WATCH A SEGMENT

Takeaways:

• Dameon Proctors and his esteemed guests explore the profound impact of artificial intelligence on small and medium-sized businesses during this insightful podcast episode.
• The discussion emphasizes the necessity of establishing operational efficiencies through AI to facilitate growth and streamline business processes.
• Taja Graham elucidates her experience in creating OPS IQ, which aims to enhance the operational capabilities of small businesses by leveraging automation and AI technologies.
• Marcela Shine introduces the concept of combining marketing and operational efficiencies, asserting that they are inextricably linked for the success of small businesses.
• The conversation highlights the importance of utilizing AI not only to reduce costs but also to empower human capital by allowing employees to focus on higher-value activities.
• Listeners are urged to recognize that AI is a tool to augment human capabilities rather than replace them, promoting a collaborative approach to innovation and efficiency.

WATCH A SEGMENT

Taja M. Graham is an executive strategist, founder, and trusted advisor with more than two decades of leadership experience spanning executive sales, operations, and organizational leadership. Throughout her corporate career, she led high-performing teams, managed multimillion-dollar business units, and helped organizations navigate growth, transformation, and operational excellence.

Taja founded TMG Solutions Advisors to bring that executive experience directly to founders and leadership teams seeking strategic and operational guidance without the commitment of a full-time executive. She later launched OpsIQ, a digital operations platform designed to give growing businesses access to proven frameworks, executive-level insights, and practical tools that help them scale with greater clarity, consistency, and confidence. Today, Taja is recognized for helping organizations build stronger operational foundations, reduce founder dependency, and create businesses that are positioned for sustainable, long-term growth.

https://opsiq.biz/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/opsiq-coo-in-a-box

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tajagraham/

All right, welcome to this episode of earn your seat.

I am Damian Proctor, CEO of Sierra Crew AI where we help businesses to reduce costs, streamline operations and drive revenue using artificial intelligence.

Today we're having a wonderful discussion about how artificial intelligence is being implemented in businesses, small and medium sized businesses, to help them become more efficient and grow.

And today I am joined by two of Charlotte's most wonderful operating visionaries and leaders in the mid market and small business operating space.

So we have Ms. Todrick Graham, CEO of Graham Solutions Advisors and founder of Ops IQ.

And we also have Ms. Marcella Schein, she is the co founder of Shine Enterprises Consulting.

Ladies, thank you so much for being here.

I think we're gonna have a wonderful discussion because you guys are in a wonderful space of leading and operations for large companies and medium sized companies as well.

So I'd like to start off this conversation of let's figure out and help the audience understand who we are, where we've come from, how we earned our seats.

So let's start with you Taja.

How did you earn your seat in the marketplace and with AI?

Well, thank you Damian for having me on the show today.

So yeah, I started a consult consultancy first, helping businesses to grow in their operations efficiencies, working with their team dynamics and ensuring that they have the right infrastructure to support the growth that they were looking for.

And I quickly recognized that in order to really build capacity not only for myself but for other businesses in life cycle, that I needed to be able to scale that.

And so I created OPS IQ to help small businesses be able to get to the level of where I was functioning in the capacity of the consultancy.

OPS IQ basically helps those founders that are doing anywhere between 250,000 a year to about 3 million a year.

They're starting to hire some of their first initial hires and they really are wanting to structure so that they actually have the right foundation in creating OPS iq.

It was quickly by design with my developers that we knew we were going to have Agentix to supporting that for automation.

And in my joking I say it was my first hire so I really couldn't say anything different.

Exactly, exactly.

We haven't yet named him.

He's got to earn his rights.

We quickly did that in the way of supporting our assessment, which is the way that you come into OPS IQ in its scoring abilities.

We also address it with some customization within the platform and supporting those subscribers that come into the platform.

It has helped me tremendously.

And then obviously I then become an evangelist to it to those Subscribers and my clients that I work alongside of.

So you're kind of like the Scale foundation for businesses at this point.

They get to the half million and then you help them get from half million and up.

Yes, exactly right.

Yeah, yeah.

You're on fire.

We hope so.

Well, we're gonna speak that into existence.

There we go.

I appreciate that.

Yes.

All right.

Marcella signals my way, please.

So I'm the co founder of Shine Enterprises, which is the parent company of Ready Plan Grow.

Ready Plan Grow focuses on enabling small business owners in creating efficiencies for both their marketing and operations.

I believe strongly that they are not disconnected.

We started with marketing operations because there is a lack of knowledge in the small business space around what that means.

And every time that comes up, operations is really the core problem.

So we are looking to support small business owners in two ways.

Small business owners that are under 250k can join ready Plan Grow's membership and access.

In essence, coaching at Scale.

We have office hours and we teach them the core basics that we believe every single business should understand from, from an operational standpoint, best practices and marketing best practices.

So that's level one, if you will.

Level two is incorporating our frameworks into the companies.

Using our AI frameworks.

We believe in building a knowledge base first.

So we interview, we bring you in, our AI grabs your voice, DNA, if you will, so that we're getting to know the founder and usually their right hand, depending on the size of the business.

We understand how the business is functioning today through that interview.

We create a knowledge base for them and we hand that knowledge base back to them and put the AI on top of it.

So everything we build for them is theirs from the get go.

The key things that we really solve for are not knowing your numbers well, you cannot run a company unless you understand the metrics that run those decisions.

So we really look for data or teaching them data through that operational efficiency.

And then we start looking at, okay, do you have the right employees in place, what are your goals, etc.

And we drive them through those frameworks to really position them for the growth they need or to fix the things that are broken that are preventing growth again.

We have our AI workforce.

She has earned her seat.

Scarlet is our girl and Scarlet is the foundation for the AI that we then start to hand over.

They get to name their AI and kind of have some fun with it from there.

So that's our goal, is to make sure that they're confident that the AI they are going to be using is theirs and that it's not replacing, it's supporting and driving growth.

