Service Based Business Society Podcast

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Service Based Business Society podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Ann Botcher. On our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over 7 figures per month and a passion for marketing, finance, and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 00:26

Guys, welcome back for another episode. It's going to be a good one. I have been so looking forward to this topic. And, you know, I think that that we're gonna have lots of listeners from different stances on this topic. And that is what makes this topic even more important and exciting to share.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 00:45

So today, we are talking with Jonathan Mast, who in my opinion is the AI guru. Jonathan shares AI knowledge, tips, techniques, strategies in a way that is easy to understand, easy to implement, and can make a difference in your business now. Before you anti AI listeners shut the episode off, I encourage you to listen and learn what AI can do for you in different ways because AI is here to stay. And I think it's important to know more about the topic. Lots of times when we don't know things about something, it makes us nervous.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 01:25

We pull back. We've talked about it about a variety of topics on the show over past seasons, but this is a topic that I think can really revolutionize your business. And if you're here to scale success, then you need to listen and pull from it what you will. And those who are avid AI users, there is so much value for you you here as well. I constantly am learning things from Jonathan and implementing them in different ways.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 01:51

So Jonathan started in digital marketing in 1990. And so over many years, he has learned lots of different things and his ability to share knowledge in a way that is understandable is second to none. I cannot wait to share this episode and really encourage you to take some of these tips and strategies and implement them. Do the next step. Listen, learn, and then implement.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 02:19

Knowledge sitting on the shelf, although more valuable than no knowledge, is still not helping you scale your success. So super excited. Welcome to the show, Jonathan. You know, I have been following you online for a very long time, because this is topic near and dear to my heart. Total nerd.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 02:36

And I have been on the I want to know everything about AI since the very beginning. And and one of the things that you see all the time is you see such just little corners of AI that are super cool, but shared online. And you know, you sharing online is one of the places where I get the most diverse information. It's not always just about one little piece or, you know, one specific workflow or it's it's just a general knowledge. And and so I I'm here for it, and I'm so faking it up.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 03:03

So I'm super excited to dive in and learn more about you, and how you even got into this because, you know, if I check out your website, you've been in the industry for a really long time, but AI has maybe not been so prevalent in that time. So I'd love to hear more about how you got started and how you found your passion in AI.

Jonathan Mast: 03:20

Yeah. No. I'd love to share that. Thanks for asking. Well, as you know, if you've checked on my website, I've actually been in the digital marketing field for a very long time.

Jonathan Mast: 03:29

I love to tell people I've earned all this white hair. I sold my first website to a client in 1995. And, we actually did it. We mocked it up on a PowerPoint. I worked for another company at that time, and the boss said, if you can sell this, I'll hire whoever we need to do in order to deliver it.

Jonathan Mast: 03:45

And I'm like, okay. I was a sales guy. That seemed like a good challenge to me. So we mocked everything up in PowerPoint. We sold it.

Jonathan Mast: 03:51

I brought it the contract back to him. And he goes, I guess I need to hire some people. And that's kinda how I got started in the digital marketing world. Had a few falters along the way. I've made some mistakes in life.

Jonathan Mast: 04:03

And again, I'd really started in sales and and done well there. And then, decided I need to learn marketing and, probably have one of the more interesting stories about how I learned marketing, and everybody, always is a a bit surprised. So I mentioned I stumbled along the way a couple times and made a few mistakes. And one of those mistakes, caused me to end up in prison for 3 years. And while I was there, I had the opportunity to meet another gentleman who was there on a conspiracy white collar crime like I was.

Jonathan Mast: 04:29

In other words, we gentleman who was there on a conspiracy white collar crime like I was. In other words, we should have known better than we did and we didn't ask enough questions and we got in trouble. No no excuses. I was stupid. And he happened to be the dean of marketing at Ohio State University.

