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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
AI in marketing, business operations, industrial automation, public speaking, business coaching, AI tools, ChatGPT, Opus Clips, video content, social media, customer experience, self-service, execution, seizing opportunity.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, John D. Hanson, Speaker 1
Damon Pistulka 00:07
Alright, everyone, welcome once again to the face of the business. I am your host, Damon pistolka, and I am so excited for our guest today, because we have John D Hanson here today talking about how AI is changing marketing and business operations. So excited to have you here today, John, I always enjoy
John D. Hanson 00:30
our conversations. Damon, because the big giveaway is, when the time flies, you’re like, holy smokes, we’re already have had a discussion for 3540 minutes, like, Where does the time go? That’s a great sign.
Damon Pistulka 00:41
Yes it is. Yes it is always fun talking to you. So John, like we always do on the show, let’s do a little introduction to John D Hansen, who he is, what he’s about, what he’s up to. Gotcha.
John D. Hanson 00:56
So there are three things I’m up to. One is that I returned to B to B sales in industrial automation did that before. Loved it. My business took off so much I was able to go full time. Things slowed down this year, and so I was able to return, at a great offer to work with a industrial automation firm based out of Cincinnati. My area of responsibility is Columbus, Ohio. Love that field, and I know we’ll talk a little bit about that because you also are an industrial automation geek at heart, like I am. That’s one. Number two is I’ve got a combination of public speaking, workshop facilitation and business coaching that I do on the side outside of that, and love those things. And then the third thing is that I’m working on my fifth book that’s going to be coming out this fall, entitled seizing opportunity. So those are the three things I’ve got going on so far. Nice,
Damon Pistulka 01:45
nice. So, yeah, we’re caught. We got to talk about the fifth book. Because, I mean, you’re pretty busy guy in the first place, and you’re on number five. So that’s cool, but let’s go back to the topic at hand, right? Because how AI is changing marketing and business operations. So if you would have had a a crystal ball, say, just six nine months, maybe a year back, would you have ever thought that AI would move this fast?
John D. Hanson 02:18
Partly because I grew up in this Skynet era with Terminator and all that, so there were already concerns that way. What I didn’t anticipate Damon was how it would become an everyday part of my life, in a great way that I didn’t anticipate when I dipped my toe in the water last year, and I’m so glad I did. So while there were concerns about reasonably so how the same kind of concerns about the internet when that came out in the 90s, right? Change is something that humans don’t tend to dive right into, and that’s part of our survival instincts, right? But there’s also always the silver lining and advantages there. So I tend to be entrepreneurial, so I look at things with all right, how can I take advantage of this new tool? And I think that’s helped
Damon Pistulka 03:07
- Yeah, yeah. So what has been one of the things that you’ve seen in marketing and business operations that’s really surprised you about the use of AI,
John D. Hanson 03:17
you know, a friend of mine. I worked with him down in Florida, the Tampa area. He went to pod fest. Nope. Before he went to that, he went to an event hosted by, I believe it’s, is it Blackstone or Black Rock? I think it’s one of those companies, yeah, and it was Microsoft. We had all kinds of incredible tech leaders in the room. What shocked me, Damon was in the room. These are companies with vast resources. The they were still in the slim majority, 15 to 20% of companies that were actively in these are fortune 10, fortune 100 companies that were actively investing into and learning and leveraging AI. So this is on the enterprise level of things, which shocked me, because I thought the companies that have all these resources surely they’ve got to be diving into this. And if that’s the case, then that meant that small, mid sized companies, and definitely Main Street USA, they haven’t even really begun to scratch the surface with this. If enterprise with all these resources isn’t yet, and this was just last year. This is less than a year ago, six maybe eight months ago. That shocked me. That shocked me,
Damon Pistulka 04:31
yeah, that is crazy, because it and I can, I can see, I can see why, though, because a lot of a lot of companies, big and small, yeah, are kind of stuck in the way of the way. I shouldn’t say stuck, but they’re used to doing it the way they are. That’s right. We’re doing it this way. It’s working. Well, I think that’s actually worse than if it’s not working well, true for for change, they’ll continue to go down the same road for a long time. Until they start to see, you know, performance Wayne, that’s right
John D. Hanson 05:03
before that, where it gets to the point of, well, now it’s broke, so maybe we need to fix it. Yeah, proactivity has never been a strong suit, and it’s a challenge the larger the organization is to bring about transformational change. So I totally get it. And this is where small business, or Main Street, USA, they’ve got an advantage over these enterprise sized companies because they’re so agile. They implement something within days, sometimes even hours, where large companies, they’ve got all these levels and decision makers, and so there’s a lot of friction in the process of bringing something like that on board, even though the are so much larger. I mean, yeah, it’s where mid sized companies have an advantage.
