The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

The Future of Small Business in an AI World with Heidi Cramer

• Jennifer Ann Johnson • Season 4 • Episode 4

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Overwhelmed by AI hype? Heidi Cramer, veteran technologist and growth strategist, joins us to break through the noise with practical, real-world ways small businesses can use AI right now—no coding, no massive overhaul.

We start where most leaders lose time: email. Heidi shares how small “agents” automate replies using your existing systems—freeing up your calendar and improving cash flow. We also dive into using AI for competitive intel, financial insights, and rethinking workflows without hiring sprees.

From data privacy to model choice, this episode gives you the clarity and confidence to build your short list of automations and scale smart.

Thank you to our generous sponsors for making this podcast possible!

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Visit us at jenniferannjohnson.com and learn how Jennifer can help you build the life you dream of with her online academy, blog, one-on-one coaching, and a variety of other resources!

Jennifer Johnson:

We're living through what feels like an AI revolution. And everywhere you turn, someone's telling small business owners that AI is either going to save their business or completely transform their industry. But here's what I keep wondering: with all the buzz and all the headlines about AI, how much of this is actually helping for small business owners that are actually trying to solve problems? And how much of it is just hype? Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Heidi Cramer. Heidi is an AI and technology integration strategist and a business growth consultant with over 35 years of experience in driving technology-driven innovation across diverse industries. We're going to cut through the noise and talk about practical ways that small businesses can actually use AI and harness it in their business so that it can actually do something spectacular for them. Welcome, Heidi.

Heidi Cramer:

Okay. I'm glad to be here. This will be a lot of fun.

Jennifer Johnson:

It's going to be, and it's going to provide a lot of information to our listeners. Now I know because this goes at the speed of light, meaning all of the AI stuff, you wake up and you know, we'll wake up tomorrow morning and there'll be something new. So some of the things we may talk about may be a little bit different, but we're talking about basics, I would say. And when you originally heard AI, and I know because you're in that world and you've been in that world for a while, when you hear the world AI for small business, what do you automatically think? I think of democratization.

Heidi Cramer:

So it for the first time, and I this is I I hate cliches. So for the first time, small businesses are actually we're going back to the cottage industry. We're going away from the industrial revolution and back to small businesses for the first time can do what today we have the picture that a hundred percent business does. So you can do you can do using AI. And that's not just hype and it's not just cliche. That's that's really how I think of it. And I see it every day.

Jennifer Johnson:

I'm sure you do because it's the space that you're in. So I want to hear about your journey and what got you interested in AI from the onset of us. I mean, I'm sure you probably heard of AI before the rest of us did, because that's your space. But what was it that really interested you about that that made you really dive deep?

Heidi Cramer:

I've been through I've been through several tech launches. So matter of fact, I remember sitting in conference tables with very important men convincing them that they would have a number of their own. They would not go directly to their secretary. So that's that's how long I've been around big changes, right? I mean, we forget how many big changes have been even done in our life, right? And so um, so the way I saw AI and the way I still see AI is really it's just, and I know just, right? But data availability. So for the first time, we have the ability to process and these huge amounts of data, and now we have the ability to say, of all this data we have, of all these camera pictures and of all of the detail we have about any human being, what is the most important to predict their next step? Or what is the most important piece to predict what's the better path to take, you know, for a business? So the example or from my world, by the way, the answer in terms of a year was 2019. So there's your year answer.

Jennifer Johnson:

Really? That seems like it's not even been that long.

Heidi Cramer:

It hasn't at all, but the re but what I saw and what we know today of AI, at the time, I now I come from mostly the sales side by choice, started out coding and as an engineer and moved into the sales side of the tech world. And so um way back when I was running sales teams all over, mostly B2B sales, running them all over the nation, and I could see very quickly that the data we were gathering about your sales funnel and about the type of client to approach, and about what messaging or what product packaging worked better for different types of clients, we were quickly gathering that data and not quite knowing how to use it. So I could take, you know, I had 2,000 salespeople. So I could take 500 of them that went into maybe a specific trade, like they were after electricians and plumbers, you know, they were working with tradespeople, for instance, and I could take just those and use all the funnel data, you know, where they were located, how many times in a month they worked with those people, uh, each of those different companies, what the companies needed, you know, what was moving in plumbing. And I had all that data available. And how could I use that to better align these 500 people and to better create products for all of, for instance, that vertical, all of the our our great infrastructure and trades vertical. And so in 2019, I went to um, you know, you see them all the time now, but I went and got a business analytics part-time certificate uh just to focus in that. I have the first decision sciences degree ever given out in the US. I won't tell the year, but it's embarrassing. Wow. But so I've known for a long time that this has always been about analytics and decision sciences. And so 2019, I said, well, time to brush up the skills and understand how we can use this. And so I went back, did a two-year program, and now I'm actually working among other things, but I'm working on my doctorate for AI specifically in research. So, how do we use this for our workforces so that people can learn better and faster uh using AI, using all of this big AI intelligence we know?

