Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody. And welcome to today's episode of the Never Peak Project Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Ranger. And in today's episode, we're going to be diving into the wonderful world of AI. Now, if you are in any of the social media circles that I'm in, you've probably seen AI everywhere. Everything is being, you know, anything that is anything. If you throw AI on the end, it just seems like the newest marketing thing. AI this,
AI that. It's just kind of almost become this buzzword, just like the organic certification in the ag and food industry, that is kind of like, what does this even mean? Is this something that I want to use? Should I be afraid of it? Should I jump in both feet, head first, whatever? How do I use this to make an actual difference in the world through my nonprofit, business, or cause, or just in my job or daily life? And that is the question that I am hoping to answer
today with our fans. fantastic guest. Today, I brought on an AI expert that uses AI in her business and does webinars and teaches other people how to use it effectively. So thank you so much to our guest, Heather DiRocco, for coming in and talking a little bit about AI and how to use it in your business. Heather, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for inviting me too. I am excited to be here and share a little bit about my journey to AI,
through AI. Perfect. Could you just go ahead and give us a little bit of a background of who you are, what you do, and what got you to where you are today? So it's a long and windy road. I'm going to try to make it as short and maybe just... do some vertical hills instead of those long lines. So I started out, I was a math major in college. I got a scholarship. So it's like you wait tables. I major in math. It's not what
I thought I was doing with my life. I wanted to be a diplomat and go to parties and drink champagne. And I didn't know about the report writing, but anyway. After going to grad school for international relations, I had applied to State Department, then started applying for other government service jobs. Most of the temp stuff I was doing was really a lot of Excel spreadsheets. It kept on going back to tech stuff. So eventually I started working for the Department of the Army
as a civilian. And again, they saw, oh, she knows how to do databases and tech. I wound up working on some machine learning projects as an analyst. Eventually I was doing counterintelligence and I was doing some digital forensics on computers to catch spies, whole nother podcast. And then eventually wound up in Hawaii to be closer to my family. And some changes had happened in the department of the army. Anyway, my job went away. I was at a crossroads. What do I want to do?
I decided to go back into private industry for a while. I had done some finance stuff in the early 2000s, actually worked in the World Trade Center up until May 2001. So yeah, crazy kismet story there about leaving before disaster struck. Anywho, I tried my hand at life insurance. I didn't love life insurance, but I sure loved being a beta tester with Go High Level. Started looking into organic social media marketing. And around that time, AI was released in October
2021. February 2022, I had seen some of the first AI programs come out. So I was showing people how to use it in conjunction with organic social media marketing. That company goes bankrupt. Again, another whole long story. So I started looking on my own. As a member of BNI, people are asking me more questions about AI than about life insurance. So I changed my seat. And I have been building this business on AI education. And also the journey included a lot of AI hesitancy.
There's always, I think, tech hesitancy in life. So I had to figure out a smaller chunk to get people through the door. And that's when I started talking about chatbots for your... website that would act as a 24 -7 digital concierge to help people find what they were looking for on your website. So Google got them there. Have a Google -like function on your website that will show them exactly what they were looking for, especially if it's great SEO from three years ago that's
buried somewhere. Get them to what they need. they will go with you as a vendor opposed to getting frustrated, going back to Google and looking for someone else. So once they figure out, oh, AI can do that for me, what else can AI do? So it's a perfect lead in for businesses to experience that cognitive offload, getting that digital assistant that works for them. Give them their time back because that's what you talk about in all the ads. Get your time back
with AI. Get 70 AI robots for $2. It'll change your life. And we can absolutely talk about that too. Yeah, and I've seen those ads too where it's like, I left my business for six months and AI chatbots grew my business 78%. And it's just like all these like big promises. And I'm always like, is that a real thing? Or is that just kind of, you know, the thing that you're going to see in six months where it's like, were you affected by this scam? Call us now, right?
