[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam foreign.
The Truth behind the Business I'm Jen Gode, your fearless host, investor, entrepreneur and business strategist. Why are we here? Because iron sharpens iron. And when we bring industry disruptors, leaders and experts to discuss what's working in business and even some of what's not, we're all able to learn and grow. As a result, our businesses grow and and the ripple effect impacts not only ourselves, our teams, and our families, but also our communities and our world.
We have an awesome episode. So get ready, sit at the edge of your seat, get your notebooks prepared. Listen, folks. You can have a million followers and you can still struggle to meet payroll. You can sell a course and discover that buyers never finish it. And now a customer can ask AI for pretty much anything that you've been putting into your digital content.
They can get the expert information that you've been selling for nothing, pennies on the dollar with their AI.
So what are people willing to pay for in today's world? Today, we're going to dive into businesses in this arena and what we can actually do so that we can continue to command those premiums. When information is easy to get, attention is hard to keep, and a big audience is no longer a guarantee of income. My guests today are Ramsha Ahmad, co founder of School Scale, who works with creators and business owners on turning audiences into communities and sustainable businesses, and Mario Polanco, an AI and business system strategist focused on helping businesses to identify where AI and automation can actually remove the friction and create value. Ramsha, welcome to Power CEOs.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Jen. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: I'm really excited about this. This is a long time in coming, folks. I think we talked in March about this and here we are. What is it? Almost October. Can you believe it?
Let's start with the uncomfortable question.
If the product that you sell is an answer, your customer may already be getting that answer somewhere else. What are they still paying you for? The test is whether a business helps customers to take action, improve and stay engaged. And that distinction really impacts our pricing, our repeat purchases, and the value of the business. So, Ramsha, what has AI changed about the value of a course or a digital product?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: That's such a good question, Jen. So it has absolutely changed the landscape of things. Product and information is simply not enough. You cannot just have a course. You can't just have 400 hours of content. It's not going to work.
So now more than ever, community is incredibly important.
And so anything that we build Always has a layer of community.
And community really goes back to our innate feeling as humans of wanting to belong and like, just feel like we're part of the tribe.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: You
[00:03:27] Speaker B: know, back in the day we used to be in tribes and if something happened and you were being chased by a tiger, your tribe would protect you. You wanted to do the things that other tribe members were doing. You'd wear the same clothes. Now, obviously we have, like, we don't have to, we have grocery stores, so we don't have to do that anymore, thank God.
But now it comes down to now. You want to find your people, people need people. So whether you're taking up CrossFit or whether you're taking up yoga, you want to find your tribe. And that's what community does. And I think it's more valuable now in the age of AI to find your people because people are actually feeling a lot more alone.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: I can see that. Absolutely. But we have so many experts, coaches and other consultants who are knowledge based professionals and they've literally built their businesses around this.
What? In this day of AI, where people can rapidly get all the information that they want at their fingertips just by asking ChatGPT or Claude, let's be real, or even Google with Gemini in their search browser, what is it that still requires that coach, that expert, that consultant, or other people that AI isn't quite delivering on?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Yeah, people learn by doing, right? Like when you're learning a language, the best way to learn a language is by being in that country and really soaking it in. So while the facilitator really helps, which is the coach and the creator, most people actually end up learning by their peers and their members. And so when you have a community and they're going through a curriculum together, there's another level of accountability.
And you make friends while doing it. So now your community is really sticky. And they're not just there for the creator, they're there for all the other people that also enjoy the same thing.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: So let me ask the million dollar question because there's a lot of talk out there. Are courses dying?
Because I'll be real people don't want just a digital course or a done for you or like that, that on demand sort of thing that's kind
[00:05:35] Speaker B: of
[00:05:35] Speaker A: going away. Or are customers simply less willing to pay for information without some sort of a definitive result?
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Courses are definitely dying. I wholeheartedly agree with that.
You can ask ChatGPT at 2am and it'll give you the same answer.
But community and AI are positively correlated.
So the more that we step into the digital age, the more people long for community and humanness. So that's not going anywhere. And that's why if you're selling anything digital, you need an element of community or else it's simply not going to work. They can get that same information elsewhere.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Well, in addition to community, you also have to create some sort of level of transformation.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: And so where do most creators and business owners that you've interacted with, where do they confuse delivery of content with actually creating a real transformation?