Absolutely.

So what does Charlotte do?

Scarlet.

Scarlet, Sorry.

So Scarlet, first of all is what I'll call the containment unit.

So my co founder Ryan has placed a lot of barriers around her so that we can remove the AI haze that happens when she starts to think on her own.

So number one is Scarlet owns the rulebook for our frameworks.

So you have a guardrail around hallucination?

Absolutely.

Not just hallucination, but the frameworks themselves.

What does the know your numbers framework do, what does the marketing framework do, et cetera.

Right, the voice, DNA.

So we have those framework pieces, our members can come in and download those and actually use them inside of GPT or Claude Gemini.

Again, we're here to teach, we really believe in teaching.

First and only ownership.

I want you to walk away feeling like you've learned something by working with us.

So Scarlett owns their frameworks, the rules around each of those, either JSON files or custom GPTs, whatever way we're going to work with that client number one.

Number two, she has the ability to determine which workflows go when.

So we're not going to let you start a content strategy unless you have your brand voice, your icps.

Right.

So she's making sure that at least the frameworks are set up in a way that are logical so that you're not having to redo work over and over again.

Once those guardrails are set up, we then create again the knowledge base and the agent base for each of the customers and hand it to them in their chosen AI.

But Scarlett is the owner of it and manages to those agents.

Okay, well that's amazing.

And so you, you're doing agents, you're implementing agents and deploying those for your customers.

And we're going to talk about that a little bit later.

So yeah, so you're a powerhouse as well.

So this is going to be a really fun discussion.

And so for me, CEO of Sierra Crew AI and my background, I started off in the defense sector and so I spent a good chunk of my career running large defense intel systems.

So you can think about a large billion dollar Navy drone system.

Right.

So I would lead to some of the big teams that will make sure that that gets built and flown in air through software.

And more recently, before I went out on my own, I ran a 90 million dollar defense contract that was helping 3 million DoD personnel globally to make sure that they had their health benefits, that they can get into the systems, they can get on base.

Right.

So that's where I got my start.

And then when I started Sierra Crew, I, much like you two, started helping small businesses.

And I started off with defense contractors and government contractors to help them to be ready to scale, to get the operations in place, to know how to hit the market better and secure more contracts and grow.

But then AI hit the scene and I figured, I said, you know, I could deliver this better through AI, right?

And so you get the scale, that's where you get the efficiency, you get the cost reduction, and that is what we're doing.

So what we're doing today, and mind you, I just started the AI business really literally six months ago.

And it's been a ride in our business.

We're helping two sets of businesses.

We're helping law firms to automate intake through voice and other technologies as well as home services.

And then we're also helping larger, small.

Larger small businesses that are professional services and mid market companies to implement AI similar to you.

What you two do to implement AI into the business so they can reduce costs, streamline operations and drive revenue.

I think with all of us being here today and your fractional roles, I look at myself as a fractional chief AI officer as well.

Having formerly been a chief operating officer, you two are chief operating officers.

So I think we have this tremendous vantage point of operational leaders within enterprises that can really lend itself to this conversation in a way that we don't always hear.

Right.

You hear, especially if you look at the social media, a lot of these conversations, you have people who are talking about AI from different vantage points, but, you know, but from being inside, inside the bubble, seeing where everything grows, breaks, and everything in between, this is a fascinating conversation.

All right, so now that we understand.

Who we are, I want to say you're not on fire, you're nuclear.

Absolutely.

I mean, incredible.

Well, ingenious to actually capture fractional AI because I think that that will be that next level of phenomena.

So being at the forefront of that trailblazing, that is spot on.

I think that's brilliant.

Yeah, I think it is.

As I want to introduce that today.

Yeah, right.

Good for you.

Get it ahead.

Take it.

All right.

All right, you ready?

Okay.

So now that we've gotten to know ourselves and all this, got to know who we are and where we've come from and how we got our seats.

Let's now talk about what we're doing with businesses and how we are and how you guys are implementing AI within businesses, small, mid market to help them to reduce costs, streamline operations and drive revenue.

Now we already started that conversation in the introductions, but let's get a little more deeper into that.

So just start with you.

What are you doing with your clients and your fractional role and how is Ops IQ helping to drive that as well?

Yeah, I'll actually share it in two examples.

So I have a client right now that does a lot in the corporate government contracting space.

One of the things that we wanted to align was someone that could help with what are the proposal writing needs of the team dynamic.

Right.

And so, you know, before, you know, I'm always looking for the efficiencies, you know, where are the cost opportunities here?

Is this something that you know, is repeatable in so many situations that we could layer in some agentix to fulfill some to facilitate that work?

Right.

And so that is something that we're currently investigating for them.

Does that make sense, you know, to level that in?

And again, putting the guardrails so that the information can stay protected in a space that is only solely owned and operated through them.

Because that'll be important, especially working in the, as you know, the government space.

So those are always the first ways that I go about it when working with them in a fractional role.

The chief operating officer is looking for those spaces where it makes sense.

I am not and I want to be clear, I'm not eliminating the human capital.

I just want to make sure the human capital is in places where we really can optimize the benefits of having it.

Right.

So where it really requires intellectual property and skill set matter that can't be automated.

In essence, that is where I'm always going to be a leading proponent.

So that's an example of how I work within the fractional space in justifying Agentix and the abilities of utilizing AI beyond just the normal day to day of what everyone should be doing.

I mean my 80 year old mother is using ChatGPT.

If she can do it at 80, we should all be using it at some level of skillset, right?

Absolutely.

But then also within Ops iq, we use it not only for the subscribers, but we also have some licensing partnerships where we are pulling, like you said, it's data rich if you can allow for it to be.

We create these spaces of pulling some very data rich information that is only accessible and proprietary to those licensees so that now they have really a story that they can tell in a very succinct matter as to deliver deliverables, engagement, how things are working, where they're seeing benefits, where they're seeing the bottlenecks amongst their subscribers that they have within the platform.

