In this episode of The Boost, Leon and Pablo sit down for an engaging discussion on AI, internationalization, and how businesses can leverage emerging technologies to scale effectively. They break down the impact of AI on business operations, customer interactions, and even the ethical implications of automation. The conversation also explores the growing trend of nearshoring and how companies are moving operations to and from the U.S. to stay competitive in global markets.
Hosts:
Pablo Calvo: Linkedin
YouTube:
Podcast:
Hosts:
Pablo Calvo: Linkedin
Find Us:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBoostChannel
Website:https://theboost.fm
Key Topics Covered:
1. AI and Its Current Landscape
- The aftermath of the Super Bowl and OpenAI’s ChatGPT commercial.
- The rise of “prompt engineers” and the industry of AI-driven productivity tools.
- The limitations of AI memory and the importance of threading prompts effectively.
- AI struggles with fundamental tasks and why human intervention is still crucial.
2. AI in Business Operations
- The common questions business owners ask about AI: Which one should I use? How do I integrate it?
- The use of AI for automating customer interactions and improving efficiency.
- The risks of poor AI implementation, citing cases like legal AI missteps and refund policy errors.
- The importance of AI agents in streamlining workflows but not fully replacing human oversight.
3. AI and Customer Experience
- The pros and cons of AI-powered customer support tools.
- The impact of AI on customer frustration when systems fail to escalate problems appropriately.
- The delicate balance between AI efficiency and maintaining strong customer relationships.
- The inevitability of AI becoming an integral part of everyday consumer interactions.
4. The Future of AI in Advertising & SEO
- The challenges of AI-driven advertising and how companies will monetize AI-generated content.
- The shift in search engine optimization (SEO) toward AI optimization.
- Google’s struggle to adapt its advertising model to the rise of AI-generated answers.
- How businesses can tailor AI responses to fit their niche needs.
5. Internationalization & Nearshoring Trends
- The increasing number of Latin American businesses expanding into the U.S.
- The role of AI in overcoming language barriers for business expansion.
- The impact of tariffs and political pressures on companies relocating operations.
- How businesses can integrate AI for seamless international operations, including translation and regulatory compliance.
6. AI & Multilingual Business Communication
- AI-powered transcription tools like Fathom that help facilitate bilingual business interactions.
- The growing demand for businesses to support multiple languages in customer service.
- The advantages of AI-driven translations for smoother cross-border operations.
- AI’s role in enabling companies to expand their customer base beyond domestic borders.
Conclusion
As AI continues to evolve, businesses must strike a balance between automation and human oversight to maximize efficiency without compromising quality. The conversation highlights the rapid integration of AI across industries, the need for ethical considerations, and how internationalization—particularly nearshoring—is shaping global business strategies. Companies that leverage AI responsibly, optimize their operations, and embrace multilingual communication will position themselves for long-term success in an increasingly interconnected world. Whether streamlining workflows, improving customer experiences, or expanding into new markets, AI offers powerful solutions—but only when implemented with strategic intent and adaptability.
0:06
hello my name is Leon i’m Pablo and today we’re on the boost doing the boost
0:12
we’re doing the boost we’re doing the boost at Geekdom again little bit of a
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time since we’ve actually sat down and did a one-on-one it’s been a while yeah
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and the big conversation really for us today is AI internationalization
0:27
good job good job yeah that was a four or five syllable word it’s hard uh but
0:32
they kind of play hand in hand you know Super Bowl was Yeah yesterday it was
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today is a holiday should be a holiday go Eagles yes they they won just
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destroyed the Chiefs just to be clear I’m a Ravens and a Washington Commanders
0:47
fan just because I was raised on the East Coast but you know I got gota got
0:51
to root for the for the I I personally was just like okay too many too many
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Chiefs yes too many Chiefs going on they they’ve won too many times i was there
0:59
for the commercials i don’t really do the sports ball did you like the
1:01
commercials this year no they weren’t as good the one that I was focused on
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because of the convo that we’re having was the Open AI chat GPT ad which
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for an $8 million ad or $7 million whatever they impressive no it it wasn’t
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considering it was like it’s the little dot the through line of the dot and it’s
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like from Indians and caveman all the way till the AI i just didn’t think it
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really showed people what the product does most people don’t know what it does
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isn’t that catchg though i mean it feels like chat GBT doesn’t quite explain
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itself all that well and people have lot and by the way this is the whole reason
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we’re having this conversation we did our workshop on the very thing it
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there’s not really like a guide right no there’s a whole industry popping up
1:51
called uh chat chat prompting or prompt engineers right there is every single
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product adding AI onto it and a lot of people have a flavor of it that I I
2:03
think is kind of the cheat cheat cheating way is they just add on you
