AI for Your Business: Where to Start and How to Integrate It

Kristina Stubblefield: [00:00:00] Get ready, because I am diving into an exciting and essential topic for modern businesses. Where to start? With AI artificial intelligence. 

 Welcome to Simplified Solutions, your go to resource for small business owners and entrepreneurs seeking practical advice, innovative strategies, and simple solutions for business, marketing, and technology. I'm your host, Kristina Stubblefield. If you're eager to take your business to greater heights, then you're in the right place.

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 So AI or artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that can transform your business [00:01:00] operations. Enhance customer experiences, help with your marketing and advertising and drive growth. But with so many AI tools available, how in the world do you know which ones are the right ones for you? And then once you've selected them, how do you integrate them smoothly into your existing workflows? That's what we're going to explore today.

Now, let's start with tool selection. One of the biggest challenges with AI is managing the sheer number of tools available and selecting the ones that best meet your needs. I struggle with this myself. It can be easy to get overwhelmed because it seems like there's a new tool, widget, or software that launches every minute.

But with the right approach, you can make [00:02:00] informed decisions that offer the best return on your investment, whether that be a free tool, but it still takes your time to invest in it, or a paid tool where you're investing some type of money for that software or tool. First, let's identify your specific needs.

That's what it needs to start with. What are the primary pain points you're trying to address in your business, in your everyday life? This is important because if you're trying to improve customer service, Enhance your marketing efforts or automate repetitive tasks. You want to make sure you clearly define what your needs are, because this will help you focus on your search for tools that are most [00:03:00] relevant to your business.

Now, once you identify those pain points, and you may have several, you want to really hone in what is the top pain point. Whether it be a revenue affecting pain point, an operational pain point, what most affects you, that's the one that you want to start with first. Because what you want to do then, is you want to evaluate The tool based on its features, ease of use, and what does it cost?

Now, when you talk about cost, how much time needs to be invested to figuring out how it functions, how you need to use it, and also the monetary cost, how much is that tool, whether it be a one time cost or a monthly cost. I would encourage you to look at user [00:04:00] reviews. Also, when you're searching out these tools.

Look at the case studies. A lot of these websites for tools or software have a case studies button where you can see features that belong with specific case studies. That way you can potentially identify your industry and how this tool can be helpful. Also, take advantage of free trials. That way you can get some hands on feel for the tool itself or software.

Now again, I speak from experience on this one, you can use up a lot of time in different trials and then you fall in love with two or three different softwares and you're trying to make the decision. It can be a slippery slope, but you want to focus in on what your needs are.

Those free trials can help you determine whether or not that software truly fits your needs. [00:05:00] Your workflow and delivers the results you are looking for. Let me give you an example. A lot of times people struggle with content. Getting content out into the world because there's so many different platforms.

So many different types of content. And let's just say for an example, you're someone that does video content. And it appears to be a very big time suck for you to edit. videos When you start researching video editing tools, there's going to be a plethora of them to choose from. You might not be familiar with video editing.

It's probably not your forte. And if you're not in a position to offload that work to someone else, you need to find a tool that you can use. That you can navigate through and be able to end up with a video that you're [00:06:00] happy with. I'll give you an example. Descript. I love Descript. One of the best things about it, even if you're not familiar with editing videos, they make it really easy to edit from the transcript.

And by editing, basically you're taking the wording and you can backspace or delete it. where you've paused or if you've said something incorrectly, or you just jumble your words and it needs to be removed. However, that software might not be the right fit. It's probably not going to be the right fit for everyone.

And you can end up spending a lot of time in those free trials of those tools to figure that out. But by reading reviews and seeing how other businesses, similar to yours have implemented these tools, it can help you in your decision making process. Also don't forget about the power of AI.

If you plug [00:07:00] into AI, something like ChatGPT and you tell AI who you are and what you do and this is your pain point and I'm looking for a tool software widget to help me cut out some of this time I have involved in this. What are five tools that you recommend for my industry of blank? Because you can use AI for researching and you can save a hell of a lot of time by going out and doing all of this research on various websites.

So there's a tip inside of a tip inside of a tip. Now, once you find. a tool that is the right fit for you. Here's the next important thing. You need to implement it because time and time again, I see people purchase Tools with an S, multiple, and they [00:08:00] sit. I'm also guilty of this because I love technology. I like to know what's happening. I like to know what's coming out.

I want to try it because I want to talk to my clients or my customers about it, my community. I want to share with them because it could be helpful for them. You need to implement. Because I've also left very valuable software sitting on a shelf and that does no good for me when it's just on my computer or I've got the email with the license but I'm not using it.