[00:06:35] Speaker B: That's such a good question. I think oftentimes creators come at it from an egotistical standpoint and yeah, surprise, surprise, they think that they're doing their members justice by providing them with everything that they know by providing them 400 hours of content. But that's not how you do it. You have to deliver a transformation and a curriculum that's going to benefit someone and it's going to take them from point A to point B. If your piece of content in that curriculum in that course doesn't do that, don't put it in there. Less is more. Oftentimes less is more.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: But you're, what you're talking about really is the difference between just having content and having knowledge, which knowledge is a dime a dozen now, and actually changing behavior. So talk to me about how you can tell the difference between, between someone who's just looking at content versus looking at changing their behavior. How do we as a business owner see that in the content that we're creating?
[00:07:34] Speaker B: You have to really put yourself in the members shoes and take it like if there were a newbie, how would I approach this? And we make our stuff so simple. Whenever somebody joins, it's how do you use the platform? And I break it down because you could have the best curriculum in the world, but if they don't know how to use the platform, then it's useless.
Then you go into curriculum building. And the first step of building a really good curriculum is actually pattern interruption.
So we've worked with some of the biggest creators on the planet. They have the best courses, they're certified.
But Jen, we live in this age of dopamine. And so everybody's scrolling non stop. And so oftentimes when they join a community, they approach it the same way and we have to pattern interrupt that. And so oftentimes it looks like a digital detox or a gratitude crash course or a nervous system reset, whatever is applicable to that curriculum. And then we build on top of that.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: So the engagement comes first. And that's like, folks like, if you're watching, like, I want you to listen. What we're saying is not that your content is worthless. What we're saying is that content without behavior change and transformation is not able to command the same price level that it could even a couple years ago. Because anybody could look at it, can research this and can get that at their fingertips. But really, there's a big difference between knowing what we need to do and actually doing it. Otherwise everybody would meet their New Year's resolution every year instead of them going to die on January 28th. So let me ask a harder question here. If a really good AI prompt can reproduce most of your offer, and I'm talking about consultants, coaches, like any specialist, even legal and accountants, and these kind of expertise, what becomes your competitive advantage?
[00:09:24] Speaker B: That's. That's such a good question. I think AI is great to a certain extent, and I wish I had an AI prompt, I could do that for my business, but I don't think it's there yet.
What we focus primarily on when it comes to differentiating yourself is I like to sit down with people and ask them, what is your God given talent? What are. So what are you as an individual and as a creator so uniquely gifted at that nobody can
[00:09:51] Speaker A: do
[00:09:52] Speaker B: school? All these community platforms, they're just vehicles.
And I can do a lot of the. It can do the admin work, it can do the repeatable tasks.
You should use AI for that. But it should help elevate you in a way so that you can just do what you love. Our big mission is to keep creators creating and to keep them doing what they love.
So if AI is doing that and it's helping you do that, then go for it.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: And not in an egotistical manner.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah, not in an egotistical manner, please.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Okay, folks, if you were a founder, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a coach, a consultant, and you're watching, do this immediately. Not tomorrow, not next week, immediately. Write down what does a customer get from you that they cannot get from the knowledge alone or by reading an answer. Then I want you to ask three of your customers or clients who have actually paid what had them making progress. Like, what was it that generated the behavior?
That is how we're going to move the needle in this, in this environment.
And of course, you know, I want you to join the Power CEO's Facebook group. If you haven't already interact there. Let me know what are your questions? What topics? What things do you want to learn or know? About so that you can drive your business forward. Because this is a, this is a conversation that includes you. And so if you want more like what we're talking about here with Ramsha, let me know. Hey, this was great. Bring more content like this so that I can continue to deliver what you are looking for.
Okay, so Ramsha, with everything we've discussed right now, give me like the 10 word sentence that is why we should think about community.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Good question.
Community is at the heart of everything that we do.
If you don't have community, life loses its substance. You're in it alone. You don't have people to rely on.
Community has been absolutely everything for me in my time of need, in my time of victory, and everything in between.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Thank you after the break. Folks, stick around. Everyone wants a community, but a group full of people who never talk to each other and never interact isn't exactly a community. We're going to dive deep and look at what makes members stay, what makes them leave, and where. I can support the experience without replacing that human touch. After these important messages.