And that has really become of huge benefit to the point where my team is like, hey, I think we should be selling this more frequently.

And I'm like, yes, as it's needed.

Right.

But within the subscriber base, the ability for them to cut time.

I just did a report this week, you know, amongst our current subscriber base, they have saved over 250 hours in the month in just facilitating what we have provided with for them as well as the customization of what's being done through the agentix within the platform.

So, you know, if I can live that testament and say, hey, you know, you add up the dollars to that, I think that that's a huge economic boost.

That's what I'm going to take from it.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

So you mentioned a couple of things you mentioned for your government contractors kind of automating using AI to do proposals.

And we're starting to see that proliferate a little bit more across the sector.

I've done the same thing.

So for my clients who need proposals done, actually built an app to put in place all the pieces to, to automate, or at least speed up, let me say automate, but speed up the proposal writing process and also the decision intelligence that goes behind that.

Right.

So should you bid and should you not bid?

And so AI is really helping, as you just said, really helping to fast forward and shrink that time so you can think about if it's a, a decent sized proposal, let's just say $5 million proposal for federal state government, that time for all involved, it could be north of 40 hours or to even 80 hours to get that done.

Once you put AI in there and you do it correctly, you have right guardrails, you have the right synthesis of the data and you make sure you have the right formulas and what it's going to output, that 40 hours can shrink to five.

You're talking about tremendous cost savings or solve for that.

So then your other point you mentioned, which was you're not going to replace people, right?

One of the things I tell clients that or prospective clients, there's, there's this concern about, hey, I don't want to get rid of my people.

And the one thing I tell them both is all of them is you don't have, don't think about getting rid of your people.

Think about how you can deploy those people to do the activities within the business that drive the business, how to drive more revenue, how do you make it more efficient, those are the things that are worthy of your skills in your mind.

Let AI do all the mundane stuff.

And that's what we're talking about today.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I think it's very important.

And even in this scenario, right, when you bring in that $5 million contract, who's going to fulfill the work?

Well, it's the person that you were pulling in to help draft the proposal.

Well, now see how the bottleneck occurs.

Well, let's put it in the right place.

Right.

So that the person who needs to fulfill the work of the $5 million contract doesn't get bombarded with needing to go and fulfill now proposal drafts.

It's quite simple.

It really is.

But you know, we make it a little more harder than what it really needs to be, you know.

Oh yeah, but it's a mental block, right?

It's a hurdle, you know, as technology evolves and we've seen these massive evolutions happen and everyone gets stuck in what the old framework was in the old model and it takes some time to get to get them to adjust to the new model.

Right.

So Marcella, how are you implementing?

And you and you and you've talked about your, your core agent that you're deploying.

Scarlett, Scarlet Girl that is going Scarlet girl that orchestrates everything else.

So how is Scarlett helping to reduce cost and bring in more money?

I couldn't agree more.

It's all about efficiency of human capital.

So we believe every small business owner wears hats.

The CEO hat, the CMO hat, the CFO hat, COO hat.

Did I say that one already?

You've got the cso, they don't even know.

Small business owners tend not to know what all these things are.

But we come from enterprise and we know what each of those roles mean.

And the supporting actors, if you will, beneath each of those.

If a business owner is not thinking through each hat consistently, growth stops.

It's a machine, it's a clock.

It has to function that way.

As a coo, our job is to make sure that clock is functioning.

And because we have this experience, we understand the actors underneath it.

I agree with you.

Not every single actor needs to be a full time actor.

But the people that you have that important human capital must be used efficiently.

So what we do is make sure that those efficiencies are in place.

Every business is different.

But if we can minimize the amount of time they're worried about the tasks that they hate doing, stick their head in the sand to do because they're not the cfo, I don't want to do my books.

I don't want to sit with my bookkeeper and prepare for tax season.

Right.

If we can remove that, if Scarlett, if you will, AI can remove that fear or that roll of the eye moment.

We're already saving you stress and we're saving you bad use of time.

So I'm with you.

That, to me, is the most important thing that I've seen coming out of this.

So what does that mean?

That means that when we interview as a fractional coo, we come in with our frameworks, we ask the questions that we ask everybody.

I can very quickly tell, human to human, where you have fears, where you're sticking your head in the sand, and we pull those out right away.

The beauty of AI is I don't have to give you the same report as I give another customer.

I can name that report differently.

I can deliver that report in the language that you use with parentheses.

This is margin.

This is cash flow, so that the owner becomes confident in the data that they're reviewing.

Data is the most critical component to any business.

And most business owners are not trained to do government work.

Drones, government contract.

That's not what they're there to do.

They want to mow lawns, they want to deliver their architectural designs, they want to deliver.

They want to do a great job being general contractors.

They don't want to have to remember those things.

So the job of AI is to help you manage across those things so that the human capital that you have supporting them learns and is efficient in doing it, and so that you can roll up all of that information into digestible chunks of content that you actually don't hate to look at every two weeks, every month, whatever that timeframe is.

So that's the job I think, that we can all do for these small business owners.

So back to how we do that.

I think the most critical example I can give you is the know your numbers framework for these business owners.

We uncover bookkeeping issues, we uncover lack of data entry, where it should go.

Why?

Because AI can tell you those things.

In the past, you would have to pay 175 to $300 an hour for a CPA to look at your books, and that's going to cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.

You do need a CPA for tax strategy.

You do need a CPA for planning purposes.

You do not want to pay a CPA to just take a look at your books every month.

Your bookkeeper is cheaper than a cpa.

So it's not that you don't need those people.

It's what are they telling you and how are they describing it to you?

So those functions, those hats and the reporting and the activity underneath them can be automated so that you're making the right growth decisions for the business.

And that's what we focus on.

So we audit.

We make sure that the reporting and the activity make sense in the timeframes in which the business needs.

So if going back to the marketing hat, the CMO hat, if you have a website and you are not updating it at least weekly now, you're not going to show up on search.

