Episode 98
E98: How AI is Revolutionizing Business With Heidi Araya
Excited to share the latest episode of the Hourly to Exit podcast featuring our exceptional guest, Heidi Araya! 🚀
Heidi's transformative journey into the world of AI is nothing short of inspirational. With over 25 years of experience in leading enterprise transformations, Heidi recognized the limitations in her previous roles and pivoted to immerse herself in artificial intelligence. From taking a data science program at MIT to founding an AI agency focused on empowering solopreneurs and small businesses, Heidi's story showcases the power of reinvention.
Here are three key takeaways from this insightful episode:
🔹 AI Accessibility and Efficiency: Advancements in AI Assistants and chatbot technology have made these tools more accessible and cost-effective for small businesses and solopreneurs. These technologies provide immense value by automating tasks and enhancing content engagement.
🔹 AI in Content Creation: Heidi emphasizes the exciting possibilities of using AI for content creation. From real-time streaming AI avatars for courseware to AI-driven blog post generation, the potential for making teaching and content delivery more engaging is immense.
🔹 Erin’s AI Assistant!: We talk about the awesome custom chatbot Heidi created for Think Beyond IP and when you might be ready for your own!
Tune in to this episode to hear more about Heidi's inspiring journey and her vision for the future of AI!
Listen now and don’t forget to check out her website and connect with her on LinkedIn.
More About Our Guest:
Heidi Araya is a global consultant, inventor, trainer, and speaker with over two decades of experience driving multimillion-dollar business improvements in businesses both large and small. She specializes in a people-first approach to AI adoption, offering AI-enablement coaching and AI consulting, with a primary focus on AI Assistants and AI Automation. Remarkably, this is Heidi's third career.
Heidi's first career was as a technical writer, where she later managed a team of writers and trainers. Subsequently, she led large change initiatives within organizations to help them adopt better ways of working. In 2023, she founded her own AI agency, managing AI Assistant services. Heidi's personal mission is to connect people with information that can transform their lives.
Connect with Heidi Araya:
Charity Mentioned: https://malala.org/
Connect with Erin to learn how to use intellectual property to increase your income and impact. hourlytoexit.com/podcast.
Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/
Hourly to Exit is Sponsored By:
This week’s episode of Hourly to Exit is sponsored by the NDA Navigator. Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are the bedrock of protecting your business's confidential information. However, facing a constant stream of NDAs can be overwhelming, especially when time and budget constraints prevent you from seeking full legal review. That's where the NDA Navigator comes to your rescue. Designed specifically for entrepreneurs, consultants, and business owners with corporate clients, the NDA Navigator is your guide to understanding, negotiating, and implementing NDAs. Empower yourself with legal insights and practical tools when you don’t have the time or funds to invest in a full legal review. Get 20% off by using the coupon code “H2E”. You can find it at www.protectyourexpertise.com.
Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos
Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music
A Team Dklutr production
Transcript
Hello, ladies.
Speaker:Welcome to this week's episode of hourly to exit.
Speaker:I have a very special guest for you today, who I'm super excited about.
Speaker:Heidi Araya.
Speaker:Hello, Heidi.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I'm so excited to be here as well.
Speaker:Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:we can't get enough of AI.
Speaker:And so we have a wonderful AI expert to talk to us today.
Speaker:We're going to find out more about kind of, the latest and greatest with AI.
Speaker:But before we do that, I really want you to get to know Heidi.
Speaker:how she got here.
Speaker:So Heidi, before we get started, can you tell us about yourself,
Speaker:your business and your journey?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:So my journey, I actually spent the past 25 years helping
Speaker:companies become more effective, efficient, and productive at work.
Speaker:I just saw opportunities from the very beginning that no one else did.
Speaker:So reinventions along the way.
Speaker:But I saw that companies would.
Speaker:Execute these process improvements without considering people.
Speaker:So then I built a brand around inviting people into the process improvements.
Speaker:And that took me deep into the software companies, agile ways of
Speaker:working, of course, and finally leading transformations inside enterprises.
Speaker:But honestly, a couple of things happened the system inside most companies.
Speaker:Prevents actual change from happening number 1 and secondly, I
Speaker:saw about 3 to 4 years ago that the job I had of leading large change
Speaker:initiatives inside organizations was going to come to an end soon.
