Overwhelmed by AI Tools? How Self-Employed Professionals Can Use Google Notebook LM

In this episode of How to Win Big at Business, Joe DiChiara sits down with entrepreneur and technology expert Jerry Goddard to talk about a problem almost every self-employed professional is facing right now: AI overwhelm.

If you feel buried by too many AI tools, too many subscriptions, and too much hype, this conversation will help you cut through the noise.

Joe and Jerry break down what makes Google NotebookLM different from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Instead of pulling information from the entire internet, NotebookLM lets you work from the specific sources you choose. That makes it a practical tool for business owners who want better research, better organization, stronger training systems, and fewer bad AI answers.

In this episode, they discuss:

• why business owners should master one AI platform instead of chasing every new tool
• how NotebookLM can help with SOPs, onboarding, and internal training
• why AI should be treated like a gifted intern
• how to think about hallucinations and verification
• why cybersecurity matters even more for small business owners today

If you are a self-employed professional looking for a smarter, safer, and more practical way to use AI in your business, this episode is for you.

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Thanks for listening!

If you want fewer headaches, fewer IRS surprises, and more smart systems running your business (so YOU don’t have to), let’s talk.

Book a strategy call: www.timewithjoe.com

Because running a business shouldn’t feel like wrestling an octopus… alone. 

Also check out:
www.Bedrock360BusinessSolutions.com (Complete Coverage)

www.Bedrock360TaxSolutions.com (Tax Gaurd 365) 

www.Bedrock360BusinessTraining.com (Courses)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Have you been as frustrated and overwhelmed as I am over all of these AI tools and programs popping up almost on a not even a daily basis, but on an hourly basis? When I first started learning about AI, I engulfed myself in it. I immersed myself in it. And I signed up for all of these subscriptions. And every day in my email, I have to delete like 10 or 15 emails because I got so tired of reading about all the new gizmos and things that are going to eat up my time. I am a nerd when it comes to all of these uh programs. So I can go into a deep black hole and it winds up wasting my time. So being an accountant and very, very time sensitive, I'm very cognizant of the amount of time and effort I spend on these programs. And also, you know, making sure that all the programs that I use, and I use a lot of them, are are beneficial to my business. And tonight I'm gonna delve into another program, believe it or not, that I checked it out. I wasn't that impressed with it. I I didn't understand it to be honest with you. I didn't want to spend the time, you know, trying to figure it out. So I put it on the shelf. And then uh recently I met this very, very interesting, handsome gentleman in my podcast uh group, and and we have we we uh are members of a very great uh podcast mastermind, and what transpired is what's supposed to transpire in these mastermind groups. We made a connection, he mentioned uh this program, which I'll let him get into. He's definitely an expert on the topic, he got my attention, and I it's my pleasure and honor to introduce Jerry. Jerry, I don't want to mention your last name, so you want to help me out here? Do you want me to say it or do you want me to mince it? You weren't clear.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

No, it's Jerry Ghidori.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Well Jerry, what is it? Ghidori. Yes, okay, so that's that's embedded in my in my brain now. And uh so to I I don't want to keep everybody hanging. The program that I'm talking about is called Google Notebook. Is it LM or LLM? LM. LM. Google Notebook LM. And like I said, you know, I'm I'm a big fan of Google, I'm on Google Workspace, I pay them a lot of money to to use that. So it seemed like a natural fit. And like I said, Jerry, I just got, you know, I don't want to get sucked into the black hole. But what was it last week or the week before, you mentioned it about how powerful it is, and and again, I put it on the side. I said, I'm gonna wait until Jerry uh you know sets me straight on this. And just before the the uh meeting tonight, I did some research on so I used uh chat GPT. I said, tell me all about this program. Then I went, I did the same thing with Gemini, which is the Google AI, and they both came out with basically the same thing. And I'm like, okay, I think this is for me, but I'm gonna let you fill in the gap. So uh why don't you start by telling people a little bit about you and why they should listen to you, and then we'll get into the whole Google LM thing. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

