Episode 2 – John Lawson

Filipe Santos
00:00:00 – 00:0050

You’re listening to phraseology plus a I, with your hosts and guides, Felipe Santos and Miguel Santos. Follow us as we uncover everything you need to dominate search rankings, and increase your online visibility. Get information bridging SEO and digital marketing with artificial intelligence. Staying updated on the latest tools, technologies, and strategies to make sure you’re always one step ahead. Phraseology is the podcast show to keep you in the know. Without further delay, let’s get into the episode. Stay tuned for the entire conversation so you don’t miss the tips and secrets and any bespoke advantages that AI can offer for your business. This future might seem scary, but we will demystify quite a bit and help you stand out in your own pursuits.

Filipe Santos
00:00:51 – 00:01:42

For anyone who doesn’t know this man is an established entrepreneur, authority on ecommerce, dynamic speaker, and all around entertaining professional for sure. Even more than that, he spent more 2 more than 2 decades in in digital, so that’s pretty impressive. He’s also out there selling into the 8 figures within ecommerce and 7 figures with digital products. John’s really come from humble beginnings as a high school dropout and now a juggernaut in ecommerce. I’d also love like to kind of say this because I’d be at a loss if I didn’t mention that John’s pretty much everywhere expressing and giving out expertise and giving out advice and kind of working with some of the most notable companies. He’s also been at some pretty big events like South by Southwest at the White House. And in over 13 countries, he’s had his footprint. He’s also worked with Accenture.

Filipe Santos
00:01:43 – 00:01:49

Tell me if I’m missing anything, but, like, American Express, UPS, FedEx, eBay, and probably countless others.

John Lawson
00:01:49 – 00:01:49

And

Filipe Santos
00:01:49 – 00:02:27

Yeah. Wasn’t already impressive enough. John’s a best selling author of the book, Kick Ass, Social Commerce for E Nerfs. Paid for entrepreneurs and small businesses to try thrive in the digital age, so definitely pick that up. We’ve, believe it or not, known each other for slightly more than a decade, which is a little insane. And every time we we chat, John’s been kind of expeditiously building an empire of knowledge and and professional pursuits, so I have to bring that up. And now he gets to bring you all for the ride as we explore AI’s impact and kind of how to win as an entrepreneur and as a marketer. So with that, I’ll I’ll let you kinda kick it off a little bit about anything you wanna say, John.

John Lawson
00:02:27 – 00:02:40

Wow, man. You know, I mean, hey. That was great. Oh, that I wanna meet this guy. I don’t know who this guy is. I live with him every day and don’t even know all that stuff. But now I’m teasing. No.

John Lawson
00:02:40 – 00:03:01

That means, hey, I’m just an open book. I’m really here just to hopefully put a set aside some of the fears, interpretation, or, you know, the questions that people have when it comes to AI in our field of ecommerce. You know, whatever you wanna talk about, let’s just jump in. I don’t care.

Filipe Santos
00:03:02 – 00:03:34

Sounds good. Well, yeah, I’ve always known you to kind of, like, really be on top of your your stuff and really know exactly what’s going on. You’ve got, like, that pulse in check. So I guess let’s start from the fundamental changes in ecommerce from AI. I think that’s a good section to, like, kinda start this off, some of the thinking that might help others. And one of the first areas I think I’d like to concentrate on and kind of think about is maybe some of the top five uses, maybe, that you can think of that, you know, SMBs can use with regard to AI right now?

John Lawson
00:03:34 – 00:04:01

Yeah. Sure. You know, here’s the thing, man. Especially in our you know, a lot of times when I’m talking AI, I’m talking to general small business people. Right? But since this audience is mostly ecom. Right? So here’s the deal. We’ve had AI in ecom forever. Right? I mean, literally, if if I had to think of an industry that grew up with AI, it would be the e commerce industry.

John Lawson
00:04:02 – 00:04:57

Right? And and what do we think about it? Right? Personalized product recommendations. You know, we see that all the time on Amazon. Right? My Amazon feed is different from your Amazon feed. And the reason why that is is because Amazon has been using AI to give personalized product recommendations to each individual person. Now Yeah. That kind of technology was so advanced and ex and expensive that only the big boys like Amazon could really get into it. But now, thanks to the ability to do things with chat TPT and the APIs on the back end, We can do personalized recommendations just like that. So AI can analyze the individual customer’s behaviors, their preferences, you know, their old purchase histories and provide much more highly relevant product suggestions.

John Lawson
00:04:58 – 00:06:04

So as opposed to just sending out general emails, you know, hey, you bought this. How about buying that? Just because we know you’re a male. Now we can get even deeper and make the recommendations, you know, because you’re a male, because you live in this part of the country, because you’re in this age group, because you’re this, I don’t I don’t know how to say it, you know, because you’re black. You know, I don’t know how to say it right. You know what I’m saying? But, you know, you like hip hop or you like this kind of music. All of those things before used to be hard for us to take into account when making recommendations for customers that have already purchased with us. And now we can do that. We can take into account all of the information people have given us in their private well, not private, but public profiles on on social media, and actually pull that data in and use that to help give them recommendations that are very, very tailored to that individual.

