BRAD KILGORE
0:24
Hey everybody, it’s Brad Kilgore here with America’s Best Shops, and we have another jam-packed, exciting episode of AI Marketing Experts. I’m here with 3 of my closest friends, and we are going to jam out the cool stuff that’s happening in the world of AI for business. Our one associate, Chris, he’s somewhere in Texas. He may be frozen solid at this point, we don’t know, but we know he wasn’t going to be able to make it today. So Chris will be with us next week. Don’t forget to share, like, comment, tell your friends about us. Our show has continued to grow. We’re excited of all the growth and all the new people that are joining us.
BRAD KILGORE
1:05
So with that, we’re going to go ahead and kick off our latest episode. I think we’re in season 2. I think this is like our 30-something episode. So we are here to deliver the goods. So with that, we’re just going to kind of open it up for an open forum today. Like I say, kind of a jam session. And kind of talk about who in the group here saw some stuff that really caught your eye that you want to share with our audience.
JOHN CLENDENNING
1:32
Cool. I’ll just give a quick little bit of news just to jump in ahead. We’ve got a close friend of the show. We probably should get him on as a guest at one point now that I’m thinking about it. By the way, everybody, next episode, we got a really cool guest. Danny will be joining us. We just got the word. From Chris while traveling.
JOHN CLENDENNING
1:52
So whenever you’re watching this, episode next number, really good guest and person deep in the AI world helping businesses as well. But a friend of ours, Josh, does the same thing and he was at an implementation conference last week and he just announced in one of the masterminds we’re in that we all knew this, we saw the stats saying that, oh my gosh, like 94% of like all of the AI projects that were put in place, I think it was Deloitte and Touche or somebody came up with this, attempted in 2025, 84% of them didn’t get implemented and failed. And it’s like, nah, wah, wah, wah, AI’s just a fad, right? There’s the bubble, right? All this kind of stuff. The caveat, the backend of that, and it still replaced 300,000 jobs. Now, the next eye-opening caveat is they expect that to go from 6% to 60% in 2026.
BRAD KILGORE
2:47
That’s right.
JOHN CLENDENNING
2:48
So just think of that. If you’re— again, as we keep saying, I’m just gonna put a pin in that right there. We’ll carry on. But if you’re not thinking AI, if you’re not implementing AI, if you’re not in masterminds about AI, if you’re not in coaching programs about AI and communities about AI, um, you’re behind. It’s not maybe, you’re behind right now. So there’s my warning to everybody. You guys can pick up from there.
BRAD KILGORE
3:18
Yeah. And I think just to, to jump off of what John just said, even though jobs are being replaced, that doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to be unemployed next year. It just means that right now, more than ever, you need to pay attention to what’s going on and say, okay, I, I may be really good at my craft, I may be the best ag dealer, mechanic, carpet cleaner, business owner, whatever it is out there in the world. But I am not technical and I don’t know how I’m going to handle this. I don’t know where I would even fit in my business because it scares the crap out of me. Right. So the thing is, is find somebody, you know, whether you look at working with us, we’re going to have some really cool stuff rolling out in the near future that’s going to help you like you’re not even going to believe. But find somebody, you know, that really knows the cutting edge of what’s happening.
BRAD KILGORE
4:13
If you want to learn it yourself, we’re here to help, but it’s not going away. The other thing, too, is I know John just did a big masterclass or webinar recently. We’re doing another one this week in our industry. And that’s, you know, businesses that don’t adapt may not survive. Because their competitors are going to and are currently really latching on to the fact that they can streamline things in their business. They can utilize AI assistants and chatbots and AI receptionists or whatever it is to free up the people that they have for other more valuable work other than just answering the phone saying, yes, our hours are blah, blah, blah.
JOHN CLENDENNING
4:59
Right?
BRAD KILGORE
5:00
So be aware that now is the time. If only 6% or whatever percentage really grabbed onto things last year in the AI world, hold onto your hats, boys and girls, because 2026 is here now and it is going to explode. It is now everywhere you turn, almost every software, almost every, you know, Amazon, every Google, everywhere you go, there’s a new AI tool or an AI, assistant or chatbot or whatever, it’s everywhere. It’s not going away. I mean, I’m even hearing people around me, friends and business associates and what have you that were like last year, like, oh no, no. Now they’re like, oh wow, no, it’s here. I’m seeing it everywhere. Brad, can you help me? Brad, tell me more.
BRAD KILGORE
5:47
Brad, what’s going on there? Because now everybody’s waking up to the fact that this is Not just next level. This is now.