Damon Pistulka 05:44
That is, that is an advantage for those smaller companies to really go out on a limb a little bit or explore it a bit more. So let’s, let’s back up and turn, turn to John and go, John, how is AI really impacted your marketing and business operations?
John D. Hanson 06:04
You know, I have to admit I was, I wasn’t a slowest adopter, but I wasn’t the fastest one either, and I had heard of it. I had friends encourage me to use different tools, and I’ve got, like, my top three list of things that I use on a daily basis. But it was the first one, the first toe dip for me in the water was fathom, an AI app that I use now built into my teams anywhere that I meet virtually. It’s built in so it’s automatically, if I have the permission of my guest, automatically recording and summarizing every single virtual conversation I had. I should have been using this so long ago. I used a free version, and even if I wanted to upgrade to the pro version, it’s so affordable. But what I get from that, because I do coaching sessions, right at the end of the coaching session, almost immediately, my clients get a full transcript, word for word, of our conversation. They get a summary with action steps and a business plan. So a few of these, I was helping them put together their business plan because of this tool I don’t have to now transcribe for my handwritten notes, which I still like to do. I just take that, download the full transcript, and I can send that to them. I can send action steps to them. As soon as our conversation is done, you talk about crossing something off your list that gives them next best steps. Oh, game changer. As a coach, I should have been using this years ago. As soon as it came out, I should have been using this. So I’m so glad I adopted that last year. I wish I had done it sooner.
Damon Pistulka 07:35
Yeah, because those I use otter.ai similar tool, you know, and, and they are, it’s, it’s just nuts how your how your whole process changes for a meeting, for review, to go to the next meeting. I mean, that’s what i i Go what? Because I don’t know if you’re like me. My notes are a bunch of squiggles and points and and, you know, I’m going to miss some critical conversations, but being able to go back, look at the AI summary, look at and then go, Okay, this is something that I I need to look at more on and click on it. Go down to the actual words in the transcript. All having all that automatically, you just became that much more effective. Because before that’s just gone, or if I’m if he recorded it on video, you got to go to that spot in the video. You got to think about it. You know, oh my gosh. And I never did that. I’m just gonna be honest. I would never
John D. Hanson 08:33
go, just go off my notes, which are already cryptic. I’m not a stenographer that’s taking down typing or taking down great notes. So it was the highlights of what are, whatever stuck out to me? Yeah, not comprehensive, like this is,
Damon Pistulka 08:46
yeah. So those AI note takers in in the video are great. And we’ve even used it on on just videos, download the videos so you have a transcript, so that you can get get better, just better knowledge base from it. And I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it in just use a ton of ways, ton of ways for for people to do that. Yeah, so note takers, awesome. We’ll we’ll talk about that one a little later, because I think there’s some awesome. There’s some incredible things you can do with that, with some combinations or other tools. So what are some other things that you really see affecting your AI, things that are affecting your business, marketing, operations.
