AI Lens
AI news, hot topics, advancements, and discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society.
Your focused view on the emerging hot topics in the Age of A.I.
AI Lens
Episode 2: How Business Leaders Can Start Using AI Today
AI Lens: Your Focused view on the emerging hot topics in the Age of AI!!
We provide AI news, hot topics, advancements and discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society.
Episode 2: How Business Leaders Can Start Using AI Today
This episode is your practical, no-nonsense guide to getting started. We're going to talk about the tools, the use cases, and the strategic that business leaders can implement immediately- even if you're not technical.
This is AI Lens. Welcome back to the show. We're your focused view on the emerging hot topics in the age of AI.
SPEAKER_01:We provide AI news and hot topics, advancements, and discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society.
SPEAKER_00:Now, today we're diving into one of the most important topics in modern business. How to actually use artificial intelligence to make your company more efficient, more profitable, and more competitive.
SPEAKER_01:And we want to start with the simple truth. AI isn't here to replace you, it's here to replace the version of you that doesn't use AI.
SPEAKER_00:This episode is your practical, no-nonsense guide to getting started. So for those of you who have been in it a while, it might be a little refresher and reminder, but for those who want to get into AI and use it for your business, we're going to talk about the tools, the use cases, and the strategies that business leaders can implement immediately, even if you're not technical. So let's discuss what is AI. It's a nice chance for us to level set. And what it isn't, right?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:So let's level set. What is AI? AI is a set of tools that help you think, write, analyze, automate, and create. It's not magic. It's not a robot uprising like the Terminator. At least not yet. And it's definitely not something only engineers can use.
SPEAKER_01:And as business leaders, it's not something that you need to understand in terms of how it works. You just need to understand what it can do.
SPEAKER_00:That's the important thing is learning how to use it. Today, AI tools are as easy as email. Really, a lot of them are. You type, they respond, you revise or re-et reiterate to get it more what you're looking for, and it improves. That's what it can do.
SPEAKER_01:That's kind of it, right? In its simplest form. Now, the AI landscape in plain English, there are major categories AI tools fall into that you'll encounter. Let's try to break them down in simple terms.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, there's generative AI assistance.
SPEAKER_01:And what do those tools look like, Liz?
SPEAKER_00:They look it's things like ChatGPT, Copilot, Grok, Gemini, Vlad, so many of them. The ones that you hear about all the time. These tools help you write, research, brainstorm, analyze, and plan. Sometimes they can even do more than that. They can do diagrams and code sometimes. Think of them as your digital assistant, chief of staff, research agent. It's fabulous.
SPEAKER_01:Another major category that really took root in 2025 is going to explode, we think, in 2026, are automation tools. These tools help you eliminate repetitive tasks, the process-driven workflow automation platforms, CRM automations, and AI scheduling tools, just to name a few.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and a lot of the programs you're already using have adopt have adapted to adopt automation tools. So you may be seeing that more and more in the types of software you're already using.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they build them into the platforms like ChatGPT and Quad as two examples. So those things will become more uh ubiquitous as time goes on.
SPEAKER_00:But what I was really talking about, for example, if you're in the legal world and you use something like Cleo, or my case, they're already implementing the automation in the actual software that they sell to legal businesses. And it's in all kinds of fields.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And what you're gonna see with these tools, we'll discuss it more in future episodes, is it's getting more it can handle more and more complex processes, and it's getting simpler and simpler to use.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, the next number three, what it can do is data and decision tools. These are tools that summarize documents, extract insights, analyze spreadsheets, and help you make better decisions.
SPEAKER_01:One example we talked about in last episode was the legal field and contracts. AI has there's has the ability to actually review legal contracts better than lawyers can on average.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, now there's also industry-specific AI, such as legal drafting tools, medical imaging AI. If any of you have had uh a calcium score test, they now have, I think it's called Clearly Seth, which will act is AI that will actually read a scan and give more information. There's real estate valuation AI, supply chain optimization AI, customer support. There's all kinds of industry specific. AI is no longer a niche technology, it's a business utility.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's interesting. I just was talking to some uh some high school kids that I had met, and one of them wanted to get into radiology, and I was explaining that that might be a difficult field to get into going forward with AI. He was actually aware of that and was reconsidering what his career choice would be so that he could actually leverage AI in the radiology field. It was a fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_00:The five fastest ways to start using AI today. Let's talk about that. The easiest wins and things you should start doing today that will save you hours every week. The first one, John, why don't you go over that?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's writing and communication, leveraging those platforms we talked about, Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok. These tools can't be one. These tools can draft emails, proposals, reports, job descriptions, meeting summaries. I mean, the list goes on and on. It's really limited to your creativity and how you leverage the AI.
