Implementing AI For Your Business

[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Today’s episode is sponsored by Make.com, the Automation and development platform that helps you harness the full power of AI. I’ve been using make because it’s hands down the easiest way to automate the boring, repetitive tasks in my business without needing to know how to code or over complicate things. Make uses a super simple drag and drop visual builder which lets me connect all the different apps that I use to create workflows and saves me so much time. Honestly, it feels like having a virtual assistant running in the background 24-7.

Whether it’s sending out client forms, updating spreadsheets, or syncing your calendar, make helps you get it all done automatically so that you can focus on the stuff that really matters. And the best part? You can get started for free while you figure out how to set up the best automations that work for you and your business. To check it out, head on over to calanbreckon.com/make or click the link in the show notes. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.

Welcome to the Business gay podcast where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host Calan Breckon and on today’s episode I have founder and CEO of Ops Machine, Mitch Schwartz.

Ops Machine is a CGLCC certified consultancy that helps small to mid-size organizations adopt AI intentionally amplifying human strengths rather than replacing them. Mitch has spent years mastering process design and team dynamics, now guiding organizations from “where do we start?” to measurable AI wins while balancing automation with human impact. I’m excited to chat with Mitch about AI integrations and implementation today. So, let’s jump in.

Hey Mitch, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. How are you doing today?

[00:01:30] Mitch Schwartz: Oh great, great. It’s like a swampy 45 degrees outside and here in Quebec yesterday was St. Jean or the national holiday.

National provincial holiday.

[00:01:43] Calan Breckon: Oh nice.

[00:01:44] Mitch Schwartz: Yeah, so I got to walk like 16 minutes from a parking spot to the park in this incredibly hot water melty sun.

So I’m, I’m great. I think I’m like detoxed completely in that.

[00:01:56] Calan Breckon: Nice. Yes, it is the, it is the heat dome. Currently as we are recording this, I thank God have great ac. But I did go out last night. Toronto Pride just kicked off and so I went out last night to the AIDS visual that they had and so that was really nice way to start off Pride. But yeah, it was definitely, definitely warm.

So we’re going to be jumping in and talking all about kind of AI integration and implementation today. So, so I want to start off with this.

How should business leaders rethink the values of experience in this kind of new AI era that we’re in right now?

[00:02:35] Mitch Schwartz: I think that’s a great question.

So the way I’ve been framing it and I took this from Guy Joe Hudson, who’s a great coach, I’ll give him credit right now since attribution is becoming so important in this age. And so he’s put this forward as wisdom work replacing knowledge work. And I think it’s a great way to look at things. So experience, right?

I’m going to, you know, the obvious way to answer this feels like, oh, like my level of experience. But I’m going to talk a bit about employees experience and everyone’s experience of going through this change.

And so a friend of mine started learning to ride a motorcycle.

And the thing that I thought was great he learned is if it starts to wobble, if you look at the road, the motorcycle is going to go towards the road, and if you look at the ditch, it’s going to go towards the ditch.

I don’t know if you’ve done that thing where you’re looking over while you’re driving and your car starts veering dangerously and you go, oh, crap.

So that’s the playing field, right? But now we’re all going around this weird blind bend and what’s around that? And we don’t know.

So how do we go about this, AI Change? How do we come into this new world in a way where everyone is so afraid, so many people are stuck and paralyzed, so many people are afraid that their jobs will be replaced and they will, but computers replaced a lot of jobs, and now how many more authors are there than there used to be, for example, or writers?

So it’s really like, what’s the experience of what becomes possible?

And I’ve totally sidestepped this question again. So I’ll. I’ll, you know, let me know if you want to take another swing.

[00:04:19] Calan Breckon: Loop background.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, yes, I. I agree in that AI is. It’s got everybody up in arms in many different ways. I’m a firm believer that humanity continues to just power on and get curious and, like, learn and evolve. It’s what we’ve done. It’s what we’ve always done. Like, horse and bug be turned into the car and everybody’s like, huh, That’ll never take off. And, like, look at us now. Like, it.

Obviously it did. And then like, electricity, all these things, all these moments happen. And I.