Do you really want your employees worried about whether or not you're publishing a blog post every week in the right voice, SEO optimized, etc.

Etc.

You don't have to.

You're now spending two hours a month instead of 20 hours a month doing marketing planning.

So it changes how you use your time.

And what does that employee now get to do?

If she's not posting to a blog and worrying about publishing to social X times a week, she gets to use her brain for much cooler things.

You're going to retain your employees.

Google and the search engine are going to find your business.

And that same thinking can be applied across every piece of your operations.

So finding those efficiencies as our number one job and then executing them across each of those small businesses the way they need could only be done because of AI.

Now, how many hours would we spend doing this in consulting?

I mean, onboarding a client.

How long did you say?

I still, I'm like, oh, I can't believe I just onboarded someone this fast.

This, even for ourselves as consultants, onboarding used to take 15, 20 hours and you could never bill enough for that.

You know, you can never bill enough for that.

You gave them a fee and you, because you love what you're doing, you ended up spending 50 hours and you bill 20.

Right?

We all did that.

Here we are.

So you bring up really great points, right?

They each, each AI has a role in the AI marketplace today.

They're calling it AI employees.

As you create these employees to do some of these functions.

Marketing, finance, creating your books and other workflows in a manual today by people who are trained.

The question then becomes, well, who is managing those employees?

Who's hiring those employees?

Who's creating a job description?

Who's making sure they do what they need to do and so that they don't drift off and start doing things that's not in a job description.

As both of you think about that we now have the AI workforce.

What role comes in to make sure that those AI employees are doing what they, what they need to be doing to bring them the maximum benefit to the operation and also they continue to produce the results.

Yeah, I think you treat your AI employee like you would human capital employee.

They should be assigned KPIs.

You should be able to see their deliverables.

You know, my example back to my consultancy client, right.

We want a win rate of 60% or higher against those proposals that this AI agent would be drafting.

That is where you set that benchmark and then we're going to monitor it to ensure that that's happening.

If not, we know that we have something wrong obviously within how we built it out.

So we need to go back in and re engineer that to ensure we can see that happening the way that we design.

But yeah, they absolutely should have KPIs.

So is your AI employee going to present at the monthly meeting on The API the KPIs?

Yeah, absolutely.

We should be able to see, see it in the data.

Right?

I mean that should be absolutely a critical part of building out and ensuring that we're scaling it the right way.

So yeah,.

This is where new opportunities are arising.

I think your fractional AI expertise is a perfect example of that.

And I believe that even within the company I was at before I was laid off, we were starting to put people into roles of AI reviewers.

You want to make sure that the human in the loop, my co founder Ryan, is that human in the loop for us.

I'll see him up at ungodly hours.

Well, I got a report that Scarlett did this instead of that.

So the guardrails have to be put in place.

And as advanced as everybody thinks, the I'm going to call them desktop AIs are the clauds, the GPTs, et cetera, of the world.

We're not at the point where we're just going to let them run rampant.

There's still a human in the loop element that is so interesting and such great jobs.

We had two interns this summer and part of their job was to review the reporting that came out of Scarlett to make sure that the guardrails remained.

Errors happen, errors happen.

Errors happen.

Absolutely.

And if you don't have that human brain latched onto those reports, it's the same thing as if you did hire an intern to run your high level finance reporting.

Don't give the employee just yet.

Right.

I still think that it's critical to have that human in the loop check for whoever the head of the agents is.

And that these are going to be really interesting jobs coming up here.

I mean, I can't wait to see where all of these young adults getting out of college just going to jump right in and be able to do it.

Absolutely.

There's a, there's a statistic out of Salesforce that says 91% of the small businesses that actually implement AI into their business, they actually see revenue growth.

Right.

And I think we're saying that.

Right.

Well, and I want to be clear.

There's one thing in what is revenue growth, there's another thing in what is cash flow.

So if they're able to cash flow because of it.

Now you're into the secret sauce.

Absolutely.

Right.

So that, that, that's where I think AI in early adaption within business dynamics is really going to be beneficial.

Beneficial.

The human capital side of it.

Right.

Does address your cash flow, you know, so, you know, it's all in how you look at it.

But I'm always of the opinion, cash is king.

We're gonna be best friends.

Cash is king.

Well, you know the one thing I say, if you don't have revenue, you don't have cash.

So.

But your cash can go very fast even when your revenue numbers are high.

Absolutely.

Right.

So, and I do want to piggyback on what Marcella said, because even within OPS iq, although I have these wonderful agents, within the platform, there is human capital.

I have a C suite of advisors that I curated just to ensure that what that founder is seen as a subscriber, they can vet it against what is the human capital of an Omar Ritter who is a cfo.

Right.

So that they know that those numbers or the strategy and their thoughts to what they're going to do next is being vetted by someone who has that level of expertise.

Absolutely.

And so I agree with you that there's still that need of having that touch point for sure.

And I also believe, I don't want to steal the show, but because of this, those students that are going to be coming out of the academia side of things is forcing them to have to think different, differently.

It no longer can you just adjust to.

And I'm not faulting anyone.

My degree in essence probably is this a general studies type mindset.

You're going to have to really dig in deep into some very linear or thought processes and specific specialties.

And I think that is what's going to really create the dynamic in even academia.

No, I absolutely agree.

Thinking about the customers that we've served and speaking to cash flow.

When you look at, let's say you're your small law firm or your service based business and they're looking at implementing AI to save money and to automate some of their intake, some of their customer interface, all of those things.

The one thing we're seeing is that by doing that they're, they're increasing their revenue by at least 25%.

Right?

Because now you have automations taking over customer intake, client intake and then, and not just intake, but also the next step in the client journey.

In the customer journey, right.

So for an example, if you have a law firm that just has people answering the phone during the day and that's it.

Well now you implement AI.

