Just add “AI” to Your Business Name And Tell Everyone You’re a $100M Startup?
Welcome to Spring, Autumn, or Fall
A special mention to my beautiful wife this week as we celebrate our Wedding Anniversary. A true partner in business and in life – it’s 15 years today since we first visited Lake Como, unaware it would later name our business.
Also, a final reminder for all the Queensland Companies I work with to register your interest for government co-funding of your business coaching. Click here to read more.
- Blackboard Fridays Episode #24 explains when to best value your business for sale
- And the ongoing Como AI series outlines The Top 5 AI Tools every Small Business can use right now
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1. Blackboard Fridays Episode #24 – When and How to Value Your Business
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.
The best time to develop a Business Valuation Plan was the day you started your business.
The second best time is today.
How well do you understand the valuation drivers that impact your business, and the tax implications?
This short #BlackboardFridays video asks some key questions, and shares the two best times in your business lifecycle for you to sell.
Watch the video or read the article here.
2. Top 5 AI Tools for Private Enterprise
The comment I’ve made is that AI hype solutions are great for massive corporations (with data + budgets) and solopreneurs (more free time) … but way less practical for small and medium sized private companies.
Less Value doesn’t mean No Value, however.
Here are the Top 5 AI and AI adjacent tools I’m implementing in my clients right now, to release time and cash for future investment options.
AI tools are already creating 20%+ more time in some roles, especially those in Marketing, Training and Recruitment. How much time is your business wasting?
1) Bing Image Creator
MidJourney is the best image generator, but I recommend Bing Image Creator the most.
It’s easier to learn, and sufficient for creating AI images for blog + social media content.
Free with a Microsoft account, you can create specific images in a range of styles within seconds of logging-in.
Here’s an oil painting of a small business owner who just found an extra day each week working with Jacob to install AI tools in his business.
Just don’t ask it to give you “a horse riding an astronaut” or “blue grass and a green sky”.
2) Scribe
Scribe was one of the first AI tools I pimped in when my weekly newsletter changed focus.
Since then, additional AI integration has made it even more powerful.
My clients use Scribe to create visual Training tools for any task that uses software – browser / desktop / mobile. In the time it takes to complete the task, you can create a guide to hand over that task to someone else.
Scribe now also has the ability to draft any SOP (Standard Operating Procedure, not to be confused with the SOB who took you to FairWork) that your business requires.
You MUST treat these as a first draft loaded with hallucinations … but a first draft in 60 seconds sure beats taking a day to create something which requires review anyway.
3) ChatGPT
If you prefer Bard or Claude, or even the open-sourced LLama, I understand. The benefit of ChatGPT (still the fastest app to register 100 million users) is the breadth of accessible training and guidance, should you wish to upskill.
The list of advancements continues – Custom Instructions (eg, to describe your business and brand style), Code Interpreter, PlugIns and more.
Sure, use ChatGPT for newsletters and blogs. Then use it for Sales Proposals. Then for Tender Writing. Then for Project Planning. Then for Complaints Handling. Then for Workflow Visualisation.
ChatGPT is more than text generation; it’s thought generation – again with the caveat that by design it’s a mediocre first-draft creator, not the source of thought leadership.
4) Magical
How many times a day do you type your name and email address? How many times a month do you draft a very similar email? How many hours are spent when you multiply that repetition across your team?
The Magical magic starts with text shortcuts – on my machine, “ja@” expands to my full email address, and “3way” converts into a 4 paragraph email for making a 3 way introduction (my preferred method for giving and receiving referrals).
These shortcuts can be shared across your team, reducing data entry load and ensuring more consistency.
Magical continue to expand its product, though I’ve found the limits of its data scraping tool have fewer applications.
5) Shortform
Ain’t nobody got time for reading that long article or watching that 20 minute video. So use Shortform to generate you:
- An immediate summary
- Key information about the wider Context of the topic
- Counterarguments, to avoid the information bubble
I use Shortform almost every day, and paid subscribers also get access to Shortform’s book summaries – allowing you to read the world’s best business library in a fraction of the time.
Who doesn’t want 20% more time in their life? Next week we explore Como Segment 4 … what Strategic Projects will you invest in, with all the extra time and money your team has found?
With love,
Jacob Aldridge
International Business Advisor
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