Welcome Back to power CEOs the truth behind the business. Stay connected to this show and all of your NOW Media favorites, live or on demand, anytime, anywhere. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Prefer pots? Me too. Catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv for business and news to lifestyle, culture and more. Now Media is streaming around the clock. Ready when you are. Let's dive right back into our conversation. We left before the break talking about community. Why community and what's the difference between community and just a group of people who never interact? We're going to dive deeper into that with Ramsha Ahmad today. Because she works in this arena, putting people in the same online room does not mean you have built a community. Folks, I want to say it louder for the people in the back of the room. If members would not notice when it disappeared, what exactly are they paying for?
Healthy community can support your retention, your career, recurring revenue. A quiet one's going to create work and expense without actually adding value to your business. Rimsha, what makes a community different from an audience? A course with comments or a busy Facebook group?
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, number one, people actually use it.
So people are constantly going in there. They're engaging.
A lot of people get stuck up on vanity metrics so they'll look at a group and they'll be like, oh my God, there's tons of 10,000 people in there. Or this Facebook group is 100,000 people and that's simply just a vanity metric. We care about how many people are interacting in there, how many people are engaging with one another, Are they opening it every day? Are they consuming the content?
What makes it totally different is how it is set up. So a Facebook group is social. A community is designed for transformation and, and to deliver value to the end consumer. They should be able to get in there and learn something and be held accountable for that and do it with other people that are learning the exact same thing. And as a creator, you should be on there providing at least, we recommend like at least one zoom call every week where you're sitting down with your people, you're encouraging them, you're actually providing value.
And it's a very structured curriculum as well.
So within the platform that we use, which is school, you can time unlock certain courses. So for example, some people want to get the whole enchilada when they join, but that's not the best thing for them. The best thing for them is to go through a pattern interruption, then learn the basics, then go into different things. And so a community allows the facilitator and the teacher to be in control.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Well, talk to me a little bit about the member to member interaction. So what role does that member to member interaction play and what does that do for the, the members that the owner or facilitator or creator just couldn't deliver on their own?
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think honestly it's the best part. Like facilitators are amazing and we appreciate your content, but the stickiness that that creates really increases lifetime value.
And within the communities that we've created, people meet up online after formulating these friendships. There's a maps feature, so people host meetups. In fact, my best friend who is here with me in studio, I met her in an online community that we built. So people form real connections with real people and that is incredibly powerful for your brand and for your lifetime value.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Well, and not only that. I mean, we exist in a digital age and there's so many feelings, especially with entrepreneurs and founders. It is a lonely mountain that we are on. When we were founders, especially the successful ones. And we've talked about that on this show a whole lot. We've talked about the founder isolation that we experience. And when you have a community or you have other people who are peers of you that are not necessarily the facilitator, I imagine that allows a lot of that secret vulnerability, the things that we don't talk about elsewhere, to kind of Come out and naturally be dealt with. And that only allows the creator to know what your consumers are thinking even more.
So talk to me about this because we've all been there, we've seen this group launch, and everybody's excited and it's super stoked for the first week, maybe two, and then it goes completely dead.
What happened? What went wrong?
How, how? Like what happened? And how do we prevent that from happening in our own situations?
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Really good question. First of all, if you've done that, congratulations, because most people don't have a successful launch. So that's incredible.
But typically what happens is it sounds like an offer issue. So you promise something that people actually really liked and they joined, but then they got there and you didn't sustain that value. And so what we see very, very commonly in our industry every single time I build a community, is we're trusted with people's lifetimes of work. We have authors, we have creators that are at the top of their game and they come to us with all this information and they're like, I want to just give all of it away in month one.
That is a horrible idea. You cannot show all your cards at once when it's a subscription service.
If Netflix just gave you all the episodes to every series ever, why would you pay next month? Right? So you want to slow drip the value and you always want to give people something to look forward to for the next month. So when we work with creators, we have the whole year planned out. I know what's happening at Christmas. I know what's happening during Black Friday. I know what's happening during Valentine's Day.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: You know, it's not that different than a TV show. I'm always teasing the next segment so people want to come back after the commercial break.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: It's the same thing.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: But how do we avoid the other side of that spectrum where we don't give enough for members to renew? Like, where is that healthy balance between giving it all and nobody wanting to come back because they can consume it all in a month and not giving enough to keep them interested in coming back for more?
[00:19:16] Speaker B: It's a really good question. When it comes to content, there is such thing as way too much. People get overloaded with content. Sometimes less is more.