Jonathan Mast: 04:47

And, he said, I heard through the rumor mill, Jonathan, that you're here for about 3 years and I said, yeah, I am and he goes, I also heard that you wanna learn marketing while you're here and I said, yeah, I figure I gotta make the best use of the time. Don't have a lot to do and he was amazing. His name was Roger Blackwell and he spent the next 3 years tutoring me on marketing and and taught me I don't want to say everything he knew because he was brilliant but he taught me everything I know about marketing and was just an amazing mentor through that process. And then, when, I got out and realized I needed to rebuild my life and focus on that, I really got focused on the marketing side of things through digital marketing. Started an agency of my own at that point in time.

Jonathan Mast: 05:30

And, just again, we grew, we expanded, we built that to 7 figures. My wife got involved in it and actually just recently sold that agency last week, in fact, after 14 years almost, in business. But along the way, as we grew it, I started having more and more I'm not having so much fun here. My entrepreneurial brain kicked in. And and as we grew as an agency, I had to follow more rules.

Jonathan Mast: 05:57

And I'm an ADD rule bender type of guy and it it wasn't always as much fun. And so we talked a lot about it and, when AI came out, because of my ADD, AI was really appealing because I'm really good at hyper focusing, but I'm not good at doing that for a long period of time AI allows me to really amplify that hyper focus because it can do things so much faster that I could often complete processes and complete projects before my, oh, bright shiny object squirrel kicked in and I went on to something else. And so I just saw so much potential for it, not only in the marketing world, but I have a real passion for helping teams and employees understand that because I've seen so many of them, for lack of a better description, kind of go into freak out mode going, oh, no. I don't want AI because it's gonna take my job. And and I really have a passion for helping educate them and teach them that AI is a great tool that if they use and leverage can actually amplify their skill and experience with their employer and make them more valuable, not less.

Jonathan Mast: 07:02

And so I decided to step away and started a new agency and we're focused on really AI strategies but surrounding the simplicity part of it on prompting. In other words, I'm platform agnostic. I don't I don't have any software that I sell. I don't try to recommend the product. I try to teach people how to communicate with AI because like any relationship and not to make it more personal than it is, we communication is key.

Jonathan Mast: 07:28

Whether that's my marriage, whether that's friends, whether that's coworkers. And I look at AI as a coworker, and so I need to learn how to communicate with it effectively so that I get the best possible results out of it. And that's really what I do now. I'm focused on helping people understand how do we communicate and how do we do it without overcomplicating it. Because there's a lot of people that love AI that are really, in my not so professional opinion, overcomplicating everything, and I try to keep it simpler.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 07:59

Which is so important when we're talking about rolling it out into any kind of scalable, you know, widespread audience because, yes, there are some people who can do amazing things, but there's also amazing people that can do amazing things with code, with certain design element. You know what I mean? There's there's always that that high level. And you can do amazing things, not to be discredited, but that isn't going to be, you know, what the average person in their business can go out and use it for. And and so and I I think there's so much to be said for the prompting, that is often just missed entirely, and it's just sometimes small changes can make such a big impact, like anything in business really.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 08:38

Small, you know, we always think about the big things. We always think about the big changes, the big dramatic things. But oftentimes, there's so much more impact and value in just small minor adjustments.

Jonathan Mast: 08:50

Yeah. No. And I think, you know, it's it's natural that that people tend to go towards some of the more complicated stuff. It's unfortunate that they started calling it prompt engineering because I think that took a lot of this this us normal people. I am far from an engineer, trust me.

Jonathan Mast: 09:05

And caused a lot of us to just go, oh, I don't I don't get engineering. I don't wanna go there. When in reality it's much like texting. If you and I are texting, you know, setting this up or following up prior to a meeting or anything like that, I find that communicating with AI is very similar. In other words, it should be a conversation, shouldn't just be one prompt, and I hope I get everything.

Jonathan Mast: 09:24

But I also don't need to over complicate it. I can chat with it much as though I would chat with you, you know, if I were walking over to your office saying, hey, you know, I need help to create a press release on this. Is that something you're gonna help me with? If you said, you know, tell me what you need. And I said, no, and walked away.

Jonathan Mast: 09:41

You probably couldn't create a great press release for me. But that's what a lot of us do with AI prompting. We go, oh, I want a press release about this. And then we don't give it any context, any background. And then the response that we get is really generic and it's not really applicable.

