Maximizing AI for Small Business Success with Stephanie Love

Summary

Maximizing AI for Small Business Success with Stephanie Love

In the January 2, 2025 episode of Small Business Quick WINS, hosted by Jay Schwedelson and presented by Thryv, listeners dive deep into leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to propel small businesses toward success. Featuring guest Stephanie Love, a team lead at Thryv’s content division, the episode unpacks practical strategies and insightful tips on maximizing AI tools like ChatGPT for business growth. This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions, actionable advice, and valuable insights shared during the episode.

---

1. Embracing AI as a Collaborative Partner

Stephanie Love emphasizes treating AI not as a search engine but as a collaborative partner. She states at [01:42], “the first thing that I try to do is remember, I talk to it like it's a human, like it's a partner who is working with me.” This mindset shift is crucial for harnessing AI’s full potential beyond merely retrieving information.

Jay Schwedelson concurs, highlighting the importance of iterative interaction with AI. At [03:00], he explains, “If you take that first version back and that is what you roll with, you are failing. You are failing in your use of AI… you need to be pushing it further and harder.” This back-and-forth engagement ensures that the AI-generated content aligns closely with the business’s specific needs and tone.

---

2. Effective Strategies for Optimizing AI Interactions

a. Refining AI Outputs Through Iterative Feedback

Stephanie advises that initial AI responses often require refinement. At [01:42], she mentions, “the first answer is probably not going to be your final answer.” By providing additional context and specific instructions, businesses can guide AI to produce more accurate and relevant content.

Jay introduces the concept of “bullying AI” at [03:52], advocating for a more assertive approach in refining AI responses. He suggests persistently pushing AI for better results by critiquing its outputs until they meet the desired standard. While Stephanie prefers a more polite interaction, acknowledging the iterative nature of working with AI, both perspectives underline the necessity of active engagement to optimize AI-generated content.

b. Utilizing Personas for Targeted Content Creation

At [05:12], Stephanie shares a valuable technique: "Rather than telling AI, write me a social post that will get small business owners to think about marketing for next year, I instead ask AI to be part of my audience to telling a friend." By assigning a persona to AI, such as a small business owner or an email marketing expert, businesses can receive more tailored and authentic content. This approach ensures that the generated material resonates effectively with the intended audience.

c. Leveraging Image Uploads for Enhanced Feedback

Jay highlights an underutilized feature of ChatGPT at [06:58]: the ability to upload images for feedback. He explains, “You could upload an image of an email… a social post… a brochure” and request detailed analysis from AI. This functionality allows businesses to receive constructive critiques on visual and textual content, facilitating improvements in marketing materials and overall brand presentation.

Stephanie adds at [07:59] that using AI for feedback extends beyond text. She notes, “using ChatGPT for feedback, both graphically and for your writing can be hugely beneficial,” enabling small business owners to refine their content for clarity, grammar, and audience engagement.

d. Analyzing Customer Reviews with AI

At [08:51], Jay introduces the idea of using AI to analyze customer reviews. By uploading all reviews into ChatGPT, businesses can extract the best testimonials and identify common complaints or praised aspects. This synthesis provides actionable insights for enhancing customer satisfaction and refining products or services based on real feedback.

---

3. Personal Applications of AI for Enhanced Efficiency

Both hosts share their personal uses of AI, demonstrating its versatility beyond business applications.

Stephanie Love shares at [09:49] her use of AI for vacation and trip planning, leveraging AI to optimize itineraries and evaluate activities: “I ask it, like, what's the most efficient way to hit all of these destinations… Is it worth the money?”

Jay Schwedelson mirrors this practical application. At [10:33], he describes using AI to plan travel logistics by inputting hotel addresses and requesting activity suggestions within specific time frames: “Tell me the different activities… give me a table back of the driving distance from my hotel to each activity.”

These examples illustrate AI’s capacity to streamline personal tasks, enhancing productivity and decision-making in everyday life.