When it comes to value driven things like events. Most people join communities for events, for networking events, for time with their favorite creator, for group coaching, those kind of perks. You want to have a couple of them every month to keep them coming.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: The engagement matters, folks. That's all I'm Hearing, I'm hearing the engagement matters. It's not something you can set in and forget it. Which is what we did. Let's be real, like the Evergreen course, that was huge. And
[00:19:55] Speaker B: what,
[00:19:55] Speaker A: 20, 18, 19, even 2020, because the world was locked down and we couldn't do anything but be online. So let's face it, like, that was when we had our heyday. But now that we're back, we want that experience, we want that human connection.
And so that's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing the. The important thing is if you want to actually have value in the offers and the content that you're having, you have to stay engaged. You can't just set it and forget it. So let me ask you about the numbers, because everybody that watches my show knows that we're always about the numbers. Folks, what are you measuring at 30 days? At 60 days, at 90 days at that tells you, oh, this is a successful community or oh, we need to do something here. Danger. Danger.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Such a good question. So at 30 days, the main metric that I am looking at is if people are actually clicking through to my community.
So in the first 30 days, I'm just trying to see if I have a winning offer. Like, is it actually landing? Is my messaging correct? Am I landing that appropriately? Are people really excited about this? If my click through rate on my About Us page or my landing page, wherever I'm sending traffic is incredibly high, that's a good sign. So that's 30 days.
60 days is now. How many new members do I have? Right? Is this community growing? That's what I care about is, okay, now we've gotten to the landing page. Now people are joining. Now we have customers at 90 days, I'm looking at retention.
How many of those people are staying? And I'm also looking at lifetime value at 90 days. Did they upsell? Did they opt in for the annual instead of the monthly? What percentage opted in for annual versus the monthly?
And then like, can I upsell them into different things? Did they low ticket often starts the ascension to high ticket.
So with a community, it's often the first purchase that someone makes with a creator and then later they end up buying like at 90 days a retreat from us or a more expensive coaching program. So that's what I'm looking at.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: So what number is the number that makes you halt and say, oh, we can't cuss on tv but
[00:22:04] Speaker B: oh,
[00:22:04] Speaker A: expletive, I need to do something right now?
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Yeah, if your churn is like through the roof and people are dropping off like flies.
You have a horrible offer. Like, I hate to say that, but you need to provide more value. And you might want to go back to the, to the whiteboard and like, what more can I add to this community to get people to stay?
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Okay, so now I'm going to ask the next question because I'm in a couple of communities. I'm a total. I'm a whimsy forger. I do all of the, like, fantasy workouts like the Valkyrie and Dragon Rider, all that kind of stuff. I love martial arts and, and battle type stuff. You learn something every day, right?
And they applied AI in the community.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Okay. I'm not saying I'm a huge AI proponent. Multiple AI businesses, AI strategists, everybody knows this about me.
I don't love that they completely automated customer service experience because sometimes you get in the danger loop. Like folks, there are always edge cases. There's always that one question that you didn't train your model enough on that comes up. And I am not the average whimsy forger. They're all in their 20s and I am a grandma.
So they have some mobility issues that other people definitely don't have. And so I'm constantly getting the. The loom. The doom loop, I guess, is what I like to call it. So, so where does AI make the community better?
Where does it make the experience worse? And how do we make that decision? As a business owner,
[00:23:32] Speaker B: it's a really good question. You want to use AI for repeatable tasks. That's going to save you money.
So in one area that we use it, and it's the. One of the only areas we use it is for churn management.
So the second someone's payment declines or their car didn't go through, then they get an automated message from us. It's a sequence. We've tested it. It works really well.
We have human community managers in all of our communities because in the digital age of AI, people are coming to community to interact with humans. So it doesn't make.
We can't have people.
Sorry, we can't have.
When it comes to AI and community, we don't want to.
Sorry, I'm totally blanking.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Send them into the doom loop.
It's totally. It's totally fine. We are getting towards the end of our segment, folks, but the. The big thing is pay attention to your numbers. Yes. I finally got to say it in the episode. Pay attention to your numbers. If at 30 days you're not converting and getting new members, if your people aren't clicking through, you need to make an adjustment. At 60 days, have you had a community that's grown? If not, look at that. If at 90 days, all of a sudden you're plummeting off the face of the planet, your turn is too high. You need to fix things. You need to fix your offer. You need to add more value. Next, we're going to put platforms and AI systems under the microscope. Yes, we're going to go deep and technical after these messages. Stay tuned.