Jonathan Mast: 09:55

And we go, well, AI is stupid. That that didn't help. When in reality, if we'd given it the right information, or if you've seen my stuff, one of the things I recommend is let AI ask you questions to to get the information it needs. If we've given it permission to do that, then all of a sudden the responses get magnitudes better very, very quickly.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 10:17

Absolutely. Absolutely. So going back to your journey, a little bit and diving into that a little more, there's there's this element of sales and marketing. And it's interesting because, I come from a background with no sales and marketing experience whatsoever. Total, you know, finance, you know, nerd who didn't have it.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 10:37

And when I started my business, I I very quickly figured out that, you know, the fact that I'd had all these years of school and I had all these years in the corporate made made little to no difference. Because ultimately

Jonathan Mast: 10:49

entrepreneurship. Yes.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 10:50

Right? Because ultimately, it was like, well, that's great that I can do all of these great things. But if I can't sell them to anyone, if I can't actually do them, then we got a problem. And so I started immediately diving into all different parts of sales and and, you know, did a couple of masterminds and mentorships and and all of these pieces. And and so, I mean, I'm far from any kind of sales and marketing expert from, you know, in that in that regard.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 11:15

But we've, you know, grown, and we've done great things, and and lots of success in business. Mhmm. But, you know, someone asked me recently, what is the most important skill? Like, out of all the things you've learned, what is the most important thing you've learned? And I said, sales.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 11:28

And they said, what? And I said I said, if you can't sell your idea, if you can't sell what you're offering or explain it to people in a way that makes them wanna learn more about you, you you're dead in the water. You know, ultimately, then you have to be able to go and and hire someone that can go and do that for you. But but an idea alone really goes nowhere. And so, you know, you've got this this multiple ideas, different things, different setbacks and growth.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 11:53

And and, ultimately, it all comes from a, you know, we're we're we're moving forward. We're doing it. You said you said, you know, I failed a few things, but here you are and and, you know, an agency for 14 years and all these things. That's that's a journey that had some highs and lows, but the the overall consensus is, hey. We're we're we're doing great things here.

Jonathan Mast: 12:12

Well, you know, it's it it for us, it was really and and for me, it still is today. It's about serving others. And I think you're of course, I am a sales guy, so I'm biased. I absolutely have always said nothing happens until somebody sells something. But the other the other side of that coin is for for people that aren't in sales and marketing like yourself, we need the operational side to deliver what we sell.

Jonathan Mast: 12:34

And you really need both in in business or you're not gonna be successful in my opinion because I would have never been able to build a 7 figure agency had it not been for the fact that my wife happens to be an operational genius and she wanted to leave corporate America and spend more time with her youngest son And so we negotiated. Okay. She told me what it was gonna happen. She came to work for me and made it work. And, you know, that that was an amazing thing because she brings to the table an, a level of skill and experience that I don't have.

Jonathan Mast: 13:08

So you're right. Nothing happens until you sell, and that's so critical. It needs to happen because that ball has to start rolling. But salespeople are great at getting the ball rolling. We're just then really bad about directing it as it goes downhill.

Jonathan Mast: 13:21

We kinda stand there and watch and go, oh, look. There it goes. And we need we need operational people to then come in and get involved and go, okay. You sold the client. Now introduce me to them so I can make sure we deliver and meet the expectations that you set.

Jonathan Mast: 13:36

Because Yes. Most salespeople, I'll only speak for myself, but most salespeople, yeah, we kinda suck at that delivery part.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 13:44

Yeah. It's interesting. So, you know, I call it my corporate life, but I was there was 3 business partners together. I mean, grew this business. And I did the operations and and finance in portion.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 13:54

And we had 1, you know, the visionary charismatic CEO, and and then the person who did all, like, the sales and customer management. He and I were always butting heads because he would do just that. And he would come back and he would say, okay, well this is what I told them we could do. And I would say, we don't what do you mean?