JENNIFER CREGO
5:55
Yeah. So just to touch on the point about how there’s so many businesses that are implementing AI right now, like it’s like, so if you’re not, you’re, you really got to look at it. You’re going to be behind. But think about it just from this very boots on the ground kind of a way. We already know that when someone is looking for a service, when they’re online and they’re looking for something, they might make a phone call, someone doesn’t answer, they’re going to go to the next one and the next one and the next one. They like whoever answers, that’s, that’s the, the company that gets the work, the job. But a lot of like it doesn’t have to be human. It can be an AI receptionist that can answer, that can book the appointment, that can like do, do all of those things.
JENNIFER CREGO
6:42
And like, that’s okay too. It does not have to be a human. And so just implementing something I mean, as, as big and as simple as that can make a big difference for a business. And the thing is, is that if you’re not doing it but your competitor is, then that’s where the, the issue comes. So it’s not— you can’t just say, oh, I, I’m not gonna— I’m not gonna use AI for my business and, and think that you’re going to be able to compete still. This is a foot race. This is not an individual thing that, you know, that businesses can, can do, you know, and not think about their, their competitors. It’s just that’s not how it works.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
7:22
And I’ll just build on that because if you’re listening or watching and you’re thinking, I just don’t have time, then often back it up one more step and say, what can you use? So when you walked into the office today or you open up your laptop or you open up your phone, where can you implement or start using AI naturally? So it may not be as big as, oh my gosh, I need to focus on having someone answer my phones just yet. It may be I need it to reply to an email and it would be as simple as, can you craft an email reply? And then you direct, you know, we’re big on human first. You want to go ahead and put your human in the loop, you refine it. But then all of a sudden naturally you’re seeing AI start helping you with micro tasks that you found. And even if it starts saving you 15 minutes of time during your day, then you can start learning more about how to have your phones answered or that AI assistance on your website or having those different elements in more of your business. Because now all of a sudden you’re freeing yourself up from redundant tasks that are dragging or time just sucking all the time out of your day.
BRAD KILGORE
8:32
Sure.
JOHN CLENDENNING
8:33
I want to, I want to show the clear separation right here as well in our, in our comments, because Laura and I talk about human in the loop all the time, but we work with people like different types, like I work with cleaners that they go out on site and they’re like AI booking an appointment and being able to be the highest priced cleaner in your marketplace. Really hard to do. You need a human in the loop to explain that. And in Laura’s world, same idea. Brad, a shop, an auto shop. Yeah, by all means, here’s my calendar. You’re coming to me, book. Jen, med spas and businesses.
JOHN CLENDENNING
9:05
Yeah, you’re coming to me. Here’s an opening, book. And that even as our listeners are listening, think of where you are in your business and where it makes sense. Here’s one that we’re adding to all of our clients right now as an enhancement, as we call it, inside our lead generation CRM. So think of the side of your van, a QR code, and it says, you know, start your safe and healthy home here with an arrow to the QR code. Somebody scans it, good, it goes to your website. That would be a good, better, better, best. Better, it goes to a very specific landing page offering something in exchange for their email.
JOHN CLENDENNING
9:38
Oh, we’ve all heard of that. That’s kind of cool. Best starts a chatbot conversation with your AI chat. Boom, your chat opens up. Hey, thanks so much for scanning the QR code. What, what about that attracted your attention? You have a conversation, you go down a path. What are they interested in? Or you run a social media post about pet urine problems and say, hey, by the way, DM me with the word pets and I’ll send you our pet urine recovery guide. Now that DM could be a real person having to type back and whatever..
JOHN CLENDENNING
10:06
But no, in our world, what we’re building out is that is, hey, thanks so much. I’ll send that over. Give me your name. Give me your email. Oh, by the way, what is your pet urine problem? Let me, let’s talk about it. And the whole goal is not to book a job. It is to find out if they are a lead with a long, with that, a long-term lead that you need to drip on that nobody ever talks to, or a short-term lead. Win that conversation.
JOHN CLENDENNING
10:28
Eventually you’re gonna be asking, the AI is gonna be asking, and is this something you’re looking to solve?
JENNIFER CREGO
10:32
Soon.