Welcome back, folks, to power CEOs truth behind the Business. I'm Jen Goday, your host and I, I'm going to continue with the conversation. Ramsha was bringing the operators perspective on building communities, why we should be at build communities, how do we get engagement? And now we're going to shift a little bit and talk of more technical. I know I promised you all the technical goodies before the break. So I've got Mario Polanco on and Mario brings the AI systems perspective, starting with the business problem before talking about the tools. Listen, founders, we've spent years building audiences on platforms that could change the rules overnight. So why would you move your customer relationships onto another platform or build critical business workflows around AI tools that you don't control?
We're going to talk about all things AI now. Mario, welcome. Hi.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: I'm really excited about this. Before we dive in, before the break, I asked Ramsha about in the community setting, when to AI and when is AI too much or when to keep something human?
[00:26:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Do you have a perspective on that?
[00:26:47] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I'll say firstly, where I use it, like we mentioned, there's some message automation, but it's not human to human conversations. We're not just prompting people back and, you know, putting them on do not disturb. It's more so some of the design, graphics, images, things like that, some strategy and brainstorming maybe beforehand. The tool that we use, the software I built, there's a lot of it implemented in there. But what we don't want is AI talking to AI because now it's like what are we doing? You know, who's, there's what's the point here? You know, it's just, it doesn't make any more sense. So we don't want to and most of the time our creators don't like that and we're not really fulfilling on our promise and our what we're providing them by simply just letting the AI take, take over or it's, it's what we call AI slop for right we're just kind of going in circles. So we put a hard stop to that and it's more so everything that's done behind the scenes and like from an administrative level or really just getting the build up and running and getting to a completed school and some of the maintenance.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: So let me ask the question because we get this all the time and we've talked about it on the show a lot. I'm an AI too. And business owners and founders, they tend, tend to think that AI is a magic button. And they come in, listen, I know there is no judgment here folks. I get it literally 15 times a day I want you to AI my business.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: And
[00:28:06] Speaker A: I think it's a magic, it's a magic button that's just gonna like do all the things and it's gonna magically know how they think and, and how they act and how they come to decisions and etc. Right, so when a business owner comes to you and says, Mario, I need AI, what do you want them to diagnose before they buy or build anything? Especially before they buy or build something they don't need.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Well, I really want to know like why, what's going on? And if you sent me some TikTok or Instagram reel you saw last night of some cool feature, I tell all the people like you don't need Jarvis in your office. You know it's ridiculous and you know what much that's going to cost and build and the privacy and the way your business runs, they, they it's a lot of hype and excitement behind it because there's obviously a lot of opportunity there. But finding bottlenecks and where there's leakage in the business, sometimes it's a simple mind mapping and actually talking it out, whether it's with their CFO or some other head of the corporate in their business and coming down to a real solution and maybe just getting back into business consulting before we even talk AI consulting and injecting any kind of tech or replacing a piece of tech that they already have for something else because typically for as fast and easy it is to use AI, the adoption rate is sometimes just not there. And you have to consider your staff and even though the head wants it and the rest of them are maybe just going to have some pushback and now a little workflow optimization can really make a huge dent in the business for the worse or for the better.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I want to talk a little bit more about that particular thing because folks, I've been an AI, I'VE been an AI consultant for over six years now, and the implementations fail because they don't plan for adoption. They plan for implementation or integration. And that planning for adoption, that's the people side, folks.
Newsflash. And so you, you touched on it, you said sometimes the workforce doesn't want to use the efficiency or whatever you're putting in place. So how do we, as founders, as executives, even as the investors who are looking, how do we make the decision, is this just technology for the sake of tech that we're going to cram down our people's throats, or is this something that's actually going to be meaningful for our employees? How do we suss that out and how do we know that we're actually putting something in that's going to be adopted?
[00:30:22] Speaker C: I've had a lot of business owners run a simple survey or questionnaire throughout their company or their small team and essentially plot, you know, writing out what they do, maybe every 20, 30 minutes. Repetitive tasks. So finding common denominators ultimately is the one thing or the one piece of fat you could start trimming and then implementing something very simple even like, like you mentioned the implementation or the adoption rate of like now having to put a note taker on every call and then making sure you even told it to send the notes to the people after the call. Like that's just one extra step that you used to not have to do. You just log on and log off the call.