Jennifer Johnson:

Right. You know, I found it this interesting because I've heard you speak a few times. And the last time I think you heard you speak, you were talking about how way back when you went to school for a certain degree and you walked in and you were the only woman in the class, and then you walked into your current class and you were the only woman in the class. That's right. I know.

Heidi Cramer:

So here's I'll tell you this story. So um I there an AI institute was having a class, and I was like, time to get back into coding. I mean, honestly, I probably would have stayed in coding if I would have had vibe coding because I hated debugging. Well, AI, nothing better than AI for debugging. Right. And so I went back, I thought, well, let's shake it up a little bit. Let's, you know, shake up my Python skills a little, and you know, and so I went into class and I walked in, and so back in 190. Oh, I was I was the only woman in class. There was one other woman, she had been an engineer in Ford. So she would be in my classes, in my, you know, the I have a master's in information systems. So it was the only the two of us in the master's class, and then undergrad, it was always just usually me. And so I walk into this class, and I'm not kidding you, 35 people, and I'm the only woman. And then a call and it was for college student age, so I was really trying to shake up my skills, and the uh young college student walks in about 15 minutes into the class and came and sat down by me. And so, at you know, on a break, I had to lean over and say, Are you still the only woman in these classes? And she said, Yes, it's so good to see you here. So I hate to say it, but 30 some years later, it's still the same. That's one advancement we haven't made. I'm still the only woman in that class, but now we have two.

Jennifer Johnson:

Right. That's just crazy, crazy to other than wrap my head around. So I want to get real for a second and get practical for our small businesses who are listening. What is the lowest hanging fruit that they can use AI for?

Heidi Cramer:

Um there's lots, obviously, but the two lowest hanging, well, actually, there's three email assistant, right? So if you if you find yourself as a CEO or as a COO or whatever your role is, because we know you're chief bottle washer and everything as a small business, just like you, Jennifer, if you find yourself spending any kind of time answering any standardized emails, maybe uh looking up and maybe looking up where's an order, maybe just simply scheduling, scheduling yourself, right? If you're doing, if you find yourself doing more than two hours as a business owner or business leader doing anything in a day, or even more than two hours every three or four days, it's usually email. And it's not hard to build agents to respond to email. Um, and we'll talk, we can talk about that. But that would be the first place I would look, honestly. You know, how and what platform are you on and are you using? And some of them have it already built in. I won't name names because you're right. They're three months later or whatever might be different names. But um different, right? Exactly, totally different names that are the priority what people use. But email is obvious one. A funny one that I that I always work with my clients on, that is always extremely useful, surprisingly, and we can talk about this with data, but a lot of people are using free services. Well, what you pay for free services with AI is you're paying for your data. So everything that you're uploading is going out there as training data and is open to the to the cloud, right? So this is the time for small business owners to all look out there and say, what are my competitors doing? You should be asking. You said, what is a low-hanging fruit? You should be absolutely asking. And I always say, and Jennifer, you've probably heard me say this, once a week, Friday afternoon, when you're sitting there and everybody else is done and ready to go and you know you're still cleaning everything up, you should be saying, So, hi, hi, chat, hi Gemini, whoever you are. Can you please tell me what my competitors have been up to this week? Can you please tell me where my digital presence is and how I'm positioned against my competitors? Because they are making changes all the time, and they have people within their companies putting out all kind of information that is now available to you, and you better be taking advantage of that.

Jennifer Johnson:

I heard you say this before, and I love that because now that is on my list. And uh, you know, I I just think it's awesome. I want to go back to the email thing really quick. How do you set up a chat to help or a bot to help you answer your emails? How does the bot know what to answer? Okay, well, so this is the hardest part.