For first of all, no one should ever listen to me. I am a horrible influence. Uh in all seriousness, uh, my name is Jerry Ghidori. I'm a serial entrepreneur in the technology, cybersecurity, and military intelligence space, uh, former Marine SIGI inter. That was really my introduction to technology many, many moons ago. Uh, from there, I really got to the people side of the business, again, focused on technology. So I built a a uh MuleSoft consulting company. MuleSoft's an API company. And for those of you that aren't super techie, eight APIs are the piece of software that connects other pieces of software. Built that up to nine offices in three countries and then sold it. Then since then, I started my current company, Redbeard Solutions. We basically help technology services companies to do what we did at Apicero, which is build world-class companies that they can sell or grow to crazy big sizes. Uh, like everybody else in the last couple of years, I got kind of swept up in the AI maelstrom. I think it's gonna be a really big revolution. Uh, like most, that's not exactly a hot take. Uh, where my hot take is, though, and I just want to touch on something Joe said earlier, where my hot take is, I think most, not all, but most AI products on the market right now aren't ready for prime time yet. I think they're mostly hype. For those of us that have gray in their beards, you might remember in the late 90s when the internet was just getting off the ground, and most of what you saw there was kind of hot garbage. I feel that way about AI now. I think I'm waiting for the big bust and consolidation cycle where the real quality shines through. Uh, and uh one thing I want to mention, uh Joe, that you talked about. So, Joe, uh, I and I I hope you haven't fallen this risk. As small business people, it's really easy to get sucked up in a million different tools. If I could give one piece of advice before we even talk about this one particular product, pick one platform, learn it really well, and then decide if that's the path you want to go down. Because if you learn one platform really well, it will give you a foundation to judge other platforms off of. And unless you're an AI technologist, you don't need to master Claude, OpenI, Gemini, Manus, etc. You just need one. And frankly, I picked Google for no more scientific reason than I'm already paying for it. My my my company uses workspace, I'm already paying the subscription. So I'm like, why not learn Gemini, Gemini Gems, the AI studio, and of course, Notebook LM.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yeah, so you know, you mentioned about uh small businesses, and I forgot to to mention that you know, the name of this podcast is How to Win Big at Business. And what we do, Jerry, is we we work with the whole idea of this podcast is to target self-employed professionals that are confused, they don't have any time, they're making all kinds of mistakes. You know, I don't know about you, but I've been there, done that too many times. As an accountant, I've worked with thousands of business owners, and I said, you know, we need help because it's lonely being a self-employed professional. Okay, especially if you're like me working from home. I've been a remote worker for over 20 years. So, you know, it's it's hard. Thank God for technology. You know, I'm in the Philippines right now. You're, I don't even know where you are, but you're in the United States somewhere. We're halfway around the world. So I think we're both, you know, leveraging technology uh as best that we can, but I believe you hit the nail on the head. It's overwhelming, all the programs that are out there. And I agree with you, you know, Master One. Unfortunately, when I got into this, uh Chat GPT, well, I don't know if it's unfortunate, but Chat GPT was like far and above ahead of everybody, including Google. So I learned that I dabbled in Gemini, I dabbled in Claude, but I always, you know, I can't because I know it, and I got a lot invested in Chat GPT, but I'm also invested in Google. So tell me what, you know, so you're already married to Google, right? You're already paying them a lot of money like I am, and you're using Gemini. And how long ago did uh Notebook LM come come come on board?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

I believe it's it's less than a year. I've only started using it several months ago. Uh, and it's been leaping forward. So interesting point. OpenAI by far was the industry leader. Gemini has really closed the gap in productivity, specifically Notebook LM and Gemini Gems, and Claude has crushed their coding capabilities. So OpenI, as is often the case in technology, they got uh you know first first release benefit and then they lag behind now.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah. So let's get into, you know, I really want to get into exactly how this this program is different from Chat GPT from from Gemini from Claude. You know, I I've also looked at Copilot, and I'm like, that it took me about 15 minutes to realize. I'm like, no, this ain't gonna work for me. But when I first looked at LM, I was like, well, this just looks like another AI program. So what what makes it different? And more importantly, how are self-employed professionals gonna incorporate this to make their businesses more efficient, more streamlined?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Great question. So a two-part answer. You asked a question in the beginning, you said, is it notebook LM or LLM? And that question is the genesis of the answer. Uh uh a Google uh Gemini or an open AI is what's called an LLM, a large language model. It trains on all the internet and our copyrighted materials and and generates its body of knowledge that it draws its answers from. Notebook LM works conceptually the same way, but it only draws to the knowledge you feed it. And that's all the difference in the world. So, for example, I'm an author. I wrote that book right there, Destination Employer. It talks about my specific methodology on how I go to market and my company does what it does. There is an enormous amount of generic information similar to that on the market. So when I'm training my team, if I just used an LLM, they would get generic market information. But by opening notebook LM, inserting a copy of my book, inserting all of the YouTube and podcast episodes that I've done, inserting material I've made, when I generate answers, it is only pulling from my personal methodology, not the generic internet stuff. And that's all the business in the world.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