So it's just like, and I think that's a crazy thing is I was talking to my fiance yesterday and I'm like, could you imagine explaining to us 10 years ago? what chat GPT and all these AI bots are doing. And she was kind of like, it would be the same as explaining it to me six months ago. Like these things are moving so fast and so quick that it's like, if you're not reading everything or trying everything out, it's just
so, it's so much. So I just kind of want to like touch back to what you're saying earlier about one of the things that you did in your, when your past lives, which was that aspect of machine learning. Like, how is that different from AI that we see nowadays? And that kind of leads into another question I'll have in a second. But what's the difference there? Branding. So and how the bots were trained. So AI has been around since the 1950s. When you hear about how
computers beat other computers at chess. That was AI. They just called it machine learning. When you used, you look a little young, but I'm sure there's other people who remember Clippy in Microsoft Office. That was AI. Spell check, predictive text. That is all AI. The computer. has a brain of its own for intents and purposes. It knows what's going to happen next. It's been
programmed on so many different outcomes. And what makes classic AI machine learning different from what it is today is some of the training and some of the logic. If you imagine a logic tree, that was some of the original AI that could beat chess because there were only so many moves. And when I say only so many moves, only so many moves for a supercomputer. But now what they're doing is instead of a tree, they're training
on bushes. And now they've taught computers to even play poker because what they're doing is predicting, okay, this looks like where they're going and all the possibilities are in this bush and that bush. So they're able to grow the tree much more effectively on how it's been trained. So hopefully that wasn't too geeky of an answer. And I'd like to point you to books like AI Snake
Oil. I just finished reading that and that will answer a lot of questions between what's useful for my business, what's real and what are people snake oil. There's leave for three months and become a millionaire. It's snake oil. Interesting. What would you say is your biggest takeaway from the book just off the top of your head? You still have to be a skeptic. If it seems too good to be true, it's too good to be true. But there are just so many advancements out there that
it is making your life easier. But you also have to be aware of hallucinations, the limitations. It really is a computer. It's not a person, even though you program it to sound like Zig Ziglar and have positivity and act like this and act like that. It's not Zig Ziglar. It's still just a computer that's pulling from data to have a similar personality and not to be confused by that. Yeah. And I'm so glad that you brought
up. I'm glad I. mention it too like the difference between like machine learning ai all these things because when i was thinking about the other day it was kind of like okay well like in a video game right like when you're playing pong even then against the computer it is making choices based off of what is going on you know i for my understanding video games are just a huge if then statement If you are within the range of the character seeing you, then they will turn
and point their weapon at you. If you do this, then it will do that. And it was almost like, where is that line of this is just what it's programmed to do versus it is artificial intelligence? Or is that just what it is? And it sounds like it's just knowing all these different possibilities is what it is, right? Is that? I feel like I'm having a hard time explaining it, but can you make that more eloquent almost? So if there are 10 for the ease of explanations, let's say there
are 10 ,000 possible outcomes in Pong. It knows the 10 ,000 possible outcomes. And where exactly you have to be for that outcome to go against you. So that would be the classic AI. If we upgraded Tong to be able to learn from all of your moves, that's more AI. So now the machine is learning
in real time. And this happened even with... some of the earlier chess versions where a human player would play and they would win one game but the computer would then take that into its algorithm reprogram itself so now it knew it knows how to beat that move and that would come off the table so yeah it's teaching itself every time It plays with you. Yeah, kind of like it,
every time it, what is it? Was it Thomas Edison that said something like, I learned the 2000 ways to not make a light bulb before I made it. Like, it almost sounds like that's kind of the approach that AI takes in these generative models of, as we learn what all the inputs are, now we can figure out what the next best output is. And when that fails. We just find another way to try it. Absolutely. And you're training AI
every day. Every time you use ChatGPT and it says, do you prefer this response to that response? Do you prefer this image to that image? You're now training AI not only for ChatGPT as a whole, but to learn your preferences as well. A lot of people have talked about, oh, ChatGPT has a bigger memory. It remembers everything now. And that's not quite true. It creates a memory and it's unlimited. But before, like, people would be like, oh, my memory's full. I have to