John Lawson
00:06:04 – 00:06:37

The other thing is customer chatbots. Right? Chat chatbots for customer service. But, I mean, I remember, if you think about it, you know, chatbots when they first got on the scene, they were very stoic. They would you would have to literally write in a a a pathway for people who’s like, ask this question. If they say yes or no, we’re gonna go this way. And then ask this question based on that question. They used to have to do that. But now AI powered chatbot can handle a large volume of customer inquiry.

John Lawson
00:06:38 – 00:07:28

They’re open 247 and you don’t have to give them coffee breaks. You know what I’m saying? So that is amazing to be able to provide instant responses to common questions and help people with things like order tracking. I mean, the number one question people almost all of us have to deal with on ecommerce platforms is where’s my stuff? Right? Or an attraction. Right? Or escalating issues, you know. Maybe they have something that really does need a human agent, then we can have these chatbots that do the escalation process so that we are not taking all the inquiries, but only the ones that actually need human, touch. So those are just a couple of of the ways that we can actually implement this today in SMBs.

Filipe Santos
00:07:29 – 00:08:05

Yeah. I’ve I’ve noticed that. I mean, obviously, who else here is a big Amazon buyer, but every single time you deal with the chatbot, it’s most of the time pretty pretty a pretty good experience and pretty clear. Just a couple times, you you may need a human agent. So that’s a really good way the business is kind of keeping it efficient and also helping customers quickly via their mobile app. It’s a really good point there, John. I’m also like you kind of segue perfectly into how personalized shopping experiences have been and kinda how they’re transitioning. Maybe take that a little bit, further and and let me know what you think has really been a solid change in the last year since, like, AI has been a little bit more accessible.

John Lawson
00:08:05 – 00:09:06

You know, I mean, it depends on who’s using it. Right? For me, personally, I may I’m able you you know, before we used to do the segmentation, and we would still, you know, segment our audiences based on commonalities, but Mhmm. It was still pretty broad. So now, we can actually segment to 1. True one to 1 personalization. So instead of grouping customers into these broad categories, AI is allowing us to create individual profiles that’s completely based on very granular data points, like the browsing behavior, purchase history, product affinities that they like, price sensitivity and all of this kind of stuff. It allows us to hyper personalize the experience with every touch point that we’re dealing with customers. From the content we pro you know, provide them, from the offers that we might give them, from the pricing that we could give them.

John Lawson
00:09:06 – 00:09:43

It’s tailored to the individual. And here’s the killer part, it’s done in real time. So AI can actually analyze, take those factors into account, and literally spit it out in an instant. And I I can’t believe we’re here. If you I out of out of all the things, honestly, I used to tell people, man, I don’t feel like we’re living in the future up until maybe 2 years ago. You know? Once chat gpt got released and all this stuff started coming out with the APIs, I mean, like, I finally feel like I’m living in the future other than the phone. Okay. Yeah.

John Lawson
00:09:43 – 00:09:59

The phone has been pretty cool. But everything else is like, I don’t have the flying car. I don’t have the personal robots, you know, all those things. But now I see it. We’re here. It’s coming. It’s right around the corner, and I’m excited about it.

Filipe Santos
00:10:00 – 00:10:27

Well, we’re definitely gonna get into that a bit, like how somewhat scary it is, but also how it’s a great opportunity right now. So there’s a combination of those thoughts, but I’d love to, like, kinda pick your brain a bit along those lines. So, like, these chatbots and the virtual assistants, all these things that big companies are using, How can, like, smaller businesses kind of harness that power and also perform better? Because I think a lot of them are are kinda either maybe intimidated or don’t know how to start.

John Lawson
00:10:28 – 00:11:14

Yeah. I mean, okay. There are services that will build a chatbot for you. Okay? Chatbots and virtual assistants used to be seen as a tool that only large in enterprises could actually afford. And now it’s become very, very accessible to businesses of all sizes. And that’s really thanks to the advancements in natural language processing, NLP. Right? And the availability of affordable AI platforms. So what used to cost 1,000 of dollars, you can probably get built for a couple of 2, $300 to have a a chatbot on your site that’s trained only on your, you know, product data and is limited to just that information.

John Lawson
00:11:15 – 00:12:17

So it’s not connected to any other you know, you can’t have it pull data from, you know, its mass databases. But also you could also just limit it to just here’s what, you know, the information that you’re being able to access from our website. So for small businesses, these tools can provide an always on and a scalable way to engage your customers and provide support. So I think what you really kinda want right now is a common, you know, a way for common questions to be answered about your products, your policies, and customer orders. If we can just get that started, I think that’s the place where you wanna start. Right? And then Yep. After that, we can go into providing personalized product rest recommendations based on customer input. If they got questions, you know, or if they’re like you can have it ask them questions about what their preferences are and then make a recommendation.

John Lawson
00:12:18 – 00:12:44

It can actually do that. It can help customers navigate your website to help them find what they’re looking for. All kind of cool stuff that is available to us right now for just very I mean, if you’re tech savvy, you can build it yourself. Or, literally, you can go out to these platforms like Fiverr and Upwork and places like that and get them built for, you know, very low cost.

Filipe Santos
00:12:44 – 00:12:55

That that’s excellent advice, and I think that’s a definite way to go if you’re not technically technically, like, sound there or if you feel like you you don’t wanna mess it up. But I don’t know what Here’s you

John Lawson
00:12:55 – 00:13:33

here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. You know? If you think about it, how much would that cost for for you to just do that work in house or even offshore to get somebody to answer phones for us? It used to cost us 100 of dollars a week. And literally, you take that one week’s worth of pay and get something built that will take probably 80, 90% of the load of customer inquiries off your table and also be able to help customers make better purchasing decisions. Where I mean, it’s it’s a no brainer. It’s time to get started, guys.