---

4. Enhancing AI Interactions with Emotional Intelligence

Towards the end of the episode, Stephanie touches on the significance of emotional manipulation in AI interactions. At [11:42], she references a webinar by Thrive, Microsoft, and Cyclotron: “it is possible to emotionally manipulate AI to help give you the response that you want.” By being polite and positive, businesses can elicit better responses from AI, ensuring the generated content aligns more closely with their desired tone and objectives.

Jay humorously contrasts their approaches, implying that while Stephanie maintains a courteous interaction, his assertive “bullying” method also proves effective in fine-tuning AI outputs.

---

5. Concluding Takeaways

The episode wraps up with a reinforcement of the practical AI strategies discussed:

• Collaborative Interaction: Engage with AI as a partner, providing continuous feedback and refinements to enhance output quality.

• Persona Utilization: Assign specific personas to AI to generate targeted and audience-aligned content.

• Image Feedback: Utilize AI’s ability to analyze and critique visual content, improving marketing materials and brand presentation.

• Review Analysis: Leverage AI to synthesize customer feedback, identifying strengths and areas for improvement.

• Personal Efficiency: Apply AI tools for personal tasks such as travel planning to increase productivity and optimize decision-making.

• Emotional Intelligence: Incorporate polite and positive interactions with AI to elicit better and more aligned responses.

Jay Schwedelson concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to explore Thryv’s business management solutions and to continuously implement the AI strategies discussed to drive remarkable business results.

---

Notable Quotes

• Stephanie Love at [01:42]: “I talk to it like it's a human, like it's a partner who is working with me.”

• Jay Schwedelson at [03:00]: “If you take that first version back and that is what you roll with, you are failing in your use of AI… you need to be pushing it further and harder.”

• Stephanie Love at [05:12]: “Pretend you're a small business owner prepping for your marketing for next year. Explain to another small business owner friend what your process is and why this is important.”

• Jay Schwedelson at [06:58]: “You could upload an image of an email… a social post… a brochure… and get detailed information about what you think is good or terrible.”

---

This episode of Small Business Quick WINS serves as an invaluable resource for small business owners seeking to harness the power of AI. By adopting the collaborative, iterative, and strategic approaches discussed, businesses can unlock new levels of efficiency, engagement, and growth.

Transcript

[Jay Schwedelson]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. This podcast is exclusively designed for small business leaders like you. Prepare to get invaluable insights from every episode, equipped with actionable tips made for immediate implementation in your business. Tune in as we teach our firsthand lessons from fellow small business owners and thought leaders. I'm your host, Jay Schwedelson. Over the last 25 years, I've grown multiple small businesses that have generated over $300 million in revenue. Along the way, I've learned pitfalls to avoid and quick wins that can transform your business immediately. I'm excited to share it all, so if you're ready to win on Main street, let's dig into this episode.

[Jay Schwedelson]

We are back for Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive, and we are talking about AI stuff today. I'm exc. I'm more excited, though, that we have the great Stephanie Love, who's one of the team leads at Thrive in their content team because she knows a lot of AI stuff and she is a big friend of the show. Stephanie, welcome back.

[Stephanie Love]

Thank you for having me.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yay. Are you AI or are you a real human?

[Stephanie Love]

I am real in this moment in.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Time, but AI is our friend. AI is our friend because AI can help us with so much stuff, and we're going to rip through some different ways to think about AI and some tips that maybe you haven't thought of. So, Stephanie, when you go to interact with AI the ChatGPT and you ask it stuff like, what do you make sure to do to get the most out of it?

[Stephanie Love]

Well, the first thing to remember about AI is that it is not Google. So you're not googling a question saying, what is the best, you know, restaurant near me? You are wanting it to be a collaborative partner to help you create something new. You can use it as a research tool, but it can help with so many other things. So the first thing that I try to do is remember, I talk to it like it's a human, like it's a partner who is working with me. So that's step number one. And step number two is to remember that the first answer is probably not going to be your final answer. Once again, it's a partner that you're working back and forth with. So you put in your prompt, it pops out an answer, and then you usually need to come back and refine it, provide it more details, give it a little bit more context on what exactly you're looking for or what the platform you're looking to write for is. Make sure that you're working with it so that A, it learns from you because that's the best part of it, is it learns over time, but B, that you're actually, you know, working with it in a way that's going to get the answer you're looking for rather than just kind of accepting that first social post that's filled with weird emojis and hashtags like, we can get past that totally.