So and that, you know, when when I just did my three minutes of research before you know uh starting this podcast, uh that hit me because I I know, like with ChatGPT, I changed the the uh format, the settings from like fast to deep thinking. And I'm like, before it was amazing, it would got within it almost knew the answer before I hit enter. Now with with deep thinking, it's like I gotta sit here waiting and I'm impatient, but it's what you said, it's it's pulling information from everywhere, right? And that's time consuming. So I think what you're saying is this is only gonna go by stuff that you're you're giving it.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yes, correct. So I literally, when you open Notebook LM, there's a add files tab on the left. You attach the files or websites you want it to pull data from, and that's all it pulls data from. Now, the use case I gave is essentially creating a download of my methodology for my team. Here's another use case to illustrate. Let's say that you need to learn something. Uh doesn't matter what. Let's say you want to learn about how to code in Python or how to do taxes in Manila, or or it doesn't matter what the topic is. You could so that you don't accidentally get bad information, you could include only the sites you want that to draw draw information from. And now when you're asking it questions, it's only giving you answers from those places. So you have to be much less concerned about it making mistakes or generating false positives. Additionally, I didn't talk about this at all, is it has an output window as well. It can output as flashcards so you can test yourself, it can output as quizzes so you can test yourself, it can output as slideshows as PDFs. You can even use it to build a website off of your material.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah, so I'm a little bit of a of a skeptic when it comes to that because you know, uh so I know a little bit about websites. I built my own, unfortunately, that were terrible. But you know, things like you know, I'm I'm like, okay, so I did just to to see what it was like. I was I used some program and it gave me like the HTML code, and then I had to copy it and pay. I'm like, this is beyond my pay grade. So when you tell me it's gonna do a web website, is it gonna actually do the website or is it gonna give you the code?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Great question. So I only did it once to test it on the weekend when I was figuring it out. Um and it works. I used so one other quick note you can use notebook LM with other tools. I just use it with Google's own, but you can attach to things like Canva and other tools for other features. I have not done that. But having said that, using Notebook's tool, it builds the entire website. Uh, but in order for you to host it, you have to download the code and re-upload it into your uh into wherever your hosting company is. It doesn't do that apart for you, but you it compile it downloads the code, you can open up in your browser so you can see what the website looks like, make sure it works, then you copy that into your hosting company and so you don't know you don't necessarily need to be an expert on HTML code. It literally gives you every step to take. It tells you, okay, when you're in your WordPress file, uh, this is where you put it, this is how you do it. It gives you every single step. Again, full disclosure, I was using that as an example, and I've only done it once, but it was pretty straightforward.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah, so I I have a million questions going through my head, so just you know, I might bounce around a little, but eventually it works. So I know in in chat GPT, because this is something that I, you know, and this is why I'm married to it. I have a lot of data in this, so in chat GPT, you can do project, which I don't know if they're the same as gems in in in Google, but in project, so I could feed it all of my information, just like you just said, okay, with the with the Google LM. So how is Google LM different than what chat GPT is with with the projects?

SPEAKER_01 16:13

I've not used projects, so let me let me ask this question back and maybe together we can answer it. So the whole magic of notebook LM is when you put stuff in the in the input file, that's the only place it will draw data from. And your export options are not limitless, but there are documents, slides, flashcards, quizzes, websites, all sorts of things. So that's how it works. Does chat GPT uh projects work that way?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

No, I wish it did. It like, you know, and to be honest with you, a lot of times it's frustrating because it says, you know, and sometimes it's I don't know if this ever happened to you, but it's almost like sometimes I'm arguing with it, it'll tell me, oh, I'm not I'm not able to produce a PDF. And I'm like, you just did a PDF for me. What are you stupid?

