Leveraging AI to Transform Your Business Model with Jeff Hunter

Prepare to have your mind expanded by Jeff Hunter, the innovative force in AI consulting for marketing and copywriting, as he shares his transformative journey and insights with us. Envision the landscape of tomorrow's businesses, molded by artificial intelligence—where content creation is accelerated and personalized, service industries are revolutionized, and the quest for profitability through AI becomes a tangible reality. Jeff, once crowned the 'king of outsourcing', now pioneers the integration of AI in service-centric businesses, offering a glimpse into a future where machines enhance human creativity and efficiency.

As we converse with Jeff, we uncover the seismic shifts AI is creating across social media, content production, and even the educational sphere. Imagine mastering the competitive edge in today's market by infusing AI into business strategies and educational content, all while eyeing the promise of a business exit that capitalizes on these advancements. Jeff's narrative is a testament to the power of embracing change and innovation, where the once elusive trifecta of quality, speed, and affordability in services becomes an achievable milestone with AI's prowess. Join us for an episode that promises to challenge your perceptions and inspire action in the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What if AI could be a profit center for your business? No, I'm not talking about some infomercial type sleazy product. No, I mean, what if your business could be AI-ified? I personally think that every service-centric business could do this, and 2024 is the year to start thinking about it. But how, you ask? Well, I don't know exactly. So I'm bringing my friend, jeff Hunter, on the show today to discuss this very topic. Jeff is best known as the savage marketer and he has become one of the top AI consultants for marketing and copywriting. He's the creator of the AI persona method and he's consulted over 100 companies on how to integrate AI solutions to increase margins and reduce overhead for just about any type of business. So let's see what he has to only. Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show.

Speaker 2: 1:12

I'm so happy to be here, michael, it's going to be a doozy.

Speaker 1: 1:17

Now wait, wait a second. This is Jeff. This is not an AI rendering of Jeff, right?

Speaker 2: 1:22

We're going to find out.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Oh my gosh here we go, I'm going to ask really hard questions.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Oh my gosh, here we go, really hard question, even my wife got upset with me this morning because I wrote her a text message and she said I don't even think you wrote this, I think AI wrote this.

Speaker 1: 1:33

Isn't it crazy? We've been so we've, we've dedicated this entire season, season seven. We just passed 102 or a hundred yeah, we're on this. This one, I don't know, will be like 107 or 110 episodes. We just we just passed a hundred episodes and so so far, we've been talking about how to choose AI, how to use AI for the business, and you and I were chatting at the content hackers live a couple of months ago and you were talking about like every business should find a way to use AI to generate revenue and get people to pay them, regardless of what they're doing. Yeah, to use AI, and it's like I'm like, yes, let's talk about that. So let's first let's talk about how you're a really short journey from, like, your badassness before AI and then how you've just completely turned your stuff around using AI because you're like you're Mr AI.

Speaker 2: 2:33

It's funny. I don't even know if I would say I'm Mr AI. I would just say that I'm like Mr Leverage man, you know.

Speaker 1: 2:40

I love it, I love it.

Speaker 2: 2:41

I actually garnered this nickname over the years, the king of outsourcing, and it's really because, you know, in my past life I was a Fortune 500 project manager, for you know, basically doing IT project management, and I've been in IT pretty much my entire life, since I was a little young kid, at 12 years old, and my grandpa used to drop me off at the computer store down the block they don't even have computer stores anymore like that and I, you know I used to build computers and you know, just have a chat and, you know, learn how to do everything before people just ordered something from Dell. You know people still bought computer parts and stuff, but like, I just always loved IT and the crazy part was I used to love my favorite TV show growing up was Star Trek. The next generation.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Okay.

Speaker 2: 3:38

Okay, dating yourself, all right.

Speaker 1: 3:41

I got it.

Speaker 2: 3:42

Definitely dating myself. Okay, In high school it was Voyager. But what was really crazy was my favorite character was Data. Data was by far my favorite character. He was this humanoid android that had all of the universe's secrets and knowledge stuffed into him, but he really didn't know how to coordinate, you know kind of communicate with people. He obviously had a hard time with emotion, because he really had none.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Oh, his social skills were like second to bottom.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Oh they were horrible, yeah, and and not to mention, you know, tried really hard to show emotion and at least pretend and show humans that he was capable of emotion and empathy, but really wasn't. And it sounds a lot like ChatGPT. It sounds a lot like the language models that we have right now, the language models that we have right now. So, you know, fast forward to today. You know it's mind boggling because I've been building remote teams. That's what I did as an IT project manager. I built remote teams to do things. I own a virtual assistant staffing agency in the Philippines. I have over 150 virtual assistants, and how I came into AI was pure desperation. When ChatGPT came out in November 2022, I said, oh my gosh, why would someone even hire a VA, a human, when you can have an artificial intelligent virtual assistant for free, right? I totally agree. You can have an artificial intelligent virtual assistant for free, right?