Jonathan Mast: 14:11

What? We can't Yes, I heard that.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 14:14

And so super frustrating, but as I started my business, I really started to even see more you know, it's it's funny, it's hindsight is always 2020, and so you Oh, yeah. So much as you go, and you start to see so much value in some of those pieces that you maybe didn't appreciate at the time. And I thought, gosh, if I could go back and and because I I spent more time being like, hey, stop doing that, than actually trying to learn. I mean, I wasn't in sales. I Yeah.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 14:39

So I thought, I don't need to know. Yeah. And so, it's interesting because now I think, gosh, had I been paying a little closer attention to some of those techniques, he was doing great.

Jonathan Mast: 14:50

Well, and again, it's it's you can't be everything to all people. So I think it's unlikely that that person that's good at operations is gonna be good at sales. And in most cases, the person good at sales isn't gonna be very good at operations either. It's it's why the multiple people are often needed to build a successful business.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 15:07

Yes. And knowing when to bring those people in and whatnot.

Jonathan Mast: 15:10

Oh, yeah.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 15:10

But but oftentimes in today's age, you know, going back to AI, sometimes you can, you know, borrow some some knowledge and some technical strategies instead of hiring people all the time.

Jonathan Mast: 15:23

No no question. And I think AI can fill in a lot of those roles if we know the questions to ask. I think the hard part comes in in in especially as an entrepreneur, I need to know when to ask those questions. And I think that's something that at least I know I've struggled with sometimes is not being aware that I had issues I needed to deal with. And so I wasn't asking the right questions.

Jonathan Mast: 15:43

But AI is tremendous on that. It can really serve, you know, I can create a a virtual HR employee. I can create a virtual operations manager. I can create a virtual, you know, salesperson if I need to. But virtually anything along that path to help fill in the gaps that maybe I'm not really good at in my business.

Jonathan Mast: 16:02

And there are a lot of ways, especially for smaller and medium sized enterprises, that they can leverage those technologies and and really amplify what they're doing for their clients. I love to say that AI amplifies skill and experience and allows us to deliver more value in less time. And most businesses can succeed well if they can do that, deliver more value and do that in less time.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 16:27

Yes. Absolutely. Ultimately, it's, you know, whoever gets there first. You know, great ideas, are are great ideas. I was at a a conference a while ago, and something really resonated with me.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 16:38

And it was, you know, the explanation of, you know, you've got someone who spends, you know, maybe 6 months designing some kind of specific new fashion thing, and they poured their heart and soul into this. And, you know, they get they get it to market, and they have, you know, they have blue, and they have green, and whatever. But in in an hour, you know, you've got, like, some kind of factory and online shop who then takes that design, and they literally, the next day, have it in 17 colors at half the price with an with an upgrade. And and it's like, well, it but it's they're just faster. It's they just and so, you know, and and in today's day and age, there's there's everything is moved so fast.

Jonathan Mast: 17:17

Well, I mean, again, that's an area that AI can really help. Just in a practical perspective, I can share a story from yesterday. I'm launching a new AI tool. It's a very simple one. It's just a prompt.

Jonathan Mast: 17:27

It's I shouldn't say it's a tool. It's a prompt. So it can work on any platform. And I needed to name it something because, of course, a prompt in and of itself is hard. It doesn't have a lot of value because you can copy my prompt, and I can't do much to stop you.

Jonathan Mast: 17:40

So I needed the brand and I needed a name and I needed to come up with something. Candidly, I was tired yesterday. It was almost a 14 hour day. There was a lot going on. So I asked AI to help out with that, and I explained what I was doing.

Jonathan Mast: 17:51

And I said, hey. Here, I need to come up with a brand name. And I'm not kidding you. Within 12 minutes, we went from Jonathan has no idea what to call this and how to do it, to a named product that I was really proud of that made sense to a cover for the ebook that I'm gonna put that around or wrap the the prompt in. And the prompt was now formatted.

Jonathan Mast: 18:12

The introduction to the ebook was written, and the conclusion was done. And I did it all in 12 minutes. And it's not because I'm brilliant. It's simply because I asked the right questions, got good responses. And that is something that even in an optimal environment would have probably taken us a day to do just a year ago.