Now someone could call at 7pm AI picks up the call, handles that new client, that information gets put into the legal CRM and then within a matter of seconds that same new client now gets a retainer agreement in your email and they get an invoice and now you have a prospective person who needs it, let's say get out of jail, right?

Within seconds they called and now they retained client in a matter of seconds.

And so when you look at revenue generation, revenue increase, you know, that's a really crystal clear example of how AI is really helping to advance businesses.

And it's come to the point where if you don't have AI in your business, you're losing.

Right?

And so yeah, so, and that's, and so that's an employee, right?

So we talk about AI employees.

This is your, from a law firm perspective, that's your law firm intake specialist, right?

It gives from call to client just like that.

And so that kind of stuff gets me excited.

You know, we worked with a, with a mining company in the Middle East a while back and their issue was again, this is about time.

They were really concerned that the engineers were spending tons of time reviewing engineering documents and specifications, trying to make sure that they matched up to the standards.

And so these are people with master's degrees, PhDs in engineering and they're reading these 40 page engineering documents trying to make sure that they meet spec, right?

They say, okay, this PhD is spending five hours plus reading these documents and just making sure they meet spec or identifying where they don't.

We want to get rid of that.

What happens?

Implement AI solution.

Now that five hours becomes one, I.

Want to jump in and call out employee development in that cycle.

Because one of my examples similar to yours is one of our customers has a, they do architectural support, design work and I was in the office watching them Read pen spreadsheets they printed out.

And my heart immediately like, what are.

They said, hold on.

And one of the other things that we had spoken about was whether or not the employees were using their time efficiently.

Some of them had complaints about not being able to do A, B or C within the timeframe of their job.

By moving that review digitally and knowing that AI can now capture those change management notes, we were able to see that it was a specific error that kept happening over and over again.

It was not a system wide error.

It was a person who didn't realize he or she was making that particular mistake because somebody was just redlining and moving fast.

Because it's a small business.

Right.

We don't have time to think too much or now we paused, we fixed the issue by developing that person, training them hours, hours a week, stress gone.

And they were able to now look at how else we can improve that workflow because it's being documented digitally.

Listen, we probably could have taken pictures of three months of data rather than waited a month.

But we went ahead and did it electronically.

But I said, listen, if you guys have old ones, let's take pictures.

And I'm sure it can still digest it and mark those changes.

But the point is those efficiencies are going to drive employee retention.

It's going to improve your customer satisfaction because things are moving faster and you're delivering better documents right off the bat.

So, and I imagine that the employee retention, because now you're training them photos, higher level thinking activities.

Right.

Things that actually contribute to the growth of the company, not just the mundane things.

So you're training them on how to use AI to do their job.

Yes, right.

And to do it better and more efficient and to drive output for the company.

Right.

So yeah, that's, yeah, I would challenge to those small businesses as they're seeing the efficiencies, as they're seeing the revenue growth.

Where does innovation now take you?

Because this is your opportunity to really now set yourself apart from what is your competition is because you're able to leverage that.

So where is that innovation coming?

What I love the most about the job we do is watching their brains turn on when they realize how much data can help them.

As soon as they can see that, because they understood this data point, oh well, what about this one and what about that one?

And we tell them if you're doing the same thing more than five times, we should look at it.

And the companies that are doing the best today are those that already have standard operating procedures and the ones that are going to see the most efficiencies are those that we create SOPs for.

It is the dorkiest but the funnest moment when I see them coming to us be like, we want this to become a data point.

It didn't exist before, but now with the support of AI, they're not afraid to look at it that way.

And it's my favorite moment.

We're all becoming data geeks.

I love it because you have to have those processes so that you can improve.

Yeah, you just touched on something.

Right.

When you work with clients and you move them from one place to before AI and then after AI and then the transformation that happens and the aha moments that happen.

Had a client, head of a small consultancy and it was a real estate development and community, community development consultancy.

And so they would take on these engagements to help cities and private organizations figure out how to maximize real estate use and all of the things around it.

But what was happening was it would take them weeks to gather all of the data.

Right.

So they would have like 15 data sources.

They would have to comb and pull and then collect and synthesize before they could come up with some, any kind of insights around what their client should be doing next.

Well, of course what we did was we built out some AI workflows and you know, between ChatGPT, NotebookLM and Claude, next thing you know that that multi week process was shrunk down to two hours and the minds were blown.

And then they started to think about, well okay, now that I have all this extra time, what else could we do?

Right.

To move this client engagement forward to help them maximize this real estate opportunity.

Yeah.

So it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Yeah.

So.

We started talking about this.

Agents, AI agents.

Right.

So the AI agents are like taking over.

Right.

They're, they're running out companies and they going rogue.

Right.

But they're also making people a lot of money.

And so let's talk about the agentics and you know, and all of us are employing agents with our clients in our own businesses.

And Todd, you and your OPS iq, you have agents in the background that are helping your subscribers.

So you know, talk about how agents are helping to increase knowledge to speed things up and produce greater outcomes in your OPS IQ or in the clients that you're serving as coo.

Yeah, definitely within OPS iq where it's already early on adapted, just being able to have better clarity in customization of those sops, of the different abilities to see forecasting and things of that nature.

Have really been at the critical point of our ability to deliver to the subscribers.

I shared with you last week.

I think that we've got right, right now four, three or four into platform and I'm hoping to have another three or four more before the end of this year because I see areas where I'm like, oh, okay, this could help in this scenario or in that scenario.

And so again, I'm not trying to discredit the need for the human capital because I do see still very much so the value in having that curated C suite to vet the things that we're getting out of the Agentix.

But I also see where it can definitely continue to support and enhance the deliverables and the experience for our subscribers.

And so that, that is something that I'm excited about and look forward to as we move forward.

As far as for my clients, although they see me doing it and using it, you know, there's still a lot to.

It is an investment up front.

Let's be clear.

You know, it's not your $20 a month.

I got chat GPT, you know.