upgrade to the $200 version. I'm like, no, you're not. Go to your memory. copy and paste it all, put it into a Google Doc, take out the stuff that's not relevant, delete your memory and chat GPT, open up a new chat and say, train your memory on this. And it retrains the memory, brings it all back in and it's retrained. So all it means is that training. It doesn't remember every single chat you had with it. You can ask it to recall something and it will go back. And this is going
to get real technical. So if you're using off -the -shelf software, or even if you're creating a custom GPT, it's limited, I think, to about two gigs of data you can upload to create a custom GPT. And that's because it's a computer. It works in smaller chunks. So you need to build a RAG vector database, basically, if you've got 11 gigs of data and have it recall to train in there. Because even if you're using, you go into OpenAI's
Playground, you can upload up to... 50 gigs of data or 60 gigs, I think, but it's not going to work very well if it's all documents and PDFs because it's not broken down enough for it to really train on it. So you have to have it in smaller bytes. I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's kind of what we're getting at is that it's, these
models are generative, right? Like they're based off of an overall, like it's, from my understanding of chat GPT, like it has access to the internet, has access to all these other inputs that you've put into it. So like, for example, mine is going to be a little bit different than your main channel versus somebody else's main channel. Like my fiance's heard the one that she uses. It is very nice. She uses please and thank you and compliments it and it compliments her back. Like it's like
this. It takes pieces of you. And mine is very straight to the point. Very like I try to be polite to the robots, too. It just doesn't feel weird. It feels weird to be mean to them, right? So I try to be polite and, you know, oh, please, thank you. I appreciate it. Like, I like this better than this. And I think that's kind of what you're saying earlier is that it's learning what it is getting that positive and negative
feedback on to make everything better. And I guess that's the thing that kind of confuses me, too, is that this is, like, ChatGPT is generative. It's making all these outputs based off of existing data. Is there a difference between the generative AI versus AI? Is that a differentiator or is that kind of splitting hairs? That's splitting hairs. Okay. So I think the difference between suggesting text and generative and what people...
People confuse generative AI to AGI, artificial general intelligence, where the bot thinks on its own. It's no longer pulling from everything, learning from you. It's building its own neural networks. And that's where people, like the HAL 9000 jokes. That's where people get worried where it can make its own logic change without your input. Because right now, ChatGPT is not going to write a book for you just because you're thinking, oh, I'd like to write a book. Or if you put in,
write a book for me, it doesn't know that. You want it to write a book about hiking or coaching. You still have to tell it. And then it pulls from all the different places to pinpoint it. One of the best things you can do when you're talking to AI is say, ask me additional questions
to clarify my. request so you can answer it better that is something that i've added recently to almost all of my thing i think i even made it almost a rule i was like every time i ask you something that's more than just a definition or edit this down or whatever please ask more questions because i've noticed like you were saying the more you give it the better you're gonna get it's like the What is it? What you put into it is what you get out of it. I mean,
same thing with BNI. Same thing with most things in life. Like, I guess almost like the BNI example, right? If you just show up to meetings, you're not going to get a whole lot out of it. You got to give it a little bit more. You have to talk to more people. You have to do more of the work in order to get out what you actually want to see. I think that that's like the greatest thing about AI and these tools is if you're doing it
right. you're still learning like people are kind of like i i've noticed a lot in the creative space especially with podcasts on the podcasting pages i'm on they say if you ever use pod or ai for your podcast like you're a hack you're a cheat you're like you're cutting corners And it's like, no, I'm able to do what I want to do in much faster time. And the podcast is actually getting out. I'm having the interview right now with Heather. I had the interview with Ricky.
I had all these other interviews in the past. I'm still making the content. It's just kind of cutting out the stuff that I don't like doing necessarily. So I'm just curious, like, is that a mindset shift that other people have to get past? Or what have you seen with people in the stories they tell themselves about their creative?