Speaker 2: 5:27

Mm, hmm, mm hmm, I totally agree, I had that kind of come to Jesus moment and I basically flew to the Philippines in December of 2022. I created an AI division of the company, a task force that said, guys, we got to figure this stuff out before it figures us out, right, right, right. Did you feel like the CEO of Blackberry when, like the iPhone came out? Got to figure this stuff out before it figures us out, right right, right.

Speaker 1: 5:46

Did you feel like the CEO of BlackBerry when the iPhone came out?

Speaker 2: 5:50

Man. When the iPhone came out, blackberry thought they were still the better option. Right, right.

Speaker 1: 5:59

I was the downfall of the BlackBerry eventually, right, so yeah, so you're saying we ain't going to be the BlackBerry?

Speaker 2: 6:06

It was way worse than the CEO of BlackBerry, because I was thinking like man, why would people? No, you know what I felt like. I felt like the core. That's what it was. I felt like the horse buggy driver when Henry Ford introduced the automobile. That's what I felt like I love it.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Well, somebody at the conference that we were at in Austin said something like AI is to the human race as language was, the human race as language was. That's how transformational AI is going to be to the world, and and and how it impacts the human, the human life period.

Speaker 2: 6:47

Yeah, and it's so primitive right now it's. It's almost like you know a. You know this discovery of AI is almost like inventing. You know humans inventing the first tool, like the first hammer. You know humans inventing the first tool, like the first hammer. You know? Think about all the things that were built because of the invention of the hammer, right? The invention of the nail you know, it's.

Speaker 2: 7:07

It's kind of mind boggling if you think about it because it's so primitive right now. You know, and, like I said, you know, when it comes to that comparison between the buggy driver and BlackBerry, whatever, like I was thinking as a human virtual assistant company. Why would someone hire a human when they can hire an AI for free that never complains, never gets tired, never calls in sick to work, never rolls their eyes when you ask for a revision, doesn't poach your clients, can be trained way faster than a human, way faster than a human, can absorb massively large amounts of data and it's just nuts. Like what AI can do is so crazy.

Speaker 1: 7:53

And yet we're still in the precipice. Yeah, this is year, not even year two, right, and it's barely scratching the surface, so all right. Your not even year two, right, and it's not even scratching the surface, so all right. So you add this tax force. What did you discover in this in these last couple years that now you're in year two of this?

Speaker 2: 8:08

So when we did the power with the team, I discovered three things. Number one AI gave my human virtual assistants superpowers that they didn't have before. For example, my Filipino VAs, like you can tell the difference between an American English versus a Filipino English. You can just tell every time you call up Comcast or whatever and you gotta pay your bill, you know Like you're gonna stop to a call center in the Philippines. Then you can tell. You know, like even today I had to call up and cancel some tickets for a flight coming up and I totally knew right away that person was a Filipino call center agent. You know, because I was canceling a ticket for my wife and she immediately said well, you want me to cancel this ticket for Mom Ana that's my wife's name. And I said Mom Ana, that's totally Filipino. But I never in the past would have my Filipino VAs do massive amounts of content for me because I wanted it to be in very good American English.

Speaker 2: 9:04

So social media posts, email newsletters, email marketing, landing pages I mean think about all the product descriptions for econ businesses and things like that Like now you can use AI to do that. Now you can use AI to do that. And what I've found is the best way to get leverage out of my own human virtual assistants is to create AI models, basically, that are already pre-trained what we call AI personas, that are already pre-trained AI on how to do things, and then the VA is just the operator. The operator that says, hey, I need you to do this, I need you to write a social media post about this, and that AI is already trained to do so. So that's number one. It's become the superpower. Number two is that people still don't want to do anything. All right, no, no.

Speaker 1: 9:52

What was the statistic that said like? Only I want to say a ridiculously low percentage of businesses are even looking at ai, not not to say even using it, but not even looking at it yet.