SPEAKER_00:And the way to get started is to play with it and start giving it tasks or problems. For example, you can ask it to write a sales proposal, give it the specifics of what you're trying to sell, how much price, what the customer is interested in, what the terms and conditions are, see what it comes up with.
SPEAKER_01:You can even upload your own sales proposals from the past and have it replicate those.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Performance reviews for employees. That's another area it could help you with. Boy, that'd be.
SPEAKER_01:I wish I had that when I was managing people.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Customer emails. You know, maybe you have a standard email that you send out for different things that you want it rewritten. And what you can do, like, for example, some people are kind of concerned about exposing themselves to liability. In an email, you can say, for example, let's say you want to do one for employees. As the top employment lawyer in whatever city-state you're in, draft and or revise whatever it's doing, an email to my employees notifying them of maybe it's uh PTO issues, or maybe it's you know an HR-related issue. You can have it help draft it. Now, one thing anytime you have AI draft, double triple check. There, you the you know what they say the fish it smells from the head down. You need to start taking responsibility, just like if you were assigning it to a person. Don't just send something out without reviewing it.
SPEAKER_01:Two quick suggestions on that. Number one, run it through a different AI platform and ask it to analyze it, to look for any weaknesses or flaws in its legal reasoning. Another thing, too, is to ask for sources and double check what it's sourcing. For example, if you say you're a landlord and you're asking it to, you know, about tenant law and it's citing, and let's say it's in some state like Arizona, but it's citing examples from law firms in Colorado, well, then you know that there might be some issues with whatever advice it's given you. So that's one thing that you want to do is always double check.
SPEAKER_00:And if it is legal, just so you're aware, the two big top legal research platforms, Lexus, Nexus, and Westlaw, both have implemented AI. So there are tools through those types of legal softwares uh programs where you can actually use AI for drafting. But again, I would still double triple check the information to make sure it's correct.
SPEAKER_01:In terms of emails, another area that is helpful is let's say you want to change the tone of an email. You're not exactly sure how best to go about it. You throw it into one of these platforms, it spits it right back out. It saves you a tremendous amount of time and headache in terms of getting it right.
SPEAKER_00:That's really important because sometimes you're really angry when you're writing an email. And you may say things that later you'll regret. So the best thing to do is write your email, throw it into one of the, you know, either Chat GPT, co-pilot, grok, or all three or four, go to perplexity, whichever, Claude, and ask it to revise your email to be cordial, professional, but stern and persuasive. And you can say, for example, you know, if you're a landlord, you can say, as the the top landlord tenant attorney protecting clients, revise the landlord's email to be to reduce risk, so risk management, to be cordial, professional, but stern and persuasive. The more you put into your prompt, the better the outcome is gonna be. But it can change the whole tone. You can say, add humor to paragraph three. Oh, I don't like that joke. Add a different one. You probably don't want to do that in a landlord tenant letter, but in other emails or things that you send.
SPEAKER_01:Or sales email, make it more persuasive as an example. You know, people might ask, okay, well, which platform is the best one to use based on what this particular need is or what I'm trying to accomplish. And the reality is they're all getting closer and closer, doing everything really well, the gaps closing. And with these, they're coming out with updates so fast and so frequently, what might have been a weakness in one platform suddenly becomes a strength. So that can change over time. Just keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're recording this on January 2nd. By January 15th, you know, what one platform is good at versus another could radically change.
SPEAKER_01:That's January 2nd, 2026. And we'll and we'll cover what we think are the strengths and weaknesses at a particular point in time in a future episode of each platform.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, 2026. Is it 2026 already? It is. All right. The second area where you can really get help here is research and analysis. And again, those same platforms Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, all of those guys, they can all help you with research and doing analysis in different areas. Need if, for example, you need a market overview, a competitor analysis, regulatory summary. Now, one thing I would say is if you're gonna ask for regulations, ask on all levels. For example, say, I want to know federal, state, and and discuss which state, county, and if it's a city or a township or a village, depending on where you are, um, make sure that you're asking for regulations across all of those fields that address a certain topic.