It is early days with AI I do believe it is kind of an electricity moment where, like, electricity became. And just like electricity, it’s going to take a while to build the infrastructure to figure out, like, what’s really working, what’s not really working, and how it works inside of your industry. And so I think today in, you know, leaders in business, if they’re rethinking this Whole AI Era, I’d suggest not to, like, think too hard and not to, like, commit yourself a hundred percent anywhere. Like, take a step back and just breathe and just remember, like, you know, as long as we’re taking little steps and we start looking at it now and start going, okay, well, what’s working? What’s not working, what can we easily put out and what can we easily not?

And then also look at your workers, because I believe your workers make your business. And so look at that and go, okay, are there roles already existing that can do this? Because it’s going to come down to like, you know, prompting or setting things up. Who in the business already exists, who’s close enough so that instead of laying people off and just changing things, you can just pivot them over or at least some of them. Or ask around, say, hey, who wants to switch up jobs?

And do you want to learn these things? And then start building that team and start building those things and implementing them into. That’s how I would do it if I was a leader.

[00:06:16] Mitch Schwartz: Yeah, I think it’s a lot like that. Right. So now to talk about the question for real is, okay, so I like to say wisdom work, right? And when we talk about wisdom, then there’s three skills that again, named in Joe’s model. I’ll just keep crediting him on this because I feel like I’m just straight taking it out, but from his work. But there’s connection, there’s discernment, and.

Well, that’s. What’s the third one here? Yeah, emotional clarity. Okay, good thing I wrote that down.

So when all of the information is available to us, right? When there’s so many things, like there’s. There’s more data than ever, so how do we find our way through it? Right? And if we come to connection, then how do we help our team want to be a part of things? Right? Like, what’s going to be really hard is fighting your team, like, managing, hurting them through this change. But what’s going to be a whole lot more fun and enjoyable and prosperous, I think, is lighting that fire for people, helping them see, like, hey, AI is not going to take your job.

People who use AI better than you are going to take your job or your future job, right? Like, we don’t know what’s around that bend, but there’s nothing for the people just sitting here and not making the journey.

So how do we inspire people to want to make that journey? And I’ll tie it back now. That’s where we care about their Experience in the sense. And I’d say, like, right now, I mean, what’s your level of experience with AI? Actually, I was listening to the other podcast, so I think I know this, but it’s.

[00:07:52] Calan Breckon: I use it. I use it. I wouldn’t say robustly. I would say I use it as a tool to help me or get over, like, a writer’s block. When I’m like, using to write my emails for podcast episodes, sometimes I’m just like, I’m tired. My brain is blanking. How to, like, take this information and make it nice into an email for people.

I use it to consult, just like myself in terms of, like, asking questions, going deeper, like, hey, give me ideas about this or that. And it’s not a tool I use to straight up write things. It’s a tool I use to prompt me to move faster.

Because when you’re staring at a blank page, that’s probably the most daunting thing. And you’re like, come on, brain. And it can really help you get out. And so that’s where I am. I have started looking at like N8N and like, setting up systems to automate things because I used to use, like, Zapier and all these other kind of tools that kind of automated things. But then with AI, I feel like it could get murky real quick if you don’t really know exactly what you’re doing.

And so kind of just starting to toy and play in there. Because there’s things with this podcast that I’m surely AI could automate for me, but. But then, you know, am I going to have to go back and check her work? You know, like.

Like, did you do that right? Or is that thing right? And, you know, starting now and just kind of toying with it and not actually implementing it, and then eventually waiting until it gets a little bit better and I can know it’s going to do the thing, then I can turn the switch actually on and actually implement it. So a lot of these things can get automated. That’s. That’s how I use it in my systems.

[00:09:29] Mitch Schwartz: Yeah, I think so. One iterative approach, right. And building the muscle. So how. Now, when you’re using AI, you must see a meaningful evolution in the way you think and approach using AI versus when you just started with it.

[00:09:43] Calan Breckon: Yeah, definitely. It was very daunting when I first started.

[00:09:47] Mitch Schwartz: Right. And I mean, like, what, what maybe what micro skills have you absorbed?

[00:09:54] Calan Breckon: Asking better questions.

And so, yeah, asking better questions because your prompts and your responses are only going to be as good as the questions or the prompts that you put in. And so getting better at like asking those questions or making those.