John D. Hanson 09:27
I’m going to say the biggest one for last. So number two is, we’re going up the list for number three to number two to number one. Number two for me is something called Opus clips. I use the free version for that. I tried the the pro version for a little while, and didn’t need that much, that much capacity. What it does is I upload so I do a lot of video content. I upload either the link from my YouTube channel or the raw video, whichever I prefer, I upload that, and within five minutes, I’ve got a full transcript, plus I’ve got bite sized chunks of. Video with transcripts that I can then convert to whatever. And that’s going to take me to the third tool. The advantage of this is, rather than, again, this is like a note taker from video is it’s my content. So I’m very much about original content, and I often just have our bullet points in my mind, and then I start sharing on camera. Well, I want to convert that into social media. How do I do that? And there wasn’t an easy process until I got Opus clips. Now, I take that full video, it’s three minutes or less, it’s a short, and I upload that, and I’ve got bite sized pieces, I’ve got the whole transcript, whatever I want to use, and then that enables me to create long form, short form, written content that I can then put in an email newsletter, I can put into a social media post, do both, yeah, and it take makes it so easy, where it’s done for me in just a few minutes. But then it also plays very well with my number one AI tool that I cannot imagine my life without. Now, Opus clip is the tool that I needed to take this AI tool to the next level. So definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re creating content of any kind. That’s a short form could be long form. You can do up to 10 minutes, I think maybe even up to 10 hours, if you get the more robust version. For me, I was just doing shorts, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 11:24
yeah, and it’s funny, but I actually use that tool as well because, yeah, it’s so good. I mean, when you can, when you can edit videos by just adjusting the the transcript, yep, that, to me, is a game changer, because I’m not going to sit there and try to get to the exact frame, or anything like that. I mean, because for social media, you just really want it impactful, you want it short, you want it to say what you want in that clip. But that was the thing that really hooked me, is to be able to go, okay, take this text out, and the videos adjusted, and then, you know, like you said, you come back a few minutes later, you upload a 40 minute video. You got six to 10 different clips in it. Yep,
John D. Hanson 12:02
boom, yes. Even score it for you. Yes. Based off of the clip, it’ll say, Hey, this is an A plus. It’s got a good hook. It’s got a good content and body to it. It’ll give you a score of those clips it just created for you in five minutes. It’s phenomenal what this tool does. And like you said, I can’t stand editing. There are people that like to that sort of thing. I guess I’m not one of those. So editing, any kind of video editing, oh heck no. This models me, even with a short it clips it for me, and then it gives me the transcript on top of that that I can turn into other kinds of content. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 12:36
that’s great. That’s great. And and when so we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about your third tool, your favorite tool, your most important tool. And I love that we’re getting right into this, because then we can look at the other side of this and how this has helped. So yeah,
Speaker 1 12:53
your your most favorite tool. Oh my gosh, lean on them. The
John D. Hanson 12:59
most favorite that I know I’m still scratching the surface of, and the only reason I say that is because even of the several things I do with it, I know there’s even more that I can do because I have friends that do more with it. Is chat GPT, I started using this last year. Now there are other open AI or even ones that you can pay for. This isn’t the only one. Same with Opus clips. I just did my research. I like the reviews on it. I like the interface. I tried the ones for free and Opus Eclipse is what stuck for me. For video AI, video editing, chat. CPT is my go to I quickly maxed out the free version so I have the paid version. There’s only $20 a month. But what tool does for me? Unbelievable. Now, again, I’m not creating original content with this. What I’m doing is a two step process. So if you’re a creator like me, and you want it to be original, now, if you wanted to spit out from and create from just an outline or something raw, absolutely you can do that for me. I’m a bit of a purist still, and what I do is I take the transcript from my videos, and now, by now, it’s I’ve trained, it’s learned me. Yes, I take that transcript, I say, All right, I want a long form email for my newsletter, and I want short form for my social media posts based off of this transcript. And here’s the topic, here’s what I want to communicate, here’s the theme, and here’s the the tone of it. And then, and literally, a minute or two later, I’ve got the long form email for my newsletter. I’ve got the short form content for my social media, posts, copy and paste, adjust how I like it to sound, put in additional links and hashtags and a process that would have been impossible for me to do keep up with, means that the time it takes for me to be consistently on social media every day has shrunk from where you can’t see my hands to something that’s so manageable that I can’t imagine my life without and that’s just social media I haven’t. There’s other things that I’ve benefited from, all from a creative point, it’s helping me. It’s an optimizer. It’s not taking over my creativity. It’s enhancing it. It’s enabling me to communicate more effectively. It’s making such good use of my time that it enables me to be consistent far better. And then so many people have said, I’m so grateful for your content. That’s so encouraging. I start my day with it. Well, part of that has that I’ve been able to stay with it is because I take the video and with the help of chat GPT and Opus clips, I turn it into content that resonates with people. And that’s the biggest way that I use chat GPT on a regular basis, every day.
Damon Pistulka 15:42
Yeah, that’s very cool. Yeah, that’s very cool. Incredible.