Jonathan Mast: 18:30

The 3 main tools that are out there is ChatGPT, which most of us have heard about, Google Gemini, which a lot of us have heard about, and then Claude, which a lot of us haven't heard about. Those are really the 3 major players in the AI industry. It's so hard not to get caught into that bright shiny object syndrome that there's a new tool out. I need to use that. With rare exception, and you're probably not one of them if you're listening to this podcast.

Jonathan Mast: 18:54

No offense, but I'm not an exception either just for the record. Those are the only three tools you need to start out with, and you only need one of them. I recommend people if they're just getting started, start with chat GPT. It it may not be the best at everything it does, but it's very good and it has the most features. So it's it gives you the opportunity to learn and do so well without having to try to figure out do I go here or do I go there?

Jonathan Mast: 19:20

You just ask it questions. It'll even do image generation. It'll look at photos and analyze them. It's it's tons and tons of features that it has very good value and you can start using it for free nowadays and then decide to pay if and when you decide that you need the extra usage. Most of the AI models have moved from when they started it was they're free but you get limited features and if you pay you get advanced features.

Jonathan Mast: 19:47

Most of them have moved to the here's our product. It's free. And if you want to use it more frequently, you need to pay us. I do that. I do that for all the major models.

Jonathan Mast: 19:56

I also do it for a model called Midjourney for creating images. And those are things that can make sense as you get down your AI journey. Just getting started, you've been sitting on the sidelines and you're going, okay. It's time I do something. Just go to chatgpt.com, sign up for a free account, and start asking it questions.

Jonathan Mast: 20:13

Start asking it to help you write that next email or that memo or create that standard operating procedure that you've been waiting to do because it was just seemed a little too arduous. Ask it to help you with that. And literally, if you're not sure what to do, just ask ChatGPT or Gemini or Claudia, you can do it any of them. How can you help me achieve this goal? And it will come back and tell you the types of things it can do and then you can say that's a great idea.

Jonathan Mast: 20:39

Let's do it and it'll walk you right through the process.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 20:42

One of the features that I found lately that has been most exciting for me is being able to upload, Canva images. So creating some kind of social graphic and then actually uploading it right into chat GPT and asking it for some caption ideas, different ways, different hashtags, things that I could do with that graphic.

Jonathan Mast: 21:02

Well and and I wanna commend you on doing that. A lot of people don't really think about its vision capabilities and its ability to recognize images. Like you said, you can literally take a social media post image that you've created in Canva. It's like you described. You can upload it.

Jonathan Mast: 21:15

You can ask questions about it. It really amazes me how much information it can gather from an image. In fact, one of the things I often do when I'm speaking, I often have slides up in the background, and one of the slides I share is what I call my perfect prompting framework. And it's pretty much a slide full of text, and everybody immediately is like, oh, I gotta take notes on that, and they start taking notes. And I'm like, just save yourself the hassle.

Jonathan Mast: 21:37

Just take a picture of the screen, upload that to ChatGPT or Quad or Gemini, and go tell me what's on this image. And it will literally create all of the text that's on that slide, and then they can copy and paste it into their note program super easy. So kudos in doing that. It's amazing how few people I talk to know how to use the vision program. The other thing that I think is so cool about that is its ability to get context.

Jonathan Mast: 22:02

In other words, I can upload images that I've taken with my cell phone or that. And it can begin describing the scenario of where that is and and the situation. You know, if I take a picture of a neighborhood, it identifies it as a neighborhood and the houses and all it's just Yeah. It's really surprising. And while it's surprising, we're waiting on a a new and improved version that they announced about 60 days ago that they have yet to release.

Jonathan Mast: 22:25

So I think that that vision feature is gonna continue to get even better and better.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 22:29

Yeah. It's, I don't I couldn't figure it didn't do it for me when I first started. And so it's one of those things where you're like, oh, sometimes even if you try to do something, it's it's the technology is growing and evolving so quickly that, you know, just because it didn't work before doesn't mean that you shouldn't shouldn't give it another go. One of the the biggest challenges I run into is consistency. So whether whether that be in images or in in responses, you know, we've we've played around with with the assistance in chat gpt.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 22:59

Yeah. And and I I learned about them actually because it was required for some other app I was using. They they walk you through you need to create an assistant to connect it to this this app. So I was, like, oh, okay. So I you know how sometimes you're, like, oh, well, maybe I could use that same thought for this or that.

