreach I I think the more success you're going to find and whatever's true to you um and so when you use a script there's nothing wrong with that right and there's Frameworks for sending emails and this really is I guess technically a framework for sending an email but when you're sending a message to another human um it's really helpful if you can you know tell that human what
26:30 - 27:00 you like about them or what you like about what they're doing in a way that can only really come from another person again all of this is able to be automated but start first with understanding exactly what is working for you and for the Outreach that you're sending before you even try to automate anything and so before the meeting I had with the Charter School director I just spun up a prototype um and if all of you are probably familiar with this screen by now so don't need to go super in depth um but yeah I just created a the pickaxe tool um and at the time this is
27:00 - 27:30 what the tool was and so you can see my instruction set here not that complicated the reason why I put this instruction set in is because I had a premonition that the first thing that I wanted to pitch to this um director at this charter school was the idea that AI was going to help their students not necessarily get the right answer but get to the right answer right so it wasn't going to immediately give them everything they needed to know but it would give them a framework or at least a guideline to getting there um because
27:30 - 28:00 schools are generally scared of students just cheating more and more and so they don't want to be the ones that are allowing students do that they want students to gain more knowledge and so the reason why I made this super simple prompt is that it directly correlated to the feature that I was going to offer to that Charter School director once I started speaking with him and then all I did was throw that in a studio um and just basically made it so that we could access it on a domain um in in a custom URL so that I could send it to them on the Google meet and he could you know use it in the meanwhile and if you
28:00 - 28:30 haven't done any of that I I added links here as well on how to actually set those up um and so I showed up to this meeting and I just asked him tons of questions and through these questions I got a bunch of information about the actual problems that his charter school was facing and while I didn't know much about his workflows originally um he knew very little about AI so it was kind of this match made in heaven and and I think you'll find this as um AI Consultants we have this subject matter expertise in AI that other people are
28:30 - 29:00 really hungry for and looking for and if you can find other subject matter experts what comes of it is this really beautiful um kind of conjoining of experiences that allows for the best systems to be made and it's really exciting because um when you combine a subject matter expert in a field with this technology you get really great outputs um and it's really helpful and so look for people that are subject matter experts in their respective field and go and be their person for this technology everybody's looking
29:00 - 29:30 for it um and to be honest companies like chbt or sorry open Ai and anthropic um and deep seek are all doing the marketing for all of us to tell the entire world that this is where uh the world is going and and this is what people need to implement so now people are looking for the real ways to actually get it involved and so um we have a great marketing team as all the people on this call uh it's all the largest companies in the world basically um so we did a deal with the charar school and I was super excited um
29:30 - 30:00 because I finally had a chance to impact the education system which I had felt you know somewhat failed me but now I had a chance to go actually make a difference and not just complain about it um and so the next thing I knew I uh I started meeting with this Charter School uh director a lot more and I started transcribing all of our meetings and this is a little uh hack I picked up um just through meeting with a lot of clients in general but I did it a lot with this client and it really worked well for me so if you're able to do this and with the permission of of your clients definitely try to transcribe all
30:00 - 30:30 of your meds and you can do this with a lot of different softwares I'll give you a recommendation um here shortly but what you can do is you can build databases of iterative cycles that you're actually using uh and the changes that you're making and why you're making them based on the exact feedback that you're getting from the client and this can be super helpful in displaying and portraying some of the value and and steps that you're making as an AI consultant when you're building this kind of software and so um I use reai I think it's pretty good uh it works for me uh and it's like
30:30 - 31:00 20 bucks a month and so it will basically transcribe every meeting and now I do this with every single call uh where it's necessary and again once you have these transcripts what you can also do is start to build Niche specific databases of how people are looking uh and thinking about using AI tools and then you can literally have pickax generate you a bunch of ideas for different solutions to offer and so it's a great data set to base f your products off of current product iterations off of
31:00 - 31:30 uh marketing messaging really everything and so I would emplore you to do this if if you're not already doing it and if you're already doing it awesome um and so the product for this charter school started to really take shape and in the process we you know did some more design on the actual um studio and made it look different than um it had initially looked and so this again goes back to that iterative cycle where you can start to actually change and adjust exactly how the tools look um and do it in the context of how the client is reacting to