SPEAKER_01:Internationally, make sure you include cultural sensitivities as well so that you don't make a mistake there, because that can happen.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, these tools are so powerful, things that you wouldn't imagine. John, what are some of your favorite ways that they can help with research and analysis?
SPEAKER_01:I'll tell you one that saves me a lot of time is summarizing long PDFs. Let's say that you get a very large PDF, you upload it into the system and ask for it to do a detailed analysis, it does a fantastic job very quickly. It's fantastic. Otherwise, um let's say that you're wanting to get key insights in a particular industry. Let's say you're doing a product launch and you want to know some key insights about that industry. It's a great way of figuring that out quick and efficiently. Uh let's say you want to compare competitors. You know, it can sit there and quickly analyze competitors and create a very detailed report for you that way. Let's say you want to identify trends in your industry. Or let's say you just want to draft executive summaries. Let's say you've written a long piece and you want to shorten it up for, like, say, an email to executives. Well, that can be done easily with any of these platforms.
SPEAKER_00:One of my favorites would be it, you know, identify who my ideal client would be. Yes. And then develop a branding strategy that would be uh the best branding strategy for sales and marketing for that client. Um, things like that. But we'll get into marketing and sales later. There are all kinds of really fun things you can do to give your business an extra bonus step up. You know, and you know, the probably the most favorite thing is cutting time with process automation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, lovable is a fascinating tool. It helps you build simple software and automations without using a developer.
SPEAKER_00:Right, like apps. You can build an app with lovable. It's great.
SPEAKER_01:Without without coding.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Lovable will do the coding for you on that. It's crazy. It uh, you know, you can also do, you can find workflow tools, um, all kinds of things with process automation is available through AI. Everything from creating internal dashboards, customer intake forms, automated workflows, and the apps. Now it's not going to be a very extensive app. You're gonna do more of a basic app, but you can do that in minutes using some of these programs.
SPEAKER_01:And even though you might not be able to scale an enterprise-level app, just what they call vibe coding or coding by word, that's today. That's getting there, it's able to do more complex, increasingly complex coding with just simple verbal instructions, and that's only going to improve throughout the year.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, now the next topic, which I really love, this is number five on our list, or number four on our list of top five things you can use it for in business. Sales and marketing acceleration. You can do so much in sales and marketing so much faster. It's unbelievable. And you can do this just with Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Artifact. You I mean, but there are also specialized platforms out there.
SPEAKER_01:Tools, yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_00:With the marketing, uh, John, what are some of the AI um processes and tools that the marketing teams can use now?
SPEAKER_01:Well, in terms of the processes, things like creating ad copy, uh social media posts, uh, simply and easily draft newsletters, content calendars, marketing plans, uh personalized outreach. There's so much you can do just by but just even at the simple level. Now we'll get into more complex uses where you can actually do data mining, scraping websites for competitor analysis, those sorts of things. But that'll be a topic for a different different podcast. But today, right now, you simply jump jump into any of these platforms, you type in, like um go search YouTube for the most effective YouTube videos, the most watched YouTube videos with XYZ product or service, detail the key insights, deliver back to me um uh you know a YouTube um plan or a um like an ad copy that that adopts all of those. Basically, yeah, a script that you can then create your own YouTube video. I mean, and and then you get into you can even use avatars that can do all of the videos for you too. So it's a fascinating world that that you can create all this content in in a very short period of time and not even have to be the face of it as well.
SPEAKER_00:Right. In terms of using photo photographs and illustrations and charts and PowerPoints and videos, you can do this in a fraction of the time using AI. There are so many tools out there, and they they've been out there a lot of them for a while. For example, back in 2023, I used Synthesia to do um short ads. And it would take me less than a couple of minutes to you know pick an avatar I wanted to get a message across and type in the message, and you can upload a background. It was it was amazing, and it's gotten only better and better over the last three years.
SPEAKER_01:I think the website for Synthesia is synthesia.io. And keep in mind we're not getting paid or have any type of affiliation with Synthesia. Um, but it's such a it's such an incredible tool, it's worth mentioning. And when you look at it, it it looks like a realistic person, even though it's all digital.
SPEAKER_00:But there's so much more in that area. I think nano banana um is has come up. Yeah, there's so many more applications that are doing that now.