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know a chat interface and say with it y it’s it’s bolted on services it’s I mean
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look I I I don’t want to say anything offensive because obviously there’s lots
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of geekdom you know and and and in San Antonio companies that are focused on AI
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but when done right it it it’s it’s good though right but the thing is when
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people call them prompt engineers you’re just really good at asking specific
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questions that a computer can understand right yeah it’s a fancy title for you’re
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really good at googling you’re really good at talking to the AI that was a
2:40
skill before that was just embedded in the workforce but also there’s another
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piece though it’s like also like getting the threading right of the prompting
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like for example what I mean by threading is okay you ask it to do one
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thing and then you do ask it to do another and then another and then
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another and the thing is is most people don’t recognize or realize that the AI
3:03
gets lost right they just keep asking and keep asking and then they don’t
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realize that you know and actually I learned this very recently from a from a
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Dirk Durk Amundorf i sat down with him he said “Most people don’t realize that
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AI has a capacity issue it will not just simply take what you say to it and
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remember it all.” And I started recognizing this when I was uploading
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documents for review for producing uh you know material for a client and I was
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just trying to organize my thoughts get everything kind of squared up and then I
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kept referencing previous documents that we included or that I had included for
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continuing the conversation and it kept saying oh due to the reset due to the
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you know the the and I was like what reset what are you talking about what
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reset so the AI has to reset between prompts in order to track enough
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information and then after a while if you give it too much to look through it
4:00
gets lost it’s just like a human and in the end it it’s like if you give a human
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five documents might remember two of them the AI is is good in in a lot of
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ways but the the strawberry example is my my
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favorite thing is if you asked it how many Rs there were it was like two or
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three or one it was never the right amount of ours which was three three
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right it it would always be wrong because it just it struggles at these
4:30
basic things sometimes so that’s why a human intervention is always needed yeah
4:34
oh absolutely but the thing is is that most uh business owners when they’re
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using AI they they come to the conclusion that I need it
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the questions we always get which is which one how do I need it right how do
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I get it to replace things that I do or people that I work with which is common
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uh but the thing is is you know it’s not just like a one clear-cut answer for
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anybody right i mean some people use AI for very simplistic things which I think
5:08
are the easier applications yeah but when you’re talking about really like
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complicated like stepbystep chaining events that’s where most people like
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lose its you know it it’s true capabilities because they’re not far
5:25
enough down the production or development you know life cycle to
5:29
understand how to like leverage that and it it didn’t get good at handling that
5:34
until the recent one which is like the 4-0 model that chat GPT has i think
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Claude has a really good model that can do like chaining and and all of that the
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other part of it too is the thought reasoning around it is
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it struggles it doesn’t always know what it wants to think and how it needs to
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think so the prompt has to tell it what is it thinking like who is it thinking
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like right all those those systems and I think a lot of people don’t realize it
6:06
it’s like talking to a person mhm with way more instruction the high schooler
6:12
with lots of information is is kind of the the it’s kind of like my basic
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explanation you know the high schooler has lots of knowledge but does not know
6:21
what to do with it right so you have to kind of guide it at the same time
6:25
provide that human intervention which requires the rails that it needs to
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travel right yeah but the thing is is a lot of people they don’t recognize the
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fact that they need to provide those guard rails because if they don’t and
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they sort of just seed authority and they just start asking it random stuff