31:30 - 32:00 what you're building for them and there's so much value in this and it's really helpful to um you know I've sold a lot of AI systems um with pickax and without and pickax is great because it handles all the authentications so it's really fast to get these you know really thorough and working products out to people um and then once you actually build them you're able to manage all the users in the same place and all the tracking uh all all features that you would have to build custom if if you're building your own application and um from somebody who has built those
32:00 - 32:30 features fully custom takes a lot of time um so if you're building in this kind of quick interative cycle uh and then you want it to be a tool that they can use for a long time pickax is really great for that um and if you're looking to White Label your pickax Studio there's a really great post on the community Forum that is linked to right there um and in in this iterative cycle um topic uh I think it's really helpful too that you can just clone these pickax tools super simply and if you have haven't done this before um just go to
32:30 - 33:00 the tool settings and you can actually just turn on clonable right here uh and then if you go above uh you can hit clone and and this clone button actually above here on the first screenshot this is kind of the a bad screenshot to use um so I'm sorry about that but there's also a way that you can just go to a video and see how to clone your tools so the reason you can clone these and why it's so beneficial is that you can literally just clone the tool make different changes to the instructions or knowledge base and then add that new new tool to the or the studio that you're
33:00 - 33:30 building for and then you can have the client just test between tools right and you can do this whether or not you want to test between model providers instruction sets really anything um in the new release of pickaxe um that's coming out early March you will have the ability to also see kind of change logs for specific tools and inations that you're making and so that will be really helpful as well and I'll definitely be using that so then we launched our tool to this charter school and immediately we had a bunch of users and this goes back to that B2B Toc concept of if you get one
33:30 - 34:00 person at a big organization um you're able to sell to them and then it gets spread out among everybody and then what you get from that is not always will they pay for it of the people underneath at the organization not always will they pay for it in this case they didn't the charter school just paid for the entire project um but what you get is tons of user feedback and and then you can take that that feedback in the form of queries by the way um this is direct feedback and that's what's really beautiful about large LS models is the feedback a lot of times will come directly through the model uh in the
34:00 - 34:30 form of queries and people saying hey don't do that or don't do this you can take that back to the person at the company that you're building for and have really valuable insights on what the people in their organization are using the tool for and how they're using it so uh really just becomes a great ecosystem so why do I tell this story of this Charter School well one it's personal find stuff that actually matters to you that you're passionate about whether it's you know you have a vendetta against a sports team or whatever it may be find something that you're curious about and want to actually solve and remedy uh in the
34:30 - 35:00 world and then show what you have early and often and what do I mean by that build something you know pretty simple and just show the client it and say hey I don't really know if this is what you were looking for but it's what I guessed you were looking for based on what I knew about you and a lot of times in their minds they'll go wow this pretty good imagine what he could do if I gave him more information imagine what he could do if I if I gave him the time of day to you know transcribe the meetings that we have and then iterate on this product they'll be really Blown Away by what you get and then again find that one person in B2B that that's sticking
35:00 - 35:30 out like a sore thumb kind of swimming against the current of the slow bureaucracy that you're selling to um and they can often lead to mass adoption so um let me close this card we all have access right now to honestly one of the most valuable features ever uh and that's simply knowledge bases at at large right knowledge bases are so valuable because they allow us to make application and Niche specific um
35:30 - 36:00 software solutions that really serve real needs and can help so many different people in so many different ways and to be honest Society at large doesn't really know how to do this yet um I can tell you from personal experience this is still something that people are struggling with and don't necessarily know how to implement themselves so I just went ahead and generated using AI 50 use cases for knowledge bases um that I think are all pretty uh reasonable and viable um and
36:00 - 36:30 so you can kind of read through some of these as I'm scrolling through everybody has their own data that they use whether you're one person or you know 100, person company and when you actually take that data and build knowledge bases with that data there is so much that you can do and ask of that data and as all of you know if you've built applications knowledge bases it just expands the functionality greatly of any large language model when you can add data to it so I would really implore you to think out
36:30 - 37:00 of those 50 um knowledge-based examples how many do you think are already being done probably a lot of them right probably a lot of people are already doing some of these but how many of those is every single person in that field already doing probably none right and those are only 50 think if we could come up with you know 10,000 more examples maybe a 100 thousand more examples or what if we could come up with a million more examples where you could use a knowledge base and all the ways that that people aren't already doing it right so that's a huge opportunity whether it's a huge organization or you know a solo founder