SPEAKER_01 17:09

And you know, ironically, I'm working with a coach and she sent me custom G GPTs, and I had to buy a paid subscription to use them. And I did just that. The first one I did, and it said, you know, I said, Can I generate a PDF? And it did, and that was it. She sent me the second one. I did the exact same thing and got the exact same result you described. We I can't do that. And then after it said it couldn't do it, it came back and said, Would you like me to generate a clean PDF?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

And I was like, Oh, yeah, it gets frustrating because it's like you know, you have time investing. I'm like, listen, I just gave you all the instructions, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, another thing that is bad about I don't know, so I basically focused on Chat GPT, and so many times I found mistakes, and you know, I'm doing tax research, so I'm like, you can't afford to make mistakes, right? One time it gave me uh information based on 2024 taxes, and I I had to tell it, I'm like, listen, this is for 2025. Remember the big beautiful bill, and then and then it apologizes. So, what I do is I'll do the research in that, and then I'll actually go into Gemini and perplexity just to verify it. Okay, so it's what do they call it? Hallucinations, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

When I was in the Marines, when I was in the Marines, I was in Signals Intelligence, and we had a motto, trust but verify. The thing to remember about all GPTs, all large language models, is that at their core, all they are is prediction engines. So so they go out in in search for whatever, and then they pull up what they think the answer will be based on your question. And when it gets it wrong, that's called a hallucination. So you're exactly right. On anything critical, you need to check your work. One quick note, and this is a related tangent. When this whole AI thing started, I had the opportunity to speak to an AI researcher, and she gave me the best advice, and I've followed it since then. She said, uh, what she does, so part of her job is helping small businesses get AI programs off the ground. She said, the number one problem she sees is that business owners give AI too much autonomy too soon. She said that's a losing strategy. She said the way to treat uh AI is to treat it like a gifted intern, somebody you see potential in, but they haven't yet earned your trust. She said, if you keep that mentality, you won't go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

I loved it. You know, and that quote, trust but verify. I always thought didn't Ronald Reagan say that, or did he take it from someone?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah, I have no idea. So in Sigant, it was that we had two models, trust but verify, and the second one was in God we trust all others we monitor. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

And then uh what was it? The X Files, it was trust no one. Exactly. Huge X files. So okay, going back to some of the questions I had in my in my mind. So you mentioned about you know, you can you can give it YouTube and and website. Can you actually just drop the links in there? Yeah and it'll pull the data, really.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

There's even, and I haven't used it, but there's even a Chrome extension where you can put whole YouTube channels in it. So let's say I was writing a uh a paper on Casey Neistat, I could literally put his entire channel there, and everything I generated would only come from that specific YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Oh my god, because I got I have a couple of YouTube channels, and one of them I have like close to 700 videos, and I'm thinking right now, I'm like, okay, how am I gonna transcribe all those videos and get them into my Google LM?

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Are you familiar with the cybersecurity term white hat and black hat? I've heard it, but basically, a white hat hacker is somebody who works for you. A black hat hacker is somebody trying to break into your system. A bit of a black hat trick you can use notebook LM for is competitor research. So you can put all of your competitors' info in there and then ask it questions. One of the things I've got a uh YouTube creator friend is he'll put in a competitor's channel and then look for keywords and then use those to make videos from.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Wow, that's huge. That's huge. But now, if you do that, aren't you pulling info from somewhere else and it's not yours?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

So I gave the example of using your info, but the reality because that's the most common use case, but much like the Learning example. The point is, it only goes to the place you sent it. So if I wanted to learn, you know, about something, I put only a source I trust there. So I'm not getting a bunch of generic internet garbage. If I want to go to learn about a specific competitor, I put only their website or only their white paper or case study or whatever there. Now it's only getting info from that source. So it's not about it being only yours, it's about targeting its source to only locations you chose.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Okay. So now the question you can you is it just you only have one notebook, or you can have as many million.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Just like any other document, you name the notebook.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

