Innovative Tools and Strategies for Business Success With John Corcoran

John Corcoran: 10:01

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s kind of the next level of a lot of these different AI tools right now. Google notebook LM is another one that has allowed you to do that.

I think that they allow you to attach up to 20 documents or something like that. So you could attach all these different documents and then ask it to summarize it or ask you to create an email out of it. And I’ve heard some wild examples of people uploading their credit card statement or uploading, you know, you know, a contract and then asking for it to, you know, create a summary text message or a summary email or something like that from a document, or combine a couple of different documents and create something that that is drawn from that, or comparing the two different pieces. I mean, it’s just a bit mind boggling, all these different things, but Perplexity, yes, you can definitely upload documents. Oh, that was another one that I used.

I used it for actually, I can’t remember if it was ChatGPT or if it was Perplexity, because sometimes I’ll bounce between the two and try, try different things and see who can accomplish it. But I had to submit a series of invoices, about 20 invoices, and they were pretty similar, but they just needed to have a different date on there. Well, that can be really laborious and and, you know, monotonous to put that together and time-consuming. So instead I came up with a template, I uploaded it, and I indicated, oh, by the way, the dates needed to be every other week, starting at a particular date earlier in the year and going for the rest of the year. And I didn’t know what those dates were.

So first I asked, I said, give me all the dates, you know, every two weeks starting on this date, and it spit them out. And then I said, here’s the template for this invoice. Insert this date into the invoice PDF document. And it did it. Wow.

It’s just a bit mind-boggling that it could do that. And it really saved a significant chunk of time.

Chad Franzen: 11:54

Wow. Amazing. One more thing. On Perplexity. My brother-in-law had been unemployed for a year and a half, so he’d been unemployed for a year out of that year and a half.

You know, just a grind. Nothing. You know, the resumes and the cover letters or whatever were evaporating into space. It seemed like he started putting his resume into Perplexity and then posting or pasting the job, posting into Perplexity and saying, hey, rewrite my resume, or rewrite the bullet points so they can fit more, more specifically toward the job qualifications. And he did it.

He got a multitude of resumes, and he actually got two job offers on the same day, I’m sorry, a multitude of interviews, and he got two job offers on the same day. Now he’s now employed after a year and a half.

John Corcoran: 12:36

Wow, that is really amazing. Yeah. And I wonder at what point he’ll reveal that. Oh, yeah, I know, I mean, actually, I mean, frankly, that shows some innovative thinking. I think, you know, that’s great for an employer.

Okay. I mean, I think that type of customization, you know, at some point in the near future, we’re going to be baffled by the fact that we used to do it the old way, that we would upload the same resume to 150 different jobs. Right. Yeah. And we’re going to look back on it, and we’re going to be like, well, no wonder it was such a difficult slog for an employer to get a job or find the right applicant because it wasn’t relevant.

There wasn’t any relevance between those two. You know, it was this templated resume. That’s the same for 150 different job openings. And the employer’s looking at it. And, you know, it’s not customized to their particular needs, you know.

So yeah, I think I think we’re going to very soon. We’re going to be accustomed to that kind of thing being commonplace.

Chad Franzen: 13:38

Okay. So we’ve covered the book and that is The Automatic Customer by John Warrillow software Perplexity. The next topic is an issue in your industry. So you’re obviously in the podcasting industry, content marketing, what have you. Tell me an issue that you’ve kind of been paying attention to in your industry?

John Corcoran: 13:56

Yeah. So for this one, it’s really one of the biggest mistakes that I see B2B businesses make today, which is assuming that they don’t need to engage in content marketing. And many of these companies are struggling to get clients to get referrals. You know, we’re recording the end of 2020 for, you know, it’s been a presidential election year, which is historically down. The stock market seems to have been doing it’s at record levels.

So the economy seems to be okay. Unemployment is not that high. So I’m not sure what it is. It might be the onset of AI or something, but there have been a lot of companies struggling, and a lot of these companies are not doing any sort of content marketing. Or if they did, at some point in the past, they gave up on it.