Speaker:So I knew I had to prepare myself for a pivot and I just didn't know.
Speaker:How much pivoting I would have to do in the course of a year.
Speaker:So, long story short, I dived deep into AI, took a data science
Speaker:program at MIT, sort of upskilling and building AI assistants.
Speaker:And now I'm building an AI agency with a people first poke focus.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:That is amazing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I will say, I mean, we're going to point out like all the
Speaker:things that happened since you, MIT, I didn't know that about you, Heidi.
Speaker:And so, a year ago, I mean, I guess it's a year and a half now.
Speaker:I didn't even know like AI is formed to me as like Bitcoin or cryptocurrency
Speaker:or whatever it was like out there, there's no way not touching it.
Speaker:That's somebody else.
Speaker:It's not me.
Speaker:And now here we are.
Speaker:And it's kind of all I talk about these days.
Speaker:So for you, I mean, so much has changed, like, since you decided
Speaker:to like, kind of dig into the AI, how has that process been for you?
Speaker:Yeah, first of all, it's been very interesting that I'm not
Speaker:where I thought I would be.
Speaker:I don't think I could have predicted where I am now, but yet I feel like this
Speaker:is kind of what I was born to be doing.
Speaker:So a year ago, a year and a half ago, I just started experimenting with AI.
Speaker:I was a consultant inside a technical consulting firm, helping enterprises
Speaker:with their transformations and, technical, like, app modernization.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:I saw how it could help me in my work come up with workshop agendas.
Speaker:And I thought, well, okay, this is probably the worst AI we will see, you
Speaker:know, that's what they started saying.
Speaker:Hey, this is the worst AI you will ever see.
Speaker:And so I began experimenting more and more.
Speaker:I found how to summarize web pages, podcasts and all that,
Speaker:because I love to learn.
Speaker:And I thought this is where I have to dig in more.
Speaker:So I was laid off twice in 2023.
Speaker:But I was already prepared for what I was going to do next.
Speaker:So I hopped right into the data science program at MIT again.
Speaker:At the time, I thought.
Speaker:I'm just going to learn as much as I can, because I don't know what's out there,
Speaker:but I know I need to know this thing.
Speaker:And I remember having a conversation with the program manager at MIT when
Speaker:you had to have a call so that they would accept you in the program and
Speaker:talk about why you were doing this.
Speaker:And she says, but Heidi, this is so different than
Speaker:anything you have ever done.
Speaker:the business statistics, the Python, the data science and all this data wrangling.
Speaker:And so I remembered my words back to her were, Okay.
Speaker:If not now, then when, like, this is the time.
Speaker:And so I, spent a lot of hours learning that discovered by the
Speaker:end that I didn't want to be a data scientist, but that was okay.
Speaker:the time.
Speaker:My goal was to just simply know enough about data science, machine learning, AI
Speaker:to lead an initiative or something inside a company like an AI initiative or team.
Speaker:Then I started to build AI assistants and I got very excited about the
Speaker:possibilities there, especially because my first customers were content
Speaker:creators and authors who had a lot of work out there that they wanted to
Speaker:share their knowledge with the world.
Speaker:And so I, thought, well, this is kind of my mission is sharing knowledge and
Speaker:helping connect people with information.
Speaker:So I just kind of all ballooned from there, I guess.
Speaker:That's fantastic.
Speaker:And so now you have an AI agency.
Speaker:did you coin that term?
Speaker:Or is that,
Speaker:I didn't coin that term, but it is a term that's kind of new.
Speaker:That's out there that people are using.
Speaker:So yeah, in the past year I had to move from, agile ways of working to
Speaker:this AI from a non technical role
Speaker:to
Speaker:providing technical solutions from helping large companies.
Speaker:To serving solopreneurs, small businesses and from dealing with technical customers
Speaker:who were typically engineers to serving a lot of non technical customers.
Speaker:And lastly, uh, last and hardest maybe I think was from employee
Speaker:to business owner solopreneur.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Well, I am one of her challenge
Speaker:clients.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:They're wonderful.
Speaker:So we're going to talk about AI assistance.
Speaker:And by the way, when we say assistance, it's like the A N T S like, the
Speaker:noun correct, uh, or plural noun.
Speaker:basically the custom chatbots.