Filipe Santos
00:13:34 – 00:13:55

Beautiful. I love how you said that. And and the thing is, I think the quality of that support and that help is gonna be a lot better. Right? Because, obviously, the the chatbots are getting more sophisticated. The data that they’re trained on is better, And so customers will have an amazing experience, and that’s, you know, I I think, post purchase or post service, it’s really important to have that kind of high quality service.

John Lawson
00:13:55 – 00:14:35

Here’s one here’s one thing that I I really stressed. I really stressed, you know, I don’t like chatbot that people try to pass off as if they’re not a chatbot. I think it is very, very important that you are transparent with people and let them know. Hey. Hi. I’m, you know, so and so, your AI chatbot. And that automatically sets people at ease, and they know what to expect. And anytime inside of, you know, that experience, you can have them give them an option to, you know, drop out and wait for a live customer support agent.

John Lawson
00:14:35 – 00:14:47

That really changes the whole game, you know. But if you’re trying to pass off your chatbot as if it’s a real live agent, you’re you’re asking for trouble there.

Filipe Santos
00:14:47 – 00:14:56

Yeah. I love that distinction. It is it does matter. And when you think you’re talking to a a person and it’s not and you can kinda tell at some point during the conversation, it’s like, oh, crap.

John Lawson
00:14:56 – 00:14:59

Yep. Yep. You lose credibility. You know? Great point. Great credibility.

Filipe Santos
00:15:01 – 00:15:21

Another way, like, I think and you you correct me if you think there are some other ways to do this. But, obviously, as a small business, you might have some great access to information from your sales team or from, like, the those that have been in the business the longest, and maybe even questions that you get on the phone a lot would be a great way to kind of start to collate information specific to your business to feed these chatbots.

John Lawson
00:15:22 – 00:15:32

101100. And, I mean, another thing is to be start recording these calls, right, with your live agents when we start using that to help train the chatbot.

Filipe Santos
00:15:33 – 00:15:58

Beautiful. Yes. That’s a that’s a great point. Awesome. Well, look. We’re gonna take another track on this same kind of line of curiosity. How can we kind of use our behavior and natural inclination in terms of, like, visual search and related technologies? Is there anything that we can do there? Is there anything coming up that you think you’re excited about with regards to, like, ecommerce and being able to use those behaviors to to benefit the business?

John Lawson
00:15:58 – 00:16:51

Well, you know, I mean, you know, if you talk about humans, we’re inherently visual creatures. And people don’t understand this sometimes, but you recognize that as soon as the baby comes out, it starts recognizing your face. Right? I mean, it can tell you from your wife or your husband and all that stuff. So, I mean, just from birth, we’re very visual creatures and we process images way faster than we process text. Right? I see you before I hear you. Right? And I definitely can see the image before I start reading the text. So we’re naturally drawn to visual stimulation. So I think visual search is a technology that we’re starting to tap in and allow customers to search and discover products using images rather than keywords.

John Lawson
00:16:51 – 00:17:49

And this is weird because I remember I’m trying to think how long ago, you know, because Amazon, I I really believe is definitely a leader in a lot of this stuff. They tried visual search years ago. I even remember eBay had an app for visual search, where you could take a picture of something, and then it would show you other products that were similar to that. But it just wasn’t ready. And we weren’t ready because we weren’t as visual as we are with our phones then as we are today. So I think that the natural in inclination to use pictures, to communicate, and be inspired by stuff based on what we’re doing on social is about to become the norm. I don’t think it’s completely there. And I’m not really 100% ready to make recommendations for small businesses on how you can do that or why you can do that or ways you can do that.

John Lawson
00:17:49 – 00:18:28

I mean, before we get out of here, I’ll give you a a tool idea that’s pretty good. So remind me because I don’t wanna give away everything at the beginning. Absolutely. Yeah. Me to tell you about a way to use visual search because, I mean, you know that, Chat GPT has vision already. Mhmm. Right? So if Chat GPT can take an image and then tell you what that image is and give you a description of that image, how does that work for your website? How does that work for your small business? Just think about the ways that we can use that and implement that. So, I mean, out the box, I don’t see a whole lot that’s like, hey.

John Lawson
00:18:28 – 00:18:31

Go ahead and grab this right now. But it’s coming.

Filipe Santos
00:18:31 – 00:19:03

Yeah. Well, you kind of keyed on this. I think I’ve been most excited by the fact that we can now use text, like simple text phrases to identify things that are just as sophisticated as video, maybe even products and and and audio stuff. So if we can do that with our voice and with, like, just coming up with, like, ways to make it simpler because I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just don’t have an image reference that I can share with those site to get a, like, a similar products. I would have to describe what I want, and that’s also another great avenue into this.

John Lawson
00:19:03 – 00:19:43

Oh, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? It’s kind of amazing that we can actually talk to this thing and tell it what we’re visualizing. When I say this thing. I’m talking about the AI. And the AI, which doesn’t actually live in a real physical world, can come back and say, oh, you that’s a flower. Mhmm. It’s like, really? How does it know what a flower smell, looks like, petals like? Yeah. It’s it’s the the concept is hard for me to really wrap my head around, but I don’t have to know how to damn, you know, carburetor runs for me to drive the car from here to there. And that’s the key thing.