No, it costs a little bit of money because you have got to train it.

It has to start to identify with, with what is that workflow, what is the materials that it's sourcing.

So there is some effort up front.

There is that investment up front.

But I would tell you it is better for me to have done that to spend $50,000 on an employee, train them up, have to pay, you know, what are premiums and insurance, you know, all of the benefits on top of that, for them to leave me within six months.

And that's a reality check.

You know the one, you know the, the thing they say about AI they say AI doesn't get an attitude, it doesn't sleep.

I don't know about that.

We can talk a lot about that.

Some days quad.

Is quad accurate?

Yes, Uncle Claude, Absolutely.

And sometimes GPT needs to stop trying to be human.

Yes, that's my biggest.

Yeah, so I don't know about that.

But.

But they do work around the clock and you don't have to feel bad.

About it and don't call in sick.

Right, right.

That's for sure.

Yeah, sometimes.

Well, yeah, that can happen too.

Right.

It isn't a perfect science yet.

And I think that's why having companies like ours be the checkpoint is important because it's what we're doing.

So thinking that it's a set it and forget it is the biggest mistake you'll make.

And if you don't know how to put those guardrails around it.

You're going to wake up with a bad email having gone out to your customers.

So, so it's not set it and forget it.

There is a human cost to us so that we can develop these things right.

For each customer.

Even if we have that core Scarlet or that core base that we've built from our own frameworks, and I'll say 30 ish plus years of experience, that's what we've put into our businesses, is all of that knowledge just inherently baked in.

But the muffins that come out of that are those trays that come out for each specific small business.

That takes maintenance.

And so it's important to make sure that if you are doing it yourself, you do not think this is a set it and forget it situation.

Absolutely.

If your company's baking muffins, I'm coming there, I'm going to work for your business.

If we figure that out, I'll just say sit in my house and eat muffins all day.

Right.

So the, the, the thing you, you're talking about, Marcella, is governance.

Yes, absolutely.

And so you have to govern AI in total to stop, to make sure it doesn't drift, make sure that they don't hallucinate.

When hallucination and drift is for those who are not AI literate just yet.

But you know, the AI doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

Sometimes it makes up things to the cite sources that don't exist.

Right.

It will not follow the rules and instructions you gave it.

Right.

It would change something.

Exactly.

And so you need, and this is the human piece, right?

The human in the loop is necessary to make sure that it doesn't do those things.

So when it starts to do those things, you put it back on track, slap its hand.

Yeah, exactly.

So example, law firms, for example, right.

It's one of our key clients, what we're seeing and is where we're being asked to help with governance, even cybersecurity, for example.

Because now you get agents running, running around, and they start to go rogue.

And now you need something to control all of that.

But let's say law firms, for example, say a decent sized law firm, 25 plus attorneys, they all have different clients and so they're working in their systems, Harvey, whatever it is, and they're creating client files and they're using legal research and all of these things to create client files.

But guess what?

All of that been done in AI, they're using AI to help produce that now what you have to worry about, what the attorneys have to worry about is the same research and data that's being used and one client files is now bleeding over to the other attorney's client file and you don't even know it.

Right.

And so governance is critically important because guess what?

Law firms are controlled by the bar.

Right.

So you know, you can't, you can't go into court.

Right.

With, with bad data, which is what's happening.

And so as AI begins is proliferating, is becoming more and more a part of our society and how businesses operate.

You know, we're hearing the concern about people being let go, but now we're seeing that no, the people can't be let go.

People needed to actually to manage, to.

Provide the governance itself.

Exactly.

We have an insurance agent that came to us for web fix my website and when we analyzed the information on it, we found that the vendor they were using had in essence copied and used the same content across multiple insurance sites.

Doesn't sound so bad, but if you're trying to be a thought leader in your space and you want to then use that information for LinkedIn or the distribution of your brand so that you can drive more customers, you're going to end up with pie on your face.

Eventually this information does leak out.

And so making sure that you have your voice baked into what you're doing and the governance is making sure that the information that we're creating on your behalf is unique, that it does sound like you, and that when you are providing a similar service to an insurance agent in another region, because we don't compete within the same space for our customers, that they are unique in their voice, it makes them think.

Everybody's saying this.

We have to push to think differently so that you yourself are differentiated as a leader.

So I agree with what you said earlier.

It's pushing people to be more mindful, it's pushing you to think differently and your niche matters.

Being a generalist is not going to drive that differentiation.

And that's the beauty of all of this.

You can go really deep now because perplexity brought you all of this research.

But you, the leader of this company, need to decide what you want to use and how you want to sound.

So while we don't do deeply compliance, compliance driven companies like Legal, the pieces that we're working on or the content that we're working on, we make sure is heavily guarded.

We make sure all the disclaimers are there, We've spoken to attorneys to make sure that we're being those disclaimers are now covering the AI challenge, if you will.

And for small business owners that are using AI, you have to make sure that your insurance is covering you.

Because even the insurance game, which I have now learned, has changed since the advent of AI so it's no longer just a generalist policy that you may need, depending on the work product that you're creating.

And that's really important too.

Absolutely.

Well, and to your point, for those small businesses that have clients that require compliance.

So if you're working with someone in finance, if you're working with someone in the medical system, you are required to come to the table with the insurance coverage, with the compliancy and disclosures in order to even be able to work with them, knowing that you have the AI technology in the background.

So you know it is the smarter you can become in understanding that and not just, oh, let me go and get an agent and I'm going to put it in there.

And no, you.

There's a lot more that you have to think about than just the creative tool itself, if you will.

Really good point.

Right.

We're expanding the conversation a little bit more beyond AI, but for AI.

So this conversation is about insurance, right, Having a coverage.

So I'm thinking about someone I know that's a tax strategist and they're adding bookkeeping to their offerings.

And so, and this, this person decided to use Claude, say, hey, okay, you know what?