Speaker:Is that basically what we're talking about?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so, first tell us about, cause I believe it wasn't that long ago that I
Speaker:was asking someone about adding a custom chat box to my website and they're
Speaker:like, oh, it's super complicated.
Speaker:And maybe they just didn't know what they're talking about, or has it just.
Speaker:Progress that much in the last 6 to 9 months.
Speaker:It's like, what is the history
Speaker:there?
Speaker:Yes, it has progressed very rapidly in the last 6 to 9 months.
Speaker:When I first started building chatbots, there were very few
Speaker:platforms available for them.
Speaker:They were expensive, they couldn't house a lot of information and a lot
Speaker:of them, like, for the 1 that we built for you and others, can kind of crawl
Speaker:the website effectively and quickly and those kind of things didn't exist.
Speaker:9 months ago.
Speaker:So, yes, great progress has been made not only with the capabilities,
Speaker:but also the storage of information.
Speaker:So it used to be very expensive to do that.
Speaker:And they were saying it would be, hundreds of dollars per month.
Speaker:So that has the cost has come down a lot from that as well.
Speaker:Those are some of the factors.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what is the difference
Speaker:between
Speaker:like,
Speaker:The AI assistance, and like, when I go on chat, if I premium, I can make a
Speaker:custom, bot or whatever they call it.
Speaker:Yeah, that is a great.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Custom.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A great question.
Speaker:So when you build your custom in chat, you can actually program that with.
Speaker:Natural language, I want this and I want that.
Speaker:how it responds and you can upload some files there.
Speaker:But the limitations are it's limited to both.
Speaker:The file upload, so it can't crawl your site automatically
Speaker:and pull in on the data, but also the file uploads are limited.
Speaker:And I think it's 20 files that you can upload.
Speaker:the work around is to gather all of your information, transport it, Format to text
Speaker:format 1st, and then you can upload it.
Speaker:so you'd have to do some massaging there, but You also can't embed that
Speaker:on your website as a chat in a pop up, like, we have done, or in an eye frame.
Speaker:And so they just meant it to be if you did do that.
Speaker:Say, you had some of your content there.
Speaker:It would be a lot less content, and it wouldn't deliver the same
Speaker:results as the custom assistance that you could embed on your website.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'll say from my personal experience, it is amazing.
Speaker:how well it can, gather the information on my site and help, people answer
Speaker:their questions from a chat.
Speaker:Very different from the customer service thing that you get, you know, when you're.
Speaker:Trying to get through to your phone company or whatever.
Speaker:I mean, it really is just kind of finding the information that you
Speaker:have helping people access it.
Speaker:So, when people are thinking about using.
Speaker:an AI assistant on their site.
Speaker:I mean, the beauty of it is it helps them kind of, really make accessible
Speaker:all of the information on their site.
Speaker:But I imagine that there's kind of some minimum requirements for it to make sense.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And I've had a couple of customers that I actually said, It doesn't
Speaker:make any sense for them to have a chat bot on their website.
Speaker:And 1 was a gentleman who had visual solutions.
Speaker:So he would do lighting solutions.
Speaker:And so 90 percent of his website was just videos of the lighting
Speaker:that he had set up in arenas and
Speaker:big
Speaker:buildings and all these things.
Speaker:and with that lack of text information on his website, I said, well, the chat bot
Speaker:Isn't going to perform for you, you would actually have to have documents where you
Speaker:train the chat bot to answer questions.
Speaker:So if you're willing to invest in building those documents, then we could train it.
Speaker:but if not, then the chat bot can't operate with no information.
Speaker:So that's 1 customer.
Speaker:the other customer I had, which recently I told him it wasn't
Speaker:worth to get a chap on his website.
Speaker:has specialty cleaning business and.
Speaker:He had 20 pages on his website, and the value proposition was clear.
Speaker:People weren't going to get lost
Speaker:in
Speaker:what he was trying to offer.
Speaker:So they could ask a simple question.
Speaker:And I did a test bot for him so he could see, and it was, how
Speaker:often should you clean your rugs?
Speaker:do you do this kind of cleaning?
Speaker:But at the end, told him, I actually don't think this would be a value to
Speaker:you because, uh, When customers come to your website, it's pretty clear
Speaker:what you're offering is they're not going to have to sip through reams
Speaker:and have complex questions about that.