John D. Hanson 15:45
Once you go down the road, believe me, I was a purist, too, you go down that road just a little bit, and the time it’s going to save you and still keep it authentic to how you would talk in front of others. It’s incredible. It’s incredible, yep,
Damon Pistulka 16:00
and in the paid versions, like you’ve got, I’ve got chat GPT, I mean, there’s, there’s people that say that other tools are better for writing, or there’s other tools better for this, and that there are because they’ve been hybridized, they’ve been adjusted to be they learn
John D. Hanson 16:15
from chat GPT, which was one that kind of broke ground, right? So of course, they’re going to have certain strengths, and they have to in order to have you’ve got a niche down in order to have an advantage, because you can’t be another chat GPT and succeed at it, so you’ve got to specialize. It makes sense.
Damon Pistulka 16:33
Yeah. And you know, the thing that I really see how it’s changing, and this is, I just read an article about this today, which is, it’s it’s interesting and scary at the same time, is that you should think about right now. We’re talking about AI, enhancing what we’re doing right enhancing the existing things we’re doing, making us better, faster, whatever that is. And just read an article. I don’t know if this morning or yesterday, that was like, We really need to start thinking about how AI is going to do the task for us, rather than enhance us to do the task faster. And that’s a little scarier jump for a lot of people, a lot of things, because, you know, it could be a big part of their day, but it really, it is an interesting thing when you see what some of these people are doing by bundling several tools together and automation and, my goodness,
John D. Hanson 17:33
yes, yeah. So while there are the security sides and the way that I don’t have a mind, that’s larceny in nature. But if I did, I would be thinking of all the ways that I could use this tool, AI to scam people, and they’re certainly coming up with creative ways to do that. So yeah, that’s the dark side out of a course. But the internet had dark sides to it, too, and people with smarter minds and way higher pay grades than me are working to figure out, all right, how do we make sure this thing as reasonably as possible doesn’t take off from us and then we become under its control? Right? Yeah, so there’s people chewing on that one. In the meantime, though, we know put yourself in the shoes as a consumer, Amazon has spoiled us so much that we expect high quality and speed Well, so do your customers? So do your clients? Well, how are you going to continue to deliver the excellent service levels that you have while staying competitive in a marketplace that expects the same level of quality, but so much faster? So do you the customer? How are you going to do that? You’ve got to use the tools available to you. In order to have if you’re the best thing out there, then you’ve got to find ways for them to find out about you first, rather than the ones that are the only ones they know. And they’re going to settle for what they know is probably there’s a better option out there. We just don’t know what it is. AI helps you with getting in front of people, more of them sooner. And that’s if you’ve got something of quality to put out, you should be using this because more people need to be working with you. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 19:09
and that’s that is, you know, like you’re saying in the marketing aspect of it, to really get efficient with your processes and and instead of like you’re saying, I might post once or twice a week now that allows me to post every day in the same amount of time or less. And you know, you can spend your time on more valuable engagement with people. Other things you gotta
John D. Hanson 19:32
Yes, yes, the highest and best use of our time is something that, particularly if you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur, you should know the value of your time. And while you want to, it’s reasonable to understand you want to kind of keep things, the concern of delegating to technology, things that you’d like to keep in a per in the hands of a person. Well, you can’t do it. You don’t have the time to do it. Are you going to hire somebody full time to do that for you? And. That doesn’t make sense either. And likely, if you’re hiring someone fractionally to do it for you, they’re already using these tools to maximize their productivity so they can support more people. So you’re already likely using it indirectly. And if you’re somebody that really values the quality of service and the quality of your content, you gotta you’ve gotta be familiar enough with this or be comfortable enough to be handing this off to someone who is using it?
Damon Pistulka 20:27
Yeah, I agree. Because, you know, people I work with, I encourage them to use it, I give them the same tools that I have. Because I say, Listen, we all have to get faster, because you made a great point. We have to continue to deliver higher and higher quality products faster products or services. Doesn’t matter, because, you know, you mentioned Amazon setting the bar high that drove the entire e Commerce Industry and brick and mortar, yeah, to a level they never thought before. Because who would ever think today that we can drive up, we can get online, order my groceries, go pick it up right at the store if I want to, or they’re going to bring it to me if I feel like it right in the same day. And that kind of stuff. You know, not that many years ago was people thought you were crazy, and now it’s just like, well, it’s expected, yeah. And so moving forward in everything, everything I mean that that has everything from buying a car to buying a house, is yes has changed because of those expectations, yes and and everything in between, all the little things even that much more. But it’s, it’s so incredible now what we can do, like you said, rethinking our processes with how does it look with this new tool? How does it look? If I can do, as you said, I can. I can create content way faster than I ever could before. So now I’m not doing that initial draft, maybe, but what I’m doing is final editing and making it really good, or adding a graphic that makes it even better, and then, then I’m done, rather than coming from the idea to the content itself and then doing the editing.