[Jay Schwedelson]

And you know, I if you go to a ChatGPT or any of the other tools and you ask it for something, it gives it back. If you take that first version back and that is what you roll with, you are failing. You are failing in your use of AI because it shouldn't get it right because you need to be pushing it further and harder. And you can bully AI. I know Stephanie believes we got to all be nice to AI, but I believe in bullying AI where it gives you back the thing and you say, no, that wasn't even close. And that's really what you write, wasn't even close. That wasn't funny enough. I need to be more sarcastic. I need to be more of this tone. I need more in depth. I need it to be shorter. I need it to be have bullets. You need to bully this thing and then it gives it back again and then you bully it again and again and again. And that is how you get the most out of AI. How do you feel about bullying AI?

[Stephanie Love]

Jay, have you lost your patience with AI before?

[Jay Schwedelson]

Of course. Of course. Always.

[Stephanie Love]

I think it works. I don't love to do it. I always apologize after the fact. I'm like, thanks, you finally got it right. But yeah, it's a back and forth with AI and especially when it comes to the consumer. I think we're all getting a little bit better at recognizing when a social post or a blog post or website copy is just ripped straight from ChatGPT. So one of the things that I have found personally that has helped me get better responses from AI is rather than telling AI, write me a social post that will get small business owners to think about marketing for next year. I instead ask AI to be part of my audience to telling a friend. So I'd say, hey, pretend you're a small business owner prepping for your marketing for next year. Explain to another small business owner friend what your process is and why this is important. And I found by reframing the question that way, AI takes a little bit of extra time and gives you kind of these more thought out responses that really are hitting the pain Points of your audience.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yeah, And I think that's a super valuable tip. Anytime that you're interacting with AI, I believe you should make it take on a Persona of some kind. Right. Because when you are. When you're getting back that content from AI, you're hoping it's providing it to you in a certain Persona. It could be the world's, you know, greatest email marketing expert, and they're the ones that are giving you back, you know, the email content. It could be, you know, some sort of scientific things giving you back, you know, let's say you're the greatest plumber in the world because you want content back for your plumbing blog on your website. Always ask AI to take on a Persona of what you want it to be, and you will get a much, much better output. Right. I mean, Stefan, are there Personas that you've heard of or seen that are kind of cool?

[Stephanie Love]

Yeah, I mean, when it comes to the Personas, it's really just kind of narrowing down who your audience is that I usually kind of put forth, like, is my audience a small business owner? Is my audience a new homeowner is looking for, you know, looking to get a new roof? What are the pain points there? So that's really what it comes down to. The other thing that I've really noticed is helpful is including very specific phrases like, please, no jargon, because AI is pulling from all over the Internet to get its information. And often it gives you all of these phrases that, you know, just sound like they are in a research paper. Like it's streamlining your. Your day to day or, you know, super. I don't know, it's. They give you these weird words that it's like, no one would say that in weird, like in real life. So make sure it's talking to people in the way that they would talk to each other.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Totally agree. And the other quick tip I'll Give is that ChatGPT and the other ones do as well, but ChatGPT has, in their free version, you have the ability to upload an image. There's a little paperclip icon where the prompt bar is. You could upload any image. And I don't think small business owners use that enough. What I. What would you do to upload an image? Where would you get out of that? Number one, you could upload an image of an email that you have sent out or thinking about sending out. You could upload an image of a social post. You could upload an image on the front page of your website. Okay. Or a brochure that you've created or print ad that you've created and say, hey, chat, gbt, I want you to use all the information that you have, take on the Persona of being the world's greatest marketing expert, and give me back detailed information about what you think is good in this website image or brochure image or what you think is terrible, what you would change. Okay. And you can upload images and get this feedback, and it can be a game changer. So it's a, it's a. It's something I don't think is utilized nearly enough.