So, you know, I, I think it's good to know, starting with them working from the bottom up and not necessarily from the top down. Because I mean, that's your workforce, that's your, your base and your support system. And I think there's a lot of parallelism there when it comes to tech as well and the way tech is built.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I agree with you. Okay, we're going to switch this a little bit.
What should a business keep control of when it builds? Whether it's building on school or another platform, whether it's building on AI tools or some other third party platform?
[00:31:25] Speaker C: How
[00:31:25] Speaker A: do you protect your brand? How do you protect your content, your ip, your customer contacts, your data, your workflows, et cetera. Like, what should the businesses be asking before they say yes to any third party integration?
[00:31:38] Speaker C: Where's our data going?
Where's our privacy? Is there any HIPAA compliance we're going to need? How do we secure our things? Do we need an extra server? Do we need to put something in the cloud? Can we run it here locally?
If they're technical, they'll ask some of those questions. Most of the time they're not. And those are, I mean, very, very obviously important. So there's.
That needs to be addressed, obviously. And, you know, it depends on the brand and the way it's going to be used. And if they want to now start having AI redo their logos and their colors and kind of taking over too much and getting a little too involved. And this is why there's a human in the loop, you know, because that human's not only you, but, you know, the ongoing decisions that are taking place. Because we can't just fully, you know, hand over the keys to, to AI when it comes to our business because you, you. It's a tool. It's not supposed to replace you, it's not supposed to replace your company because it can. And it can become obviously huge security risk or potentially down the line, if you want to try and sell something or sell your business. Now you've got some bad pr, you have a bad infrastructure that's been set up from day one. And undoing that, that not can actually be even more costly than it was from the beginning. Implementing something with AI,
[00:32:53] Speaker A: well, I think it's really important and I want to stress this because I think you and I are completely aligned on this from what I'm hearing. And that's, folks, if you're going to implement AI, you need to plan first. Get with an AI strategist, get with a consultant, get with somebody who knows what the heck they're doing. Because just installing a tool can cause you so many nightmares. And you can't put compliance and regulatory on top. Doesn't work that way. You have to build it in and bake it into every single layer. You have to protect at every single step in the, in the, in the way. So let me ask you the next question that I think my viewers are going to come to mind. They're
[00:33:25] Speaker C: like,
[00:33:26] Speaker A: but hey, I'm not technical and I don't really want to pay for a consultant because I saw this advertisement on TikTok or Instagram or XYZ or the competition is doing this. What advice do you have for these people who are just blanket putting in the next technology that an ABC influencer is talking about?
[00:33:46] Speaker C: Well, the problems will flush themselves out. Go for it. Try it. You know, I'll tell them, consult with your GPT or your Claude, see what it comes up with. And then eventually they'll put together some game plan that they're gonna, they'll call you back. They're gonna call me. You know,
[00:33:59] Speaker A: they always call me to fix the problem. And it's always more expensive. It's always more expensive to fix the problem.
[00:34:05] Speaker C: I mean, hopefully they find a solution that's out of the box, that's simple. I always say we don't have to reinvent the wheel. I'll just, as a good consultant, I think you should also push them in the right direction without necessarily have to get something out of it. And that said, I mean, if you can kind of facilitate their, their way of thinking or the way they're approaching it, then you're doing your job even if you're not getting paid to do it. So hopefully that gives them enough direction, it builds enough trust and value in yourself. And then most, nine out of ten times they come back and say, okay, can you, can you do it for me now?
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Yep, that's exactly right. Okay, so let's talk number. Yes, we're talking numbers, folks. It's numbers time.
When you see an impressive AI implementation, it's done right. It's, it's just like the kind that you're like, wow, I need to figure out what they just did and do that for myself. Right? What is the 1 follow up number or outcome that you're going to look for first with your clients?
[00:34:54] Speaker C: Cost, token usage and API usage, what models are using.
Because it's very easy to default to what you hear all the time. You know, there's just like these big brand names we were talking before the show that there are local models or smaller models that can do that job actually better than a big one would or one that you're seeing all the time, you know, advertised in front of you.
Also the turn, the turnaround time on whatever that task is being done by the AI, for instance, and more importantly like their cost, or rather their savings and money and, and the ongoing or reoccurring cost and maintaining that tool.
