Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed

AI Is Already in Your Business Whether You Know It or Not

• Evan Polin & Craig Andrews • Season 2

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Are your employees already using AI without your knowledge? What competitive advantages are you missing by not having a clear AI strategy? Fractional COO Julio Gonzalez reveals how small and mid-sized businesses can harness artificial intelligence to drive efficiency and growth without massive investments or technical expertise.

Drawing from decades of experience as a CIO and operational strategist, Julio cuts through the AI hype to deliver practical insights you can implement immediately. Rather than treating AI as just another tech buzzword, he approaches it from an operational perspective—focusing on how automation can solve real business problems and free up your time for high-value activities.

The conversation explores how mature AI implementations are yielding up to 20% performance improvements in specific business areas. From AI assistants handling phone calls and scheduling to financial tools automating invoice matching, these technologies are transforming everyday tasks. For small businesses without large marketing departments, AI writing assistants are crafting professional communications and marketing materials in minutes rather than hours.

But Julio also addresses the risks—particularly how employees using free AI tools might inadvertently expose sensitive business data. Learn how to develop specific, detailed prompts that produce accurate, valuable outputs instead of the "hallucinations" that can damage your credibility and brand. Discover the fundamental difference between using AI effectively versus simply adopting the latest shiny object.

Whether you're AI-curious or AI-anxious, this episode provides a balanced, strategic framework for implementing automation in ways that enhance your business operations without overwhelming your team or budget. The competitive advantage isn't just in adopting AI—it's in adopting it thoughtfully before your competition does.

Ready to transform your business operations? Connect with Julio at Opticution (www.opticution.com) to develop an AI strategy that aligns with your specific business goals and challenges.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. President of Poland Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the sales and marketing playbook unleashed.

Speaker 2:

And welcome to the sales and marketing playbook unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and that's my partner in crime. Did I get it? You got it this time. I was unsure. You know I have to make sure I'm on point.

Speaker 3:

A couple more years and you'll have this down pat. Hey, hey, but you cannot say that I'm not making progression you cannot remember where we just said in the previous episode perfect practice makes perfect, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 2:

So today we're going to talk about what we do best here, which is the sales and marketing playbook is we bring resources to you that can help your businesses grow. Uh, and ultimately, when it comes to sales and marketing, a lot of that is also based in strategy. So why don't you go ahead and introduce our guest Evan and I hope everybody's excited and ready because we have a lot of information to throw at you today- Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

I am very excited to introduce our guests, as you bring our guests to the stage, julio Gonzalez, the founder and CEO of OptiCution. Julio is a respected fractional COO strategic advisor these days pulling in automation, and he's going to talk a little bit about how you, how your business can be more efficient can really use automation to optimize your business, to help free you up to do those things that you really enjoy doing. So, julio, really happy to have you on the Sales Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 4:

Thank you guys. I really enjoy appreciate rather being on your podcast. I enjoy talking about what I do and how I help businesses, so excited to share.

Speaker 3:

On this other avenue, so, and before we jump in and start to you know, pepper you with some of those hard-hitting questions, do you want to share with everybody a little bit about your background and what led you to start your business?

Speaker 4:

Sure. So my background's all technology. I spent my entire career in the corporate world managing technology departments. I was CIO for the last 12 years of my corporate career and what I found many, many years ago is that in order to provide a viable technology solution, I had to go into the business. I had to fix the business because they didn't know what they were asking for. They didn't know how to fix their own operations. They didn't have a strong COO in the majority of cases, unfortunately. So I would go into the business, fix their operations and then help them find a technology solution. So when I decided to go off on my own, I could have gone down the technology route, but it's a highly, highly competitive field and, frankly, there's not a lot of fractional COOs that are focusing on that operation space and that's what I enjoy. So I'm bringing the successes that I brought to my corporate employers down to small and mid-sized businesses so that they can also benefit from the efficiencies and the ability to scale in order to be successful.