Speaker:yeah, I actually told him to focus more on building his brand and his
Speaker:authority in the specialty cleaning space instead of the chatbot.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I would think, just good old fashioned FAQs.
Speaker:Are adequate for some uses, for my site, which was, I guess, finally, all
Speaker:these web, these blog posts and things that I've been doing finally paid off.
Speaker:And so I have, a fair amount of content on there, so it's able to blog posts, right?
Speaker:My podcasts are all on there.
Speaker:So the transcripts from that, including some that I was a guest on and,
Speaker:was there something else on there?
Speaker:I can't remember that.
Speaker:YouTube,
Speaker:any YouTube videos, YouTube
Speaker:videos.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And your other website, That's right.
Speaker:And I have multiple websites.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it all works together.
Speaker:and so it is, truly amazing.
Speaker:I'm loving it.
Speaker:So it is a completely closed data set, correct?
Speaker:so that's not outside of the website when we're doing it, chat box.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And That's one of the reasons why I'm very careful about the solutions and
Speaker:platforms that I offer because some of them, was using one back in October,
Speaker:November timeframe that actually was hallucinating and it was impossible
Speaker:to turn off the internet access to it.
Speaker:And so it would do strange things like give recipes for tomato soup.
Speaker:And it, it would also at one time, yeah, it would, so it was a management
Speaker:consultant and it would give recipes for tomato soup that people asked
Speaker:it for, it would, at one point.
Speaker:Someone asked it a question and it gave a, like a link to a different website.
Speaker:So I knew that it wasn't.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:yes, all those things have evolved so much over the past 6 to 9 months.
Speaker:And so we have better checks controls over to ensure that it's
Speaker:not hallucinating, not going outside.
Speaker:And what I say, the little walled garden that you're supposed to be
Speaker:playing in an answering problem.
Speaker:the other thing that I really wanted to do when I was working on your
Speaker:solution is to have the citations.
Speaker:readily available so that when people get an answer to their
Speaker:question, they're able to click and see where did the answer come from?
Speaker:Because that gives more certitude and kind of confidence that it's not hallucinating.
Speaker:Yeah, that is so important.
Speaker:In fact, I was just like, interacting on LinkedIn today.
Speaker:Had a post about AI and someone mentioned, yeah, you know, I realized
Speaker:that I never get spurses when I use, chat GVT in this instance.
Speaker:and I think people aren't aware that they can get spurses.
Speaker:Get sources, but it's, people are just becoming way more aware.
Speaker:Like we need to make sure we know where is this information coming from?
Speaker:We know that, generative AI hallucinates, we know that it steals
Speaker:stuff, we know, and so we need to have that comfort of having sources.
Speaker:And I'm glad to know that, on my site, it's great.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, you get the answer from the bot, but to be able to go to the
Speaker:source is really important as well.
Speaker:and then back to that being a closed dataset.
Speaker:I it sounds like some of the risks that everyone is afraid of when using,
Speaker:kind of the chat GBTs of the world.
Speaker:Those are eliminated when we're using our, custom chat bots.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:Yes, correct.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:it's not trained on your information and material.
Speaker:So it's all secure and private on a sock to GDPR compliant.
Speaker:I so 27, 001 and all those compliant platforms.
Speaker:so, yes, that's another reason for doing a custom AI assistant instead
Speaker:of just going through a chat one.
Speaker:Yeah, very nice.
Speaker:Very nice.
Speaker:And so are there any best practices?
Speaker:Practices that we need to think about, like, , when does someone
Speaker:know that they're ready for you?
Speaker:Let's put it that way.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:So perhaps there are a solopreneur expert that has a lot of information out there.
Speaker:And 1 example would be an author with a lot of.
Speaker:Books like my 1 client who has 28 books 1 of them has, I think about
Speaker:500 and 500 blog posts over 17 years.
Speaker:You have a lot of content to share even courses, right?
Speaker:I have another client who's interested in.
Speaker:Updating their courseware with a real-time streaming AI avatar.
Speaker:So it would be, there's enough information there where the AI assistant could operate
Speaker:in a way that it gets good information.
Speaker:So if there's not a lot of information out there, then I would recommend that person
Speaker:build their brand and create information first so that we could train the chatbot.