John Lawson
00:19:43 – 00:19:55

You don’t have to know all the part. I mean, how many of us can build a damn car? Doesn’t stop us from driving. So stop this. We’re like, I gotta find out. Well, I doesn’t why? Just use it. Just use the car.

Filipe Santos
00:19:55 – 00:20:19

I love it. And that that’s the point. Like, things keep changing, but it’s all about well, from the product standpoint, from AI being used by the masses, it just has to be simple enough. And Yeah. Really, like, that’s what happened with phones and calculators. Right? Like, we we were using other ways of calculating and doing math, and we were doing other things besides using a phone. We were just using for voice calls, and now we can use it as a computer. So Yeah.

Filipe Santos
00:20:19 – 00:20:41

Yes. Awesome. So we’ll we’ll switch gears a little bit and start to talk about a little bit more of the now. So what have you seen in terms of where we are, what works, and how do we create new opportunities? Because we’re talking to people who are entrepreneurs, who are small businesses, medium sized businesses. What can they do now to start to just be more comfortable with the tech and and move forward?

John Lawson
00:20:42 – 00:21:22

To be more comfortable with the tech, that’s interesting. Because the problem we have is we’ve had the movies. Right? So the fear of AI is based on it turning against us as humanity. Because we’ve seen Terminator. We’ve seen I, Robot. Right? It’s a common theme in science fiction film. So these scenarios have great entertainment for movies in Hollywood. But the reality of it is AI is development or the AI and the development of AI is just way more new one.

John Lawson
00:21:22 – 00:22:24

You know? We’re not trying to create weeds if I create this stuff. But, you know, but it’s not to create this dystopian future and to spread fear and uncertainty. We have to start prioritizing responsible AI, and we have to make sure that that’s part of our own deployment and development inside of, you know, our organization. So that means designing AI systems with clear ethical principles. Right? If you think about when we des when we developed email, it took a while for us to get to the point where we had these ethical principles and human values in mind. If you remember, man, we used to get, like I mean, it was like the Wild, Wild West. So we’re going to go through a little bit of that with AI system. Because as we start bringing it online, there’s going to be things that’s going to pop up that we’re going to have to get some guardrails around.

John Lawson
00:22:24 – 00:23:18

So we need to have that. As I talked about earlier, you know, we have to have the transparency when it comes to AI and the decisions that we make and how we use it. Of course, there’s going to be government frameworks that’s gonna regulate to prevent the misuse of AI. And I think one of the most important things is the the understanding of what AI is and how we should trust AI. And and the deal is there’s a balance that comes with tools. So if you think about, you know, and another AI tool that, you know, that we’ve been using for years is called Google. You know? There’s no IP operator in the back end. When you type something in, she’s not reading it, he’s not reading it, and then saying, oh, let me look that up for you and then somebody You know, that’s all done with AI.

John Lawson
00:23:18 – 00:24:20

So the deal is for us to trust Google as a search engine, we have to they have to be responsible with our data. So if we ever found, there have been, you know, times where where we found, like, oh, they’re selling our data to, you know, you know, Joe Schmo, and he’s starting to give us ads. Well, there became pushback against that, and people are like, well, guess what? I’m not gonna use the tool because you’re not using my data trustworthy. Nobody the government didn’t have to step in. Right? The user and the user base were the things that balance that, trust. So I that’s the same thing that’s happening and going to continue happening with all technology, including AI. So the fear, I think, is a little overwhelming, very powerful, but we have to understand that it that the foundation has already been here. We already are doing all kinds of thing with technology.

John Lawson
00:24:20 – 00:24:41

And AI is just another layer of that technology. We trust our phone not to, you know, give away the data on the phone to somebody that doesn’t have our thumbprint. We’re already here. And those same things are going to, you know, translate into this new form of of tech, which is AI.

Filipe Santos
00:24:41 – 00:24:56

Couldn’t agree with you more. I and I I mean, it’s it’s interesting because we talked about the virtual assistants. Right? And, like, all these things are are here to help us, but, obviously, it’s a little scary because they are doing things that we were we never the machines or computers to do.

John Lawson
00:24:56 – 00:24:56

Oh, yeah.

Filipe Santos
00:24:56 – 00:25:02

Yeah. And I think that’s what it is. Right? Same thing with us moving from horses and buggies to cars. Right?

John Lawson
00:25:02 – 00:25:02

Yeah.

Filipe Santos
00:25:02 – 00:25:07

It’s the same thing except on a whole different level on a whole different scale. But that being said

John Lawson
00:25:07 – 00:25:10

And a whole diff and a whole different speed.

Filipe Santos
00:25:10 – 00:25:14

Yes. It’s a little scary. The speed is probably the scariest thing in the field.

John Lawson
00:25:14 – 00:25:29

I get it. I get it. Yeah. So but here’s the thing. The the nature of humans is such that we will we will be able to maintain. We’ll we’ll be able to keep up. I mean, if if if history is any indicator, humans are going to be okay.

Filipe Santos
00:25:29 – 00:25:32

Absolutely. Yeah. If history and and it should be. So I think that’s

John Lawson
00:25:32 – 00:25:34

what it should be. Go off of?