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it’s going to give you random responses and if you don’t review it and you put
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that stuff out man it can be embarrassing in some cases for some
6:50
businesses even fatal so I we we saw the example of the lawyer Yeah uh site a
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fake case didn’t realize it didn’t know it mhm uh we saw Air Canada give a
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refund or money back and you know it wasn’t in the the Yeah the refund policy
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wasn’t there right there is like a new lingo called AI agents that are
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specifically Yes really good at chaining together correct series of of actions
7:21
still not perfect um you know in our presentation we talked about CLA mhm
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they’re using it for something relatively low stakes but they’re also
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using it as a process to say hey what’s your problem right here here’s the help
7:34
you need with a little bit more than just a chat bot that kind of gives you a
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dumb answer yeah i mean there’s other applications that I’ve seen
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that I’d say kind of straddles the line of a little bit of
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uh danger that is unforeseen like I’ll give you an example like um I’m working
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with a platform right now that’s using AI chat for just resource like resource
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like conversations like if you start asking it questions about how to do
8:05
certain things or hey I can’t get into my account or certain things like that
8:10
it’s really good at those very like black and white answers but then there
8:14
are those things where the answers don’t exist until someone goes in and
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researches those answers like I’ll give you an example i’ll say something like
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“Hey I want to merge two accounts i’ve got an account over here and an account
8:26
over there and I want to now get rid of one account but I want to move all my
8:29
other stuff over.” And the answers that were provided were very
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matter-of-act to the point where like you’re giving at that point poor
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customer service yeah right so you’re taking a client that is potentially you
8:44
know not I won’t name the company but you know you’re taking a client that’s
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now paying for one or more accounts you’re starting to find a way to like
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okay I want to facilitate my engagement with you Mr or Mrs company and I need
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you to help me transition right and yes the the the chatbot will give
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you the answers again black and white but when the frustration level starts
9:08
going up the chatbot will not recognize that right a human is required to
9:13
determine okay the intention on this conversation is now getting a little off
9:18
the rails let me escalate this and it doesn’t get escalated right and then by
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the time you are escalated you’re you’re upset and you’ve been dealing with a
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chatbot like how can you get mad that you’re
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dealing with but our expectations right now are immediiacy right so in for the
9:36
goal of immediate customer response we’re putting in these AI bots and it’s
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almost like causing an opposite effect of what you’re hoping for yeah right
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you’re you’re Yes you’re lessening the load on your team to deal with those
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things but you’re opening yourself up to other things right i mean this that’s
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just one example uh where it can be you know a bit dangerous for a company if if
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if you’re not like handling with care yeah i’m sure it’s going to turn into a
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cultural thing where you’re just like I don’t want to talk to the AI I want to
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talk to the human and you know we’ve seen all the movies where support and
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and everything to government is AI run where you’re just like human looking for
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the trigger words it’s just the same thing that we do on a phone tree where
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we’re saying talk to human talk to support rep like find me a person help
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you know just I hack that stuff like right away like I’m like talk to an
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agent I don’t even like go through the phone tree if I can help it you can do
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that on a lot of those those AI chat tools and you know some really smart
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people managed to break it and kind of get you to give you know what the
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prompts were and everything in the back end so it it’s going to be an important
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part i actually think you know we’re in San Antonio rackspace was all about
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fanatical support i think we’re going to see resurgences of companies go we’re
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using AI to process data and everything else is human we’re going to see it more
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and more i think people are kind of like rejecting like the coding with uh with