Heidi Cramer:

So, and um uh the the key for AI is you can't think of it like a shift and lift, like IT has always been thought of, right? You know, this is not the big if you want to move, say, from one operating system to another, you know that you know that's gonna be a big lift for your whole company, right? Don't think of it that way. The way you should think of this is whatever you're on, whatever it is, um, it doesn't matter where your email is sitting, it may already have the functionality if you might be already in like a collaborative operating system and you may have that functionality, you just may need to go ask whatever your large language model is, right? So if it's Google, you need to go ask Gemini, hey, I need you to start, I need to start responding to these emails this way, right? Um, if it's that. There's there's also middleware that is just point and click that can link into your outlook, link into chat if that's what you use to answer emails, and say, hey, I need you two to talk. But the key is instead of the shift and lift, you need to think of this as, and you brought it, you just started there. What exactly do I want to change? What is exactly when I'm looking at these for two hours a day, what are the majority of these? And what's the trigger that makes me go look this up? Or what's the trigger that makes me go to my calendar? So always think trigger first, because an agent is not like a customer service agent in a call center, right? An agent that you hear about all the time, 2025 was the year of agentic AI. Everybody's agreed to that. Everybody said that in January, and we all agree that everyone was right. So an agent is nothing more than, hey, I'm responding to five emails a day asking me about where a product is. I go over to my CRM system or I go over to my ERP system, I click here, I click here, I look it up, I cut and paste, I put it back in that email. Right? An agent says for for this emails that ask this, this, and this, that just say order where is, go open that system, copy and paste from this field and this field, put it copy from there, paste it back here, write this email, and then you say put it in my inbox to check and send, or just put it to send. So that's how that's how you should think of AI. And depending on what you're on, that process is about as easy as I said. The hardest thing every one of my clients finds is getting it down to what are these five questions that are common? That's the hardest part, which is crazy because and here's the crazy thing doesn't matter, it matters, but it does, but you can build an agent for the one you get a day. And if you think of, you know, if you think of something that saves you 20 minutes to this for this one email that you get just about every day, multiply that times 30, you know, 30 days a month. Multiply yeah, exactly. You see how quickly that saves time, and it's and it's no cost. That's very cool.

Jennifer Johnson:

So I want to talk about the elephant in the room because everybody's talking about this, everybody's afraid of this. And we keep hearing AI is gonna replace jobs, there's gonna be people out of business, and it scares small business owners, big business owners, everybody alike. What do you say to that?

Heidi Cramer:

So here's the poly interview that I agree with it. So um, yes, it's gonna replace jobs as we know jobs, let's not pretend it isn't, right? And I've got to tell you honestly, I don't like that phrase. You won't be replaced by AI, you'll be replaced by people that use AI. I don't even like that phrase because a lot of times, yeah, I I I don't like that either. So here's the reality. And I saw a study, and it was done by McKinsey, I think, that was really good. It said, yeah, we're gonna lose 300 million jobs to AI worldwide, and probably within and definitely within the next four years, the next three to four years. And I think already of those 300 million, we've lost about 90 million, 90 to 100 million. Wow. But but once we harness the power of AI, and once we figure out things like how it makes salespeople more effective, right? How I target them better, you know, how I use how you use this, once, once you can understand, oh my gosh, I can develop two businesses in one day using AI to code because I just had two great ideas in the retail, in the retail resale industry. And I can turn those two things into businesses in the next 24 hours using AI. And knowing you, nobody knows this business better than you, you will be successful, and you're gonna hire three more people to run those businesses. Sure. So, and another I um train Florida Bar Association, often train legal firms. And one interesting way of looking at it, and it's a perfect view in my mind of how the world is gonna change with AI and how these jobs will change. Right now, it's a seven to one ratio within the legal industry. Now, really, not right now, about three months ago, it's already changed, but it's a seven to one within the legal industry, seven associates for every one partner. So it is expected by 2032, so in seven years, right? It will be a one-to-one ratio.

Jennifer Johnson:

Wow.

Heidi Cramer:

Because of a exactly. So, what does that mean for firms? Well, this is what I love for small businesses. This is what I love for the creativity of you know, of everywhere, but particularly small businesses. It means these firms are going to be smaller, it means you're gonna be more nimble because all of the big research advantage and the intelligence advantage that you had in the large firms, AI gave you. It's giving you in the case advantage and the research advantage. So now, well, well, then they're saying, well, then we won't need all those associates. No, but we certainly still need the legal skills. But now we need it for more areas. Now we need somebody that understands, um, understands how to address legal issues for intellectual property within the retail industry.