Speaker 2:

I think what I like the best about what you're saying here again right into our target market here in terms of small and medium-sized businesses is that a lot of times, people tend to gloat over the strategy and the foundational stuff. I deal with it every day. Somebody has this vision and I always call it the creative people, and this is way before we get to the technology right. We talk about creatively. I can do these wonderful things and I go let's start with the sales process. How many leads are you getting now? So I know that the AI piece, which is supposed to make life easier, not make you more creative. Why don't we speak a little bit about that?

Speaker 4:

Sure. So you know, ai is the latest buzzword. Everybody's talking about AI, and not that it's not real technology or valuable technology, but everything is AI, and whether it is truly native AI that's been built into platforms or things that look like AI, it's on the tip of everyone's tongue. Every business wants AI or is actually fighting AI, which is interesting and not realizing that their employees are using chat, gpt, left and right and they don't have the control around that. So when I talk to businesses, I tell them you know you need to embrace AI in whatever form you feel comfortable, but you have to have some sort of position, some sort of approach, some sort of strategy on how you're going to implement AI in your business.

Speaker 4:

And one of the easiest ones and I say easy because you contract somebody and they do it for you is the you know, ai assistants just had, you know, made a phone call yesterday to schedule an appointment with an attorney and their AI assistant answered the phone and it was a, you know, wonderful experience. You know it was canned, you know, because that's you know kind of what it is, but the fact is I was able to get through the entire scheduling of the call. It asked a lot of questions. It pronounced my name correctly and it certainly beats. You know, press one for this and two for that. You know an AI assistant alone, you know, can save you know any business, a tremendous amount of money.

Speaker 2:

So, even if it's just that you know, have an approach.

Speaker 4:

I want to offload, you know, the calls to my business. I want to offload scheduling of appointments. That is a strategy and that doesn't require you know crazy planning. You know you find a good vendor that's able to do that for you and you go and implement. But certainly have you know, some internal conversations, even if it's with yourself. Sit down and write down some strategy on how you're going to address AI. Don't just jump into that next shiny object.

Speaker 3:

And Julio, when folks are using AI properly, what kind of impact can they see to their business? What kind of lets them know that, hey, this was a good investment in time and money? You know, I'm really kind of seeing some kind of return out of being a little uncomfortable in bringing some of this technology into my small and mid-sized business.

Speaker 4:

It really varies pretty wildly. Presence it really varies pretty wildly. But you know I'll say more mature organizations that have a strong implementation are seeing upwards up to 20% performance improvements in the specific areas where the AI is playing right. You know there's a lot of AI now in finance. Things as simple as QuickBooks invoice matching. You know there's an AI that matches the invoice to the charge on your credit card or your bank statement. You know that can be huge. You know I personally use Wave Accounting and while it's not AI, it kind of looks like AI, and this is where I'm saying you know I personally use Wave Accounting and while it's not AI, it kind of looks like AI, and this is where I'm saying you know you really have to be careful. You know, on whether you're using AI or not, but Wave Accounting I can reconcile my credit card by just putting in, you know, the balance and the date, as long as everything matches. So there's a lot of AI and AI-like tools out there that can be, you know, huge time savers.

Speaker 4:

What I see most in the smaller businesses is helping with marketing and communications. You know smaller businesses don't have the budgets to hire you know a lot of marketing folks, so through, you know, pick your favorite AI. I'm going to say ChatGPT because it's the one that I use, but whether it's ChatGPT, gemini, grok, copilot, they all do a fantastic job of crafting messages. Crafting messages, you know. So I'm seeing a lot of small businesses kind of offloading, you know, their emails, their emails to customers, their responses to an AI, which makes it so much easier to complete a response.

Speaker 4:

You know, I've seen way too many people having to write a difficult email and I say difficult, you know difficult conversation type of email, and they don't know how to phrase it. They, you know, am I saying this nicely enough? Am I saying this? You know clearly enough? You know, toss your ideas into your favorite AI. And you know, write this email and be stern but polite, and you know the AI will give you a fantastic email. You know just those little things. You know the AI will give you a fantastic email. You know just those little things you know are helping businesses tremendously in avoiding wasteful tasks.