Instead of me going out hiring bookkeepers, Claude is really good with, with numbers and she, she runs things through, Claude goes through and cleans the books up.

Right?

So now so does that person, this, this bookkeeper, this tax person needs to have AI coverage for the business?

Absolutely, 100%.

And again, everyone, if, if you are listening and you walk away with one tip, it's call your business insurance agent and make sure that the coverage you had for digital product creation, anything like that, is still applicable to AI because it's changing.

It's going to be more expensive, but it's changing.

So please make sure that you've checked in on that because you do not want to find that you're not covered if a mistake is made.

Humans can make mistakes too.

That's okay.

But you want to be covered.

And then I would call your legal advice.

Amen.

That you've got those disclosures in place also as another form of coverage.

You know, it's interesting.

I had a wealth management advisor call on me recently and she was like, hey, I'm taking notes through my AI.

I Was like, that's fine, I'm used to that.

And then I would love to recap this for you.

And she's trying to get my business.

She wants my business.

My name was misspelled throughout the whole recap.

And I simply went back to her.

I said, even in the fact of having the efficiency, a simple overview would have given you an opportunity at New Money.

My name being misspelled leads me to believe you are not very careful with how you are handling your AI, even in the simplest of forms.

That's where I think we are just mishandling how to appropriately.

AI is not a license to be lazy, Correct?

Amen.

Yes.

And so as we move into our last phase of this conversation, you know, we're starting to talk, tee up conversations for the small business owner, right?

So we have business owners or budding or aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking at AI and seeing people make a lot of money, right?

And so.

And they're trying to figure out how can they make money as well in AI.

What would you say are the top one or two things they should do first when figuring that out and what the next step should be to make money in AI?

So I'm gonna.

My new best friend just laid it out, right?

So if it's something you're repeating multiple times, that's the ideal place to think about is the automation and use of AI Makes sense in this space.

Now let me share how then you convert on that.

Okay.

So now I've taken the talent that was doing said task from doing that task, and I'm going to put them now in a space where I should be able to generate a multiple on their expertise because I've put them in the right alignment, right?

So it don't look at AI as being the single source of revenue increase.

It's how you then realign your resources within your business or how you then are going to implement efficiencies that will give you the additional increase in revenue.

It's not just on the technology itself.

That's my view.

Agree.

Bff, you asked about starting a business and the one thing that's driving me insane right now, and I think the imposter syndrome in me starts to kick in, is everybody's out there yapping about how much money they're making with AI.

Listen, I hope it's true.

Yeah, good for them.

The reality is if you are starting a business and you don't have an expertise, AI is not going to give that to you.

So my recommendation is if you are thinking about starting a Business, understand.

Use AI to understand what you're passionate about, what your expertise is and then find gaps within your potential customers and where you can provide that expertise.

AI itself is not the magic bullet, I'm going to say yet.

I don't, you know, I think I was going to say five years, I don't know what a year from now, three years from now it's going to bring, but you have to really find a niche.

Do not think that being a generalist, I am an AI expert, is going to drive that success.

It's not the magic bullet.

So that's my one is, is really figure out and have a good chat.

Listen, I talked to chat GPT in the shower constantly because that's when my brain is at rest, right?

And I'm like, oh, this, that and the other thing.

Great.

Figure out what that specialty is and then go find gaps where you can use AI to drive that efficiency within general contracting bakeries.

Wherever your passion sits, go do it.

So that's the key thing for me, that's the magic bullet is what is your passion and your expertise and then work backwards from that.

The other thing that I think we're all in agreement on is you have to understand your processes in order to become more efficient so that you can grow faster.

With AI, it's not going to figure them out for you because it's not a robot yet that's walking around.

And I think that's the beauty of being a chief operating officer.

That role, that hat is the hat that gets to walk through every single, let's call it, office in your space, whether it's remote offices or real offices.

We get the benefit of seeing how it works across the room and glue it together.

And I think that glue is AI.

But you have to understand how your business works to drive the revenue, to drive the growth.

Without that, you're just wasting more time because how many, I mean, come on, we've all spent a lot of extra time just figuring it out.

But to me those are the two, two big things that I think are important to take away from this.

Yeah, I agree.

I think that figuring out, well, one, learn AI, right?

Learn the main tools, learn ChatGPT, Claude even just to start and understand how to create projects and how to create skills.

Those are to me is the foundations of being able to provide any kind of AI service.

And sorry to interrupt, but Claude has incredible self serve videos to start with.

Yes, they have a certification, really good job of that.

Yeah, yeah.

So I just want to inject that in because I see a lot of people trying to charge for Claude training.

And please, at least start with the free tools that are available to you and then pay up for the extra expertise you need.

So I just wanted to plug that in.

No, it's good.

I actually forget there's a.

There's a.

A course that Claude has, like a cloth skill certificate, something like that.

Right.

And it's like 25 bucks, something really nominal.

And so that's what.

So that's why I say start is learn the foundations of the AI tools, the ones that.

That drive real output and productivity.

And then to your point is figure out what your passion is.

Then you got to figure out what the market, who, who you want to serve.

Right.

And.

And so when you line all those things up now you have a way to actually generate revenue because you're serving someone who needs.

Who needs that service that you're providing via AI.

And the whole point of AI is to help them make more money, save time and save money.

Right.

So if you can do those three things, then, you know, now you cook with grease, you get cash flow.

Cash flow.

And the ability to innovate.

Yeah, and ability to innovate.

Because Biggie said cash rules everything around me.

Right?

That's right.

That's it.

All right, so we have had a robust and a dang, you know, thoughtful conversation.

Let's hit what we call the lightning round.

All right, so.

And you both answered the question each.

So what's the one agent or workflow that every business should have working?

The one AI agent or workflow?

Well, I think customer client acquisition could absolutely be one of the easiest workflows to implement.

Perfect.

Without the customer, you don't have a business.

Absolutely.

Marcelo, the number checker.

Which tool,.

Claude?

And we use Manus SOC 2.