Instead of making the assumptions you make in your brain, actually going in there and be like, you’re the best lawyer in Toronto, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah in this sector. And, and like giving it a personality to first riff off of makes it so much better than just being like, hey, what’s this? And it gives you a flat answer.

[00:10:31] Mitch Schwartz: Yeah, RICO is a, is a good model. Role instruction, context and then output.

And so these are the kind of skills that when we start using AI, even now, generative AI, to be more specific, ChatGPT, et cetera, we start to internalize this. So I had a friend, maybe a couple months ago, ago, I was trying to put a PDF in and it wouldn’t accept the PDF or download a webpage or whatever thing. And I spent a half an hour and it didn’t get me anywhere. And that was stupid. And I said, oh, yeah, that happened to me the first time and now I know what it wants, so I can do that in five minutes.

So there’s this huge wave that, well, it’s here and there’s bigger ones coming.

And I think that the more we build our balance on the metaphorical surfboard, the little skills. Right. The better we’ll be able to like, recognize the wave and then ride it. So to me, that’s, that’s so critical and I think that’s something that a lot of people overlook is the muscle memory.

[00:11:29] Calan Breckon: Yeah.

[00:11:29] Mitch Schwartz: Which, which tool should I use? Like, is cloud or chat GPT going to be better? Should I make a project for this or a custom GPT or like Gemini Deep Research, like just kind of having a sense of what’s the best one right now. Internalized is so valuable.

[00:11:44] Calan Breckon: Definitely. So here’s a question then, when a company says, like, oh, we need to implement AI, like, what’s the first question you ask them? And like, how should they think about that?

[00:11:56] Mitch Schwartz: Yeah, there’s almost no first question I ask them because it’s no pun or play on words intended here, but it, there’s a bit of a vibe thing that that happens. Right. So if we talk about wisdom, and this is clarity, discernment, those pieces, and I suppose the connection part is what am I picking up from them right away?

Now I need to understand where are they in their journey? Like if, if they’re saying, hey, I want to bring in AI and I want to replace all my team. Right. Or, hey, where are the problems? What do you think? It can solve for you.

Usually the first half an hour that I sit down with a company is really starting to zone in on like where would it help? Sometimes we actually map out the processes. If not, it happens in the next hour or so. But we put it on paper and figure it out. Right.

Something that’s really important I think for companies to realize is that like a great analogy is you’ve probably heard the thing about if you have a company that you can sell, then like you pretty much have a good, well run company. Right. And you have a better life as the owner than a company that you couldn’t sell because it runs more autonomously. It’s going to be easier to onboard people, it’s easier to make sales. It doesn’t all rest on your shoulders.

So like similarly if you have a company that you can bring people into easily and the processes are clear and your onboarding is great, then you have a company that’s probably going to lend itself really well towards bringing in AI. And so the first thing that I, that I think about and talk to people about is treating the AI almost like a person.

There’s some really important limitations to that and I feel like many of them are obvious. I won’t get into it right now but like, you know, how are you set up? Where would it get that context from? In the Ricoh model, does it have clear instructions? What problems can it really solve? So it’s understanding all of that and, and that’s collaborative.

So to me I really like, I guess the one question might be like, what do you think it can solve for you? What are, where’s your brain at right now? And then we go from there. But, but it’s such a unique journey.

[00:14:10] Calan Breckon: Yeah.

[00:14:11] Mitch Schwartz: So it’s really about walking that together to me and mapping it together.

[00:14:15] Calan Breckon: Definitely. Do you see like any big mistakes that companies make when they are trying to adopt AI? Like any big like, oh, that’s a red flag, don’t do that.

[00:14:25] Mitch Schwartz: I would say that it’s really similar to the big red flags that come with a lot of process design in general or collaboration or growth in the company. So top down stuff. Right. It depends on the size of the company. If you’re one person it’s moot. If you’re 10 people then there’s so much knowledge in each person who’s doing each job.