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AI saying like uh we’re not going to do it this way hey we’re going to leverage
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it in in a way that’s not just like a a robots you know coding a robot you know
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again and again it’s a snake eats a its own tail at some point mhm i I think a
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large part of this is and Sam Alman is a proponent of this is we just don’t know
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what’s kind of happening like we don’t know i loved uh there was a Tik Tok
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yesterday of like did we invent AI or did we discover AI and it’s it’s kind of
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like the the discussion of electricity we didn’t we didn’t make electricity we
11:45
just discovered it like did we just discover that we had enough technology
11:49
to make AI sure and I think until we can figure out and get to the next step of
11:54
like oh hey how do we mold this we’re going to have somewhat dumb AI agents
12:00
and bots kind of like pushing us around and uh I saw a video this morning is
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when you ask AI right now there’s a definitive answer and it makes it look
12:10
like an authority authoritative answer sometimes it’s really far off so more
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now it’s about a human going and thinking through that does that sound
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right what are the sources can I do that we’re going to see a lot more of that
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and we used to do it with Google of right 10 results how are we going to
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determine which one’s the most accurate you know we had https we had
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authoritative domains.gov.edu right with AI
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it’s almost a go back and do a Google search afterwards and validate it when
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some of the companies though do bolt it on the parts that I like is they tailor
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it really tightly to what you’re doing so if you’re going to be writing about
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social media Yeah you’re you’re only writing about social media they take a
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little part of it and kind of like make it dumb they put it in there same thing
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I’ve seen you know companies in geekdom where you’re writing grants the grant
13:08
application process pretty you know process driven you got to check the
13:12
boxes with what you’re writing and AI could be dumbed down to do that
13:17
over and over and over again sure and it kind of is a dumbing dumbing of it in in
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a lot of ways it’s it’s more of a niching down of it because right now AI
13:26
is a really broad smart kind of jack of all trades person yeah i mean there’s
13:32
also the other aspect of back to you were talking about agents right now
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we’re talking about consumers interacting with a business’s AI
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but at some point agents will start operating on behalf of consumers so then
13:46
you’re going to have AI just doing the work it’s happening a little bit
13:50
google’s doing it with the phone calls where you can make reservations
13:54
you call the restaurant the restaurant will book you you’ll have it
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it’s a little weird you know I I imagine on the server side answering the phone
14:03
and being like “Huh it’s Google again making a reservation for
14:08
somebody.” I think that there’s going to be a push away from all of that and more
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on the data processing more on the the automations of an employee i think it’s
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going to be way less consumerf facing tools possibly i I
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feel like the it’s kind of like the Salesforce ad did you see that in the
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Super Bowl yeah do you based on that ad did you know what Salesforce did i had
14:33
no idea oh I mean like I know what they do but I’m like Yeah you were trying to
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understand what that was i was like what was that like they they don’t make the
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planes fly they’re they’re like not booking all of that but I think it’s
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going to become a like technology kind of like internet protocol everybody
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knows what it is they type in a domain there’s DNS in the background i think
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that’s what is going to happen with AI more and more and it’s going to become a
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businessto business tool where you know they’re using it at Walmart to order the
15:05
products kind of expect you interface with the employee to say hey you need to
15:10
go check this stuff and chat back i think it might come in the consumer
15:14
space of maybe like fridges or stuff like that but I mean here’s the thing ai
15:20
and all of its iterations are certainly to some degree probably some high degree
15:26
for efficiency but time consumption and time savings is
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the one resource that we do not have infinite amounts of in in any lifetime
15:40
right so how often do we want to sit you know for example waiting in line at a
15:46
bank i mean you hear the terms of like oh people wait in line for years you
15:49
know waiting for services or waiting on the phone or on hold or I have to tell
15:54
you as a consumer I love hey when an agent is available we’ll call you back
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yes you know what that’s amazing i love that that to me is like proactive AI