JOHN CLENDENNING
10:32
Would you like to have somebody come out and do a quote on that for you? Not only is it a free quote, we give you this and this and this and this to show up anytime we find a happy new customer. So would you like our happy new customer or happy new prospect kit and a free quote? Again, I’m a marketer. My brain just thinks of marketing. We just build them into our tools now because it’s easier to build that they can go wide like that as well. So just wanted to put that in that AI can go from a little to a lot really quickly. And if your competitors are doing that and you’re not even thinking that, get with somebody that already thinks that way.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
11:07
Yes, because I’ll even build on when you, like you said, as they scan the CRM, it’s collecting that information. So there’s no more manually, okay, how do you spell your last name or anything? It’s collecting all that. So that 24/7 salesperson mentality is collecting all that, that when that valuable assistant, valuable person at your front desk, valuable person, your sales team gets in for the morning, they can then see, okay, these conversations have had— have happened overnight, and now I can go ahead and start moving forward with those that who need my attention immediately or now. And then even what Brad mentioned for one of our last episodes, having that video conversation. So not only, yes, you might start with a chatbot, or they can select video and they can be actually talking to someone within your organization. So again, keeps that human in the loop. You’re not losing any of that. You’re just getting to those conversations faster.
BRAD KILGORE
12:04
That’s right. That’s exactly right. Well, I know that we had some other really nice things to share since it is Show and Tell Friday. Laura was going to show some things with NotebookLM, if I remember right. So if you would like— Laura, would you like to show and tell off your fancy new laptop?
LAURA SOUTHERLY
12:25
I will. I will. Well, one of the things about Notebook LM is they are adding new features. And so it’s, it’s every time you open up, it’s kind of like a Christmas gift. It’s basically the notebooklm.google.com. When you’re there, it’ll ask if you want to create a notebook. I just did that for time’s sake, started one, and I pulled in a bunch of different resources. It allows it to go out on the internet to pull cool.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
12:52
We’re not going to go into very basic information on how to start your Notebook LM. We’re going to talk more about the presentation. So as we have all these resources to decide, I just randomly selected 3 and said I need to build a presentation on it. And what surprised me, you know, we have talked about in the past here how they can do an audio overview. Well, now you’ve got the video overview, all these over here, but now when you’ve got the slide deck, If you click the pencil before you click to start, you can actually start talking about whether you want it very short or default. I did find there was a limitation around 20 slides, so just kind of keep that in mind. But you can go ahead and drop in any kind of specific instructions that you would like regarding the deck. So think about your audience, your key points.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
13:44
You can be as specific as I want slide 1 to be, you know, a hero slide, slide 2 to be about the speaker, slide 3 agenda, whatever might be your flow. And then once you click generate to go, you’ll be very impressed about what can be generated. So this is the example of what pulled it together. And again, as we’re asked to do things faster, you’re able just to kind of look at how it pulled the stats from those documents and pull them in in a very visually friendly way. And yes, it does have NotebookLM. That’s not a problem because you want to give them a nod to it. The only thing I found is even when I uploaded specific brand guides such as colors, logos, and specific guests to please have my logo in the lower corner, it kind of started to ignore it. So it’s not 100% there, But I don’t think this is bad if you needed to pull something together for a quick webinar or quick presentation.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
14:50
What do you guys think?
JOHN CLENDENNING
14:51
I was going to say, I think that’s awesome. And I was going to ask you about that brand thing, how close it was to if you— one of your knowledge documents was an example slide, or, you know, and brand guides and stuff like that. But again, as we know, this is new. Gosh knows what this is going to— like, in a, in a month from now, all of us, you know, I have a sample slide, leave a square there. I can at least put my logo in on Canva. Maybe, maybe it’ll catch up to that kind of idea, right? But for now, as you said, that is like, that is impressive. And if you’ve got a quick presentation to do in front of the Chamber of Commerce or with real estate agents on why you should be their carpet cleaner, which I used to do every month or so for years, yeah, I would be painfully working on PowerPoint slides. Even if I only got 5 minutes for like weeks ahead of time, right? So yeah, that would be a, hey, I’m heading there in 10 minutes, can you build me one?
LAURA SOUTHERLY
15:45
Right, and I did find some options where you can have those and then if you have your Google Slides open, you can just grab one and drop it in, in kind of, I’ll say pieces together, but again, it got me closer to when I need it. Another, when you’re in your, Google environment. Now you can select— so in Gemini you can select Canvas, not Canva, Canvas, and it will also— and this is something I could present next time— is it will allow you to present, and when you download it, it’ll allow you to go into slides. Initially, when I tried this a few weeks ago, was it gave me an empty file, which is fine, but I found that it was a little cumbersome for somebody who’s not going to know exactly how to get it over the MD Slides up on Google Slides. I did not find that user-friendly yet, so we’ll see as another week goes by, another day, we know that there’s improvements altogether. But again, if the viewers have a presentation to pull together and it’s kind of a bland document, it’s nice for it to give some visual oomph to keep the audience’s attention.