So I could have for argument's sake, so I'm an accountant, so I want all so one of the things we do is we do entity setup and research for all the states. Okay. 50 states. We have clients all over the country, uh, also Virgin Islands. We get clients that are, you know, actually foreign uh foreign citizens, South Africa, the the Philippines, and they have to set up an LLC in the United States. Uh, so I could potentially like put in all the Secretary of State websites, right? The IRS, all the all the state income tax websites, and am I right? And just use that for for my tax research.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah, you could you could do it again. I am not a tax guy. What you guys do is sorcery, as far as I'm concerned, but but uh you could parse that two different ways that come to mind. You could make state-specific ones, so Massachusetts, where I live, it could be just wherever you draw from Massachusetts. Uh, another thing you could do is I heck you could do it that's a municipal level. Like I know in New York that there's laws specific to New York City, so maybe you only do one for New York City. Another way you could do it is entity specific. So you could say to yourself, this client's in Johannesburg, South Africa, they need to set up an LLC in Maryland, you know, what data is relevant to that, and then name that notebook, you know, XYZ LLC, and then put only data relevant to that. So you can make a client-specific notebook.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

So you you could niche it down to just about anything. Yep. So I'm thinking, yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

I'll say imagine it's your per personal library courier. The the the I gave some some use cases, but the thing to remember is is it the the magic is it only goes where you send it. So knowing that you can make very, very specific notebooks. Like I've got one that's internal to my team. So it has all of my, it's got my book, it's got my channels, it's got our training, it's got all that stuff. I've got one that's client-facing, it's got my book, it's got my website, it's got some of my training, it's got my sales and marketing info. So when I'm generating data from that, it generates a more client-flavored thing. So again, it's it's it's what you put in it. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

So I'm thinking, like, I I met this guy from saying he he taught us in the Philippines and shows them how to set up a franchise using Singapore laws. So I'm thinking, man, I could I could show this guy how to like all the different uh businesses, you know, because you got all different kinds of businesses that you can franchise, right? So he can go to them and say, Hey, this is how you can franchise your hot dog stand, right? And just give them the whole, oh man, my head is spinning. So you know, I'm thinking, so like for my business, we and it took us years, literally, and you could relate to this, set up standard operating procedures on boarding for clients, onboarding for new new team members, onboarding for interns, training manuals, and and I'm like, oh my god, because we have so many documents and manuals. I'm thinking, man, I could just feed all this into you know the LM and just say, update it, make them all same. Because just you know, updating them, just one thing, like we changed our our CRM. We were using this program called Cartra, and then we moved to Go High Level. Oh my god, you know, the the ripple effect it cost us so much man hours.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, certainly, and you know, again, you mentioned onboarding clients, so you put all the data relevant there, you can generate guides, you can generate whatever for it. Onboarding onboarding team members, you put in whatever they need to be uh skilled at, you can generate quizzes for them, you can generate all sorts of stuff, you know. Yeah, and I'm sorry, go ahead. One other thing I didn't touch on at all, and this will blow your mind as a podcaster. One of the outputs outputs is a podcast style thing with two people talking about your whatever it is you put in there, uh, and you pick the voices, so you literally can have that generate, and that's it's AI, I wouldn't post it as content, but for internal consumption, you get two talking heads, they look pretty decent, and they talk about your thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Wow, yeah. We do that, we have a program called Hey Gen, and uh we actually made my my video guy made a baby Joe. It's it's me as a baby with glasses and a and a goate, and it's hilarious. So I use it for some things, but yeah, that that's a whole nother thing. It it gets kind of strange.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

It's not it's it's not as sharp as high hey gen. Hey Gen is very specific, but I wouldn't be surprised. I don't know this is true, but one of the cool things about Notebook LM is you can you can use other exports. I mentioned Canva, for example. So so it wouldn't surprise me if you could connect it to to Hey Gen and uh and use it as the input for those.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Wow, yeah, it it's really mind-boggling. So let me ask you this because you know, one of the benefits of doing a podcast like this is I get to pick uh people's brains for my for my own benefit, right? So me, and I'm sure this is on everybody's mind. How do you in your you know daily, you know, whatever you do, how does somebody like you stay up to date with all of these programs? How do you not get sucked into the black hole?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