Speaker 2: 10:04

November 2023 not that long ago the us census came out that showed only 3.8 percent of businesses in america use ai 3.8 crazy, they're crazy so and then like one out of five people looked at it and you opened up with the topic for the day.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Okay, that was number three. See, I'm glad how you came into that. Okay, the first thing that I learned was that it now augmented humans to do more. Number two is that humans still didn't want to do anything and they would rather pay for another human to use AI for them. Which brings me to number three. I made the most money profit I've ever made as a consultant. Last year I did $282,000 as my first year as an AI consultant, teaching people how to use AI in their business.

Speaker 2: 10:57

Oh, I love it. I love it. That's a mind-blowing statistics. Think about this 3.8% of businesses use AI. Business Insider just got done publishing an article that says 90% over 90% of all potential employers right now are searching for someone who knows how to use AI and chat GPT. Isn't that crazy? So let's think about this disparity gap between the businesses that are using AI 3.8% and the businesses that want to use which is what? 96.4%, 2%, my math is off. I think that means that there is a massive opportunity here to actually help come into companies and show them how to use ai. That's the opportunity. That's the biggest opportunity of our lifetime. Dude, it's like you know. They talked about the gold rush. Who made you know this one? Everyone knows this. Who made all the money in the gold rush? Who?

Speaker 1: 11:59

made all the gold.

Speaker 2: 12:00

People who sold the pickaxes and the buckets and the orges or shovels and the shovels and the sifters, sifters, all that stuff, yep, the people that sold the tools because it funded their dreams. Well, what do people want right now? They want to use AI. That's the dream. Can AI do this stuff in my business? Yes, it can. What are we doing? We're selling the tools. The tools are the AI, the knowledge of how to use AI. We have a massive opportunity right now, right in front of us.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Oh, it's huge. Right now we're putting together a masterclass on how to utilize AI to basically do your entire year's worth of social media without losing your own voice. And spending less than five days to get a whole year's worth done for you that's wild, Amazing.

Speaker 2: 12:50

And, by the way, businesses can pay a lot of money for that.

Speaker 1: 12:54

I hope so.

Speaker 2: 12:57

People can pay a lot of money for that, yeah, and how much are people paying for social media managers on the team? $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 a month for some salaried employee who only works eight hours a day and probably spends an hour of that sitting on the toilet hours a day, and probably you know spends an hour of that sitting on the toilet, and and they're not, I mean, and it's, it's amazing because we're just talking about marketing.

Speaker 1: 13:21

There's ways AI is impacting other service-based businesses out there, right, um, and I think that it's going to be those innovators in those different industries. I mean, you know, when you think about, just like home service, yeah, home service businesses, right, like AI, along with things like drones and whatnot, can do a lot of work for these people and actually serve their clientele in a way they never dreamed. Right, like you can have, I just moved and I need, I want somebody to, uh, to mow my lawn, and so I had to call three people and each of them had to send somebody out here to come and look at the lawn and not survey it. All that good stuff Instead of in, I bet you, in you, in less than six months, one of these companies could figure out how to use, create a GPT that could go to Google Maps, find my lot number, identify how much lawn I had, because they're just doing a mathematical equation.

Speaker 1: 14:31

When they come and look at it, it looks like it's about a quarter, three quarters of an acre and there's about this much percentage of the lawn, blah, blah, blah. Chat Shipp, you can do it just like that, right? So if they had that built in, it's like okay, I'm going to pay you, you're going to get my business faster, I'm going to pay you because you're using that AI, right? But what if the AI could then look at your lawn for you and then it says hey, by the way, you need more sodium or you need more whatever in your in your in your in whatever dot dot dot, right, like they could use a get paid to use AI for you to get me the information I need about my lawn.

Speaker 2: 15:13

Totally. I just got done seeing it. You know, have you ever seen TikTok shop? You've seen that.

Speaker 1: 15:19

So I have ADHD and TikTok is the devil, so it's horrible.

Speaker 2: 15:25

But TikTok just came out and now you can sell other people's products. So now everybody's doing ads for people that are selling on TikTok and I like watching the ads A because as a marketer, I like to see what's working right, what's getting attention? Sure, but I was thinking about my very first like entrepreneurial job that I ever did was when I was in summer. It was summertime and I was in high school and I was a huge swimmer. I was on the water polo team. I did swimming and you know what we'd always do Pool service. We would clean your pool, check your chemicals, whatever else not. I saw an advertisement for a robot that's less than $300, that you literally plop into your pool and it automatically cleans everything.