Jonathan Mast: 23:14

100%. Yeah.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 23:16

And and so, you know, we've been able to use these assistants. And so being able to, you know, give it more context, more information on a specific topic. But I find that every once in a while, it the consistency just kind of vanishes where it's it's done something really well for for a while and then it just stops.

Jonathan Mast: 23:34

Yes. I you know, that's that's a common thing I hear a lot nowadays. And in fact, I was just having a discussion on it yesterday. And at the end of the day, I don't know whether my perception, which by the way is the same as yours, is that AI does that or if my expectations are just so high that now I'm surprised, and it's always done it. And I'm not sure which of those it is.

Jonathan Mast: 23:55

I am honestly not sure. But, yeah, it does that is one of the frustrating parts. And I think we we have to do there is we have to remember it's like people. You know, I have, great people on my staff that do things right 95% of the time. But even though they know, myself included, what I'm supposed to do, sometimes I don't do it the right way.

Jonathan Mast: 24:13

And AI is gonna be like that to a certain extent as well. The same holds true for how AI can make mistakes because it's been trained on not just the right books and the right knowledge and the right image. It's been trained on all of it. And we've all seen things that we've read, you know, go to the store and there's 2 books. One's has one opinion and one has another opinion.

Jonathan Mast: 24:34

AI got trained on both of them and nobody told it. You have to believe this book over this book. So it has both and sometimes it just picks the wrong thing for what we're trying to accomplish. And that's one of the reasons that going back to what we've been talking about. Communicating is so important because if I want to reflect book a's paradigm, I need to tell it that.

Jonathan Mast: 24:54

And it will do that. No problem. But I need to tell it that. And and like you said, sometimes it does things and then it stops doing them. And that's why the proofreading and and the validation is so important.

Jonathan Mast: 25:04

We can't just go, oh, a is perfect every single time because it will make mistakes.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 25:11

Right. Yeah. And I I think really thinking of it as a team member is is such great advice, because, you know, same thing. We have team members that do amazing things all and every but every once in a while, it's, it something goes wrong.

Jonathan Mast: 25:26

Yeah. Just cycle a train went off the tracks.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 25:29

Totally. Totally. So I've I've been following you in your Facebook group. Is that is that the best place for people to connect and and follow and learn more about what you're doing and and your prompts different prompts pieces that you're teaching?

Jonathan Mast: 25:43

Well, the easiest way to connect with me is just to remember my name, Jonathan Mast, that's m a s t, and just go to jonathan mast.com/linktree. It's got all my contact information there, every way to link to me. And right at the top is a link to my Facebook group that you mentioned. We've got over a 150,000 business people in that group learning how to use prompts, how to communicate, and we share a ton in there. As you know, we we don't it's not a sales group, so you're not gonna get a ton of sales pitches.

Jonathan Mast: 26:09

If we find them, we kick them out. We really focus on adding value in there, and I think it's a great resource. I'm a little biased, but I think it's a great resource. If you're trying to learn how to use AI, it's a great place to do that.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 26:20

Well, I found it to be very interesting in because it's showing so many different parts of AI, and and the group overall seems like a a really great group of people that are all interested in helping each other out and not not the sales pitch, which I think has become the the more common Facebook.

Jonathan Mast: 26:35

Unfortunately, it has.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 26:36

I'll be sure to drop the the links in the show notes as well.

Jonathan Mast: 26:40

Oh, thank you.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 26:41

So what's that kind of tangible tip that that you would recommend to a business owner? Maybe that someone that thought, hey. I'm sure this can help my business, but I don't know how.

Jonathan Mast: 26:51

Great question. Well, I I think the the most tangible tip I can give you is that as you get started in AI, you're gonna begin to get bombarded with messages from people about buying lists of prompts. And I want to discourage you from spending even a penny on those. I've spent 100 and 100 of dollars on them. That's part of what I do.