John D. Hanson 22:12
Yeah, so many steps in there, right? Yeah. Reminded me of a quote by Grant Cardone who said, best known beats best well, you might have the best service, the best solution out there, but if they don’t know you, they’re going to go with best known. And oftentimes that’s that’s not going to be the greatest level of service. Sometimes it is, but not always. So it behooves you, if you know you’ve got something of quality to become best known or better known than you are now, and that’s where these tools help you do that. Who doesn’t want to maximize their income and their impact, they truly believe they got something of value to add to others. Well, shouldn’t that be in front of as many people as possible without burning yourself out and not sleeping? Well, this is a way that helps you reclaim your time and helps you get in front of more people and add more value to more customers.
Damon Pistulka 23:02
Yes, yes. Good stuff. I love that. Best known beats best. That’s it is the way it works. Yeah. And
John D. Hanson 23:10
so oftentimes you’ll hear small, mid sized companies, well, we just can’t compete with the with the big boys. With the enterprise size comes, you’ve got too many resources. Well, the good news is, you’ve got a window, at least for, I don’t know, a year or two before it becomes mainstream in enterprise level companies, because it’s going to take them a while to turn the ship, because it’s such a huge ocean liner, you’re a speedboat. You could just zip that thing right around and start tomorrow learning about using these tools. It really they are that simple and that intuitive to use. You could be taking advantage of this window where the enterprise is not taking advantage of it to the scale that it could be, and that’s something where you have opportunity. So don’t wait until becomes mainstream. By then it’s too late.
Damon Pistulka 23:52
Yeah, that’s that’s a great tip, golden nugget that people should be taking to heart and going out and using, because we do have an opportunity now to jump ahead and and move faster than we were before with this new tool. And I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago, and I said, you know, it really seems like the chat GPT, and I’m just saying this straight, that generic could be Gemini could be whatever you’re using is going to be more like the Excel of business, because, you know, it’s just propagated everywhere. And I think they think the AI, the simple AI tools like chat GPT, is going to become that. Because even myself, I see myself using it for, well, I don’t know what to do. Go ask, I don’t know how to do this. Go ask, can you do this? Go ask. And then drill down through the levels. And the thing that’s interesting is it’s getting better and better. So much better. I mean, you look eight, nine months year ago, it was kind of wobbly. Now. It’s pretty succinct, and the the errors are much less.
John D. Hanson 25:03
Oh yes, you know. And I was thinking back, we talked about industrial automation at the open of this. And I was thinking back of to some of the machine builders that I know here in central Ohio. There’s a good number of them. And going back just a few decades, every single print, every design, was done with a slide rule and a pencil. Yeah, so now engineers could not imagine, couldn’t fathom their life using pen and paper or pencil, and they have computer drawings that can render ad and they can move this thing around and rotate it. The design time has plummeted in a wonderful way, so they can get an idea into a design and into production so much faster the adjustments that engineers would have to make on a drawing that could be as big as these tables in size. It just boggles my mind that that’s what was standard, commonly accepted to where now what’s standard and commonly accepted? That’s why companies of particularly smaller footprints can be turning out so many complex designs and and making millions upon millions of dollars and then putting these machines into the hands of the manufacturers that need automation, yeah, so much faster. It would be like, Wow, I don’t want to go down there because of the concerns of security. Okay, there could be concerns with that, yes, but the upside of this, it would be ludicrous to think we need to go back to pencil and paper design. Well, that’s how we’re going to stand out. That’s, it’s, it’s kind of an absurd comparison, but that’s what you’re saying when you want to do everything manually as a solution provider, as a service provider, that’s the same thing. You’re going back to pencil and paper drawings for these complex ideas, and expecting that you’re going to compete in a marketplace that’s using 3d CAD drawings on a computer. It’s just not going to
Damon Pistulka 27:02
happen. Yes, yeah, that’s a great example, because I’m, I’m sure that AI is is working its way into helping those designs better, faster and yeah, and more intuitive, because as as those those tools are getting better, the AI makes them easier. I see that in marketing. You know, in most of your CRMs now there, there’s definitely an AI component. There’s an AI component that’s both customer facing, there’s an AI component that’s both internally facing, that helps you be better with the systems, whether it’s answering your questions internally, or helping you to build automations. I’ve seen some of that that’s been really incredible lately, and and then from the out, the outward facing to customers, I’m just really getting amazed and a bit hooked on, you know, how can you make a website, AI chat bot really work well for you, and get that customer 75 80% of the information they need, and really answer their questions to the point of they’re either got what they need and they’re just going to go off and do what they’re going to do, or they need to talk to someone in sales or then whatever your next step is, to do what they’re going to Do. It is just so incredible to see now how that powering with your data can combine with your data, your FAQs, anything else, yep, can help those customers get what they need faster and create a dramatically different customer experience.