integrity and AI? So what I find with a lot of people who are in the creative space, they feel like because it's been trained on everything, it's stealing other people's ideas that people aren't using them as creatives anymore. And honestly, the people that are using AI to create a logo, They never would have used you in the first place because they can't afford to get a logo from you. It's the same people who went to Canva a couple of years ago to create their logos. They're
not coming to you. They're coming to a $12 a month program because they can't afford you yet. You, on the other hand, when you're sending out samples because someone's like, I have no idea what my logo should be. like, you're saving time as a creative because instead of you going into Adobe and creating seven different things that you think they might like, you can start putting in. that they've generated from Facebook, from Instagram, to get an idea of even pictures they
post. Like I work with someone who loves really bright pictures that look like their tarot cards. So I was able to bring those graphics in and generate something for her. So I would say it helps you as a creative. to get the job done faster for your clients, bringing in more revenue because you can do higher amounts of volume. And eventually I cannot wait till I can hire someone and I'm not bootstrapping a lot of my
stuff and outsource this. to someone, but I'm going to choose someone who's using AI because I know they're not going to spend 12 hours with a pencil and a paper hand drawing stuff or going through Adobe and doing stuff with a mouse. They're going to use AI to get it done quickly and efficiently. I'll be able to go back and forth with them, still pay them a fair living wage for it, but it's because I don't have the time to do it anymore. I need to outsource this. people who can afford
to outsource are still going to outsource. It's not taking their jobs away. Very long -winded answer. I'm very passionate about that. No, I mean, that's the big thing, right? It's like even with like my coaching practice, like it's cutting down a lot of the time that I'm spending on these very detailed, like the things that don't super matter on the back end, like writing some copy, creating show notes, creating these
other things. where i'm able to cut back a lot of the time i'm spending on every piece so that i can focus on learning more about coaching learning more about ways to better serve my one -to -one and group clients like i'm able to be more effective on that higher level stuff and it's kind of like the idea of don't work in work on your business like that is the biggest thing that i've learned from a semi -creative profession like i'm not a digital marketer this or that like There are
pieces of that, but I'm able to kind of be more effective. And I think that's the biggest thing too, where I've advised people or talked to them is use the base level tools until you can hire someone that is better than you. Because you can only do so much with the AI tools, whether you pay it for the $20 a month chat GPT, like I do, huge fan, or you just use the freemium
stuff. Like all of it is going to help you. And if you're able to make... a few hundred extra bucks a month or anything at all, take that and reinvest it back into the business. Because you're not going to be able to get from zero to one if there are so many other barriers to stop you from getting there. So for your nonprofits, I want to tell an amazing nonprofit story. I have another friend on the island that works in cybersecurity and is also doing some stuff with AI, but his
main clients are nonprofits. So they proposed a question to him and they were basically from group sessions for this nonprofit. They had to write up everything and it was taking the doctor four hours to. write up all of the notes from the group sessions. And most of the notes were the same for the group. And there was only a couple of things that were different per person. And they all have to go into their database,
whatever they use. So Derek was able to build something for them that was HIPAA compliant. anonymize the data with numbers that they knew on the outside who to connect it to. It went from taking four hours for one group session to do notes to a half an hour. So that gives. those people more clinical time to spend with
people. So instead of doing that administrative backend that's absolutely necessary to keep the nonprofit up and running and getting their funding, they can now offload that cognitive drain of busy work to AI and spend more time living in their zone of genius and helping more people. No, I think that is just such a clear, specific, beautiful example of how this is just a tool. I think that's the big thing that I try to explain to other people too is like it's a technology.
It's a tool. It's a way that you can cut down on time. Just like the walk that I did last year across the country, like walking is so much slower than driving. And you say that and people know that and understand that like, OK, well, duh, it's slower. But it's like it makes you really appreciate how much opportunity and usefulness that a car has been able to provide, even when going five or 10 miles an hour up to the 60, 70, 80, 90 mile per hour vehicles we have now.
Like AI and these tools are just a way to make things go faster so that we can build more so that we can do more things. And I think that that's the other great thing is the more time that we can spend doing the things that really matter, the better. Whether it is actually working with people in that one -on -one setting or being able to advise deeper, like that is what we're here to create. And I know that that is something that you're doing with your business, like with
the chatbots. I'm just kind of curious, like how... How does that actually help entrepreneurs on their website? I feel like whenever you go to a website now, there is some kind of chatbot or something. What is the use case for businesses in that regard? So what I've noticed, and I was shocked because honestly, I assumed everyone was doing AI chatbots. So there's two different types of chatbots when you go to a website. Put your name and phone number and email in your
question and someone will get back to you. A lot of times then you get a text from the company saying, thank you for signing up for our text message marketing, but you never get the answer because it's gone into the abyss somewhere. But if you had an AI powered chat bot, it's acting. like you as the business owner. So we can absolutely put your, depending on how fancy you want it, we can put your personality in there. It's trained on all the FAQs. It's trained on driving to appointment.