BRAD KILGORE
16:55
Totally agree. And I would also echo what Laura just said as far as a week from now, a month from now, there’s a strong possibility that this is going to integrate right into Google Slides because this is a Google product. NotebookLM is part of the Google Gemini family. And I did see some hacks. We tested them a little bit. If you just were to go to YouTube, for example, or even Google search and say, NotebookLM slideshow to Canva or something like that. There’s some ways you could import these things. It’s not quite there yet.
BRAD KILGORE
17:29
But the other thing, Laura, if you don’t mind sharing, I think we might have shared before, but will you show what it does with infographics? Because those to me are off the charts.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
17:39
Yes, I will. I will. So I’ll go back and share my screen.
BRAD KILGORE
17:43
It’s technically like one slide, but it’s infographic.
JENNIFER CREGO
17:46
Go ahead, Jen. Well, uh, I think, Laura, I think what you showed was, uh, if you’re grabbing stuff from the web, but you can also upload your, your own document or, um, or connect it to, uh, you know, your Drive to where it’s just pulling in your information too. If you, uh, you know, wanna— if you need to do a report or, um, that can still— or, you know, maybe you still want to do a slide deck, but it’s specifically for you or based on your information and not.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
18:17
For what you find on the online. Absolutely, you’re exactly right. That’s one reason why Notebook LM is so appealing to me for when we need to work with our clients, because our environment is within Google, so we know it’s secure, it’s only for them and their specific request. So having a notebook built upon our client, and if they ask, can we have some reporting, we can build an infographic just like what I’m showing on the screen by one check. We can go ahead and pull in just for that client an audio file. They— you can do a video based on, hey, what did we do for you last year? And it can review all those transcripts, everything that we’ve done for them. If we want to do a first quarter, it’s nice to kind of have that reflection with them. But I’m glad you brought that up because it is going to pull specific file for those clients.
BRAD KILGORE
19:14
What does that share button do now, Laura? I don’t remember seeing that. Do you see the little share icon on the top left? Up right, the furthest one to the left.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
19:22
Sorry. When I opened up the— so it just shows you if we want to go ahead and send a welcome note, or I can share the full notebook or partial notebooks in a group or adding an email. So I’m glad you asked.
BRAD KILGORE
19:34
And what about the copy link to infographic? What I know it doesn’t look like it’s highlighted. What does that do? See the bottom right corner?
LAURA SOUTHERLY
19:41
It does not. So probably because we are already— yeah, probably because it is.
BRAD KILGORE
19:46
I was hoping it had some editing type features.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
19:52
So if it’s not, let me go ahead and— but again, for all these, I found that if I close this and go back, that’s some of these you have to kind of hunt and peck on it. For the infographic, as Jim was saying, so we’ve got still those source files that I just pulled off online. I can load in a few of our transcripts from this podcast and say, no, I want to pull information from it. But when you do that, you can go and actually specify on the infographic if you want it landscape, portrait, square, concise, detailed. So you can really get specifics. John, this might be an area to go ahead and try the colors that you really want. Yeah, but, um, I found that that is, like I said, still a little rough. It might start out strong, but then by the time you get to the end of the slide presentation, or if it’s an infographic, it may be more spot on.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
20:46
So this one, um, but I did find that it kind of started losing its pizzazz when we got to the latter slides or the later slides. Um, the data— so this is the audio. Again, you have different We’ve got an interactive mode now with the audio file.
BRAD KILGORE
21:04
So that is growing.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
21:07
It keeps improving where you can actually, as it is going, providing the overview on those resources audio-wise, you as a listener can say, well, I have a question and actually interact with that podcast. So again, just takes things to a whole nother level, especially if you think about if you’re training. Staff and you want them to listen to something or visually see it versus reading it all, you can have them take the quiz, look at the flashcards. But if they’re listening to it and now they can ask a question to clarify it, wow, does that open up the world. Yeah, we all have different ways that we learn.
JENNIFER CREGO
21:52
Yeah, yeah, I, I feel like NotebookLM is um, one of those, um, like, it’s— more people should know about it. It’s like, it’s so valuable, and I feel like it’s, uh, it’s, it’s being overlooked right now in a lot of ways. Um, it— so I’m really excited that you shared about it. It’s, uh, yeah, NotebookLM might be mine.