Filipe Santos
00:25:35 – 00:25:57

Well, look. We have big creative minds, and that’s why we think about the worst case scenarios like the Terminator twos. You know? Exactly. That’s exactly it. Oh my goodness. But yeah. So I I wanted to go back a little bit to the track that we were talking about, like, virtual assistants and using technologies like that. I’m curious from your take and from kind of learning what’s happening now.

Filipe Santos
00:25:58 – 00:26:06

Do you think augmented and virtual reality are kind of ready for small and medium businesses to use, or you feel like that’s something that’s kinda being developed now and it’s just not there yet?

John Lawson
00:26:07 – 00:26:46

Oh, no. I think, yeah, I I think it’s ready right now. You know? So I think someone so so, like, one of the biggest pushbacks I always hear, people go, what about if they steal my data? I’m like, really? So I mean, what what data do you really have that’s so important that we gotta wall it off? I mean, really, realistically in our businesses. Very little. Right? Very little is the data that we have in our business so amazingly transformed. So I think it’s I think part of it is our ego. We just think we’re just so brand new. But in reality, you know, I don’t know.

John Lawson
00:26:46 – 00:26:48

Is this for children? This Is

Filipe Santos
00:26:48 – 00:26:49

this for children?

John Lawson
00:26:49 – 00:26:50

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Filipe Santos
00:26:50 – 00:26:51

Oh, and kinda keeping it a little PG.

John Lawson
00:26:51 – 00:26:55

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. PG, that’s crap. How about that? That’s bull crap.

Filipe Santos
00:26:55 – 00:26:56

That works.

John Lawson
00:26:56 – 00:27:33

You know? What we have to get over some of these, you know, fears that we have. Most of us alright? Most of us don’t even create our own product, you know. We we we’re not manufacturers. There’s very few people that I’ve ever met that manufacture in the ecommerce realm that manufacture their own product. They take that product idea, if it’s their own product, They take that product idea to somebody else to manufacture. They share that idea with them. Those people start making the product for you, and then they send it to you from offshore a lot of times. Right?

Filipe Santos
00:27:33 – 00:27:36

Scary thought, isn’t it? It it would be, wouldn’t it?

John Lawson
00:27:37 – 00:28:11

Yeah. It would be. And here’s the funny part. I’ve what I’ve just blessed and explained is probably just a small percentage of the 100 businesses that I’m thinking about. That might be 5 to 10 of them. The other 90% are just finding other shit somewhere else and putting their name on it. They’re calling it private label, You know, what’s private labeling? Private label is just like, I snatch the label off of this cup, and I put my own label on it. And that’s what a lot of people are doing.

John Lawson
00:28:12 – 00:28:46

And what that what that entails is they haven’t put in any extra to the process. They haven’t actually added any value. And I think that that game is coming to an end or it’s very it’s becoming really, really competitive. So what we’ve gotta start thinking about, even with AI tools, is how can we use AI tools to add value to what we’re already creating. So that ours is different from just throwing a label on it and calling it our

Filipe Santos
00:28:46 – 00:28:50

own. Yeah. It could you really kind of segued perfectly into my next question because

John Lawson
00:28:50 – 00:28:51

Oh, no.

Filipe Santos
00:28:52 – 00:29:35

Yeah. Well, obviously, in SEO, it’s the same consideration with, like, helpful content and with the way that people are able to replicate even, like, just text, like, articles or content. It’s so much easier now. So you have to really try to use, you know, data enhancement or or information gain or something that’s the 3rd like, first party data, if you can, to make your content more interesting, more informational, and to to differentiate itself. So same thing with what’s happening in AI. Imagine when you’re building something even for for the product, like, you wanna stand out, you can’t just do what everybody else is doing. You know? So that kinda drives me into this question, which is with the thousands of different generative AI tools kind of emerging, and trust me, there’s a lot. I think I’ve seen at least 2,000 of them out there.

John Lawson
00:29:35 – 00:29:36

That was last week.

Filipe Santos
00:29:36 – 00:30:01

Yeah. That was last week. Exactly. Now now it’s probably doubled. What are the best ways that you like, do you think that we can kinda ground ourselves and develop clarity and kind of avoid getting paralyzed by indecision because there are so many options? And, like, you know, what do we set as our criteria? And, you know, from an ecommerce standpoint, from a business standpoint, maybe some of the considerations that are, like, more important for this audience to know to kind of understand.

John Lawson
00:30:01 – 00:30:26

Yeah. I mean, you know, the generative AI is both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. So what you wanna do is, you know, avoid decision paralysis. And that’s what a lot of us have. We just don’t know which way. We’re like, I don’t I don’t know. Because given too many decisions, just the natural inclination of people is to not make a decision. Right? If I’ve got too many pathways, I’ll just sit on the bed.

John Lawson
00:30:27 – 00:31:24

So what you wanna do is start with your goals. What are your defined goals and use cases that you want to have and do that first before you start even evaluating tools? What content do you need to generate? And then for what purpose? That’s one of the things. So at you know, if you’re looking at the tools, you wanna do that based on first, you know, what’s the quality of the output? What’s the ease of use? How easy it is going to integrate with our existing systems and of course, the cost. And then after all those things, you wanna pilot test it before committing because you know there’s always that’s the other thing too. There’s always gonna be something else new. And I mean, that’s what keeps you in business as SEO is because it changes constantly, constantly, constantly. So much in fact that I need to hire somebody like you. Right? Or engage somebody like you to help me keep up with the changes.