Speaker:But if you already have a lot of information out there and you want
Speaker:to share your knowledge or, monetize that knowledge in some other way
Speaker:than you're doing today, then an AI assistant could be that thing for you
Speaker:go back to what you mentioned with the course creator,
Speaker:some kind of live streaming.
Speaker:What was that?
Speaker:Explain this to us.
Speaker:So it is now possible to have a live streaming avatar where someone would.
Speaker:So say you have a course that you wanted to teach
Speaker:and
Speaker:you have an AI, avatar that could kind of be waiting for a question.
Speaker:So you'd go to a portal and then the person would ask a question
Speaker:either by voice or type it in and then have your avatar reply to that
Speaker:question based on your knowledge base.
Speaker:Whoa,
Speaker:that is so cool.
Speaker:So it's basically teaching.
Speaker:It's like having a teaching assistant, basically.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:It's new and not a lot of companies or people are going for that solution
Speaker:right now, but you could imagine how much more engaging it would be to
Speaker:learn something if you had sort of this person there in front of you,
Speaker:instead of just engaging in the chat.
Speaker:So that's one of the things that I, super excited.
Speaker:So I'm exploring for my own self, how much it would take
Speaker:to have that happen for people.
Speaker:And, the other thing is I have a client who's interested in
Speaker:updating their old courseware.
Speaker:And they have the transcripts for that, and the content is still good, but yet
Speaker:the videos are probably 10 years old.
Speaker:So this person did ask me and I told him, oh, you could certainly
Speaker:create an avatar of yourself and that would be your own voice and your
Speaker:own persona, you know, physically.
Speaker:And then we could actually.
Speaker:Train it on your courseware.
Speaker:So you already have the transcripts
Speaker:and
Speaker:all we would have to do is update it to however you looked currently
Speaker:and make any tweaks to the content.
Speaker:And then your avatar would just have your course.
Speaker:So it's a much I'll say lower course creator.
Speaker:Who's got some stuff they want to update if you have your old content.
Speaker:So that's another opportunity.
Speaker:That's not a real time streaming avatar, but it's still kind of the same where
Speaker:you could have your avatar there.
Speaker:That is amazing.
Speaker:So as you mentioned that it reminded me of the way old video games used
Speaker:to be made where I think they had to kind of produce multiple options
Speaker:and then somehow it would choose the right option based on what you did.
Speaker:Was that a I or is that just,
Speaker:well, it's something that I was, I actually was wondering if we
Speaker:would get to talk about today and that it's like a decision tree.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So more like, okay, it's kind of falls in machine learning where you
Speaker:would have a decision tree or So, not really the kind of conversant.
Speaker:More intelligent that we have today, but those were annoying because remember, if
Speaker:you call up the phone number and they say, do you want talk to this or talk to that?
Speaker:You press a number.
Speaker:And if you don't answer exactly what it wants, it gets
Speaker:confused and it won't respond.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So we've advanced a lot beyond that.
Speaker:But, yes, some, those were.
Speaker:Probably typically decision trees, I would think.
Speaker:Oh, interesting.
Speaker:And now we have something dynamic and generative.
Speaker:So we can take that is so interesting.
Speaker:Well, that I mean, I really look forward to seeing 1 of those live
Speaker:streaming lens with avatar is public.
Speaker:Please let us know.
Speaker:I would love to see how that works out.
Speaker:That is so exciting.
Speaker:I think people are going to be.
Speaker:Extremely excited about that.
Speaker:so what else?
Speaker:I mean, obviously, that is more of the trends that you're seeing.
Speaker:I mean, things are happening so fast.
Speaker:I know it's probably hard to keep up, but what can we also can we look
Speaker:forward to in the last half of 2024?
Speaker:What a great question.
Speaker:So, the next thing I think people really start to dial in on is
Speaker:this idea of AI automation.
Speaker:So, more than just an assistant.
Speaker:So, a simple assistant can, you know, you can chat back and forth with, but it's
Speaker:not really taking any action on its own.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, agents.
Speaker:There's something called AI agents that will actually take
Speaker:autonomous actions on their own.
Speaker:So they might go through complex workflows.
Speaker:There's 1 person on LinkedIn.