JOHN CLENDENNING
22:17
As we’ve been saying for the last couple weeks, Google went from sort of meh, quietly in the background, just simmering, and we didn’t know what was happening. And I was like, oh my God, ChatGPT is jumping ahead, and this gro showing up and all this kind of stuff. And then they went, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We are still the biggest boy in the block. Let me show you. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it’s just been like every week it’s like, oh, and we had this ready and we figured this out and we’re planning this and it’s like, what? So, yeah, keep up with Google right now.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
22:46
Yes. And this if we take a little sidestep to the aistudio Google. And so if you’re like, ooh, I like the podcast. Not really sure how to pull one together. Ai-studio.google.com has what they call a multi-speaker audio. So it takes a few steps to get there. We won’t go into it today, but there you can say, I want the speakers to be witty, or I want them to be skeptical, I want high energy, I want very professional. So you can start setting tones.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
23:17
You can pick what male, female, different kind of voices, um, It’s just amazing as to what they’re putting there for selection of who you’re going to have as the speakers. So again, just takes information that we’ve just taken for granted to a whole nother level. And the other thing, it’s free. It’s free. It’s good.
JENNIFER CREGO
23:41
Free is very good.
JOHN CLENDENNING
23:43
Brad likes free. Brad tells us of all the lifetime deals and the free deals and stuff like that. He’s good at it.
BRAD KILGORE
23:48
So there we go.
JOHN CLENDENNING
23:49
Yeah, it is weird.
BRAD KILGORE
23:51
It would be interesting to— because I don’t do it, but it’d be interesting to look back on our episodes a year ago, what we were talking about or sharing then, and what it’s going to be like a year from now because it’s so lightning fast.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
24:06
Yes. When I— one of the slides I share with a few of my presentations is it from the time that the airplane AI was invented to the time that someone landed on the moon was 66 years. And the question is, is where will we see AI in 66 months? And in agriculture, we think of it as the invention of the tractor. It really did an advancement with agriculture with the invention of tractors and, you know, feeding the world kind of thing. But if we stop and think to Brad’s point, the elements and the items that we were talking about just when we started. It’s just phenomenal where we’ve been and where we are going. Speaking of which, even some of the— say again, I’m sorry.
BRAD KILGORE
24:56
Maybe more like 66 weeks or 66 days.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
24:59
Yeah, absolutely. Because they say by the end of 2026, it’s not going to be our typing. And I know, Brad, you’ve mentioned about Whisper. We’ve had some different discussions about more audio. So audio, and now that you can upload MP files, you can do it by voice, do it by audio, or do it by video. You won’t even need to type. They’re looking to just point your camera at something and say, fix this. So anyway, it’s just interesting as to see where it’s going.
JENNIFER CREGO
25:28
Yeah, and I think there are things that will happen in the, in this upcoming year that we don’t even have words for yet. Like they’re, you know, they’re— they have not been invented. Did you know that, uh, cars were originally called horseless carriages? Yes, because there was not a word for vehicle.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
25:48
Good point.
JOHN CLENDENNING
25:49
So, and they were electric, the first ones, just by the way.
LAURA SOUTHERLY
25:52
And then we— yes.
JENNIFER CREGO
25:54
Yeah. So like, that’s just one example of, of ways that things will change in this upcoming year that we don’t have words for yet.
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:03
That— so everybody tap into our show on a regular basis because we’re going to be finding out what words people use for this and how to keep you in the leading edge, right?
BRAD KILGORE
26:13
So that’s right. So that’s right. Well, is there any other things that you guys have thought of in the last week or two now that we’re into 2026, new year, new ideas, anything in closing that you can think of that we want to touch on or do we want to jam it all into next week?
JOHN CLENDENNING
26:31
I think we left a lot for people to think about. Hopefully do some deep contemplative thinking. Talk to your favorite LLM, ChatGPT, my gal’s name’s Sam, whatever yours is. Have your conversations, figure out what you’re going to do about all of this and keep coming back, as I said, to episodes. We’re going to share how we’re using it more, like AI in everything we do more and more and helping our clients do it more and more as well because we work with businesses and and solopreneurs and all that kind of stuff. So I think you’re in the right place to get that information. If you enjoy this and all that stuff, keep coming back.
BRAD KILGORE
27:09
Great way to put a pin in it. Don’t forget to like, share. As I’ve heard other YouTubers say, smash the like button, right? Don’t forget to tell everybody about us because we want to, we want to help as many people as we can. So with that, we’ll wrap up another episode of AI Marketing Experts. And we’ll catch you next time.