It leads them to your appointment page. It finds the articles on there. So people are now interacting with your webpage on that topic instead. of going back to google making you that thought leader in that area or even if you have an e -commerce store that you're not available to recommend which dark coffee should they buy you train the bot on all your different blends of coffee and you backlink it to all the links to buy the different stuff and when someone's Like, oh, I want a non
-acidic coffee blend from Columbia. It says, hey, this is our X blend. And then it really explains it like I don't like a barista. Maybe that's what they call them. I know it. whine their call. They have a certain job title, but anyway, it'll explain it and then link it to that product. So they're not searching the whole internet for it. They're searching your website for the product that they sort of put into Google and it led them to your website. And this gets
them to buying it faster from you. A lot of what you're saying kind of reminds me of almost like retention on YouTube videos. Like when you go to someone's website, it's kind of like you're going to a YouTube video. And if there isn't something to grab their attention beyond just the actual content of the video, like they're going to leave and go back to Google or to the YouTube search page and leave you and go find
someone else. So it almost sounds like by having that chatbot on there to ask those basic questions, it's almost like those. like the cuts in a YouTube video, like, oh, now they kind of brought your attention back and you're starting to leave and you're leaving. You can ask them a question. So that's really interesting and really good.
So if somebody wanted to like learn a little bit more about that or like add that to their site, is there a site that you have that you have set up or like what would that look like to get situated? So InsureBot Solutions, I have two different websites because it's InsureBotSolutions .com. and InsureBotSolutions .ai. .pro is more dedicated to my coaching and .ai has more information about the bot building. Both of them have website
bots on there. It's a very long story why one is embedded, the other one is at the bottom of the page. That's neither here nor there, but that's where they can go to learn more, try them out and experience what it would be like for their website. If they make an appointment with me and they want a mock -up of what it would look very basically for a minimally trained bot on their information, I can mock that up for
them. But that's not, What I found with a lot of people, too, is they're like, oh, I can do this myself. I'll just buy a ManyChat. And then they're like, well, how do I put this on my page? And why does yours have a cute robot on the back and mine is white? Well, that's because I've spent a lot of time and a lot of money doing stuff with AI and you're getting. that $15 a month product. And maybe that is what's good for you right now in your business. And when
it's time to upgrade, you upgrade. But again, those are some places that you can look for examples. Also something I've started doing is quizzes. So having the chat bot ask some questions and then recommending which part of your service. So think of it as a... Cosmo Quiz meets AI. How funny. I love that. Cool. So yeah, all that information will be down in the show notes. And something that I want to add to this episode is a little
bit of a fire round of questions. Now, some of these are things that we've already kind of gone over, but I think it'd be a great way to kind of just wrap up the episode and ask some questions that are... useful for the listeners. So the very first one is pretty basic, but what is one AI tool every small business owner should try today? I'm going to say Gamma because it builds slides for you. It builds social media posts. It builds PDFs for you and you put in a prompt
and it knows like methodology. It does the outline for you. It's hooked up to about seven or eight different AI generators. You can program it with your branding. So everything comes out in your colors, your fonts. So it's going to save a ton of time for you. That's, I could have just said ChatGPT, but I wanted to give you something that you might not have tried yet. They give you,
I want to say about 400 AI credits. Usually what I tell people is do some of the heavy lifting outside of there with ChatGPT and then go back in and don't use all your trial AI credits. That's awesome. I don't think I've heard of that one yet. And I think that's a great thing too. That's what I was kind of hoping. I'm like, please don't say chat GPT, but I would totally understand if you did because like, there's so many tools
out there. Like even this weekend over Easter, my brother, my future slash whatever, my brother
-in -law. um he was saying oh there's this and that and this i'm like i haven't even heard of any of those so it's just so interesting how many different tools there are so gamma will be down in the show notes as well and maybe i can even see if this helps with my presentation tonight how fast it can help out so perfect and this next one what's the biggest misconception about using ai in business um that you're cheating You're not cheating. Do you still use the Dewey
Decimal System? Do you still use a rotary phone? Do you still use an abacus? No. This is just another tool. Even Encyclopedia Britannica, it is now a multi -million dollar company again because they trained an LLM on all of their verified data. They went from bankruptcy to a viable company again. So if you're not using it, you're going to be left behind. That is what I've been telling people as well. It's a tool. Jump in and use
it. You can still be creative and still... be the expert while getting a little bit of extra help. So number three, what's a real result you've seen from using quiz bots or chat bots? There's a BNI member that I talk to all the time. I see him in several different other networking groups. And he had this great idea for a quadratexahedron.