John Lawson
00:31:24 – 00:31:59

Because on the back end, I already know what I need to do. My thing that I’m good at is finding good opportunity with product. So I need to do that and then find the tools or the service providers that are gonna help me on the back end. So you take that time to evaluate all of the goals and your use cases first before you even start getting out here. Right? And then start with just 1 or 2 things. Start small. Don’t try to do an overhaul. I just got off a phone call with a client.

John Lawson
00:31:59 – 00:32:08

Right? And this is interesting because I’m sitting here and I’m talking to her, and and this might be relevant. If I get off, you know, that’s me. I just just bring me back.

Filipe Santos
00:32:08 – 00:32:09

You’re good.

John Lawson
00:32:09 – 00:32:43

Right? But I got on a call with her, and she said, you know, I joined this program and the program has a lot of education. And also with the education, it gave us an all in one kind of tool. And I’m like, what do you mean all in one kind of tool? Well, I can do the email. It can do the landing pages. It can do the, you know, the the this, that, and the third. Right? It could just I was like, really? That’s interesting. And so she’s like, I so I I stopped all of the subscription based things that I had that were doing that. And now I can’t get the tool to work the way I want.

John Lawson
00:32:43 – 00:33:16

And it’s like it’s taking longer and longer for me to ramp up than I thought it would. I’m like, wait. What? Okay. I’m like, well, how much were you spending on your other tool? And she’s like, well, about, you know, $200 a month. It’s like, okay. Okay. And then I was like, well, what is your cost of your highest selling products? So she’s like, we would do, like, 4,000 of this one SKU a month and I can’t do that right now because I don’t have the tool. I’m like, go turn on the damn $200 tool again.

Filipe Santos
00:33:16 – 00:33:17

Yeah.

John Lawson
00:33:17 – 00:33:53

Well, right? I’m like, what would you’ve got to think about, man. You gotta build the bridge before you take. I mean, just because just because you give me a free house, I’m not gonna move my children to an entirely different school district where the school might not be as good just so I could be in the free house. That’s just that doesn’t you gotta think about all the downstream impact, you know, before you start jumping in. So I get it. AI is great. But before you jump and say, oh, we’re gonna do this now. We’re gonna fire all of our people that are on the phone, and we’re gonna build a chatbot.

John Lawson
00:33:53 – 00:34:08

How about we test the chatbot out first before we make those moves? Those are kind of things, you know, that you know, don’t get it over overbuilt with the hype. Because the AI selling guy on the phone will tell you everything you want to hear.

Filipe Santos
00:34:09 – 00:34:11

And that’s never changed. I mean, that’s that’s

John Lawson
00:34:11 – 00:34:19

still change. Right? Right? Yeah. Never change. Matter of fact, it gets better because the AI is writing the script form now.

Filipe Santos
00:34:19 – 00:34:31

Yeah. Beautifully said. And and the interesting thing about all of that is, as you mentioned, careful steps, but also be willing to test things. Right? It’s just that you don’t wanna replace everything before you know it works for you.

John Lawson
00:34:31 – 00:34:43

Absolutely. And and take it step by step, one at a time. You don’t have to eat the whole cookie at one setting. You don’t have We don’t have to do that. We didn’t build our businesses that way.

Filipe Santos
00:34:44 – 00:34:48

Yeah. I don’t wanna destroy it overnight either by doing something that’s very, harmful.

John Lawson
00:34:49 – 00:35:11

Exactly. It took me it took me 6 extra months to leave my job. I already said when I was gonna, you know, transition from my business to working full time in my business for my old job. It I the the timeline I put in my head ended up taking me 6 extra months. But I was willing to make sure all the things were in place before I’d made that

Filipe Santos
00:35:11 – 00:35:15

jump. Yeah. You did it like you needed to have a level of comfort, and that’s important.

John Lawson
00:35:15 – 00:35:16

It’s so important.

Filipe Santos
00:35:16 – 00:35:24

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, that’s yeah. I I I remember that, and I think most people that struggle with that just have to have a little planning, and it goes a really long way.

John Lawson
00:35:24 – 00:35:27

Long way. Long way, bro. Do it, guys.

Filipe Santos
00:35:27 – 00:35:41

Love it. Alright. So with that, let’s let’s talk about the future because I think everybody’s also curious what’s what are we coming into? How much do we already have in terms of potency for all these opportunities? I think in your mind, like, what’s the winning gambit for the future?

John Lawson
00:35:42 – 00:36:26

Generative AI for content creation. Alright? Obviously, AI powered tools are currently and will continue to make it easier to create high quality product descriptions, generate images, videos, other marketing content. We’re going to be able to do it faster and at scale. So that’s gonna help SMBs compete with those larger brands in terms of content richness and variety. Right? Because before we would make it just for a single audience. Now we’re gonna be able to actually create content at scale for all of our different audiences. I think that’s gonna be amazing. Right? Conversational AI, which you talked about before, and and I think that’s gonna be amazing for personalization.