I think that the rate of change that humanity has experienced right now is faster than any other point in human history, and being a professional in today's day and age requires continuous education. I'm not a big consumer of television. Uh, I read endlessly, I stay plugged in and I listen to when my colleagues talk, most especially, frankly, my younger colleagues. You know, what are they doing? What are they seeing? I work a lot with the U.S. government in classified technology intelligence space. So I by necessity stay kind of uh you know close to what's changing. And there's three things that the US government has been pushing for the last two years: agentic AI or generative AI, zero trust cybersecurity, and quantum computing. So I stay on the cutting edge of those as best I can.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Okay, so now you hit something that I'm like totally beyond my, it's like in a whole nother uh stratosphere. Quantum computing. How does that relate to AI? And is that something that we as as small business owners that we should be like spending time on?

SPEAKER_01 30:12

No, on the small business owners. So quantum computing at present right now only works in super, super, super cold environments, super stable. It's nothing we're gonna touch in the short term, it's not in any way directly related to AI, but here's where it's crazy quantum computing is about 10,000 times faster than standard computing. So, what that means is uh you hear all this talk about uh ASI, um artificial superintelligence, when AI and quantum computing touch, that changes the world forever. Because imagine AI now working 10,000 times faster.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

It's it's that's where we're in Terminator territory.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah, that's when Skynet is born. That or the matrix, I don't know which.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, but uh and what was the third one you said? Zero training? Okay, is that something that we should be aware of?

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Well, probably a conversation all on its own, but cybersecurity is something that small business people should be paying a lot more attention than they do. We always hear about these big ransomware attacks on hospitals and megacorps and data breaches on these giant retail companies, but the reality is small business people get hit more often because we're infinitely easier targets.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Oh, I learned that the hard way. You know, once I started yeah, once I started really getting out there on social media, getting big followings, uh all of a sudden, like I got hacked a bunch of times. My my ex account got hacked and I couldn't get it back. My credit cards got stolen. Okay, I can't tell you how many credit cards I had to cancel. I would I you know I get a text message. Hey, did you just charge $6,500 at at the store in Hong Kong? Like, you gotta be kidding me. So, yeah, and we had to up our because I'm an accountant, I have people's personal information, date of birth, social security number. So accountants are targets, of course, big targets. So we institute all of these security measures, uh, double and triple authorizations. You know, we have one of the things in our company is that is that listen, if you're using a computer at home, it's got to be dedicated to us. You can't have other people like logging in and stuff. It's it's kind of scary because it's almost like it's gotten easier for the criminals to hack into us, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Yeah, so so super basics first. Don't reuse passwords. Uh, use long or here. This this advice isn't new, but it doesn't get enough attention. Passwords aren't great, past phrases are significantly better. So, for example, something you can remember, and I'm making this up, but uh 11 red rabbits running. 11 red rabbits running, capitalize you know, all the vowels or capitalized all the first letters of that sentence. And if you put a question mark and exclamation point at the end, now you've got like 20-something characters, nobody's brute force hacking that. Right phrases are better, and and and you can make them long because they're memorable. You know, uh Joe has a goatee in black glasses, that's a huge password, but it's it's memorable, so it'll stick in your head. So so so things like that are more useful. So that's the second thing. Number three, multiple factor uh authorization. It's a pain in the butt, but it's necessary. And and and number four, like you said, especially as business owners, be careful with BYOD policies, bring your own device, and that's a risk. So, in a former life, I was COO of a custom software development company, and one of our clients built air airframe harnesses, they built the wireframes for airplanes, and one of their clients was the US government, they actually made the wire harnesses for Air Force One. Well, they got snatched up in a in a ransomware thing because of their government work. The FBI was there that day, and every one of our consultants whose laptop, uh uh iPad or or or or uh cell phone was on their Wi-Fi network, they had to take it and and wipe it.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