Speaker 2:

You know, what's funny is is that one of my old mentors used to tell me, for every gift there's a pain. That was kind of the phrase he used. And so ai in a in a, as wonderful as it is, and we use it in various ways in our marketing space, you know there's also the other side that you know clients have it too, and so a lot of times if you use the tool the wrong way, you um, you have to be make sure that you're using it in a way that's very productive. So, things that most small business are going through yes, the emails and things of that fashion but I've seen some stuff that have destroyed brands. That was kind of established because it was cute, right, that was pretty right, and now people are confused. Can you tell us some of the things that would happen if you aren't really incorporating AI in the appropriate way in your businesses?

Speaker 4:

Well, we've stopped talking a little bit about hallucinations. But you know, for those who don't realize, ai hallucinates and you know it's not, you know hallucinating like, you know we hallucinate, but it certainly makes things up. So it'll find, you know, sometimes, the weirdest connections between activities and it'll respond something that sounds really, you know, correct, right, but it is just not. There's a I don't know if it was the first one, but there's a famous legal case. It was a maritime case. So you know there's not a lot of maritime, you know law cases that take place throughout the US. So this one stood out because Chad GPT completely made up a case and the attorney didn't sound good to the attorney. He presented it to the judge and it was a maritime judge who knew his case law. So the attorney got sanctioned and all kinds of stuff. So the the attorney got sanctioned and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 4:

Um, but depending on your business, you know, if it's something that is susceptible to hallucinations, you know, without proper usage you can end up with very incorrect um responses. You know, and that's where it's important to have very accurate, very precise I forget what the term is but the prompts, because the correct, valid prompt will generally get you the right answer. But the same way that we're talking about needing to have an AI strategy, do you know enough about AI to have a valid prompt? And I've had this conversation many times Do you start with help me write an email about flowers? You're going to get all kinds of weird stuff, so what is it that you're trying to get? Who are you trying to write it as? Who are you trying to communicate to? So it's very different to say, as an expert botanist, write a message to a scientific community that explains how certain types of flowers pollinate different from other types of trees. I'm really going wild on this one, but that's a very different prompt.

Speaker 4:

You know from write me an email or an article or whatever about flowers. So the more precise you can be, the better in terms of getting quality output from an AI. And I'll use this very specific example and I know it'll play to your background, craig. I was in a leads group talking AI and we had a marketing person and he does commercials and he is accustomed to creating storyboards for the filming of those commercials. His storyboards and I'm sure anybody that works in that space are very precise. This is the scene, this is what I want to see the colors, the lighting, blah, blah, blah. His prompting of AI is phenomenal because he's accustomed to having to create very specific storyboards. So when he prompts Chan, gpt or any of the others, his prompts are all very precise. I just had someone on my podcast, an attorney. He has one page prompts to get what he's trying to find. It's that level of detail that he needs to be able to get what he wants out of the AI.

Speaker 3:

So small to mid-sized business owners that are concerned that, oh, ai is going to take over everything. Probably don't really need to worry about that. And going back to that maritime law case that you just referenced, I could see that a lot of companies could get themselves in a lot of trouble if there is not a human, not somebody strategic, overlooking whatever may go out and just assuming that the AI is going to get it right the first time.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I mean over time.

Speaker 4:

Yes, we are going to have, you know, job loss. You know, look at Star Trek. You know at least Star Trek Next Generation, where you can talk to the computer. You know, I don't know in their society how they, you know, make any kind of money if it's just all everybody's happy. But you know, over time you will lose jobs to AI because things will become more and more automatic In the next.

Speaker 4:

In the short term, let's call it, I was going to throw out some years. In the short term, it is much more important to learn how to use the AI, how to leverage it for maximum benefit, rather than being afraid of losing jobs to it. And I'll liken it to the PC. A ton of accountants lost their jobs thanks to Excel and ERPs and things like that. How long did that take? And AI has been a much faster evolution, which is why I thought twice about. You know quoting numbers. But, again, it's more important that you become an expert on how to use it and how to leverage it rather than being afraid of it.