Speaker:That's kind of advertising his advanced AI agents that he's created a series of them
Speaker:that operate intelligently on their own.
Speaker:They go out to the Internet.
Speaker:They solve coding problems and they come back and, when he wakes up in the
Speaker:morning, it's created 100, 000 lines of code overnight with his series of agents
Speaker:and contributed to open source projects.
Speaker:And so.
Speaker:That's kind of coming up and also scary to think about.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but the other thing that might be relevant for small businesses and people thinking
Speaker:what's next with AI would be just,
Speaker:AI automation, so for content creators, they might have some way that they
Speaker:automate their blog post creation in a way that it, generates an image as well.
Speaker:So it could go through this series of gathering information, generating a
Speaker:draft blog post, creating an image, and then have you, of course, add your own
Speaker:voice to it before you go out there.
Speaker:People who automate the whole thing.
Speaker:And I don't recommend that.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:and the next thing is voice in AI.
Speaker:And that's something I'm also experimenting with.
Speaker:So this weekend I set up a, Okay.
Speaker:phone number where people could call in and schedule time on my calendar and
Speaker:so it's not ready for prime time yet.
Speaker:But, voice AI assistants are going to be big.
Speaker:The AI agents are going to be big.
Speaker:And I think that the avatars are going to be big.
Speaker:It's still very new, but those are the kind of things I see coming.
Speaker:Yeah, I think I saw it was in some, mastermind, I don't know, I think it
Speaker:was one that we share, but someone was mentioning that their bank had
Speaker:offered to have voice, authentication, so that instead of, pins or things
Speaker:like that, but is that a good idea?
Speaker:If we have, these voice avatars, if someone can take a recording,
Speaker:they can take this podcast.
Speaker:Recording and create a voice avatar and then use it to get into my bank account.
Speaker:So actually that's a risk that no one had thought about when they put the voice
Speaker:prints because I think that came out maybe five or six years ago when I was asked to
Speaker:add that to my financial services account.
Speaker:And so no, probably that alone isn't going to do it anymore.
Speaker:I was risky, but now they have other more advanced applications to figure
Speaker:out whether it's actually you, so I know they're advancing rapidly.
Speaker:I don't know of any banking or any serious application that's only using
Speaker:a voice right now because of that risk.
Speaker:Yeah, very good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, we know that we're having issues with actors and actresses
Speaker:because of the ability to reproduce their voices, very accurately.
Speaker:So, all sorts of fun times for litigators.
Speaker:I'm not that kind of lawyer.
Speaker:So, but someone's going to make a lot of money from
Speaker:this stuff.
Speaker:I was thinking, Aaron, well, I was doing my MBA years and years ago.
Speaker:So it was about 2011.
Speaker:I looked it up to February of 2011.
Speaker:I'm in my MBA program.
Speaker:We had to take a class on innovation.
Speaker:And there's this thing called the theory of inventive problem solving by this
Speaker:guy, Alt Shuler, who was a Russian guy analyzing patents, and we actually had
Speaker:to write a paper on what we thought would happen based on his analysis of patents.
Speaker:Patents, and how people could create new patents and
Speaker:basically the future of things.
Speaker:And so 1 of the things was removing the human from the loop or combining things.
Speaker:So, just as an example, it used to be that heaters and air conditioners
Speaker:were separate, but now we have heat pumps, which effectively can operate.
Speaker:Both the other 1 was, of course, removing human in the loop.
Speaker:So my paper that I wrote back in 2011 was soon we won't need actors at all.
Speaker:And there's going to be an interim state Where the actor licenses their
Speaker:likeness to a movie because we all want to see Tom Cruise or whoever,
Speaker:but soon we won't really care because it's going to be good enough and we'll
Speaker:get used to not knowing that actor.
Speaker:But then imagine people who write books that they have this vision and
Speaker:the series can go on for 20 years, like the James Bond series, and they
Speaker:won't get disappointed because all of a sudden Sean Connery is too old to play.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:We have a whole Dorian Gray issue here, I think, going on.
Speaker:So we'll just.
Speaker:Stick the actor in some room who never see him again so he can age
Speaker:while he stays beautiful on screen.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:That was very prescient of you.
Speaker:sometimes it's really hard to wrap your head around the possibilities,
Speaker:honestly, They're just endless okay.
