39. AI for Entrepreneurs: Building a Business in 10 Days with Ashley Gross

So it's not about talking on a theoretical basis, but you also have a hands on execution experience. Uh, can you tell me a bit about how did you make the switch from working as a marketer in a company to building your own company?

And so then in 2022, I started working for commerce tools and, or maybe I started working a little early. It's all like a little bit of a time warp now that I'm a founder. Um, but. In 2022, the CMO approached me and she was like, Hey, you know, everybody knows you're using AI. You talk about it all the time. You're really excited about this. Would you want to try rolling out a few LLMs, you know, to our marketing org? And this was pre chat GPT before the boom happened.

And so I was like, yes, absolutely. I have just always been taught to say yes. That's kind of how you get opportunities until you have to say no. And that's a beautiful problem to have. So I raised my hand and just said, yes, I'll figure it out as I go. And again, I didn't have a technical background. So. How that unfolded was I just went to every department and I was like, Hey, what do you not like about your job?

And, you know, marketers, we have a million things that we're tasked with every single day. So everyone was not shy about it. And I said, okay, great. We're going to figure out a way to speed that workflow up, but not change the workflow so that there's still a human in the loop. And so long story short, you know, three months after implementing five LLMs, we overachieved our marketing pipeline of 90 million and hit 115 million.

And so, you know, I had 25 AI use cases that were amazing, but I think just having that be translated into revenue really drives the whole impact. And so I saw that and I was like, wow, this is bananas. But I was also like, you know, who would benefit the most from this is entrepreneurs and small business owners. And. You know, even having, I think I have like 35 AI certifications.

Like I really went into the research portion of this when I got the volunteer gig, even having all those certifications and the training and the learning and development budget, I still realized that there was a lack of, you know, accessible and affordable education, but also with a community component. And when you're talking about something like generative AI, this is drastically changing the workforce. And so kind of going at this alone is very, uh, exhausting.

It's isolating and it doesn't really do a good job about demystifying the fear of it. You have to have a community of people that are aligned on the same mission of like, okay, we don't know what we're doing, but we're going to figure it out. Right. So I wanted to create my own community.

And I did, and so I created the Prompt community, and I kept it affordable and accessible, and it's filled with amazing people learning AI, and AI founders come in every week, and they talk to us about the data and privacy policies behind their tools, and then they give the Everyone in the community free access for a week to their tools. So I was really happy about that. And then obviously I couldn't stop there, right? Like impulse control is not my thing. And I thought, okay, cool.

Now I have a blueprint. I built this business in 10 days. It was generating 10, 000 in monthly reoccurring revenue on day like 32 or 33. I was like, this, this is a blueprint. I need to get this out now. This is my next baby that I'm going to push out. And so I had a course built called how to build a business using AI in 10 days. And. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's live right now.

There's another cohort in August, but it was really just kind of looking at the lens of, okay, this is Ashley as a marketer using AI. Now this is Ashley, you know, as an AI task force member and the generative AI strategist rolling out AI. And now it's just like. Here's Ashley as an entrepreneur trying to help other entrepreneurs, right? It's just, it's kind of like this butterfly effect.

So, I mean, can you tell us about, like, a step by step example of, like, how that framework or blueprint looks like?

And so I really just looked at this as like, okay, Anybody can build a business, but if you ask me to go fill out a trademarking form online, I need an encyclopedia to understand everything that's, like, going on in that form in order to fill it out. It's not accessible.

But if I break down this course into ten days with ten modules, and I give it to them in bite sized lessons that add up, To their ultimate goal, then they don't even realize the amount of work they're doing because they're doing it in components So I'll just give you like a walkthrough of maybe just one prompt and one outcome per day. Would that be okay?

Okay, great Do you like this idea? Because most of the time the first idea is not the best idea and it just kind of gets the So I'm like thinking about what they're already good at that they might not have thought about before, and then we go validate that idea. So we use AI tools to do competitive analysis and market research and figure out what's out there and what competitors are out there, and we analyze.