Speaker 4:

And you know, a tool that I talk about a lot is Gamma, and there's other tools out there that create presentations for you. But you know, going back to your earlier question, craig, about, you know time saving and efficiency and you know I would much rather, you know, give Gamma an outline and some criteria than sit here for four, six hours trying to come up with the perfect presentation. You know gamma, if I give gamma my color standards and you know how I like to see things, it'll go and create the presentation for me in a matter of minutes. So I may spend an hour tailoring my message, my outline, but I'm not sitting there trying to adjust images and colors. I don't need to worry about that anymore. You know that is a very appropriate use of AI. Is that eliminating someone's job? Maybe in a larger organization, but those organizations are going to have a more mature need for manipulating a PowerPoint presentation than a small to mid-sized business that just needs a quality product.

Speaker 3:

And what kind of challenges are small businessers going to run?

Speaker 2:

into if they don't embrace AI? Good question.

Speaker 4:

They may not embrace it. Their employees have Guaranteed that every employer most employees, at least in office settings in any small to mid-sized business are leveraging ChatGPT to make their own jobs easier. The risk is that they are more than likely using the free version of those tools. So how much of your data is being used to train the AI and is now public knowledge? And that's where strategy comes in. So how are we going to use AI? What are we going to put into the AI? You know what controls are going to be put around that AI Copilot by Microsoft is one that has, you know, very, very strict controls and you can manage it from your Office 365 license. So that is one of the, I'll say, more mature from a management perspective. And you know, with so many companies using Office products, it's kind of a no-brainer ChatGPT. You know you can get a professional let's call it professional the paid version. If you don't go in and switch the, don't train the model with my data button, you're still training the model, you know. So that that gets you a little bit better than than just you know straight chat GPT, but do you know to go and you know, flick the, flip the switch. So there's a lot of little things. They don't have to be complex, but again, you need to have a conversation with a professional. You know how do you plan on using it? What do you plan on putting in?

Speaker 4:

You know, if you're in any kind of healthcare space, you cannot use any of these public language models because they are not HIPAA protected. To my knowledge, there are surely, you know, hipaa versions, so you have to make sure that your staff is using those HIPAA protected AIs, because there is a. There is fantastic usage of AI in the health care space, but you have to protect the data appropriately. One of the biggest uses is x-rays. Very few x-rays are read by humans anymore, unless the AI detects that there is an anomaly. For the most part, the x-ray is not being passed to a human because there's just not enough radiologists. So you know tons of fantastic uses in the healthcare space. They have to be very, very well protected.

Speaker 3:

And pulling it back. This is the sales and marketing playbook. The sales and marketing playbook for you. What best practices have?

Speaker 4:

you seen of ai when it comes to either marketing functions or sales functions.

Speaker 4:

Um, you know, from from a sales perspective, um, there's a lot of tools out there that are helping in the sales process, a lot of I'll call it customization I don't know that that's the appropriate term but they're, you know finding the right clients.

Speaker 4:

You know the AI tools are doing a great job of honing in not just the message but the audience, and you know it's a lot of great funnel tools that are leveraging AI again to get you to the right individual. I mean, think about it, you know when, let's call it, in the olden days, you would send an email, a letter, whatever it is that you're sending out. You'd blast it out to your entire client base, all of your leads. Now you can send very tailored messages that may be very specific to an industry, send something out to a thousand, two thousand individuals, but now, with the use of AI, you can tailor that to the market size, to the industry. If you have a little bit more knowledge about, you know, that company, you know you can throw in some tailoring on their specific business. So there's some really great messaging capabilities that go beyond just. You know how do I write this email that you can leverage to reach out to your customer base in a very tailored way.

Speaker 2:

So even Evan one of the past guests that we had had sales for AI training for AI training, I think, as one of the ways to kind of conclude this is it's already touching us in almost every industry.

Speaker 3:

I find it's hard to be zero industries.