16:03
customer servicing like okay let’s just go ahead and do that i’ll take the call
16:08
when it comes in you know uh but I think to a larger degree like in order for AI
16:13
to truly be successful it has to become a accepted mass adoption tool right and
16:20
we say we use AI is like this all-encompassing thing but in the end I
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mean I look at it as like okay there are really thousands of different tools that
16:29
fall under a category right they all do different things companies that are
16:33
building solutions are around you know they’re they’re trying to solve a
16:36
problem using more automation U but I think once you have the average
16:43
Joe that does not even look at technology as like a day-to-day activity
16:49
right I mean we are obviously highly technical just because we’re in a space
16:53
every single day but there’s lots of people including many of our clients
16:57
people that we would expect to be highly technical and they are not yet they all
17:02
know that their time is valuable they want to get more done in a shorter
17:05
amount of time and you know I I I think there’s probably going to be a little
17:10
bit of of of well a lot of the B2B side of things obviously that’s going to
17:14
drive a ton because that’s going to really is what’s going to push the
17:17
adoption and then adoption like right now I have
17:20
my my app on my phone you know for chat GBT or Claude or Gemini and you start
17:26
asking for it to do things for I can’t tell you the last time I’ve actually
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gone in to my phone to do a search on Google like for anything
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i just don’t it’s both an indictment of how bad Google is today and then the
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fact that these tools do give you an answer that I appreciate that there’s no
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ads i mean oddly enough and at some point there’s going to be ads right in
17:50
order to get the answer look at this ad i mean some way it’s coming it’s got to
17:54
be monetized somehow they’re going to have to unless they sell the data or
17:58
process the data but I think where a lot of these tools are going to win or lose
18:02
is can they monetize it yeah and then can they build the tools for the
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creators for the businesses that are pumping the data in right to understand
18:12
how their data is being displayed i think they’re right now Google makes up
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like 20% of the internet everybody visit visits it in a given day probably once
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um chat GBT is about 2.1% so huge growth there i think that Super
18:31
Bowl ads the first step to bringing that mass adoption right again the ad not the
18:37
best i think it was more Apple aspirational than it was
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actually hey this is what we’re going to you know show you how to do it i think
18:47
Google’s ad on their Gemini was a little bit more in line
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i don’t think it appealed to just everybody it was a little bit like
18:56
politically leaning one way and that that just you know it it creates a lot
19:01
of riffs of like oh no I don’t want to work use Google’s because of these
19:06
unclear bias but as soon as there’s a tool out there
19:09
that everyone’s like you know I think Apple’s doing it with Siri and their
19:14
Apple intelligence as soon as it’s just built into your phone it’s like you’re
19:18
using it a lot of people use it every single day they don’t realize it
19:22
scheduling a calendar there’s there’s a lot of like AI tools in that now so many
19:27
yeah there the if you interact with email marketing anyway there’s so many
19:32
ways to personalize it it’s it’s layering in AI there’s just a lot of
19:36
ways that they’re doing it even on the banking side I know that Stripe and you
19:40
know all of these other companies are using AI to look
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at what’s fraud what’s not and then even on the credit card like for example if
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you leave a tip at a bar Capital One’s using AI to say hey what’s more than 20%
19:56
that that’s just machine learning to say you know hey it’s more than 20% of what
20:00
you’re doing but they’re using AI chatbot to come and tell you hey was
20:04
this fraud was this accurate right right so I think it’s going to come slowly it
20:10
It’s like Facebook’s doing it i think Facebook’s doing it in the wrong way
20:13
they’re like you know you can chat with an AI Kardashian bot versus some of the
20:19
other ways the one thing I do like is their AI summaries of comments yes i
20:24
love to go read that because I’m like “Okay what are all the angles?” And then
20:27
I can go scroll and look for the different comments to say “Are people
20:31
mad people not.” I think that’s a really cool way of using it i also think
20:35
Facebook’s largely using AI in their ad department to do way better targeting
20:39
yeah and I think that’s where a lot of people again AI is going
20:45
to be a business tool more than anything how do you target people when you go to
20:49
HB here oh hey you always make a route every single time i guarantee you some
20:53
point they’re going to be tracking you with the cameras and say “I know that
20:57
he’s doing that route through the store let’s display a better you know uh like
21:03
coupon setup or sale deals you know all of that.” I think that’s where it comes
21:08
from and and I think most people don’t want to hear that mhm i think most
21:12
people want a tool that can you know like the like the
21:19
example is if you have live chat GPT right here you could be doing an
21:22
interview and have it fact check have it you know give you input is it all
21:27
accurate no but it it helps you look smarter process things especially just
21:32
as a human it’s like and you can learn on the fly right you can learn more on
21:36
the fly well um let’s talk about the workshop that we did last week uh here
21:41
at Geekdom yes it was a great turnout I think like 20 to 30 people so for a
21:46
Wednesday at lunchtime was was really great great yeah absolutely um I think