Jennifer Johnson:

Absolutely.

Heidi Cramer:

Right? And that may be a three-person firm, but there'll be enough of those that it will easily match that. So the next part of that statistic in McKinsey is eventually that $300 million we lost will become $500 million we gain by the next five years after that.

Jennifer Johnson:

People are shuffled around.

Heidi Cramer:

Exactly. Exactly. The key is when does it release our creativity? When it starts, when it stops making us afraid and starts releasing our creativity and our development for people like you who are just crazy successful entrepreneurs. When it gets, when it when it does that, that's when we'll see that that's when nobody's gonna ask that question anymore. They'll just be trying to find the job they want to do.

Jennifer Johnson:

Wow. I know our daughter is in architecture school and she's already thinking, you know, where can I do a program where I can learn AI for architecture? Because she already knows that that's where this is gonna go. And she hasn't found one yet. So I'd love to talk to you offline about that. But she is um she can see that. And I think that's so cool because it's going to touch every single um, you know, business out there in some way, shape, or form. So, what questions do small business owners need to ask themselves before they start digging into AI, before they start deciding where they want to spend their time, you know, learning and and all of that around AI?

Heidi Cramer:

So um so this will might make you check a little bit. So I'm gonna divide solopreneurs and entrepreneurs here a little bit, because not solopreneurs, but entrepreneurs, I promise you the first place you should dig is who's using it already in your company, right? And how are they using it? I there is not there's not a company out there with an employee that isn't using this somehow. Are they using it to respond to emails? Are they using it to answer FAQs? Are they using it because they find themselves seven times a day trying to answer client questions? There's nothing more important than their chat history, right? So for you to know what to do with your business, nothing more important than your chat history, right? For you to see my chat history. Oh, right. Exactly, right. So you look at your chat history, and then the greatest thing is use now that we keep it all, you know, that's just started right now that you keep it all, use AI to say, look at my chat history and tell me what would be the absolute best thing I could do to implement an agent within this company that would save me time.

Jennifer Johnson:

Oh, I love that. Can you tell the chat to organize all of your chats? Because I sure do. Like I'm sharing folders, like I they're just like so many.

Heidi Cramer:

You tell tell it to run through all your chats and pull it out and then give give you advice on what's the best thing given what it sees you thinking about the most. So for instance, I'll give you a funny example you might enjoy. So I almost always start out with entrepreneurs about bring your finances. Let's, you know, talk. It doesn't have to be extensive, net income balance sheet, right? And we do um, we do the first thing I do is say, hey, AI. Now closed system, right? So the information isn't out there.

Jennifer Johnson:

Would you ban for that?

Heidi Cramer:

For what you're um but only paid. So you know I I would never in a million years put financial information in any. But a paid subscription. And also, just as a little aside for chat, um, there is a way in settings to turn off so it doesn't share. And then we know, you know, anthropic already has those settings, etc. But um, but anyway, so I'll put it out there and put the financial information and say, hey, give me the top three things that would make me stronger financially in the next 30 days. Give me the top two things that would make me stronger financially in the next 90 days, right? And you will be amazed at the depth. Now, of course, I prefer to click on deep research for that, right? So whether you know, if you've got a pro or always click on the research options for that. But you but for instance, I had one that came in and they wanted to launch a B2C, so a business to consumer. They're a business to business, they're a supplier to large businesses, and they said, Well, I want you to help me use AI to design a website and my marketing materials. And I said, Well, you brought your finances, let's do that first. Well, the first thing AI showed is that this company is probably gonna go under in eight months. Wow. A company had been in business for 18 years. And so I said, So why? And then I before you know got any further, I thought, let me dig into this. What's this mean, right? Why did they say that? Well, they had taken on a new client, and AI found all of this through nothing but the last two years' income statements and the last two years' balance sheets. No accounts payable, no anything. And it said they took on a new client. I said, okay, AI, tell me what we mean here. And it said they took on a new client in 2023, which is half of their business. So to scale it 4 million out of around 8 million, right? And that client is paying in 92 days. They now, in the last quarter, the last two quarters, have been hurrying to pay high credit card debt. So they're paying in an average of 23 days because they're using their credit card debt to fund that supply for that large customer. And so, so when I turned around and worked with the client, I said, Hey, is there any chance you're looking for B2C because you're looking for better cash flow? It's not that you need to launch another product line, it's that you're looking for a different cash flow model. And she said, Exactly. I was just asked to be, you know, CEO of this company. And I, and so we said, I said, well, let's have a different strategic decision first, because anything that you do on a new product line, as we know, first thing I ever learned in business school is it's going to, whatever I think it's going to cost me to launch a new product line or a new location, double that and start there. Right. No matter what it works, right? Hey, start there, double that, start there, then decide what your budget is. And so I said, well, how about instead of an expense, let's figure out how to control cash flow here? And then we talked about procurement. How do we work with could we offer terms to the supplier agent so that if they paid sooner, they could have a lower cost? We just needed to find, and all those things were implemented in the company's in good shape.