Their whole entire website, all of their backlinks, all of their SEO with AI first, and we're able to come up with a whole entire blueprint and have every single, you know, header and keyword and everything that they're using to be able to say, Oh, wow. Okay. So like our idea really would work. And here's, you know, the different countries that they're not marketing to, and here's where their traffic's coming from, and we're able to validate those ideas so much faster. So then.

Day two is market research, right? So analyze the market trends and competitor landscape for your business idea and identify the competitors and the target audience, the demographics and the market needs, these are like two or three prompts, by the way. So like, I know it sounds. Like hell, to your point, but like, these are two or three prompt exercises. And then there's, you know, once you get the idea out, then we keep going.

And so, you know, day three, it's helped me draft a mission statement and a vision statement and describe the business structure and operations, and then tell me how I should talk about it to other people in a way that makes my messaging super clear. Well, that's PR. But they don't know that that's PR because they're just doing the exercise and it's broken down into little modules that are understandable and digestible.

And so from there we just go to, you know, product and service description, they build out an MVP, they prototype it, they figure out the AI tools that can get them to product market fit before they create a product, during the product, and then after in order to iterate it and make sure that they continue to have a good product market fit.

Um, and You know, from there, it's sales and marketing plan and being able to create storytelling with the content and relaying that back to your product because the landscape is really different today as far as marketing and sales go. And you do need to have visibility, especially as a founder. Um, And then after that, it's, you know, we're creating a financial plan and we're creating smart goals and operational planning and, you know, marketing materials and launch preparation.

And before you know it, right? Like we break all this stuff up and it's fun and we're playing around with tools and we're figuring out what we can automate and how scrappy we can be. But at the end of this, they have a business plan.

With financial projections, with an MVP, with SMART goals, so they can either, after this course, immediately go take that and try to raise funds, and they have everything in there all ready to go, or they can just decide to sit and start this slowly on their own and see how far they get, you know, not raising money and bootstrapping it.

And because they feel empowered, and they're like, oh wow, like if you would have told me that I have to create a business plan with financial projections and it's gotta have this, this, and this, I would have been like, I can't do this. But I did it. So it's empowering.

So they actually learn the difference between the two. And then we look at, okay, what are three automations that you probably already using that you might not have thought of as automations? Callanly, um, you know, Beehive, wherever you have your newsletters coming from. or your email marketing, um, and then WAVE, that's financials. So you can automatically schedule out invoices.

So if you're a contractor or, you know, a business owner, and you have to pay or get paid the same price and the same frequency, you can schedule that so that you're not going to miss a paycheck or you're not going to miss paying people just because it's a manual task. You can automate that. So we just take a lot of the fear out of it by saying, like, this is what it is. And you don't have to automate your whole business. You actually shouldn't. But here's the reasons why business owners fail.

And here's all the tools that are going to prevent you from failing. So you don't have to worry about failing anymore. So guess what? We're not going to be afraid anymore. We're going to figure out what we're good at, what we're not good at. And then we're going to use AI to bridge the gap between those skills that we need. . Itir Eraslan: Mm-Hmm.

. While you are helping these entrepreneurs, like, uh, you mentioned that some businesses will fail, some I business ideas, but also some of the implementations will fail. Is there a reason, uh, like is there a common challenge that you see in entrepreneurs failing or failing to automate or failing to implement AI into their practices? Yes, I would say. 70 percent fear of the unknown, 30 percent just lack of skill and lack of curiosity, you know, it's not hard.

But you do have to be motivated and that's something that nobody can teach you. You have to intrinsically be motivated to figure it out. And I think a lot of people don't really think about, you know, how do they learn, right? How you learn is completely different than how I learn. You know, if we were to talk about going back to, you know, school age, right? Yeah. Right. Right.