21:52
the direction we took was a little bit more beginner AI yeah how to how to
21:57
implement it what tools to use we talked a little bit more about automation too
22:01
crm that’s right hubspot marketing spec specifically tailored to how do you
22:06
integrate AI to your business mhm um I think a lot of people are
22:11
solarpreneurs um maybe they’re building their team just
22:14
now but a lot of their questions were more advanced how to feed it the right
22:20
data how to string along how to learn to use it right which I feel like right now
22:25
it feels like that is the level most businesses are in unless AI is their
22:30
business which is still a very small percentage of the businesses out there
22:34
yeah today and and a lot of startups are not AI startups they are startups with
22:41
AI bolted on they’re using a chat GPT a claude um maybe deepseek an API of some
22:48
sort and pulling from that to to to do all their their AI integration correct
22:54
so they’re not really the backbone of the AI they’re just trying to figure out
22:58
what’s the best way to implement it yeah you know a business owner that owns a
23:04
car repair shop they’re like “How do I get phone calls to be sorted how do I
23:10
email customers better how do I like schedule better?” They’re using it for
23:15
those reasons a startup that’s doing it is thinking about h how do I give those
23:20
tools to that auto shop and doing it in a way
23:24
that one person can handle it versus the owner going and hiring another person to
23:30
handle just that and then all of a sudden your team grows there is a little
23:33
bit of efficiency point but it’s also gives that owner the ability to jump in
23:39
and do something that they probably wouldn’t have been able to do before
23:43
sure absolutely i mean I kind of see like well I mentioned earlier like just
23:47
from my perspective you know using AI for more efficiency saving time but
23:51
there’s also you know I mean AI shoppers where you can say hey I want to save
23:55
money as a household you know I want to find deals on particular things and I
24:00
don’t want to look for them all where can I find them how do I order them i I
24:03
was doing that the other day and I actually talked to somebody about this
24:05
and this is where I got the idea from was she was shopping for couches on on
24:10
Amazon yeah and just went and asked chat GPT here are the measurements I need
24:15
here’s kind of the room layout what couch fits best and then gave her a list
24:20
of them you could have done that on Amazon it
24:25
would have been a you know one by one get the measurements check you know the
24:28
measurements are always in different spots on Amazon but chat GPT just told
24:33
you the measurements of each i validated all of them and then interesting thing
24:38
they all had UTMs saying chat GPT which I thought was pretty interesting that is
24:43
really cool actually that that’s that’s funny because tracking for chat GPT and
24:48
how do you do advertising for tracking and attracting you know bots yeah the
24:55
interesting part on the advertising front
24:58
is the fact that an AI is the definitive answer how do you
25:04
put an ad in that right so I think they’re gonna have to sort through that
25:08
google hasn’t figured it out no and they have the best way to figure it out they
25:13
have a inventory of it facebook hasn’t figured it out they have the best
25:17
inventory mhm but during that that uh workshop one of the conversations after
25:26
was with an marketer of like hey everyone’s asking me about search engine
25:31
optimization but they’re calling it you know AI optimization like have you dealt
25:37
with any of that right and I was like yes and no like right now all we know
25:41
it’s it’s pulling from Google searches very similarly um you know the big part
25:46
was answer a question like you know if you have a question write a blog about
25:52
it answer it right away and then add the SEO fluff for you you’ll probably rank
25:56
really high on chat GPT for it and then Google we don’t have as much data and
26:01
tools to say this is what affects it and I’m sure some people are starting to
26:05
hack their way into like AI optimization but everyone’s asking how do I show up
26:11
on AI how do I integrate it in there and then what do I do once it’s integrated
26:19
like what’s the next step how how advanced can I get with this does uh
26:22
Google Analytics and Search Console actually report on any of the you know
26:29
major AI platforms like because I know I mean I know looking at data I use you
26:35
know Chad GPT for example to crawl particular websites that I am tracking
26:39
data for yeah i don’t see them registered you know they come in they
26:42
might come in as as maybe unassigned you know they don’t have now analytics
26:47
picking up on that UTM now I’ve seen that in there but search
26:52
console it’s just Google organic search google needs to build a tool for Gemini
26:57
to show how many times you showed up in Gemini sure like I think the best thing
27:02
that OpenAI could do is give tools to the publishers and the creators out
27:08
there yeah that are optimizing and building that let a little ecosystem
27:12
foster and I guarantee you everyone’s going to care about it because sure
27:16
they’re going to be like “Hey how do I show up in chat GPT how do I do that how
27:21
do I you know show up on Gemini number one?” Yeah it’s a fuzzy answer right now
27:26
that’s very true uh and obviously I think we’re going to probably be talking
27:29
a lot more about this stuff uh you know I think in general there is no one
27:34
answer and obviously this is going to be very fluid as far as how AI you know
27:39
kind of integrates into just daily life it hit the market three years ago two
27:45
years ago mhm you know it AI was was had through voice for a little bit
27:53
that was dumb AI it was okay this is the closest that we’re getting to hey this
27:58
is actually pretty useful like let me ask it to write something for me let me
28:03
ask it to validate data i’ve been using it a lot to take all the social media
28:08
post and say hey what’s the best time to post what’s the audience off of this
28:13
data like can you mesh all this together use it a lot in data entry can you
28:17
separate the first name last name email and then hey by the way can you set that
28:22
up so that every email is first name last name period at whatever company
28:26