Speaker:So as you know, this is a pretty meta podcast, mostly for female founders of
Speaker:expertise based businesses to help them, make sure they're building a business that
Speaker:is scalable and maybe someday saleable.
Speaker:And so you fit into that.
Speaker:Avatar, so I'm wondering what your plans are for your business and are
Speaker:you thinking about maybe scaling your selling or what the next chapter would be?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a very interesting question.
Speaker:Because 1st of all, I never thought that I would be a solopreneur and end
Speaker:up in this, but I absolutely am thinking about it because I see that there is.
Speaker:There's desire and need and I have to turn down projects every day because I
Speaker:can't handle them or they're just not in the area of scope of my business.
Speaker:And so I have interns and already someone else helping me on the side and I'm just
Speaker:wondering at what point Will I choose to scale or prepare my business for sale?
Speaker:So I'm already planning on reaching out and thinking early about those
Speaker:things in case it does happen.
Speaker:And of course, you'll be 1 of the people that I reach out to make sure that I'm
Speaker:doing things correctly along the way.
Speaker:It's
Speaker:never too
Speaker:early to plan.
Speaker:So I like to say that the things that we do to
Speaker:Prepare for sale are the same things that we need to do to scale.
Speaker:So it's not like, you need to be thinking 10 years down the line, those
Speaker:things that you need to kind of help decouple your income from your time.
Speaker:Those are the things you need to do now too.
Speaker:So very good.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So a couple of last questions.
Speaker:So, you know, I believe in creating a more equitable society and I'm
Speaker:wondering if there's an organization or a person who's doing great work
Speaker:in helping that happen that you'd like to share with the audience.
Speaker:Yeah, so I recommend the Malala fund because it really focuses on girls.
Speaker:And of course, education girls getting their proper
Speaker:education is so, so important.
Speaker:So I love their focus on girls getting their education because
Speaker:without an education, we really can't begin to compete and know
Speaker:what our potential really is.
Speaker:So I love the Malala fund.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:absolutely.
Speaker:I agree 100 percent and there's very little more important
Speaker:than making sure we have that.
Speaker:Independence through education, so we will make sure that is in
Speaker:the show notes and to that end.
Speaker:Also, is there an offer?
Speaker:I know you're probably overwhelmed.
Speaker:I think you are going to be even more overwhelmed, but is there an offer that
Speaker:you'd like to share with the audience or what's going on in your business?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So actually I'd love to hear from solopreneurs and small businesses who
Speaker:are really struggling to scale, maybe struggling with too many phone calls,
Speaker:unable to answer them, or perhaps like you, they got to sit in a meeting
Speaker:that could have been just answered by the assistant on their website.
Speaker:so definitely, we're looking to help those folks scale and grow.
Speaker:And also there are some folks reaching out now who are ready for
Speaker:that next step into automation.
Speaker:So, automating some of their processes so that my offer to
Speaker:just reach out and have a chat.
Speaker:If you think that might be you.
Speaker:But also I have heard a lot of stories that people implement automation
Speaker:or AI assistance without talking to the people who are impacted.
Speaker:And so 1 of the things that I take very, very seriously is including the people
Speaker:who are impacted in the conversation when we're thinking about automation.
Speaker:So I lead these AI exploration workshops that are also very people
Speaker:focused and we talk about opportunities inside our company for automation.
Speaker:so another conversation is.
Speaker:If people are just uncertain where to start with AI in their company,
Speaker:we can do have an AI exploration workshop with your workforce.
Speaker:Yeah, we don't want to leave people behind, right?
Speaker:that is the danger, isn't it?
Speaker:To leave people behind in all of this conversation about
Speaker:artificial intelligence.
Speaker:So where can people
Speaker:find you?
Speaker:So you can go to my website at BrightLogicGroup.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:You can find me on LinkedIn, Heidi Araya, and yeah, those are the places
Speaker:that you can find me hanging out.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:We'll
Speaker:have all of that in the show notes as well.
Speaker:Heidi, this has been a pleasure.
Speaker:Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us
Speaker:today.
Speaker:Thank you so much for inviting me.
Speaker:I look forward to meeting you again and watching the podcast when it goes live.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Thanks, Erin.
Speaker:Have a lovely day.
Speaker:Bye bye.