I've never even put the license in. So you want to make sure you have a plan to implement. And sometimes that can even mean setting a little bit of time aside to know how this tool or software functions. You might not use all of it to start with, but you need to have an overview that way you can use more of its features and not go out like Kristina has in the past and find another [00:09:00] tool or two or 10 when one of the tools or softwares that we already have offers those same features.

So I speak from experience on this because. Let's be honest, so many tools coming out, you get excited and you see the potential of how it can benefit you or you think it can benefit you. And you take the step and you purchase the software or sign up for the subscription and you don't integrate it. And I know it can seem very daunting and it can seem like you've got to set aside all this time, but Investing that time can save you so much time, energy, effort, and potentially money down the road.

So I'm going to share with you just a couple of strategies to help make the transition smoother. First of all, I recommend starting small. And what I mean by that, one tool at a time. I know, I know it's so exciting. There's so many great things out there, [00:10:00] but this allows you time to evaluate its impact. on your business, whether that be on your workflow, on your marketing, on the growth of your business, starting with one tool, it will allow you to not get so overwhelmed.

Now, another example I can give you besides video editing, for some of us, we're on multiple social media platforms. And let's be honest, you want to talk about daunting task is going out to these different social media platforms and posting. Hopefully, you're already utilizing a social media scheduling tool.

If you're not, I highly encourage you to look into that. Because it can save you so much time from going from one platform to the next to the next. And also you can schedule it out. Weeks, months in advance. Now, some of these scheduling tools offer [00:11:00] way more features than just scheduling a graphic, a video, a reel, a story on a social media platform or multiple platforms.

Some of them have other features that you can tap into. And that's why it's important to have an understanding of what all these tools offer. So that way you're not wasting time or money by hopping around or adding tools to your tech stack. That you don't need. Goals I know you might be thinking, What in the world is she getting ready to talk about?

But, by defining what you want to achieve with a tool, this can help you with getting it implemented. For example, I was just talking about social media scheduling tools. you want to increase your content output, you want to put more content out on multiple platforms, Whether that's to increase your engagement, your brand awareness, [00:12:00] whatever your content strategy is there.

If you have that goal, and your objective is those that I just talked about, by setting the time aside to implement, you're going to achieve your goal faster. Because you want to get your content out there on multiple platforms. You want to be found. You want to be known as the expert in your industry.

But leaving that tool in your inbox or not logging into it or not understanding what it does, that is not a benefit for you and your business. Now the next thing I'm going to talk about is if you have a team, please don't assume that they can just go out and figure it out on their own how it will work.

I speak again from experience on this. Take the time to, if your team is remote, get everybody on a Zoom or a Google Meet and go through and show them the features. Why that's important is because [00:13:00] they potentially could have ideas how that tool can do even more things for your business. And make sure you provide them with resources.

A lot of these softwares and tools have videos, have email newsletters, There's so many opportunities to include your team so they can better understand the tool and more effectively use it. Now, last thing I will share with you about these strategies is you want to make sure that you assess How is this tool performing for me?

Is it meeting the goal or goals that I set out? Are there challenges that have come up? And also, you want to stay up to date if this tool or software is being updated. Because a lot of these AI tools There are changes happening to them at a rapid pace. Not only are there new ones coming out, but there's also [00:14:00] updates happening to existing tools and softwares.

So you want to make sure that you're paying attention to any challenges that you're having and making sure that this tool is working for the goal you set out for.

Now, I know I've just covered a lot, but embracing AI is a journey that begins with careful tool selection and making sure you integrate it. Start by identifying your needs. Evaluate those tools that are out there based on their features and the return they're going to provide for you and your business and then take the time to integrate them, even if that's gradually into your workflow, make sure you have a goal for using tools or software include your team and make sure they have the right training and resources available, [00:15:00] and then pay attention and monitor how that tool or software is performing for you. You want to make sure they're meeting your business objectives. I encourage you to start evaluating AI tools for your specific needs.

And as I mentioned before, AI can help you do the research. Even small steps can significantly make a difference. I would love to hear your experience. Send me a DM on your social media platform that you like to use, or you can always send me an email. What are your favorite tools? What are you using right now?

What are you interested? In using, I would love to hear what's going on in your world with AI for your business to help you with this process. And to learn more about AI, I've added [00:16:00] an AI resource hub on my website. You can visit KristinaStubblefield.com and you will find a variety of content to help you in your AI journey, whether you're just getting started and considering AI, or maybe you've already been using it. There are resources available. No matter where you're at with AI, just visit my website, KristinaStubblefield.com and you will find my AI resource hub.

Next week, I'm going to continue the conversation on AI. I'm going to dive into how to effectively communicate with AI tools. Like ChatGPT to generate better outputs. I'm also going to discuss tips and strategies for crafting prompts that yield more useful and accurate results. You won't want to miss it. 

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