right and there’s a lot of a lot of that i I’m kind of against the creative part
28:33
of it i don’t like that it writes i don’t like that it creates images i
28:37
think it’s really cool but opens up the door for a lot of trouble yeah and then
28:41
it’s also just what happening on Google you know you go to chat GPT if you’re
28:46
just writing everything with AI sooner or later the AI is training off the AI
28:50
it’s a snake eating its own tail and what’s the quality so true i I think
28:55
there’s a lot to wrangle with and how do you integrate into your business is a
28:59
big one but also like the ethical and the moral dilemmas of like you know if
29:04
if I integrate AI I don’t need to hire more people you know normally that would
29:08
have been the case you know you went from a 10 person company to 15 you might
29:13
go from a 10 to 12 and have still do the 15 people
29:17
work like do you distribute that money to everybody how do you kind of handle
29:20
that maybe it’s profit shares i’ve seen some companies talk about it even like
29:24
Buffer where they’re just like “Hey we’re just going to profit share versus
29:29
you know just increasing salaries and doing all this that’s profit and if we
29:32
can maximize with less people everybody wins.” Sure um I know we said we were
29:38
going to talk about internationalization uh we might want to
29:41
touch base on that a little bit uh otherwise false advertising so just to
29:47
change topics really quickly uh on internationalization so right now
29:51
because of the political climate here in San Antonio but I think in Texas and I
29:56
would venture to say probably any bordering country uh to Mexico uh and
30:02
maybe even Canada uh there is more activity of companies that are starting
30:09
to move their operations nearshoring in the opposite direction into the US right
30:15
so we’ve had some conversations now through uh you know my travel to Mexico
30:20
City uh and some of the conversations that I started you know with companies
30:25
that are looking to start operations in the US i think there’s more of this
30:30
political pressure now to have physical space here in the country to start
30:36
trying to avoid some of these tariffs all these talk of tariffs you know it’s
30:40
it’s scary it will close you know certain operations down completely in
30:44
the country uh if you know if we’re not placing those orders because the
30:48
expenses go up uh so because of that you know the the shift and the push is to
30:54
move operations into Texas here in San Antonio in particular i mean I’ i’ve had
30:59
conversations just in the past few months with my five or six different
31:02
companies that are interested in selling in the US um they’re either already here
31:08
or they’re planning on being here very soon
31:12
um so you know I feel like kind of back to this AI thing right
31:19
part of it is also like okay how do we do business internationally where maybe
31:24
we don’t know the language of the country in which they’re coming from or
31:27
vice versa they’re coming here and don’t necessarily know how to do business in
31:30
the US so but you have to deliver services that works pro probably not
31:36
just in the US but maybe in the country that they’re from you know because
31:40
they’re buying services to sell in this market but the one thing that I’ve
31:43
learned and this is not to say that look Latin America has a lot of u you know
31:50
I’d say advantages uh you know costwise uh you know skills-wise in some in some
31:56
cases to using resources across you know the world from from other parts of the
32:01
world right that could be either cheaper but significantly more difficult to work
32:04
with yeah um but the thing that they’re looking to accomplish is they’re you
32:11
know they’re looking to engage with a market that’s the largest economy in the
32:15
world which is ours right many times they don’t really know
32:19
how to sell here right so when they come and and start asking questions about how
32:24
to engage with them an American audience for sales purposes for B2B purposes
32:30
that’s really opening up a huge opportunity for companies here to not
32:35
just educate but to facilitate and help these companies implement quickly that’s
32:40
another reason why AI is helpful why because you might be doing business with
32:44
somebody that maybe doesn’t have the best English no but yet they’ve got the
32:48
resources to start services here how do you become a conduit for that
32:54
conversation i’m having these conversations completely in Spanish
32:59
and I I told this story in the workshop i used Fathom right i used Fathom for my
33:04
for my meeting notes yeah it’s Fathom video fathom video i used it for you
33:10
know my conversation it was about an hour long and then when it gave me my my
33:14
summary my summary was in English it translated summarized and gave me all of
33:20
the follow-ups that that were needed in English and I was like man this is
33:25
really cool you know because now it’s giving me the ability to participate in
33:30
a meeting let’s just say I didn’t speak Spanish and I was speaking solely
33:33
English and other people were speaking Spanish the language could be jumped
33:37
back and forth in that meeting as long as I had somebody that could you know
33:40
get me over the hump on some things uh and the summary and everything that
33:46
I’m getting the information like you know uh feedback that I’m getting from
33:50
that meeting now I can actually do business pretty consistently without the
33:55
need to have to speak the language you know I mean and then take the notes and
33:59
give it to a team member that’s English speaking it makes it so much faster
34:03
exactly there’s a Geekdom startup here that’s doing it the opposite way they’re
34:08
taking uh Neo banks here in the United States
34:12
and trying to take it into Latin America they’re they’re doing the same thing
34:16
going and you know you’ve talked to them of trying to figure out you know how to
34:20
take that stuff in there and using AI to look at regulations and how do they
34:24
translate best for that what are the kind of nuances with culture in in each
34:29
country yeah what are the regulatory agencies so they’re they’re taking the
34:34
same tact and you know going another direction but there is a lot of
34:39
conversation about how to tap into the Latin American market right on both ways
34:44
where whether it’s nearshoring and they’re coming out and then those