So if I can give an example, I’m working with a notary office now and one of the problems that the notaries told me is hey, by the time documents come to us and we, you know, are doing the review of it. We find problems but it’s very late and so now we have to ask the bank for an update and they don’t move that quickly. So now it’s just rush and it creates havoc. And then when I spoke with the paralegals, they said, yeah, that’s happening. And the most obvious thing might be at that point, but hey, we spend so much of our day going and sending out follow ups for people to send us documents like two months earlier. The process and that’s always on our checklist and all these red overdue things are just psychologically oppressive to us. And so, you know, oh well, maybe we could solve it at one end, but maybe this is the upstream thing. Right. So it’s, it’s one making sure it’s really collaborative and that we get input and feedback from the people because if we, if people feel threatened, they will fight tooth and nail. Right. You’ve probably heard some version of the expression that it’s impossible to get a person to understand something when their salary is dependent on them not understanding it.

And so creating those situations, creating those situations is a huge mistake. Thinking that we should do it all, trying to do it without a good sense of what the process is like. If you can’t map out the current thing then, then figuring out the next thing is going to be difficult.

So really it’s about creating this nurturing, fostering thing. I talked about leading people through the journey.

So I like to present managing versus gardening.

And in managing we’re triaging, we’re medicating symptoms, we’re hurting.

And in the sort of fostering gardening version, we’re nurturing. Right. Is there enough light? Is there enough water? What’s the soil ph?

Maybe like the worst gardener ever would yell at their tomato plant because they don’t like the yield.

But as managers like all of us at some point fall into that type of thinking. So it’s just what does the situation need? And maybe this is getting now abstract but I think all in all trying to use force over leadership and nurturing, trying to avoid collaboration and do this top down, those are huge mistakes that many companies make. And it’s so expensive.

[00:17:19] Calan Breckon: Yeah, it needs to be an approach of curiosity and openness and like bringing the team along with you and everybody working together and getting that input, making people feel seen and heard, even just making people feel seen and heard at a company, whether or not you’re actually going to do the stuff because like corporations. But when you make people feel seen and heard around the table, at least they’ve gotten that out of their system. So at least you can go, okay, okay, let’s take that on. What’s like, what, what’s real and what’s just like fear or something else. And then let’s like, look at this from a curious point of view and see like, what we can do and what we can’t do in this moment.

For those businesses that are like, really feeling maybe like overwhelmed by AI, where, like, should they start at the basics? And let’s take this from point of view of like a manager implementing it into their business.

They have maybe a small team and they’ve been told AI, like, they don’t like from the top down, just AI, where should they start dipping their toe in?

[00:18:22] Mitch Schwartz: Yeah, that’s a great question.

So there’s two ways to look at this, right? Let’s look at the fun way, and that’s start using chat GPT. Like, if you’re sitting there going, I don’t know if I want to pay 20amonth for it. Like, pay it, pay it from your personal account. If you just.

[00:18:37] Calan Breckon: That is, I don’t even pay for it. The free version’s just as great.

[00:18:43] Mitch Schwartz: So then use it, right? Like, okay, so when you’re in the paid version, you can turn off it using your data for training. And I guess the second I say that, okay, paying it from your personal account probably doesn’t solve the company conflict there, but basically, like, use it. Build those muscles.

Just start checking. Even, even those like, kind of hypey YouTube videos, they’re like, I made a startup in a day. And like, it’s. I watched one of those because I was curious. And what it ended up being was a great tutorial on how to use note LM for client research.

And so it wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to build that startup. It’s what are the skills that are in this video?

So I would say starting to just watch some YouTubes on it and you can see quickly, like, who are, who are the people that are kind of full of it? Who are the creators that are just like selling their own community?

And you know, or who are the. So just figuring out whose voice you like, that could be great too, because I think it’s so overwhelming to figure out on your own. But at the same time it can be really fun.

So the other thing, and this is such a great quick start tip, is whenever you have a prompt that you want to write, even if you’re new, say, I want to Write a prompt for this. Write me a prompt.

Because meta prompting, right?

Asking, like, this is a machine that can tell you how to use this machine.

So leverage that. Ask it about itself. It may not always be right, especially about features.

But hey, like, what can you do? Can you search this? Can you whatever, search for this thing? Like, just play with it and see what it does well. Like, it’s. If you go in expecting.