SPEAKER_01:Nanobanana being uh Google Gemini's um video uh tool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay, number five, decision support and forecasting. You can use these same tools that we're talking about Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, all these platforms that we've been talking about to evaluate different options. I know anytime I'm stuck, there's a bottleneck or there's a problem that we need to get an answer to fast for our business. My go-to is to get on these different uh AI sites and see what they think. It's giving you more information and more thoughts. And again, they're not always perfect, so you have to double and triple check, but it gives you ideas and helps you think outside the box. What are some other ways that you would use AI for decision support and forecasting?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I remember talking to somebody and they were having some issues with cash flow, and they were looking for ways to raise some alternative financing, and so we talked about like what are some um areas that they would look at, and so we threw that into Chat GPT and asked it to create a step-by-step plan for how to secure funding in this alternative arena, and they were blown away at the ideas that it had, ideas that they never had considered, and ended up securing that funding through that ChatGPT uh chat.
SPEAKER_00:But the key is uh the input that you give it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Your prompting will determine the quality of the output of the channel.
SPEAKER_01:Not just your initial prompt, too, if I can, also how you Your how you iterate on once you get an answer back, how do you then fine-tune it and refine it to get even more information that's even more valuable?
SPEAKER_00:Right. So learning how to engineer prompt is huge. And that's that's not honestly, once you get the hang of it, it's not that difficult. It's being specific about things that you want, being descriptive of the type of response you want. So who is responding? Are you asking a doctor? Are you asking an engineer? Are you asking the the top uh researcher on biochemistry for DNA, you know, it whatever you want the answer from is really a very important tool. For example, if you put I want a response from Donald Trump versus I want a response from you know, they're gonna be two different things. Or if you want a response from a dog trainer versus you want a response from an engineer. And what kind of engineer? A chemical engineer, a civil engineer who specializes in housing, or a civil engineer who specializes in bridges? Do you want an aerospace engineer? Be specific. And that will help you.
SPEAKER_01:Okay? So that's one level of prompting, and we'll get into prompting in more detail in a future episode. But keep in mind too, you can do powerful things with simple prompts, like Liz is talking about, as long as you have some structure to it. But people have gotten very creative of prompting and taking it to another level. Advanced prompting, you can do some wild things with AI when it comes to that.
SPEAKER_00:But it's almost like doing Google searches.
SPEAKER_01:In some ways, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, what you put in to Google depends on what you get out and what kind of words you're using.
SPEAKER_01:Um I think another way of looking at this too, Liz, if I can, is look at this as like a strategic advisor that helps you think through decisions more clearly. So it could be not just evaluate X, Y, and Z options, but it could be model scenarios, could be forecast outcomes, uh, you can have it analyze spreadsheets and it does it really, really well. Identify risks. These are just some examples of what you can use it for right now, today.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And what kind of risk? For example, are you asking the risk for liability in construction, or are you asking for risk of liability for an employer? For an employee. That you're asking for a top HR human resource specialist versus somebody who is top in the field, maybe as a constructive defect attorney.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Now, if you're looking for what's today's most useful AI tools for business, let's go deeper into some of these tools and how they can help your business. Liz, what are what are some ideas that you could use these tools for today?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, for example, if you were using Microsoft's Copilot, that's that's an AI uh platform that can is answering many questions. It can help you write, it can help you summarize, it can help you brainstorm, it can help with business planning. You can say, draft a business plan for this type of business with this is my ideal client and do a marketing plan for it. But the more specific you are about the business and what you're looking for. Um, I'll give you also another example. When you're drafting a business plan, drafting a business plan for gross revenue of 1 million or 250,000 versus 50 million or a billion. And what do you want your profit margin to be at? Or do you want it to calculate what your profit margin is?
SPEAKER_01:Or what are some ideas to bootstrap it so that you have to come out of pocket in terms of funding it, or maybe you have some cash to fund it and you can accelerate that that initial launch.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, like for example, in businesses, a lot of times when you're trying to be cost effective, you need to be resourceful. Well, you can ask co-pilot, what are some ways I can be resourceful and cost effective to accomplish this project?
SPEAKER_01:You know, you talked earlier about like how these apps are or these um software platforms that are not non-AI related or starting to integrate AI. Talked about LexusNexis as an example. Well, I'll tell you one area that I use um co-pilot quite frequently is when I'm using Microsoft's Office apps. So things like Outlet, Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, even all Copilot's been integrated into all these different things. Uh there's search on Bing. Um, you see it with with Google and their search engine now, having it, everybody's integrating AI. These tools are powerful. Make sure that you explore those tools and see how best you can use those because it'll make you much much more effective and much more efficient.