And that lack of consistency, that lack of discipline is really harming them, especially when they’re using it, when they use it to get in a conversation with their best clients and referral partners, and to get introductions to prospective clients and prospective referral partners. And for some reason, they think they get a pass. You know, they think like, oh, it doesn’t apply to me, but content is the new fuel of the new economy. And if you’ve got a static website that’s just like a brochure on the internet and you’re not out there creating content, you know what? You know, it’s just that it doesn’t work these days.

You know? And, you know, if you’re schlepping around, going to different networking events or flying across the country to go to a three day conference, and you’re out of the office for five days, and the amount of time that it took you to do that, you could have build, nurtured so many relationships by engaging in content marketing. And of course, I’m a big fan of using podcasts and using that as the backbone, the initial tool, which then can be turned into multiple different resources from there. So I think that’s the number one mistake I’m seeing businesses make today is they’re thinking that the rules of content marketing, which have been with us for quite some time, do not apply to them. And they’re struggling because of it.

Chad Franzen: 15:55

So when you say content, it could be podcasts, blogs. You know, people try to establish themselves as thought leaders on LinkedIn. Yeah.

John Corcoran: 16:04

It’s I mean, it’s all those things. And I’ve engaged in all those. I’ve tried all those things, you know, I mean, I’ve written for Forbes, I’ve written for Entrepreneurs, I’ve written books, I’ve done videos on YouTube, I’ve done a ton of blogging, I’ve created articles, I’ve done a ton of content on LinkedIn. I’ve come to the conclusion that the easiest and fastest way, most efficient use of your time is to start by doing this sort of thing that we’re doing right here, which is doing an interview, having a conversation with someone, and then from there you capture it and then someone else, not you, because your time is valuable. Someone else or a team of people like our company or another, one can then turn that into multiple different resources.

They can turn it into an episode across a dozen or more channels. And so you’re actually fanning out, you’re distributing your content in a lot of different places and ways. And so yeah, that that would be what I would recommend for, for most people.

Chad Franzen: 17:03

Okay. So companies and businesses should be creating content. Our last topic here is a person in your network who has influenced you. So somebody who has kind of kind of caught your attention lately.

John Corcoran: 17:13

Yeah. And I want to give a shout out to Ami Kassar of MultiFunding. He is someone who has been, you know, such an inspiration. So he is a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in the Philadelphia chapter, which we are members in as well. He started up a subgroup within that community of, I don’t know how many a couple hundred or so companies That are experiencing different ups and downs in this economy.

And I’ve seen him just really, you know, embody the principle of what you put in, you will get back. Because he has been kind of really building and nurturing this community. In a way that is just really inspirational. You know, sometimes, you know, you meet people who just kind of wait for the universe to come to them. He’s not like that.

He is a go-getter going out there and, you know, helping all these different people. And it’s really inspirational to see the way that he’s been doing that. So, you know, if you are a business and you have thought about doing, you know, getting a loan through the SBA, that’s their expertise at MultiFunding, they help companies to acquire other companies, help companies to sell themselves. Help companies get lines of credit to get funding to, you know, buy products or, you know, cost of goods, things like that. They help with all those different things.

So I highly recommend him. He’s just such a great guy and he’s got a great team with them too.

Chad Franzen: 18:50

Okay. Sounds good. And we’ll put his web page in the show notes. Okay, so the book was The Automatic Customer by John Warrillow, software Perplexity. The issue is that companies should be creating content, and a lot of them don’t think they need to be, but they really should be. And then the person is Ami Kassar, who is an EO Philadelphia member and an SBA member.

Anything else we need to cover, John?

John Corcoran: 19:14

That’s it. But this is a fun format, so let’s do it again.

Chad Franzen: 19:19

Okay. Sounds good. Thanks so much for having me today, John. Great to talk to you. So long everybody.

Outro: 19:25

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