Here’s the counter hype. If you go in expecting, like, it’s going to write these this year of content for me in 20 minutes. Like, it won’t. It won’t. But what. Like any teammate, what is it really good at right now? Like, what can you get great results from frameworks, structuring thoughts, summarizing things? Sometimes. Sometimes it’ll really cut out stuff that was critical to you.

Searching. Lots of Internet sites play with deep research. That’s amazing.

And everyone has one of those.

[00:21:04] Calan Breckon: Yeah.

[00:21:06] Mitch Schwartz: If you have clothed. Tone of voice is a really cool feature to play with also because I’ve had conversations with it where when I use the regular tone, I go, I go, like, man, this crazy thing that I read in this book and it just really hit me and it goes, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, and then I use the tone of voice that’s trained after my own and it just bust the thing open for me and I go, wow, that landed like, now I get it. So one other really cool thing about Chat GPT is that because now it can have context, which is all of your past conversations, then the more you’re using it, the more you can ask it really insightful things like using all of our conversations. What are my growth edges? What’s just in my blind spots? Where am I wasting my time?

Tell me about my style of work and where would I fit in really well? Or what should I focus on?

So those are a few areas that can be really fun to enjoy, but to explore. But at the end of the day, if it’s boring, then figure out what’s fun.

[00:22:11] Calan Breckon: Yeah, 100 agree. It’s like when I joined TikTok, I. All the kids were doing it. I was like, no. But this past December, November, December, things got dark. We all know what happened around that time.

And so I was like, I’m just gonna go on TikTok. It’s some dark days right now. And it took a while, but eventually the algorithm figured out what I liked and what I didn’t like and I ever like. I had to look up a couple of things. But then once it got into the system. And once I’m in there, it knows me pretty well now, but, like, I actively use it and it. If I want it to change, I just look up that thing. I want, okay, I want it to be more funny. Today I look up funny videos and it’ll feed me more of those. And so you can, you can guide the adventure you want to have. And it’s the same with AI. It’s the same with using these tools. You can guide the adventure you want to have. But I think the, I think the main overarching theme of today has been, like, curiosity and being open to that and human nature.

As awful as this sounds, I think a lot of people just aren’t curious. They just want to. They’re afraid of change and they’re living more fear. And it’s like, if that’s where you’re going to be, you’re going to bring that into your being and into your life. And so if you can at least be curious about it and, like, start playing and, like, a little bit here, a little bit there, at least that’s showing the universe that you’re open to it, you’re open to going on this adventure. Okay, we’re almost out of time here, so what’s one last quick tip to give people if there’s any last little bit of wisdom that we haven’t mentioned yet?

[00:23:45] Mitch Schwartz: You know, I think I’ve given all the quick tips and I didn’t really answer on the, like, AI implementation. I said there’s two things. So let me now say really short. The second thing is get your process on paper, work with your team, work iteratively. Right? So that, and, you know, that’s something I’ve done with a lot of teams, but it’s getting everyone to help build, like, what’s actually happening now and have a clear map. And from there, it becomes a whole lot easier to start figuring out where can AI help. There’s still a lot of moving pieces, but it really is about having that clarity and understanding of what’s going on.

So I, I would say, if anything, it’s just, it’s good business practice, it’s good process design.

[00:24:29] Calan Breckon: Nice.

[00:24:30] Mitch Schwartz: That’s huge.

[00:24:31] Calan Breckon: Nice. Awesome.

Thank you so much, Mitch. Where can folks connect and go to.

[00:24:36] Mitch Schwartz: Find out more so they can find me on LinkedIn? I assume we’ll put that in the show. Notes. OPSMACHINE CO. So, OPS MACHINE. It’s pronounced OPS MACHINE.CO.

and for anyone in the CGLCC extended community, we have an offer going on right now to make this accessible to anyone, especially because I have a bit of a bias. Those are the businesses I especially want to see succeed.

Queer tech community as well.

So basically we’ll do a four hour jumpstart and you pay what it was worth at the end. So it’s like a no risk and help you do that mapping and figure out the opportunities.

[00:25:14] Calan Breckon: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much for being a guest today.

[00:25:18] Mitch Schwartz: Oh thank you. It was a joy.

[00:25:20] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The Business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.