SPEAKER_00:The the short answer is how do you get started? You start trying to use it. Yes, you start implementing it. Now, the first couple of times, you may not be 100%, but you use it more and more and more, and then you expand what you're able to do. It's unbelievable. Now, the next platform, ChatGPT, again, creative brainstorming, drafting content, consumer support scripts. You can do that also with co-pilot. Um, idea generation, problem solving. But you know, I will tell you Chat GPT, copilot, Gemini, uh, Grok, I use them for similar things. And what I'll do is when I'm double checking, I might put them in each, you know, the same prompt into the same the different platforms and see if I get different responses. And then I'll research to make sure the information they're giving me is correct.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Um, I use Gemini personally for research, data analysis, web connected tasks, multimodal reasoning. Um, we need up-to-date information or deep analysis. I tend to lean toward Gemini or Grok both are fantastic at that. Uh, Cloud's another one that's great for reading long documents, structured summaries, legal or policy analysis, although I find grok to be pretty useful there too. Complex reasoning.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sorry, but for legal analysis, I I would use LexisNexis. I would use LexisNexis or Westlaw. LexisNexis has Protege and Westlaw has Edge. Yes. And those are both fantastic for the legal analysis. But there's also for legal specific programs. Like um, I there's one in the bankruptcy scenario that people use, which also does automation. There's some in um estate planning, there's a lot also. Um, immigration has a lot, basically repetitive tasks. If it's going to be a repetitive task, um in family law, drafting, you know, drafting marital settlement agreements, drafting uh the forms, or the initial complaints in civil, there are a lot of these already out there in the specific niche.
SPEAKER_01:And again, if you're doing anything legal, make sure you double check it just to be safe.
SPEAKER_00:And I would say always always get legal advice to be careful in that respect.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Well, I think one thing that Claude is really uh gearing up to do really well in 2026 is business processes. So I think you're gonna see some Claude like really leading the way in terms of um being able to create more simple ways to interact, to create more complex, handle more complex processes and automations within your within your businesses.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so you know let's discuss how you can identify AI opportunities in your business. And I would say try this simple exercise, and it's a five-minute AI audit. Ask yourself what tasks do I repeat every day, or somebody in my office repeats every day? What tasks drain time, but they don't really require judgment? What tasks require reading, summarizing, or writing? What tasks require searching for information? And what tasks require generating ideas or initial drafts? One of those is fantastic to start with to play with AI.
SPEAKER_01:Well, actually, all of them are, but yeah, start with one at least.
SPEAKER_00:Right? And then another framework is to delegate AI. If you delegate it to an intern, you can probably dedicate something to AI.
SPEAKER_01:Um virtual assistants, right? So things we used to delegate to virtual assistants, AI could pick up probably most, if not all, of that workload as an example.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So pick one of those workflows we discussed. Maybe it's drafting weekly reports, summarizing meetings, generating marketing content, automating customer intake. There's all different kinds of choices you can start to play with.
SPEAKER_01:We talked about you know synthesia. You can create training videos using synthesia as an example. Otter AI, by the way, we should mention, again, not affiliated with it whatsoever, but otter AI is another great one. It can record your meetings and actually produce a written summary of what detailed transcript and a written summary of what was covered in the meeting.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And yeah, not just synthesia. Now I would use nano banano too. Sure. Um, meaning also, not number two. Right. Um, but you know, once you get used to it, scale it, it works. AI is not future technology anymore. It's present-day competitive advantage. It's here.
SPEAKER_01:The companies that embrace it, they will, you will absolutely move faster, operate leaner, you're gonna innovate more quickly. Your job as a leader isn't to master the technology. We talked about this in the beginning, it's to master the application of the technology.
SPEAKER_00:Start small, but get started, and then let AI elevate you and your organization. Just start working with it, and then you'll gain knowledge right away. And the more you allow it to do, the more it can do. But always double check right now.
SPEAKER_01:So I think that kind of brings us to an end, Liz. We're uh just past our 30-minute time limit here. Let's um in future episodes, we're gonna talk about all of this in much more detail. We'll have a much more focused um explanation of things and help you really leverage AI and take it to the next level.
SPEAKER_00:Remember, this is AI Lens, your focused view on the emerging hot topics in the age of AI. Thank you.