Speaker 2:

Actually, somebody did challenge me the other day and they said electricians, ai doesn't really affect and I said give it time If it has not already there. Give it time because it might be some level of making the job easier for the electricians. But the actual technical work, no, not that I can visualize right now, not yet. But to the example of the sales training with AI Evan that we had in a past guest to example.

Speaker 2:

Leo brought up. It's really meant that I've just kind of from our marketing perspective, it's meant to be something that saves you time In addition to putting the process in place, so that you can technically do other tasks or multiply by 10.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, the amount. Yeah, the amount that you're able to do, so.

Speaker 2:

Mike, I'm sorry. Sorry, julio, I was thinking about somebody else. Julio, we're going to give you a couple seconds here to think about three tips that we want you to leave with our guests. And as we do that, evan, why don't you explain everybody, in terms of the sales and marketing playbook, where we can find them? Uh, I know that we're coming up in, uh, in a towards the end of the year. In the last quarter, we're going to probably do some stuff in reference to ways to close out your, your, year.

Speaker 3:

Yep. So again for the sales marketing playbook, you can find us on YouTube if you want to see our beautiful faces, for, for most of you, who you know, unless you're looking to lose your appetite you can also find us on Spotify Apple, where you can only you know. You can also find us on, you know, spotify, apple, um, where you can only you know. Listen to us and don't need to look at us, um.

Speaker 3:

Over the next couple of months, we're going to have a number of great guests, just like julio, we are also going to look at goal setting for 2026 and how to set yourself up for success for next year, different things that you should be looking at with both your sales campaigns, your marketing campaigns, to close out the year strong. So look forward to that, and at this point, we've got about 60 episodes in the bank, so please go back, and I'll go back. Listen to some of your favorite episodes, some of the ones that you didn't catch. There may be some good nuggets in there for you to take, really good, usable information that you can immediately put into practice with your business. So hopefully we've bought you enough time If you can provide our listeners with two or three great tips, as well as the best way for folks to be able to find you.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So one of the biggest ones I think so it's the first one is talk to your staff. Ask them what they're doing about AI today and don't approach it in a way that they might think that you're chastising them, but a legitimate conversation. Are you using AI in your day-to-day job? What are you using it for? What outcomes are you trying to get out of it? Because it's critical to understand what is in use already, because, again, you may not have a strategy. Your employees do. They're trying to make their lives easier. So that's my first tip Find out who's using what. Next tip reach out to someone, some expert technology, whether you're a technology vendor or a strategy person such as myself. Come up with an AI strategy. What are you trying to get out of AI? What improvements, what efficiencies are you trying to get out of AI? Are you trying to get out of AI? Have the difficult conversations. You know, what can we, what should we, what shouldn't we? But you have to have that strategy.

Speaker 4:

And my last tip don't be afraid of AI. You know it is going to I was going to say consume, but not a good choice of words. It is going to impact your business positively. So find the best ways of leveraging AI in your business before your competitors do, because they are out there having the same conversations that you're having with the same concerns. So you know and it's not like you're going to be first to market at this point, you know but find those opportunities in your business, embrace it, you know, become an expert with it, because it can truly transform your business and your customer experience in a very positive way. So go find somebody great to talk to and have those conversations about how to maximize the benefits and value of AI in your business.

Speaker 3:

So, and Julio, after listening to this episode of people think that great person could be you. How can they get in touch with you?

Speaker 4:

So, with my recent rebranding, now that we are OptiCution, all of our social media is OptiCution O-P-T-I-C-U-T-I-O-N. So that's Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. The webpage is wwwoptiCutioncom and you can email me at Julio at OptiCutioncom.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you very much today, julio. It's very insightful information and, again, we're the sales and marketing playbook. We deliver results for you guys to take action on so that you can grow your businesses. You have a growth coach, you have a growth marketing agency and you have the salesman extraordinaire right there in the center. And if you guys have any more questions, by all means, like post comment, we're willing to answer it and we're not afraid of you guys. And so now, again thank you for joining us and we'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye now.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed on all major podcast platforms and follow us on YouTube, facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.

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Craig Andrews

Host
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Evan Polin

Host