Maybe we were in the same class and you could listen to the same lecture I did and then you wouldn't have to study and you could come to class the next day and ace that pop quiz. That is not me. I was the flashcards. I had, you know, my siblings going back and forth with me, quizzing me. Like, I had multiple different ways of learning in order for me to actually retain that information. It's the exact same thing with LLMs. You have to figure out why you want to learn it.

And then find the use cases that you're excited about. And you also have to approach LLMs with a problem. You can't look for a shiny sticker because it's not going to be there.

And like, I might miss my shot at getting a visibility moment. And so I like the PRGPT just because it always kind of holds me accountable. And it makes me a better storyteller. So every time I think I have a good storyline or, you know, a good one pager for PR, it's like, well, if you said this, or if you brought this up and all that looked like training, it was saying. You know, here's all of the experience that shaped me to be where I am right now and what motivates me.

Um, so that's probably my favorite GPT. And then as far as my favorite tools go, Zekin is a really amazing marketing tool. It's Hey, I mean, I've been a marketer for 10 years, so I can't help myself. It's one of my favorite AI tools. It's really, really cool because it solves the problem of not having. visibility into like who's visiting your website, right? Like I've always, I have spicy thoughts whenever it comes to like the marketing metrics that we focus on.

Cause it drives me crazy when we're like, you know, top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. And it's like, well, who the heck cares? Do they want to buy? Like, are they in our ICP and do they want to buy our product? Cause that's, those are the people I want to come to my website. I don't care about any of the other stuff. And that's what Zeakin does.

They embed a link in any image or video that you choose, and you can distribute it on blog sites, on social media channels, and your prospect of customers just have to click on it. And it leads them back to your website where you can then collect their data and learn from them and see like, okay, like it was somebody from the enterprise world and somebody with this title and they're coming from here. And I'm like, okay, great. My messaging is starting to, you know, get to CRO is wonderful.

I'm learning something. I'm improving. I have visibility into the data. So. That's a tool that I love.

The people that are getting brought to my website with this lead magnet, my internal HubSpot page for CROs.

So when they get there, they're like, Whoa, the image was cool, the website's cool, the messaging's for me, like, I'm gonna hang out for a little while longer and they don't just bounce because they're not seeing what they want and then I get to learn more about them, they'll probably convert quicker, then I get to see what they're interested in, you know, it just opens up more doors in a more ethical, transparent way.

Will block your account if they find out you're using it and that is not worth that happening Um, but then also like I want it to be intentional I want the content that I write to be intentional and I want it to be based off of what content best performed That was already written by me As opposed to like what's going on in the news that I could capitalize off of or like what's something controversial?

I have no desire to You know, get a bunch of likes just by going off of what's already relevant in the news, because that's most of the time it's not relevant to me at all. And I don't care about it. And that comes through in my content. So how I trained my own GPT was I went to my businesses analytics.

I looked at the year over year impressions, best performing posts, and it breaks down, you know, number of likes, number of comments, number of reshares, who was, and I exported that into a CSV and I uploaded it into GPT on the configuration to

And so then I had a content matrix of 30 days of content that all I had to do was put the hook together with the topic. I had my hashtag. I had what format it was supposed to be in, and then I just had to go do it. So I'm not starting from zero. And then I actually went one step further and I started my own Google Drive. So most of the time when I'm writing, now I've gotten better about this because I do work in technology, so it was getting embarrassing. I love actually writing.

It's like a part of my thought process. I've gotten better at it though. I do type it now, but I have Google Docs where I'll just kind of like go on a tangent, right? I'm like, here's something I want to talk about, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know how to shape it, but I know there's something there. And so I created my own Google Drive where each folder in the Google Drive had blogs, LinkedIn posts, Instagram posts, tweets, and all the examples of ones that I was really, really proud of.

On top of everything that already performed really, really well. So now it's got my creativity, my creativity and the impressions and what it's actually working. And it's not, I turned off the web browsing capabilities. So it's just being trained off of what's in my Google drive and the directions I'm giving it.