37:00 - 37:30 that needs one I personally have I build AI for a living and I have tons of applications that I need knowledge based for that I haven't built myself yet you know so it's if somebody approached me and actually offered me to do some of this work I would probably be like oh interesting yeah I mean it's actually one of the ways that we're training and onboarding um new team members is having them build internal knowledge bases for us to kind of get a grasp of how to actually use them um but it's a super valuable feature um whether or not you're using pickaxe or something else to build them totally fine but the value
37:30 - 38:00 in AI really falls into the context and to get context you need data and realistically if you go to any given person you ask them for you know data that's confidential or personal to them they're not going to give it to you immediately off the rip and in the context of AI Consulting um you only really need a little bit to start and so oftentimes you can start with publicly available data to show to somebody how valuable this could be if they were to uh give you more data whether it be their customers information or past
38:00 - 38:30 order history or you know something related to the IP of the company that you're approaching and working with um one example of this was we were asked if we could make a tool that could suggest the closest physical class to college students so the data we needed to be able to do this was just what was the walking distance between dormitories um and we needed to generate all of these uh and have them be accurate so we just wrote a little script uh with python that could generate all of the walking distances between dorms and that was going to be our data that we were going
38:30 - 39:00 to prove out this MVP with and then once we had that data uh as as kind of sad as this prompt looks uh this is what we did we put it into the uh instruction set and we made a pickaxe form uh which allowed you to put in your current dorm and then what um what major you were focused in and then it would show you which courses were closest to uh in the respective dorm Halls uh that they lived in and so again this just goes back to you only need a tiny bit of data to make something really cool and useful this is an application that five years ago would
39:00 - 39:30 have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of resources whether or not it was a developer doing it um or a team of developers doing it the time alone it would take to build something that could automatically suggest to you the best dorms would be um a lot longer than it is now and that isn't to say that um this is that you know advance of an application but nonetheless it's a cool tool that that people can use um and so that's what we should look be looking for so we also had in that use case the help of an Insider again this
39:30 - 40:00 goes back to finding that person at the organization who you think is going to be most helpful um and maybe has some tech background maybe has some previous startup experience in our case people are usually pretty active in the University initiatives whether that means like they go to the hackathons or they put on the hackathons or they host the events or they're in the photo ops with the dean you know and there's these these insiders that don't know AI yet don't really know how to do it but they know they need it and they want to be the ones to be the champions of it in their organization because they know
40:00 - 40:30 that if they are then they will be rewarded very kindly via their organization um and so they're looking for people like us to help them um break down organizations into smaller pieces as best as you can really try to find the people that stick out and identify those fish that are swimming Upstream uh and against the current because those are going to be the people that champion you and the applications you provide to them the most um ask them a ton of questions even if it's not related to AI or software just ask them questions after question about their workflows
40:30 - 41:00 about what they like about their job you'll find all of these ways you could build a knowledge base for them or a chatbot or you know a voice um application for them and then just make them stuff for free you know build before even asking about how much they would buy it for um trust me you will get Goodwill with people that will eventually lead to a lot of success and then iterate and improve once there's a threshold of Interest money is always just going to happen so don't be afraid to provide value upfront um when you build with insiders or sorry without
41:00 - 41:30 insiders let's say that you just approach a large organization say I want to build I want to sell you something and then you show it to them you do a demo and they want to buy a product awesome you're able to charge some money for it or whatever your pricing is and and they buy your product great well if they don't buy your product and you went about it by just approaching the whole organization saying hey this is an Enterprise sales do you all want to sell this to you if they don't buy a product they're immediately going to put you into the long list of companies that they didn't buy the product of and re-engaging with them is going to be kind of difficult but if you approach this a lot more lightly and and kind of
41:30 - 42:00 with this warm Outreach build with insiders either they're not going to buy your product or they are but if they are going to buy your product you're going to be able to charge them a lot more because you consulted with them the application was way more custom it was really specific to their needs and you built Goodwill with them so that's all really valuable uh in the context of making a deal like this and if they don't buy your product you still built something uh you might not get a testimonial but there will be or you might um also get a testimonial and you can now resell what you just built to somebody else if you apply the same context um with a little bit different