John D. Hanson 28:40
Yep, you’re so it’s spot on. Damon, Marcus, Sheridan, he’s been preaching this for for a good number of of months, of saying that companies have got to adapt to this. I’m still hitting websites for software companies that are saying, call for pricing. I’m in sales, and there’s no way in heck that I’m going to call for pricing, because I want to know what’s the range. I don’t have to dial it down to the dollar, but give me your range, this one or this, but you don’t know what your price is, and I’m just an individual user, imagine how complex the sales process is going to be. If you’re an enterprise or a company with multiple users, you’re automatically communicating at the front side that this is going to be a friction, full process. This is not going to be a smooth process. So this is where it’s still not mainstream, where there’s even pricing calculators on websites. And that could be done with AI a company could there’s so many resources out there to be able to stand head and shoulders above the vast majority of companies of all sizes that if you’re forward thinking enough to thinking, I don’t want to talk to a salesperson, so why should they want to talk to my sales people or talk to me? Because they think I’m going to sell them self service. That’s why we love Amazon. We go on, we see the reviews of other people. We can take a look and compare people. Devices and products and reviews. Pick the one, and then it’s going to tell us when it arrives. It’s going to keep us communicated. All this is done behind the scenes, automatic. That’s why you have so many data centers popping up. Only tracking information. It’s because they help us self serve the way we want it to, with speed, with convenience, with accuracy, with communication. Well, if you could add that to your service or solution, you’re going to be heads and shoulders above anybody in your industry, most likely, or at least in the same percentage, even over enterprise sized companies, because they’re not doing this yet either you have a significant advantage. And these things are fairly simple to roll out based off, like you said, FAQs, you already have an idea of what people commonly ask. Put those in FAQs, or make a field, fill in the field, and it creates something for that customer. Eventually, they’re going to be having a conversation with an AI chat bot or an agent, and they’re not going to know it. And when they get to the point of either being fully qualified or asking a question that that agent can’t answer, then they’ll get connected with a live person, but at that point, they’ll know if they’re you’ll know if they’re seriously interested, they’ll know if they’re seriously interested. And then it makes sense to talk with someone. I’m the same way. I’m the same way. If I can deal with it in self service, I will. And if I have to talk to a representative, it takes more work than it should sometimes to talk to a representative. Shouldn’t be that way in your company, either. Should be frictionless, just like you like to shop and to buy, and you certainly like to talk to sales people. And I’m a sales guy, I can say that yes, yes,
Damon Pistulka 31:35
the making the sales easier and give it a lower friction buying experience that that’s a big deal. And you said this, I just want to reiterate it. You know, websites that say call for pricing, you’re just saying it’s like, it’s going to be, it’s going to be hard for me, and that person is going to leave and go to somebody that does show their pricing on in most cases. So the ah, super cool. And then one of the things that I’ve really seen that’s interesting is the the companies that are leveraging AI in their marketing are now able to do things technically that they weren’t able to do before at all, or they’re able to do things now faster, and I was, I was talking with a technical writer, technical market person, and it was in a larger company in the US here a few weeks ago, and they were talking about how it used to be if I needed to get a subject matter expert kind of blog or new product blurb or something like that. It was really hard because, you know, to get someone to sit down and write it and do that thing is it’s really hard. But as they’ve built their knowledge base and that, they build their new products out, and that knowledge base keeps adding into that knowledge base keeps getting bigger, now they can come back to that say, it’s an engineer. They can go back to to John and say, Hey, John, you know we’ve got, we launched the new product, XYZ, your big part of it. We want you to have a blog post on that, and the features and benefits are why it’s useful in the industry. And we’ve given you here’s a draft that we can start with, and you can edit it out the rest of the way, and and we’ll get it posted for you. And that initial being able to get that draft out there to that person, whoever it is, even they were using it in the example of to the CEO of the company, so they can publish some of their stuff. And so it’s high level people are using this to help them get over that blank page to 75 80% done. And then them doing the final edit. So it sounds like them, they approve the content, and it goes out. Is, is where you can really leverage that to get things done, more things done and faster.