Speaker 2: 16:09

And I was just like wow, battery operated doesn't have to plug into anything, you just drop in your pool, it automatically cleans everything.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Oh, isn't that amazing.

Speaker 2: 16:19

Right Like we're at this crazy age where and not to mention if you have an existing service based business and you're adding an AI element to your business it's going to increase the value of your business. It's going to increase the value of your business. It's going to increase the value of your business If you're looking to ever exit your company, if you have some sort of an AI tool to it. One of my friends, molly Mahoney I love one of the things that she's trademarked called AI-ify. It's so funny. You can AI-ify what your programs are If you're a course creator. If you're a course creator and you have some sort of an AI tool that does actually part of the work for your students to get better results. You know, I truly believe that right now we can use AI to get more results faster, solve bigger problems and, obviously, get paid more. That's what's exciting to me, and not just as a marketer, but just like.

Speaker 2: 17:16

Right now I'm actually working with a university out of Florida who has asked me to come in. I'm actually flying out to Vegas tomorrow to shoot the content for it and I'm going to be having a little credential program. It's going to be a super cheap course just for the students I think there's 700,000 students to where they can just stick that to the resume that shows them. Here's a basic course that goes over different ways that you can use AI for companies that they can stick on there to give them added value to what they're doing right now. They can stick that on their resume and say look, hey, those 90% of companies are looking for someone who has experience in AI. Here's my stamp of approval saying that I actually know how to do these basic things in AI that are valuable to any business.

Speaker 1: 18:05

I love it. A common friend of ours, julie McCoy, says you know, ai optimized right, yeah, and I think that when people understand how to use AI well, it breaks the barrier. You ever hear the Venn diagram good, fast, cheap and you have to pick two. Yeah, and you have to pick two. You just have to pick two.

Speaker 1: 18:30

I think that people always try to figure out how they can do good, fast and cheap. And one of the things you just said uh, I got just a couple minutes ago is that you can pay more right people. I I always tell people half of the clients that I bring on are like not paying and charging enough right, and I hope that that now that people go well, it doesn't take long to get it done that they don't try to break that Venn diagram and say, well, I can get it good because I'm leveraging time through AI, so it's fast, so I can be cheap. And one of the things I want to tell the audience is like, don't discount your ability to get out of AI what you get, because it's what you put in that dictates what you get out.

Speaker 2: 19:19

There's an age-old story, michael, about the mechanic that was hired to get the Titanic to actually go and start. Do you hear about that one? I haven't actually heard this one. You probably haven't. I just laid it out for you in a way that you're like, oh really, they were having a hard time.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Imagine spending all this time building this giant ship and the motor just wasn't turning on. It just wasn't turning over. They had a problem. They had their engineers go all out trying to figure it out. They did assessments, they figured it out. They tried a problem. They had their engineers go all out trying to figure it out. They did assessments, they figured it out. They tried different fuel. They tried different ports. And is it getting enough oxygen? What's going on? I don't know what's happening Now, mind you, if you remember how long ago the Titanic was, it was quite some time ago. There was a mechanic that everybody knew is infamous and he says I'll fix it for you. I'll fix it for you fast, but before I do you will have to give me ten thousand dollars which is a lot of money back then they said dang ten thousand dollars.

Speaker 2: 20:29

That's a lot of money back then, and you know what he does. They said, okay, they're desperate, they got to get this ship moving. They're desperate, they'll pay anything to get it moving. They paid in the ten thousand dollars. He walks in, he takes a look, he grabs a wrench and you know what he does. He smacks the engine and that thing starts and of course people are like what the heck right, why? I don't understand, I don't get it and he goes. You know what? I got that thing started. For you, record time doesn't matter how I fixed it, I did it. He was able to get it going.

Speaker 2: 21:12

And see, that's the thing that people don't understand is the amount of time and experience that he had to know exactly where to hit that engine to get it going. He knew, he looked at the engine, he knew exactly what was going on right. All you had to do was hit it. Even though it was the simplest solution and it took very little time, it was solving the most massively horrible and hard problem for them. And see, that's the thing People will pay for you to fix big problems. People will pay to fix big problems. And here's what I love about AI. Ai allows you to fix really big problems really fast. Okay, but you have to have the knowledge, and a lot of times, what you said, michael, is very interesting, because a lot of times, people don't have a lot of value in their own experience and knowledge, and that's scary Right Now. That should be something that we all work on. It's one of those they call limiting beliefs, where we say, oh, I mean, it really wasn't that valuable, but it was because they couldn't figure it out themselves, right?