42:00 - 42:30 data uh you could really duplicate this process and go and try to sell it to somebody else and also you're going to have Goodwill with them in the long term so if you come back to them eventually I think that there's a higher chance that you'll be able to resell them on whatever you made for them so it's literally free to build for someone else there's a free plan on pickaxe and then um if you want to know how pickaxe credits work it's great basically one uh input and output is one pickaxe credit it makes it really nice because you don't have to actually calculate token costs um there's a tutorial that goes into kind of how that works and
42:30 - 43:00 sometimes you're going to get ghosted when you do Outreach and build solutions for people and just in life it's gonna happen I sent 20,000 cold emails in 2024 this is not to scare you they weren't all this custom you know kind of uh Hey I want to be really empathetic to your use case honestly most of them weren't um but with that being said it's okay you're going to get ghosted sometimes when you help people with real problems and you actually make a difference all the getting ghosted all the you know people that didn't end up wanting your product It all becomes totally worth it
43:00 - 43:30 this is one of my favorite quotes each of us in this lifetime will be rewarded for our Effectiveness in making the people around us better I don't think this has ever been more true especially in a digital economy we are all going to be rewarded for this same criteria what will the rewards be well I think that's up for you to decide um depending on what you see as most rewarding um and if you can do this large organizations or for people that are just solopreneurs you're going to be rewarded greatly so action steps if you're brand new to a I um thank you so much for being here I would recommend you to just ask
43:30 - 44:00 questions of everyone you can right ask your friend if you can build them a pickaxe that helps them at their work um build as many projects as you can build them for yourself build them for other people build them for fake people with fake problems just find anything to build for you know you could find a local business that could use a pickaxe on their site and you could offer your help to them for free and by the way you could build it before you even go ask them if you want them to have it be built and you could say hey I built this for you what do you guys think I build this kind of stuff I don't know is this F and just see what they say see what the reaction is that you took the time
44:00 - 44:30 to actually do that for them if it has their logo on and it has their information they're going to be blown away uh money will make its way to you trust me building Goodwill like this can only help you it cannot hurt you if you already have an AI business and you want to sell to larger organizations find the innovators and see if you can dedicate an entire day to one piece of Outreach just one piece think like okay I'm going to dedicate the entire you know the next 12 hours to one person one email and not because you know it's going to greatly increase your chances but just because I'd be curious to see how different that
44:30 - 45:00 piece of Outreach is versus something that you um send very quickly and then you can figure out how to automate that kind of customization at scale record calls as fast as possible right or sorry record calls to iterate as fast as possible really if you get permission from people to do this it's so useful in building better models and systems and actually showing the value that you're providing to people over a long course of time and we're all looking for the stickiest customers possible to get sticky customers you have to have a sticky product and to have a sticky product it has to be really good so
45:00 - 45:30 you're not going to get to there unless you have iterations and the easiest way to iterate is to record calls with clients um and ask people so many questions that you get annoyed with yourself and be building all all the while H your Insider at these large ORS will get your product adopted I can guarantee it so if you're a seasoned veteran show other people what to do and how to use this technology and do it for free just see how it feels you know we all in this world are again going to be rewarded the effectiveness that are or and our ability to make the people
45:30 - 46:00 around us better right so even if you're providing value for free it's going to be rewarding to you I guarantee it join communities whether it's you know School groups meetups uh whatever it may be get involved and teach younger Generations how to use this technology because the younger you are the longer you're going to have this technology and have to know how to use it regulate it deal with it build applications with it we need to get younger people involved with this technology at a much faster rate um and if we can do that all of our legacies will leave an impact so one more time ask or build you know build or ask do those interchangeably
46:00 - 46:30 initially you know when you're trying to break into a new space when you're trying to break into a large organization just ask and build ask questions build as much as you can and then I guarantee it selling will come so easily it'll be like oh well how are we supposed to pay you for this you know what how much do you want for us to pay you for this it will be so simple um and so the less you know I hope today I've shown you the less you know the more questions you ask the better off you are um and so hopefully um going for from you know where I was and have been in my life with very limited knowledge in this
46:30 - 47:00 space to now selling this technology to organizations and people much smarter than me uh and much more advanced than me in in tons of ways subject matter experts in fields that are way more deep and thorough um than I can even really imagine uh my question would be what's stopping you from doing the exact same thing in your respective field uh and my my short answer for you is hopefully nothing um but we're going to open up a Q&A in case you guys have any other questions and I'm happy to stick around as long uh necessary to answer all those so I'll throw back to you my