John D. Hanson 33:54
Yes, absolutely. Hey, the window of opportunities are staying open shorter and shorter nowadays. So know that speed is an issue with competition against other people that have a similar perhaps even a little bit better. Often, they’re going to be about the same or average or worse than your product or service or solution. But if they don’t know about it soon enough, they have to make decisions based on the speed of what their consumers want. They’re beholden to the same kind of speed issue that you are, so you want to make it as easy as possible for the people you want to do business with. To do business with you. Yep, speaks the name of the game, and when we talk about seizing opportunity, but my a portion of that is going to be facing about speed is a real concern. Matter of fact, it’s in the top three for consumers, not price and not brand recognition, nope. Speed, yeah, convenience and no like trust. Those are the top three. Speed, convenience and no like trust. There’s your top three.
Damon Pistulka 34:52
There you go. So let’s talk about that. Your your fifth book. It’s coming out. Let’s talk about a little bit. What the title again. So we can all hear opportunity.
John D. Hanson 35:01
Fascinating word opportunity, by the way, because I studied it, I’m like, this is a word I’ve heard before, and I have I see a lot of people get stuck with lots of great ideas that they don’t take action on. And so I raised a question in my mind of, why are they not seizing these opportunities? Yeah, as I studied the word, what’s fascinating about is that it comes from the old sailing days, the wooden ships with with fabric sails. That’s where the word comes from, up port tunity. Ah, fascinating word. And so when I dug into that, the the insights and the paradigm shifts from understanding that okay, if opportunity has to do with sailing, and you can understand if we’re port, is the key word in that, and that has to do with destination. The point of the book is that half of what makes us enable to seize opportunity is before we ever leave the dock. And that’s what was fascinating to me about seizing opportunity. It’s not when the ship sets sail for the destination of choice, where they’re headed to, it’s the work that that happens beforehand. Half of what makes an opportunity turn into the success it could be is done before you ever leave the dock. Hmm, yep,
Damon Pistulka 36:20
that’s awesome. Continent, yeah, contemplating it right? Because we think it’s always in the execution, but in making sure you’ve got a good plan to execute first, or the right resources to execute first, or as good a resources as you can have. No one’s got the best, but Right, the perfect resources, but Right, just taking that time at the beginning to seize the opportunity with a little better direction, a little more effectiveness is huge, that’s for sure. Yep. What else do you learn? Did you learn by preparing for this book or or writing the book? Yeah,
John D. Hanson 36:56
what we discovered? Name, you know, the Pareto rule, 8020 rule that I discovered last year, that I think it’s even strong, higher than this. I think it’s more like 9010 that well meaning professional people, not slackers, not people that are serial procrastinators, but 80, 90% of people, I believe, cannot self implement. And then my proof of that is, and that seems harsh, my proof of that is that there are so many proven systems on how to achieve success, personally and professionally and as a business that you could follow step by step and achieve what these other companies, people, teams, have achieved, and that’s not happening on a broad scale. It’s not the lack of proven ideas or systems out there. It’s the lack of the implementation of those, yeah. And so that’s where I realized I’ve got to write a book. At first, I was going to be about execution, and then I realized, nah. First, that sounds a little morbid. When I did a Google search on execution I do. I did a workshop on this. The graphic images that came up was not the execution that I was thinking of. It to business execution, and that gave me the graphics that I needed. But that’s where I just found that a lot of people struggle with this, and the percentage of people like myself that can come up with a plan based on the big goal, and then break it down steps, A to Z, and then get those A to Z done, and see those milestones and that progress, and not burn out on the process. It’s a very small percentage, which is excellent for people who are coaches, implementing integrators, because the need for this is literally everywhere. The proof of that is, who goes to a conference great ideas, they come back with more than one. They don’t implement a single one. Now that could be, you say, well, they tried to do too much at once. My experience has been that oftentimes firefighting takes over, which could be a well planned out, just one, just one change. The challenge of that is so few companies can pull it off, and it’s not the lack of a great idea. It’s not because they had too many it’s because they couldn’t stick with the plan, because the proactivity morphed back into reactivity. They’re reacting to what’s going on in the course of their life, because that urgency steals progress. And so if you’re a coach, implementer, integrator of any kind, that has the ability to break down big ideas into next best steps, you’re needed literally everywhere. You just need to figure out, Where am I best suited to add this value, and where do I find the companies that are going to value this enough to bring me in on a fractional basis to help their team accomplish what they want to accomplish.