And then I have it go wild and I just continuously, every Sunday now, instead of spending 12 hours creating content, I create content matrixes and then I will write the content for the whole entire week and I'm able to create a repository so after, you know, every 60 or 90 days, I can start Bringing that content back in and repurposing it again.

It's nice though because, you know, obviously everyone thinks that they're an amazing writer so it keeps me humble so I have all these things that I've written and some of them have gone live on social media, some of them haven't, but then I also have the analytics and like what's actually working so I'll have it dip into my creativity and, you know, the stuff that's on paper that might not have even made it to the screen yet, but then I'll also go off of what it knows

to work and what it knows to be true.

It's free and I will transcribe that audio to text and then I'll take that text and I'll upload it into ChachiPT and I'll say using the LinkedIn hook method that I taught you to create LinkedIn posts, figure out where the bones of this story are and then show me. And, you know, it's never, Like a one and done type thing.

Like I never like what it shows me, but I'm able to get out of my head and have it give me something that I'm like, okay, this isn't great, but I can work with this, otherwise I would just be staring at this one paragraph that I want to come to life and it's just not happening. And I've wasted like an hour doing this. Perfect.

Think outside of the box of the typical, you know, marketing funnel and give me some ideas that I haven't thought about yet. And so I'll, I'll just talk to myself like I do already every day. But now these two personas are giving me feedback from the perspectives that I told them to take on. So it's amazing.

Uh, how can small businesses use AI to create personalized marketing campaigns with a limited budget?

And then find an AI that is specialized in something that you need. I always tell people, you know, it's really interesting that. There's so many different LLMs and we're still not really shifting our perspective to say like, okay, chat GPT is a generalist, right? If I wanted to form a business plan, I would never go to chat GPT. I would go to a specialized LLM that is just trained to be programmed that way with that persona and those rules.

So I always try to tell people to like experiment using a generalist and a specialist to solve the same problem And then you start to kind of understand like oh, okay, like I get it now This is why you know, I need to be really specific and use this llm versus this llm so lead with the problem lean into the curiosity and Start figuring out the strength of these specialist llms versus the generalist because sometimes the generalists can be great But oftentimes if you have a problem

that needs fixed, it's a specialist llm that you can find for free You

Um, another example would be, let me think, what's another marketing problem. We have so many, Jasper's pretty good at being a specialist. I would say it's built to be scrappy and lean. It's got so many templates too, that like when you're in that tool, there's no doubt in your mind that it was made by marketers for marketers and it breaks up the silos. So I would say Jasper's definitely a specialist. And then a third one. I mean, Zeekan, technically, I would say Zeekan would be one.

They convert high intent prospects. That's what they do. They don't try to do a million other things.

I'm dating myself, but, um, So I, I vetted all that information and, and what that looked like was, it was a very manual process, but I went and searched for generative AI strategist questions during interviews, and I put all the questions in, and I formed my own answers, and then I pulled in experience from different careers, and how I would tackle certain problems, and I worked up to, you know, 68 pages. So that when I sent my cover letter off to a recruiter, it had my GPT hyperlinked in it.

So it said, Hey, if you want to qualify me for this position before talking to me, I totally understand. Here's my GPT. It can answer questions for you. And if it can't answer a question, it's trained not to hallucinate. It'll just tell you to reach out to me.

And so if you can tap into that emotional intelligence and figure out a way to, you know, turn it on and keep it on when you need it on, then, you know, more power to you.

You know, lack of affordable, healthy food and she wanted to change that. And so she's got this payment here where if you come in, there's huge signs everywhere, you can't miss it. And it says you can pay the suggested price for the food. You can pay at least 3 for your meal. You can actually like get a card. So like think of a punch card that you would get every time you shop, you would get a punch while you just get a card and you can go punch and get free meals and there's no questions asked.

No one makes you feel weird. Um, you just get a punch card and it's like the most. Like, talk about a melting pot, it's just, like, there's nothing but empathy inside of that restaurant.