I think those are really important. I mean, most of the time it does come down to money. But one big one that's like behind the scenes because you don't see it, you don't get the bill until afterwards is what the AI is charging you. Every time you ask it, you know, you tell it thank you and please, things like that, or it's just not set up from the right way and it's having to really run the same task maybe three times when it could have done it once the right way and more in an optimized fashion. So that definitely is the biggest thing you hear is like the big Bill that comes after and realizing that it was never really discussed or thought of.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: And so we have investors, we have founders, we have executives all watching and the question that I always get is how much is this going to cost? And they're only thinking about the project upfront cost. They never think about the ongoing monthly.
So how can we frame like what are the three questions that every founder or investor that is watching should ask regarding budget both
[00:36:25] Speaker C: for
[00:36:25] Speaker A: project and and ongoing.
[00:36:27] Speaker C: I like to think of it too as like your phone. If it updates, everything got updated, you're fine. AI doesn't work that way. It's almost like you have to now go through each app and make sure it's compatible. Sometimes you have to downgrade specific packages that are running in there without getting too technical. But understanding what's my monthly AI usage cost if it's going to be maintenance costs and ultimate ultimately to time to implement because some of these tools or workflows are very robust and they're not overnight fixes. And if someone tells you that they're lying to you.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Thank you, that
[00:36:58] Speaker C: was
[00:36:58] Speaker A: excellent. So folks, if you're a founder, calculate the full cost of getting and implementing your technology. Not just the project cost, but the ongoing costs. There are hard costs associated with AI that don't go away once it's built. In fact, you can be surprised by a big bill. So you want to understand the full cost of operating this but also back up and understand what does that process cost you now when it's a human process because sometimes over engineering and automation is more expensive than keeping your human doing that task. So you really want to understand what that full thing looks like before you go in. If you're an investor, ask your customers what is the technology actually improving? What are the economics of the business if listen folks, when we come we do have to take a brief break but when we come back, we're going to build the business model. Live the community. Live. We're going to use Power CEOs because you're watching Power CEOs so you'll have a really great example. We're going to talk about community. We're going to talk about AI recurring value and the investor question what makes one of these businesses an asset instead of just another follower account or tech stack after these important messages.
Welcome Back to power CEOs Truth behind the business. Stay connected to this show and all of your NOW Media TV favorites and live or on demand anytime you like. Download the Now Media app for Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming In English and Spanish. On the move. Prefer bots? Me too. Catch our podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and news to lifestyle, culture and more, we are here streaming around the clock. Ready when you are. I'm back with Ramsha Ahmad. We just finished talking tech and AI with Mario Polanco. And. And now we're going to bring all of the pieces of today's conversation together and ask, what actually creates a business with durable value?
Which business would you rather own? 1 million followers you cannot reliably reach? Or a smaller group of customers who pay, stay and bring other people with them? I know what my answer is. And if AI can reduce the work required to serve those customers, where should the human value remain?
Ramsha, let's build one live. Let's dive deep.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Let's do it. With a fictitious community like power CEOs. This community watching this show right now. We have viewers, we have guests, we have expert conversations. We have people who want to run stronger businesses. What would you build first?
[00:39:54] Speaker B: The first thing I always build, Jen, is an amazing offer.
My benchmark for a really good offer offer is that it's so good that they feel silly not joining. And so what makes a good offer is the perks. So let's talk a little bit about perks. Oh,
[00:40:11] Speaker A: let's dive into perks. This
[00:40:12] Speaker B: is the fun part. What are some things that we can do for our community that only you can do with power CEOs and nobody else on the planet can?
[00:40:21] Speaker A: I don't know. Tell me more.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Maybe we can host some events.
Maybe you can do
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Meet the Host. Oh, me going live on Zoom and any of my viewers can join.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: They can join. Maybe it's like Shark Tank style
[00:40:38] Speaker A: where
[00:40:38] Speaker B: you come on there and someone brings you a business and you can give them feedback because people value your opinion.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: I don't know about that. I'm a little bit blunt when it comes to that.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: I think it'd be great.
It
[00:40:54] Speaker A: would definitely be Shark Tank style.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be so, so fun. We can do that. We can also do segments where. I mean, your network is so powerful, Jen. I think about all the guests that you've had on here. You could do segments where they do exclusive content, and we put those pieces into the community. We've done that with a lot of podcast posts.