John Lawson
00:36:27 – 00:37:47

You know, advances in natural language processing, machine learning is going to enable us to create more human like experiences and be aware of how we can interact with natural language with these AI LLMs, you know, large language model. So I think that’s crazy cool. Virtual shopping assistance will engage our customers in natural language and provide recommendations and help them with other complex tasks, getting them all the way through the process to payment. So I think that’s coming. Supply chain optimization. I mean, we do that right now with if you’re if you’re dealing with, you know, Amazon kind of platform. Right now, they’re able to do demand in a very amazing way, which allows them to mostly, you know, get products delivered to you in 48 hours. I think we’re going to be able to start duplicating some of that where we have an understanding of when to purchase more, where to place it if we got multiple warehouses that we can do that and help us to deal with demand forecasting for our inventory management, delivery logistics, and all that kind of stuff.

John Lawson
00:37:47 – 00:38:37

We’re gonna drive way more speed and efficiency in those area. And then emotion, which is I I don’t want people to freak out, but it is gonna freak you out. Alright? But emotional AI is really going to be able to understand consumers based on their facial expression. If they’re if it’s a camera instance or the the words that they’re using, the tone of their voice, AI can analyze all of that stuff and other nonverbal cues that will provide deeper insights into customer emotions and attitudes. That’s gonna enable us to be more empathetic and have a more personalized experience. So I think those are some of the things that we’re going to see in the very near future. That’s probably just going to change things a lot for us.

Filipe Santos
00:38:37 – 00:38:41

You should you just got me thinking about minority report. I’m like, oh, boy.

John Lawson
00:38:42 – 00:38:59

No. Totally. We’re totally here. We’re totally here. Yeah. It’s coming. I mean, you know, I mean, you think about it. Right? That whole thing that he was doing with with his hands and he put the gloves on, I mean, is is that not what we see with, you know, Apple provision? Same thing.

John Lawson
00:38:59 – 00:39:17

We’re here. So Great point. Great point. Yeah. We’re here, man. Every a lot of stuff we see in movies are not really necessarily as far off into future than than we you know, the they’re really based on things that are already in development a lot of times.

Filipe Santos
00:39:17 – 00:39:42

Mhmm. Yeah. That’s well said. I mean, and that’s the thing. I I want us to make sure that we leave on a note where Oh, yeah. People understand that fear is you you should be courageous in the face of fear because that fear should be a a propellant to get you to be better, more more performant, right, and and better at thinking on your feet rather than, you know, paralyzed by what is to be and to think of all the negative things because all that negative stuff can be very positive.

John Lawson
00:39:42 – 00:40:27

Absolutely, man. And I get it. We already talked about it a little bit, but the speed of AI and its in innovation is absolutely remarkable. It’s we can’t I can’t even I can’t even express to you how things are going to change and how rapidly things are gonna be implemented. Right? Because it’s just emerging all the time. But the key for small businesses is to stay informed about the advances and to experiment with applications that make sense and align with your goals and your customers needs. If you do that, you’ll stay above the fray. Alright? At least at least have our head, you know, above the water so we’re not being drowned out by all the competition and it’s gonna come.

John Lawson
00:40:27 – 00:40:36

It’s gonna come. But overall, I’m extremely optimistic about the future of AI and ecommerce. I’m extremely optimistic.

Filipe Santos
00:40:37 – 00:40:59

I love that. And, you know, I I was gonna ask you real quick because, obviously, you gave us a lot to think about, but and you may not be a gambling man. This this is a thing I like to leave to the end. Out of curiosity, what do you think is gonna happen in the next 6 months? Like, is there anything that that you feel is going to, like, really change things, like, even more than it’s already done in the last year? And what that may be.

John Lawson
00:41:03 – 00:41:58

So all the signals all the signals are pointing to chat GPT. I’m gonna say 4.5. Okay? And what’s what’s happening is that the competition, you know, Google versus, you know, Amazon versus OpenAI versus Microsoft. Where they’re they’re constantly trying to one up each other. And so what was what was done last year when SHAT gpt 4 came out, they were hinting at 5. And he’s like, 5 will probably come out in 2025, kind of. I think what we’ve seen with or at least what I’ve seen with Anthropic and Claude, which is an another competitor to chat GPT. And claud 3, the, the amazing output that that thing is giving, it’s it’s kind of making chat t p t 4 look old.

John Lawson
00:41:58 – 00:42:15

And if this catches on, well, then what they’re gonna have to do is they’re gonna have to go ahead and rush to release. So I think we will see a big change when they bring out Sora. And have you seen the Sora?

Filipe Santos
00:42:15 – 00:42:20

Yeah. Well, I talked about it on the last podcast. It was, like, insane. Yeah.

John Lawson
00:42:20 – 00:43:21

Did you? So let me give you and I don’t know if you talked about this, so you’ll tell me. So here’s the thing with Sora, which I alluded to earlier in my answer, is that SORA has the ability to represent and understand a 3 d modeled world, not just in 3 d, but also with physics. And that means it’s able to really grasp a an environment that is as realistic as we’ve ever seen. And the ability to be able to do that at scale and instantaneously, the the amount of processing and the intelligence, artificial intelligence that it takes to do that is beyond, man. It’s a whole it’s it’s it’s dude, the processing that’s going on just to make those images are the it’s not the images that is the freaky thing. It’s the processing that’s going on to make them that’s like, dude, we’re in a whole another world.