Jonathan Mast: 27:08

It's part of my group. And I have yet to buy one that was worth the money I paid for it. Instead, focus on learning how to write a good prompt, and it's not hard. It really involves 4 simple steps. Step 1, when you start, tell AI what type of expert you wanna be talking to.

Jonathan Mast: 27:24

So if I'm writing a social media post, I wanna talk to someone, an expert that specializes in writing viral social media. And then give it context. Just as if you and I are collaborating on a project, I need to give you context or that you're not gonna know what to do. So I may need to tell it. I wanna write a social media post talking about the benefits of using AI in your business, and I wanna highlight the fact that it's important to tell your team that it's okay for them to use it as well.

Jonathan Mast: 27:50

And then it's my question, and that question would simply be write the social media post. And then step 4 is the part that I I think most people miss in in my mind, one of the most important. And that is AI is programmed to make assumptions and not to fill in the blanks for us. So just say, please ask me any clarifying questions that you need at the end. And you literally can just put that in.

Jonathan Mast: 28:14

It says one prompt. I want you to act as an expert social media writer. I wanna write a social media post about how important AI is in your business and how it's important to empower your team. Please write that post for me and ask me any clarifying questions you may have. That's my one prompt.

Jonathan Mast: 28:29

And when you do that, guess what? If it needs more information, and it probably will, now you've given it permission. It'll ask you. You can answer those questions, and the response now that you get, in this case, in our sample, the social media post it creates will be magnitudes of order better than what you would have gotten without following that simple process.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 28:50

Super, super valuable. Yes. And and because I think when it wants more information, then it can ask and then it can it can use that information to really take it to the next level. Otherwise, you know, much like anyone else, if someone asks you to do something and you have only half the information, you think, gosh, I really wish I knew, you know, what

Jonathan Mast: 29:09

what platform this

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 29:10

is going on. You know, am I writing it for LinkedIn or am I writing it for Instagram? 2 very different styles of writing. You know, that's the kind of question that can really change the output.

Jonathan Mast: 29:20

100%. Yeah. And remember to just, again, give it that context and give it permission to ask you questions. And I think you'll very quickly become a realist. This is, wow.

Jonathan Mast: 29:29

This is a great tool that I can use in my business. And it doesn't have to be a tool to change your entire sales methodology or to to become all your prospecting. Just use it to help you write a new email, write a social media post, create that SOP, or one of my favorite uses is just to brainstorm. I have an idea, and I'd like you to to ask me some questions to determine, is this viable? And have a conversation with that AI tool.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 29:55

Yes. One of the things I I learned that was really helpful for me was saying, you know, I really like this, but I want it to be more in-depth Or I want it to be, you know, go a little deeper in this direction. And going back and forth and and kinda giving that feedback in terms and and that has really been helpful. And in some instances, some of those conversations where it started out very, you know, what I would say, like, 3 out of 10, Yes. You know, ended up with the most amazing thing in the end, really, because of that kind of collaborative back and forth of I like this.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 30:24

I don't like that. I want more of this. I you know, let's not do that again.

Jonathan Mast: 30:29

Yeah. And I think that again, that having that conversation is so important. If you and I are are working in in an environment, I again, I'm not gonna walk up and say, please write me a social media post and turn around and walk away as you're going, oh, I got some questions. But AI can't tell you it's got questions necessarily. So it then just fills in all the gaps and you get junk because you didn't give a very good information.

Jonathan Mast: 30:48

If you just give it that information, you'll get great responses. Right.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 30:53

Well, thank you so much, Jonathan. This has been so incredibly valuable on such a topic that I think really is the part that will revolutionize, you know, the next few years of, I I think, long term. But for those people, especially, that haven't done anything, you know, that biggest that biggest step is giving it a try and and seeing what it can really do for you.

Jonathan Mast: 31:12

Well, thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. You're an amazing host, and I've been so happy to be able to share.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher: 31:17

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you can head on over to the Spotify or Apple Podcast app, click the 5th star and leave a written review. It really does help the show. Until next time. Have a great week.