Damon Pistulka 39:49
Yeah, because that is it is so prevalent that you may know what you need to do, you may have the plan of what you need to do, but actually do. It is prevented by, well, it’s, it’s already late in the day. I haven’t gotten to that because everything else swamped me down, yeah, I’ll try it tomorrow, yep, and tomorrow, 365, days later, still looking at it going, Oh, it’s late in the day. I’ll look at it tomorrow. Yeah,
John D. Hanson 40:20
yep. Hey, you know the fact that there are a small percentage of highly successful outliers in every industry, particularly the ones that are notorious for poor service, poor employee experience, poor customer experience, and yet these outliers dramatically smash expectations for all of those customers, employees and throughput. And how do they do that? Well, they have the combination of taking excellent care of their people and processes. They execute phenomenally well in relationships and in processes, and that’s what companies and individuals need help with. Companies organizations of all sizes, need help with processes, and they need help with relationships, and that’s where a trusted business coach or consultant can help you do that. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 41:09
that’s for sure. Well, that’s awesome. So your book is coming out this fall, about what time? So if people are
John D. Hanson 41:16
I shoot for November. That’s the time frame. So it comes out a little bit before Thanksgiving, and that gives me enough time to to take the outline that’s in my head and turn that into the book. Gives me time to crock pot it. I was trying to do two books a year, and pulled that off once, but I had to back it to something I knew I could maintain, and that’s a book per year, so I’ve already got it two or three titles ahead, but this is the one that needs to be released this year, because I believe speed and executing on ideas people need to be encouraged on, how do you prepare for that, and then how do you execute on that? Yeah, that’s that’s something, a message that I think is desperately needed more than the other ideas that I have right now,
Damon Pistulka 42:00
yeah, yeah. So the book’s titled seizing opportunity,
John D. Hanson 42:04
yep. And there’s a subtitle I’m massaging. I haven’t made a final decision on the subtitle can have something to do with sailing, but that’s the that’s the main part of the title, about seizing opportunity. And I think that’s self explanatory. I just want the subtitle to raise a question that then I give the answer to in the book,
Damon Pistulka 42:20
awesome, awesome. Well, John, it has been awesome. Talking incredible, talking with you today, because you know, sharing the insights on AI how it’s helping you, the tools you’re using and what you’re seeing coming down the pike.
John D. Hanson 42:35
Thanks for being here today. Hey, I appreciate our conversations. Damon, I love that we’re nerds at heart, and I think that’s a strength for us, because we’re genuinely curious, love to learn. And how does this affect me and my clients? So our conversations are always good and and they’re good reminders for me too. As I’m sharing these insights, it’s reinforcing the value of what I’m doing, and I hope that encourages others to to not just take a serious look, but start taking steps to get to these tools so that more clients, more of their ideal clients, not just know about them, but choose to do business with them.
Damon Pistulka 43:14
Awesome, awesome. Well, John, thanks here for thanks for being here today. I want to thank Usman for dropping the comment at the end. Greeting from Usman or oseman, thanks for being here. We are going to be back again next week with another great guest, John. Let’s hang out and finish up offline. Thanks everyone for being here today. If you got in late, you want to go back to the beginning and listen to John. You want to look up John D Hanson on LinkedIn? Look at his coaching. Look at his off. Get on his website. Check it out. I’ve been there many times. Good stuff. There. We will be back again. Thanks. Everyone. You.