Filipe Santos
00:43:22 – 00:43:47

Yeah. I you know, on that point, I I did happen to see I I think there’s this is, like, actually coming to to fruition. The Black Mirror, the one of the the last seasons, the Black Mirror, they had the kind of use of a celebrity’s likelihood, like, in an episode they’ve never been in before. This plus being able to kind of, I just don’t know how actors are gonna stay. Like, honestly, actors and script writers at some point, there’s gonna be a different layer, different balance.

John Lawson
00:43:47 – 00:43:51

Alrighty. Right? That was the only episode. I forgot about that episode.

Filipe Santos
00:43:51 – 00:43:52

It was an excellent episode.

John Lawson
00:43:52 – 00:43:53

It was You know, I feel

Filipe Santos
00:43:53 – 00:43:55

like we’re gonna figure it out. We’re gonna figure it out.

John Lawson
00:43:55 – 00:44:27

And we will figure it out. But, I mean, here, I live in Atlanta. And, you know, our our biggest one of our biggest industries, of course, is the Hollywood industry. And we had, you know, Tyler Perry, who had an $800,000,000 plan to expand his studio. He’s like after seeing Sora, he’s like, no, we don’t need that. We’re not spending that money because we’re gonna be able to do it with computers. That’s crazy, man. That’s But, you know, I don’t know what that’s going to mean.

John Lawson
00:44:27 – 00:45:02

And another thing, just while we’re on that, I’m just gonna tell you this. When we used to talk about AI, we used to talk about it before we are where we are today. We used to talk about it in layers. Right? And they would be the low level. The first thing it would take over would be untrained workers or the low trained workers, the blue collar. Then next, it would take over, you know, some of the white collar, middle level positions. And then finally, it’ll it’ll start encroaching into the artist, you know, and the creatives. But guess what? It did the exact opposite.

Filipe Santos
00:45:03 – 00:45:03

Yep.

John Lawson
00:45:03 – 00:45:05

So we don’t know where this is going.

Filipe Santos
00:45:05 – 00:45:10

We don’t, but, you know, I think we’ll just follow you to make sure that we know what’s going on.

John Lawson
00:45:10 – 00:45:11

That’s what exactly.

Filipe Santos
00:45:12 – 00:45:24

Thank you, John. Look. This has been extremely enlightening and and entertaining. I think, like, for me, I always love our conversations because I I’m I’m always learning something new. With that, I want everybody to buy John’s book.

John Lawson
00:45:24 – 00:45:28

No. Don’t buy John’s book. Learn more. My book. Really? Want that book. No. You don’t want that book.

Filipe Santos
00:45:28 – 00:45:30

I think it’s awesome. I mean, I think I’ll buy something.

John Lawson
00:45:30 – 00:45:37

Think it’s awesome. I do think it’s awesome. Go buy it. Okay. Fine. Alright. But the thing is go ahead. Go ahead.

John Lawson
00:45:37 – 00:45:38

No. Tell me.

Filipe Santos
00:45:38 – 00:45:48

I was just gonna say, like, you know, people even if you don’t get the book, follow him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I think, you’re all under the moniker business moniker of colder ice. Right?

John Lawson
00:45:48 – 00:45:59

Yes. Colder ice everywhere. But here’s what I got for my ecom folk. Alright. Here’s the deal. And that’s what I was telling you at the beginning. I had something for you. It’s called Ecom AI Boss.

John Lawson
00:46:00 – 00:46:28

Right? If you go to ecomai boss.com, it’s a free tool. The only caveat is you do have to have a paid version of chat t p t because it’s a g p t. Alright? But what it helps you do is to write product titles and descriptions. Right? So the biggest problem I ever had as an ecommerce person is I would go out and I would find new products all the time. Like, oh, I love that. Let’s grab that. Grab that. Grab that.

John Lawson
00:46:28 – 00:46:47

That’ll work. That’ll work. And it would sit in my warehouse while I was waiting to write the product title and description. That was the hardest part for me. So this tool will actually take a product. You just give it some details, and it will write you a killer product title and description. Now That’s

Filipe Santos
00:46:47 – 00:46:49

an amazing drop right there.

John Lawson
00:46:49 – 00:46:55

It it’s I’m telling you, you guys you you better get it while it’s free because I’m a charge for that shit one day. I’m telling you.

Filipe Santos
00:46:56 – 00:47:09

Absolutely. I love it. I love it. No. But, like, that’s that’s a great drop because, again, something simple like that makes the world of difference, say shaves off a lot of time, and also Yeah. Maybe just get out of the funk if you’re, like, wondering what you should start to put together.

John Lawson
00:47:09 – 00:47:16

Yeah. It was just got rid of a blank page for me. You know? And then once you do that, you tailor it, and then now you’re ready to go to market.

Filipe Santos
00:47:16 – 00:47:21

Well, thank you, John. Until next time. We’ll probably

John Lawson
00:47:22 – 00:47:23

I can’t wait.

Filipe Santos
00:47:23 – 00:47:24

Appreciate it.

John Lawson
00:47:24 – 00:47:25

Thanks, brother.

Filipe Santos
00:47:28 – 00:47:50

Thank you for tuning in to phraseology plus AI. We hope that you enjoyed today’s episode as much as we enjoyed creating it. Don’t forget to sign up for our email list at phraseological.us. Give us a raving 5 star review anywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks in advance. Remember, stay curious, stay informed, and keep listening for more. Until next time. Take care and happy listening.