So be mindful of that.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with the Google LM, but this is important, especially for for small business honest.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Well, two things I I'll circle it back for you, Joe. I I've been in the space for quite some time now, about 30 years. Cybersecurity has always been a tet between the good guys and the bad guys. AI has changed uh the story because number one, you need fewer skills as a bad guy. That AI can do a lot of the things that you had to learn how to do before. Number two, one of the things that AI is best at is research and pattern recognition. It happened about a month or two ago, but somebody used an LLM to find zero-day vulnerabilities in a bunch of common software, which means that anybody can hack those things. So be mindful. AI made cybersecurity uh a harder thing.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Yeah. Just two points that that I think would be beneficial to people. Number one, and believe it or not, the my girlfriend told me, and I didn't listen to her, the public Wi-Fi is totally out. Don't ever log into a public Wi-Fi. I learned that was one of the ways that they got my credit card info. Uh, the other thing, I get a call from my bank. Somebody hacked into my bank account. Okay. And they were like, Don't you have double author, you know, or and I was like, Yeah, how you know I get a text message, and they were like, No, get an authenticator. So now I use uh an authenticator for everything. So apparently the hackers could get into your phone and get your, I don't know how they do it, but that's how they got my ex account, too, because I'm like, how did they get it? I'm supposed to get a text message, so you know, nothing's foolproof, but yeah, you got and it's a pain in the neck. Uh, you know, you got to constantly, you know, change your password. My tax program, it forces you to change it every month, and and I hate it, but then I'm like, you know what? I hate it, but it's it's sort of like you know, you hate it less than losing everything, right? Yeah, the time that you got to spend trying to recover everything. Okay, so like I said, we're over 30 minutes, we're coming out 45 minutes. This has been great. Uh, I I believe uh I know that you gave me plenty of valuable information. I can't wait. As soon as we're off here, I'm gonna start playing with Google LM. Uh, I'm gonna go down that that black hole. I'll I'll keep you posted. We talked about the cyber security, which is very important. So, how do people uh reach out to you? Do you want people to reach out to you? Number one, and and how do they connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Probably the easiest uh thing is LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. My profile is Jerry Gidori, I'm easy to find. Uh, I also have a YouTube channel, Jerry Ghidori, and in Business Mastery. Uh you can find me there, but LinkedIn's probably the easiest. If you Google my name, Jerry Ghidori, I'm I'm very, very easy to find.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

I how do you spell it? I know Jerry is G-E-R-R-Y. You know, Jerry's one of those names where it's it could be J, it could be J. So how do you spell your last name?

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Ghidori G A D is in Delta O U R Y. Yeah, Jerry is short for Girard. I'm I'm French Canadian, my family, so I just go by Jerry. And all my Indian friends call me Gary. They give it a hard G, which is always funny.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

That's funny. That's funny. Now you also have a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Yeah, business mastery for startups and scale-ups.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

I'm sorry, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Business mastery for startups and scale-ups.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Okay, and who who should listen to that?

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Really, any founder or founding team that is is uh looking to get to the next level in their business. So um most of our audience is in technology and professional services, but we're not limited to that at all.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

But now these are companies, so you say startup. To me, a startup is somebody that just woke up and decided to start a business and they have no capital. All they have is the greatest idea since sliced bread. When you say startup, these are actually people that are in business, correct?

SPEAKER_01 39:17

First of all, sliced bread, highly overrated. Um, second of all, uh, you can be anything from you know two or three people to 100 million dollars. Uh, once you get past 100 million dollars, you've got systems and processes in place. Probably our show isn't for you.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Okay, so I'm way beyond two or three people, so I think I'm gonna subscribe to your podcast, I'm gonna I'm gonna plug into your YouTube channel. Unfortunately, I got banned from LinkedIn, and they won't even tell me why. I think because when I got all you know wrapped up in chat GPT, I was I was sharing my GPTs on LinkedIn because I'm like, I I've been on here for 15 years, I got like 30,000 followers, and uh so did you use any automation in your outreach or responses?

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Because that'll bounce never.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Everything I did was organic, I never used any kind of bots. I I don't honestly, I don't even know how to use those to to go on social media, but it is what it is, they're pretty lousy, yeah. So, yeah, you know, you want to know something? I said, you know what, everything happens for a reason, so I'll just focus on some other platforms. Now I'm in Facebook, threads, and Instagram because they're all owned by by me. But I learned and I'm like, you know, I'm not fully like I didn't put everything in that basket. I'm like, okay, what if I get banned on that platform? So anyway, Jerry, this has been great. Uh, I'll definitely have you on again. I'm sure there's a lot of other topics we we can talk about, and uh, that's our story, folks. We're sticking with it. God bless, and till next time.