Jennifer Johnson:

Wow. All of that from uploading that to FPT.

Heidi Cramer:

All I simply did was 23, 24, and year to date 2025, net income imbalance sheet, and it told me all that.

Jennifer Johnson:

That's amazing. And that would have taken an individual a considerable amount of time. And it probably took, you know, what, two minutes? If you oh, not probably not right. Right. Oh my gosh. Yeah, to do that analysis. No, no, you did touch on this a little bit, but I want to talk about security and data privacy. Because, you know, yes, we did talk briefly just about paid versions, but what are some things that you can do in these certain models to make sure that things that you upload are private? Because I know there's going to be a lot of people having that question.

Heidi Cramer:

Yeah, no, no, that's a good question. And that is a big issue. No question. So, first of all, please keep always keep in mind that no matter what you do and your employees do, anything they do on a free version, you are paying with your data. The reason free versions exist is because LLMs need more data to train on, more data to make decisions. LLM or large language models, chat and the rest. And so, so always remember that you are giving your data. Every single thing you're putting out there, that's what you are paying on a free version. So keep that in your head always. Doesn't matter what it's a free version, image creation, anything. So on paid versions. So then your question is well, on a paid version, and and I will tell you the different ones, um, I've seen different ones sell, you know, based on, you know, we focus more on your data privacy. One thing to always keep in mind is there's, you know, not like the FAA where they're running around checking planes. There's nobody checking, right? There's nobody that opens up and knocks on your door and says, Oh, let me check if this is getting shared or by policy or not, right? No. So, so look at what you have, look at make sure that whatever you're buying, I and and you know, you might have heard me say this before, Jennifer. I have a crazy thing. You know, when you're design, when you're using chats and you're designing marketing material and you want it to be your brand because you know they learn from you, and you want to sometimes I say, particularly even for like marketing, um, you know, content creation, image creation, use a separate uh account for that that is only based on your brand identity and is locked into your company. So for small business owners that are two or three people, sometimes that's enough to start keeping things safe, and then never put your name on any other data that you use. You know, never put your company's name out there on anything else you put out there. So that's the that's the kind of the cheap and easy way. But and but make sure that you understand when you're even buying it, what the difference is. So, for instance, we talked a second ago about chat, it actually defaults to sharing the data, even though you're paying for it. So make sure you go into settings and say, I don't want to share my data. And that's across the teams too. So if you're buying, um you know, buying a uh subscription for your entire company, just remember that. Remember to watch how your settings are.

Jennifer Johnson:

That is a good pointer. Now, looking ahead on the AI landscape, what do you what does it look like for small businesses? What do you see happening in the next six months, the next year? I know you don't have a crystal ball, but I you have some great insights.

Heidi Cramer:

Yeah, no, so so the key, so I will tell you, this might you might get a kick out of this. I have a client and we've been working together for a year and a half on, and it's AI-based, tremendous, uh, you know, combination of drone technology and IoT technology and all my favorite stuff, you know, where all this, where all the backbone comes from, where I came from. And so finally I had to say to him a couple, uh, I don't know, about a month ago, I said, just blanking launch. Just do the damn thing. And so he he now puts on a whiteboard behind him whenever he's on a Zoom meeting, just blanking launch, Heidi Kramer. So, what I wanted, the whole point of that is to say, where is AI going? Where are small businesses going? AI is going to keep giving small businesses more tools than their enterprise counterparts because enterprise have got to do a big lift and shift. You may have a CRM, you may have an ERP, right? It's not so easy for these guys to implement AI in there. It seems like it because everything always is focused at them in the news, right? But it's not so easy. To be honest, the thing I see with small businesses is now is your time to use every tool. And you may have heard me say this, Jennifer. I say if you're still running your client um information on Excel spreadsheets, stop. The CRM costs you 20 bucks, right? And AI is running the back end, and you can do a quick tie into your emails, and you got everything together like enterprise clients have had for years, right? So the so what I see for what I see for small businesses is be more concerned if you're not getting the basics done because it's cost, it'll it costs you 20 bucks a month for a subscription now at this point to have a CRM, to have an ERP, to you know, run run a link to to fix your email or to you know answer all your emails, right? Um to have an agent. A lot of what I work on, this may interest you. So I have one client, just won a huge contract for an entire country, every hospital in a whole entire country, entire country. So she just won this contract. She's a great small business with five employees, fantastic small business with five employees. And so she so she came to me and she said, anyway, I can do this with the same amount of employees using AI. So we worked through it and we went through all the workflow, and she actually used an employee. I worked with them, they learned how to write agents themselves. So they're learning and think of agents as automation. So she just learned to automate a bunch of stuff they do, added a CRM. You know how badly I believe in CRMs, right? And then integrated it in. And so part of what they have is when clients use them, they also have to keep updated. So a year later, you have to keep updated. Six months later, you have to, so now we've got all of that automated. Nobody needs to sit there and follow through 10,000 clients and a country's worth, right? Of clients. So we've automated all of these things together and sh and we added IoT into some of the equipment that is needed on site. So she can now sit there like you and I are sitting here in a different country and manage that entire experience for those clients. So we've got all of that integrated together, and she can launch a whole country with five with the same five people that she had originally.

Jennifer Johnson:

That's a really great testimonial you need to get from her. Wow.

Heidi Cramer:

That is crazy. So that gives you a sense, you know, of what you have of how small businesses should be looking at this and where they're gonna go because you are going to be that size, but you got but now's your chance to get everything right and cheaper. Right.

Jennifer Johnson:

Absolutely. So because AI is changing so rapidly, how can small businesses stay informed as to what's next or what new tool is out there? What is a good spot for them to learn? And maybe it's more than one spot. How do they stay in tune to that? Yeah, so that's a great question.

Heidi Cramer:

Um, so uh so it first of all, the first thing I'm gonna say is AI is really the year, is really the launch of micro verticals, as I call them. So all these applications, like you know, we just gave the example of Jennifer's gonna have a great idea for a better way to do purses and resale, and you're gonna launch that company in 24 hours, and it's gonna solve a bunch of problems with purses and resale, right? I'll be in there later to get a wallet. I'm I need one today. Um I know I saw that, that's why. And so, so um, so we have the you have all of that, you can do that from a small scale. Those microverticals are gonna add all the AI marketing, and your name, your name as a resale store, will be everywhere. So they will be coming to you. So a lot of what you should be doing is a lot of what I spend clients clients will say, Hey, I just saw this one. They just popped up and they can integrate my CRM and they can do this, and they're in my microvertical, and they understand how I connect with vendors. This is what they said. How do I know that this is the right move to make? And so one of the things I always say is data, data, data. Where's your data? How will they transfer your data? How will they run your data? That's all that matters is data, data, data. So when you say, um, how do you keep up with it? A lot of times it's gonna be, it's not gonna be a pull, it's gonna be a push. Number one. Number two, their podcasts are launching all the time. I tend to do a podcast a lot. I get a lot of updates. I won't name any of them on here, but I I tend to get updates like I will listen to podcasts for AI for certain ones. Like I have one that will always give me a great daily update. I also know he uses AI, you know, too, but he gives me a great daily update. And he also gives me a great perspective from a here's the hype, and here's how the news had to say it, but here's what this really means. So I'll give you an example. Sam Altman came out recently and said, well, AI is hyped, you know, in and he, but here's why. He had just offered a buyback to all to all of the open AI people. And if he came out and said that, well, there's he he had to be very careful about how he said he had to walk that line because he could have been encouraging people to make a financial decision based on his advice. And so, for instance, yeah, yeah, and so everybody had you know, the headline was Sam Altman says it's all going to collapse. Sam Altman didn't jump right on this, he couldn't that day, right? Right, you know, and so he sent his senses said, hey guys, no, it's all going and it's going this fast and the world is changing. So I listened to podcasts, and then um, so one interesting thing that I've seen though, that's crazy because it's not the AA world, is um it seems like a lot of people are providing conferences within verticals. And the bet and so without question, I will tell you, without question, the best thing I have seen from every small business owner is to see how someone else has been using it within, particularly within at least if not their vertical, within their customer base. So if you're like a business to consumer, you know, how have people been using, how have people been using it? So some of these conferences, believe it or not, I think have absolutely had some great information when the doors are closed and everybody's talking. You know, if you can do that in your industry, I think it's been working great to keep people updated.