[Stephanie Love]

Yeah, using ChatGPT or any other kind of AI model for feedback is definitely one of the, like, sleeper abilities that it has that people don't tune into, because you can also use it to understand writing better. You know, not everybody who owns a small business is going to be the best blog writer in the world, but you can upload it to, you know, one of these models and say, hey, can you review this for clarity? Can you review this for grammar? Can you provide topics that I might have missed? It gives you all of that feedback so that you're not, you know, putting something up on your website and being like, oh, I hope this is okay, or I hope this comes off right. Because the whole purpose is you want to look like an expert with these things. And if it's something that is just haphazardly put together, you know, it might have the opposite effect. So using ChatGPT for feedback, both graphically and for, you know, your writing can be hugely beneficial.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Yeah. And as it relates to feedback, another awesome use of ChatGPT is if you take all the reviews that you have, Google reviews, regular reviews, whatever it may be, and you take all the reviews and you upload them all as a file into ChatGPT, and then you ask it two things. One, grab the best testimonials, the snippets of the best testimonials out of all these reviews that you think we should highlight in our website, in our marketing, in our whatever it'll give you, what are the best testimonials out of all of your reviews? And then also ask it to review all the reviews and say, what are the five biggest complaints, the most common complaints, what are the five things that people like the most? It can take all of that review data and really synthesize it super fast, and it can be a game changer for your business. So these are easy, cool ways to use AI. So, Stephanie, let me ask you a question before we wrap up how do you use AI in your real life? In your personal life?

[Stephanie Love]

In my personal life. How do I use AI? I use it. This is going to sound silly. I use it for, like, vacation and trip planning. So not silly. Pretty cool. But I use it for vacation and trip planning all the time. I put in the areas that I'm trying to go, the things that I want to do. And I ask it, like, what's the most efficient way to hit all of these destinations? What's the. What are activities in these areas that I might be missing? Or once again, I've used it with the review thing. I've put a bunch of reviews into and, and been like, hey, like, what's the consensus on this activity? Is it worth the money? And gotten a lot of feedback that way. So it's definitely helped plan some trips. So what about you?

[Jay Schwedelson]

No, same thing. And the big one that I use for travel planning is I put in the address of whatever hotel I'm staying at and I say, tell me the different activities. I don't want any activity that's more than 40 minutes away. And give me a table back of the driving distance from my hotel to each activity because I just don't like going far. And now back, oh, this one's 12 minutes, this one's 18 minutes, this one 20 minutes. And then I am cool. I also tell it that I don't like anything cultural because I'm an ignoramus and please only give me activities that are for somebody that has the attention of a flea. So there you go. It works.

[Stephanie Love]

It works, though. Now, the one thing that I do, you kind of made fun of me because I love to say thank you to AI and be nice to it. But I will say so. Thrive did a webinar a while back with Microsoft and Cyclotron, and they did say that it is possible to emotionally manipulate AI to help give you the response that you want. So just calling it out, that just saying thank you and being polite and potentially putting it in stressful situations can help get you better answers.

[Jay Schwedelson]

All I'm saying, all right, the entire universe, let it be known that Stephanie Love was nice to AI and Jay was not. We'll see what that happens. See what happens out there. Amazing. Another great episode. Listen, Everybody. Check out thrive T-R-Y-V.com it is the ultimate space solution. Everything for a small business owner, for your marketing, for your billing, for getting all of your reviews together, for everything. I can't tell you enough to check them [e-mail] and Stephanie, thanks for being here.

[Stephanie Love]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Podcast Host]

Well, that was fun and great news. You got way more where that came from.

[Jay Schwedelson]

Subscribe.

[Podcast Host]

Make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips from today's top small business leaders. And hook us up with a five star review if you've got at least one new idea you may consider using. Lastly, if you want to ensure you never miss a message from your customers Again, check out thrive.com wins to get your free account with Command center today.