um he does like uh t -shirts and signs and banners he's in promotional items and him and his business partner had been working on it forever and i'm like guys just put a perfect at put pictures in, ask for a provisional patent, ask how to market this, ask who you should be marketing to, put a business plan together for it. And they were able to do that, get their provisional patent out. They made more progress in a month than they had in the 20 years since they've been
working on this project. So that's a real result from using ChatGPT. how cool so it's just like again it's it's a way to take everything that you know all your creativity all of your ideas all of your expertise and just kind of streamline it so you get from one to two or in this case almost sounds like one to a hundred much faster than you would just by yourself it really cuts out that extra time that's not needed you know
how cool All right. And then one of the last ones, what's your favorite mindset shift for going from AI curious to AI capable? Realizing what's out there. And AI's only, oops, only limit is your imagination. oh man, I wish I had Grammarly. I would love to have that program. I don't have the extra, I don't even know, I think it's more than 10 bucks a month. Go into ChatGPT and say, act as Grammarly and help me with this solution. So all you have to do is instead of saying, I
wish I had, ChatGPT is your genie. So we fixed my Jeep last night with ChatGPT. It was stuck in four wheel drive. We asked it a bunch of questions. My brother, who is very technical, got under there. We lifted, we pried, and it's no longer stuck in four wheel drive anymore. So yeah, it's your imagination. Perfect. My little brother and I just recently got back into playing the Pokemon games. And we've been able to ask it questions for things that we have just kind of
written off as not important for years. And it's such a silly example. But it's like, oh, there's chat GPTs for... everything from, like you were saying, mechanic to Pokemon trainer to Expedia travel agent, right? So it's just like, oh, there's all these different tools, ways, and use cases that are different from what you would think. So no, that's awesome. And the very last question that I have for you today is, what's one way a solo entrepreneur can start automating their
business using AI starting this week? Pick an AI tool and use it. Do not pay for all of them. I normally say if you're copyright heavy, go to Claude. That's the best one for that. If you're research heavy, go to Perplexity because it really is an amazing research tool. And guess what? They have freemium versions that you can use with them. Pick one as your workhorse. Pay the $20, $30 a month for that one. And then as you're doing other things, use the freemium version
to put the polish on for whatever you need. Perfect. So pick a tool and run with it, essentially. Awesome. Heather, thank you so much for your time and your attention today. I super appreciate you being able to share your magic and your expertise with our listeners. Again, what is the best way for people to get a hold of you if they want to learn more about what you do or just kind of see what's going on in the world of Heather
and AI? You can follow me on LinkedIn. I have a YouTube channel that I stream stuff about once a week. But it also streams to LinkedIn. It goes to Facebook. I have a Facebook group that I talk about AI all the time. You can follow me on Facebook. That's where I started. But I realized with AI, I can be everywhere all the time. And yeah, just find me on your favorite. I'm not on X. I'm not on Pinterest. So find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or I think I'm somewhere else. Anyway,
Google me. And I'm not a chiropractor and I'm not Heather from the Red Knot Instagram. And when you look at that, Heather Duraco, you know why I'm saying that, but not going into details.
Perfect. I'll make sure the right. heathers are linked down in the description below so that everybody can have a chance to actually find you and not fall for the wrong heather awesome thank you so much again and as always thank you so much to our listeners your time and attention mean everything if you found this episode helpful please feel free to share it with someone in your network the more people this podcast reads the more people we are able to help and the greater
impact and influence we have on the world As always, remember that the best is yet to come as long as you are willing to make the decision to never settle, never quit, and never peak. I'll see you guys in the next one.