Jennifer Johnson:

That's where the gold nuggets are dropped. Yes, absolutely. No question. So we are in the final four section of our podcast. I do this with every guest that is on. So I'm excited to hear your answers, Heidi. What is your favorite book and what it has made it stick with you? My favorite book to make it stick.

Heidi Cramer:

Oh, so um, I know this sounds crazy. World according to Garp is my favorite book. Um and only because only because it stuck with me, I remember way back when I you know this, Jennifer. I do a lot of work with foster kids. And, you know, way back when it really stuck with me because for the first time he kept saying, Well, I'm an orphan, and that means that I have to always be useful. And I always spent my life, you know, hustling and you know, in careers and always being useful. And I always have thought of that book for a lot that, you know, always be useful. It's a way of it's a perspective. So absolutely. Now I will tell you right now, I'm reading God, human, animal, and machine. And it's a very interesting perspective from somebody who used to be a theologian on what is AI today. It's a very easy read, believe it or not. I know it sounds like it shouldn't be, but of course, audio read. Um, and uh it's really interesting because it's giving the theological perspective uh not anymore, agnostic, right, is moved away, but somebody that has lived on both sides, uh, even as a fundamentalist Christian, and can say, This is what I see. Um, this is, you know, is what is doesn't AI have some of the things that we as you know Christians have defined, has defined um is developing. So it's fascinating.

Jennifer Johnson:

Hmm. I'm gonna put that on my list. Yeah, it's fascinating. Do you have a favorite quote or piece of advice that you find yourself coming back to time and time again?

Heidi Cramer:

Yes. So I used to always tell my kids, do what you have to do so you can do what you want to do, right? That's always my big one, um, especially for my kids. And they and they would tell you, by the way, that my actual quote was get better or get used to it.

Jennifer Johnson:

So it's a little bit true.

Heidi Cramer:

Um so, but then um, if we were a busy family, uh busy mom and kids. Um, but then um I did heard hear something by Maya Angela one time I have always lived by after I thought of this, and it says, when someone shows you who they are, believe them. And I've and I've thought about that in AI too, because sometimes, you know, AI and I, just like many people do, we'll have a discussion about something. And AI a few times has said, well, given everything you told me before, why do you expect their reaction to be different this time? Why do you expect them to react differently? I'm like, AI and I needed to have that discussion because it's funny that that's an old saying that I've always thought of, and and now in the in it shows up in my chat.

Jennifer Johnson:

And it's definitely the truth. Yeah. What is one habit or practice that's genuinely changed your life?

Heidi Cramer:

Um, reading. Yeah, no question. I mean, I was I had my nose in a book from the time I I could hold a book. And so, and I love to read across everything. I will tell you in the last, we were talking about this yesterday with someone, in the last five or six years, it's really helped um that I have subscriptions across various different news things and in-depth, you know, peer-reviewed articles and go, because it really to you almost now need because it delivers what it thinks you want to click on for advertising. So I now need is now more important, and I tell, you know, everybody, all my kids this, that it's now more important you go seek out the information and then make your own decisions.

Jennifer Johnson:

That's good advice as well. If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why?

Heidi Cramer:

My grandfather. My grandfather died when I was seven, kind of the, you know, still absolutely the best person in my life. And uh, and I would want to go back and tell him all about my kids, tell him all about my life.

Jennifer Johnson:

Kitty, this has been a a really packed podcast with lots of things about AI. I feel like we could talk about this for hours. No questions. If our listeners are interested in getting a hold of you, how can they do so?

Heidi Cramer:

Well, I will tell you what uh my uh email is uh hkramer at fgcu.edu. Um I'm with the SVDC. And then my phone, you're well always welcome. Everybody knows my phone number, 630-886-4977. So you're always you can always get a hold of me at either place.

Jennifer Johnson:

Fabulous. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Heidi Cramer:

It was wonderful. Thank you very much for the time, Jennifer. And this is a great format.

Jennifer Johnson:

Thank you to my guests.

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Jennifer Johnson

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