So the key there is SOC 2 compliance.

You have to make sure that anything you're using with your Numbers has it.

SoC2 compliance.

Yeah, I think I'm saying that.

Right.

Socks.

Socks, yeah.

So that you're not leaking again, there's always a risk.

But that you're not leaking information inappropriately.

So, Claude, and man is for that reason.

But to me, the number checker is really important.

You have experts that do their job, the bookkeepers, et cetera.

But.

But let's make sure that they're doing it right and that you know how to read those numbers.

All right, that's.

That's perfect.

What's the one thing that's getting hyped up too much in AI?

That won't matter in 18 months.

My opinion would be some of these certifications that we talked about a little bit, you know, I think that there's too many and no one who.

Who's really identifying them, who really is.

Requiring them, who's behind them.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Prompting.

I think prompting or the perfect prompt will go away.

I think with voice and talking to AI, you're able to get to a place where they're smart enough to then give you the prompt back.

I test it all the time, and using voice to speak in and getting the prompt out is always better than anything I can come up with myself.

So I think prompting will be a.

Thing of the past, you know, Good point.

I actually have started to come to the place where prompts are getting replaced by agents.

Right.

So before, you know, just.

Just a few months ago, everything was about the prompt, the prompt and make sure it was.

And people selling prompt packs.

Right.

Sending prompt kits and all of that.

And now those things are free, and now people are selling agents.

Right.

So.

No, I totally agree.

I think that was being overhyped right now we actually touched on it is how much money you want to make.

Yeah, yeah, Right.

Because it comes down to the core, core business idea and understanding is you have to have a product that somebody wants, has to solve a problem.

That's the reason why they want it.

And you got to know who you're selling it to.

And guess what?

You got to.

You got to know how to sell it.

And you're the marketing guru, right?

So you can't.

Market has to be trust.

It has to be trust in the.

People that are selling it to you.

And that's why I hate that hype, this hype tech culture that we're in with AI right now, because we look at.

We get inbounds every day for the sales side.

That's definitely where we need the most help.

And the folks that pitch us or send us information we can deeply analyze.

I'm like, who are you?

Where'd you come from?

Where did you come from?

Or worse yet, why are you hiding?

Yeah, why can I not find you on LinkedIn?

So trust has to become top of the heap, because anybody can literally start a business today.

But to your point about even the certifications, who's behind it?

That's key.

All right, so last one.

What specific action would you tell someone to take today regarding AI?

I think it's just a matter of simple usage.

Just start adapting it into your own lifestyle.

Spend time with it in the shower if you haven't already done that.

My Husband's going to, you know, I'm.

Going to get a ticket because I'm always talking to mine while I'm driving.

But just simple adaptation of it in your everyday use, I think is the first starting point.

Agreed.

Once you get there.

Quality assurance.

Quality assurance.

What's the biggest question mark you have about your website?

What's the biggest question mark you have about a spreadsheet?

Quality assurance.

If there's one task that this does a wonderful job with, that's not difficult is please QA blank.

For me, it has saved me hundreds of hours queuing a website, hundreds of hours understanding whether there's metadata on a website.

Little QA tasks will drive marketing.

Right.

Will drive trust because you don't have misspellings on your website.

Simple things that will help you clean up and look more professional.

That's my tip.

What are those cleanup things?

Start there.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, I would just.

And my one little scent on that is have AI check AI.

So the first output that comes out, don't just take it.

One thing I like to do is say validate your answers with data and research and they go back and it will check everything you told me and say, oh, yeah, we actually got that wrong.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So it's back to your quality assurance.

But absolutely, you know, a specific way.

To do, do it or use another AI to QA the AI.

That's my favorite.

My Claude said this and Gemini said that.

And then Perplexity comes back with a wonderful additional set of feedback for you because you've already told it very honestly, hey, your competitor over here did this and this one said that and you just get richer data for it.

So you just name four subscriptions.

I know that's 80 bucks right there.

You just.

We're not talking cogs.

Okay, there we go.

To be made.

Done.

So, yeah, but I, I think we just had a wonderful discussion.

So we've talked about all the ways to install AI employees into a business and manage the employees and set up workflows and so we can run the businesses more efficient.

We have talked about how small businesses can use AI and implement agents and to make sure that you set up your company such that you don't replace the people that we're using the people for higher value activities within the business and let AI take over.

Mundane.

And we've now told budding entrepreneurs how they can become, you know, they can generate revenue in AI.

So, yeah, I think this is, this is excellent.

It's a wonderful contribution to the space so before we close out, just like to ask you all a question.

Marcella, how can people follow up with you and understand what you do in your services?

Great.

You can find us at ready plan grow, LinkedIn, Marcello Schein.

We are the real humans behind anybody that sends us messages there [email protected] we have plenty of contact forms and all the good stuff there, so definitely join us.

For small businesses that want to learn this but cannot afford the fractional COOs, CMOs, et cetera as yet.

We do have a membership and our goal is to just arm you with knowledge so that you're, in essence, not being taken advantage of when you are buying other services, when you are trying to plan for growth.

So that's how you can find me.

Excellent.

All right, Taja?

Yes.

So you can find me.

Obviously, LinkedIn.

Taja Graham is my handle there.

OpsIQ Biz has a LinkedIn profile there as well.

Ops IQ Biz is our website, TMG Solutions Advisors for the consultancy.

So all three are on LinkedIn as well and have their own website pages.

Oh, that's excellent.

And Sierra Crew can be [email protected] and we actually have an AI readiness assessment on the site such that any company that wants to figure out the next step in the AI journey with the business can get a free score and figure out where to start.

We're on LinkedIn, we're on IG, we're on TikTok, and we're on Facebook with Sierra Crew, so.

All right, Well, I really appreciate the powerhouse ladies here, the operational executives contributing to this conversation, and I think we've done something great today for the community around AI and learning how to use it to move society and our own businesses forward.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.