34:48
nearshoring conversations that you’ve had and those those talks that you’ve
34:51
done have gone the other way where a lot of those Mexican companies are like yeah
34:56
you guys are coming but it is the biggest market you know and how do you
35:00
how do they enter They they never know right they they don’t know the nuances
35:05
that are American sales and you know haggling for different things and
35:11
you know how to deal with that how to deal with the culture differences
35:14
between Texas and California or even an Illinois or Florida it’s like the small
35:19
nuances that they they just don’t know i think that transcription part is is the
35:24
coolest though because you really can get off off the meeting and especially
35:30
if if Spanish isn’t the easiest to write in and take notes and then re-ransate it
35:34
to English you just have it in English and then I’m sure you could just ask it
35:38
to take it to Spanish and send them a note from that too absolutely you can
35:42
have them send out full emails if you want if you needed it i mean the the the
35:46
beauty of it that I see is that it’s not just facilitating for people that don’t
35:50
have the skills if you have the skills it’s just supercharging your
35:54
capabilities right um you know like for me like I speak Spanish I speak it
35:59
fluently there’s some words that I may not understand there’s technical terms
36:02
for particular industries that are brand new i mean I’m learning those things on
36:05
the fly but AI makes it that much easier because I can get all of that detail i
36:10
can download all of that information and I can use it as just additional data
36:15
points for that conversation so again back to that thing of of of seeming more
36:20
intelligent I guess yeah or at least more more educated in what you’re
36:23
talking about um but you know I I think in general I would just say that look if
36:29
American companies are trying to grow you have to grow beyond your borders
36:33
yeah right the the market is huge and people want to attract you know uh
36:38
customers from the US and they don’t really know how to do it you know so I
36:43
think it’s opening up a whole slew of of buyer opportunities that now companies
36:48
that are here geekd them you know that that want to do more business beyond
36:52
just Texas you know they want to do business in other states do business in
36:56
other countries i mean that’s a complete possibility especially if you speak
36:59
Spanish particularly sure especially in in Texas and San Antonio right i think
37:04
it’s easier to go across the border south than it is sometimes to even head
37:10
further and deeper into the American market i mean it’s crazy that Mexico
37:14
City is 2 hours on on you know on a plane monterey is an hour uh you know uh
37:20
obviously we know the border is so close but we don’t really appreciate what that
37:24
means because no one really oh yeah let’s go to Mexico on vacation man
37:28
there’s so much there’s so much more available you know business-wise uh in
37:34
Latin America and and look Mexico is one of the largest you know one of our
37:39
largest or probably our largest trade partner um you know Brazil is huge but
37:45
Brazil’s further away but Mexico’s right there right so there’s a lot of
37:49
opportunity and because the uh population is so highly concentrated in
37:54
in and around Mexico City which like I think I’ve mentioned this in the past
37:58
like 70% of the total population is in one city like 20 30 million people 20 20
38:03
million yeah i mean and not to say that there aren’t other markets but you know
38:08
within Mexico the point here is that internationalization and the opportunity
38:13
to do so especially right now is a big opportunity for even small businesses
38:18
right i mean to do the outreach to find new customers that aren’t necessarily in
38:24
the US is not it’s just not a foreign concept anymore now it’s I think
38:28
something that even small businesses particularly where we’re situated if a
38:32
company wants to grow I mean the easy answer is start doing business in
38:36
Spanish most people say “Oh no we can’t we don’t have the ability to speak
38:39
Spanish in the company or we don’t have the ability to support that type of
38:43
customer.” I’m like “Okay well that type of customer is coming here.” Yeah you
38:48
know they’re they’re actively moving here some AI some chat GPT you don’t
38:53
have to service them fully you might have one person that’s in support that
38:57
knows how to talk correct have them go through it have them AI the notes and
39:01
you know send it over i think it’s an easier and easier answer to your point
39:05
agreed and and the truth is is like look if you don’t have someone that speaks
39:08
Spanish in San Antonio I mean you can throw a stone and probably hit four
39:13
people that that speak Spanish so I’m sure somebody on the team knows how to
39:17
speak Spanish they just didn’t tell you right on the first go or you can find
39:21
someone that can do it or can facilitate or whatever the case may be u so you
39:26
know I just feel like there’s there’s a lot of cross you know pollination I
39:31
think between AI and the move for internationalization and look to be
39:36
bluntly honest AI is being adopted in Latin America faster than it’s being
39:39
adopted here uh and I that could just simply be that it’s easier to you know
39:45
infiltrate a much smaller pond yeah you know when you have fewer people doing it
39:49
but it’s a still a smaller pond here we’ve got lots of people doing it but
39:53
this is a very very big country exactly so anyway I think um you know we can
39:59
continue talking about these things moving moving in forward in the future
40:02
but I just think as soon as we start seeing these things popping up in the
40:06
news there’ll be plenty more to talk about on this 100% and we’re going to
40:11
get on a better cadence yeah ourselves and we’re going to sprinkle in some
40:15
interviews we’re doing some other stuff with other folks yes that we’ll we’ll
40:18
introduce and then um you know if you’re listening you can go to the boost.fm
40:23
we’ll have all the notes in there the transcriptions if you want to go read
40:26
that all AI driven transcriptions um but please follow us on the YouTubes on the
40:32
Spotify on the Apple podcast all the places that you get your podcasters uh
40:39
from there that’s right thank you thank you guys