There is an affiliate play there too, because you can give anybody that comes on an affiliate link and then I can push it out to my list as well. That works really well.
The other thing that we can do is you can have your guests host events within your community.
So it's like a collaborative, it's like a network.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: So for example, after this show we were to build this, what I would do is have you come into my community and do a Q and A live with all of my guests.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Ah, okay. So talk to me about what has my viewers wanting to join, like, what makes that person join and then what keeps them renewing a year later.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: Yeah, what keeps them renewing is continuous value.
So you don't, I don't think you interview the same guest twice, do you or you?
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Not usually. I have interviewed a few people more than once because they've gone on to other businesses or other industries or had an exit. So it adds a different level of value, but we don't have the same conversation.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: Amazing. So you're constantly bringing different people, you're bringing different guests. People want that excitement. When we position a community like yours, it's kind of like a value pass, or it's like a power CEOs VIP pass. And they see a lot of value in it because they're getting access to multiple different entrepreneurs and coaches and investors in one place. So that keeps them coming back every month. Is that added value?
[00:42:47] Speaker A: And so what part do members or people who join this, like, what do they provide for each other? If people are joining to meet with me monthly and my experts that I have on the show, etc, like, what value do they bring to each other inside the community?
[00:43:03] Speaker B: Let's dive into it. So what does your audience primarily consist of? Like in terms of demographics, IT investors, business owners.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: It's a mixture. It's a mixture of founders and entrepreneurs, business owners, executives and investors.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Cool. So one thing we can do is within our community we like to build sub forums.
And so in your forum we can have an investors forum, we can have one for entrepreneurs, and then we can do a mixer as well. We can do meet and greets.
Basically you have 10 investors on a call and you have 10 entrepreneurs on a call and then you mix them up and you put them into breakout rooms. And you can now facilitate deal flow as well in your community, which is extremely valuable.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: And what about the people who wear both hats? Because like, like myself, someone who has built multiple businesses, had exits, I then invest in businesses, but I can't help but startup businesses. I know folks, I'm addicted to it. I love to solve problems. So what about those people who meet in different areas? Do they only get to join one sub forum or they get to join Multiple.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Yeah, they get, they get access to everything. That's the way we like to set things up is we like to give one offer and just provide so much value. You can wear different hats under one price. That ultimately leads to the best conversion when you're running ads.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Okay, so now put on the investor hat.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: One business has a million followers, relies on sponsorships. One business has smaller following, maybe it's a thousand paying numbers, efficient systems. What numbers do you want to look at before you decide which business is the stronger business?
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's such a good question. So I think we talked about this a little earlier, like follower count, email list, viewership, all these things are vanity metrics. But the underlining thing is always engagement. So when it comes to follower count, you want to look at how many people are engaging. When it comes to viewership, you want to look at watch time.
So I would easily any day of the week, take the smaller influencer. A really good example of this is we had a single mom who had 5,000 subscribers on YouTube.
She has built one of the most engaged communities on the entire platform because her story resonates with people. She's a single mom. She, her husband passed away of cancer, and so she attracts the widow crowd as well. And they're able to go deep. And her lifetime value is incredible. They start off with her low ticket, then they end up going to her retreats. They're with her for years on end because they see her, they see themselves in her.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: That makes perfect sense. So, like, give me some details because I know people are like, okay, well, you keep talking about low ticket,
[00:45:55] Speaker B: but
[00:45:56] Speaker A: low ticket means different things to different people. For some people, low ticket is, you know, 999, 1999. Some people it's 97. For others, like in my crowd, it's 25,000. I won't go to, I won't join a group that only charges 25,000 because I want people who are higher qualified in the rooms I'm going to spend time in. So what is the definition of low ticket?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Good question. So when it comes to this platform, low ticket is anywhere from like 47 to.
Okay. And this one particular career that we've been talking about, she's done, she went from zero to $300,000 on the platform. She being a single mom and teaching her hobbies to the world.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: That's, that's pretty awesome. And so for everyone who's listening in the audience, let's give them the 30 day. Like, let's say they have expertise, maybe they have a little audience, small or very small. Maybe they only have a couple hundred followers or whatnot because they really haven't done a lot of influencing or they haven't really built their following up in the social media arena. What should they test before they spend heavily on a community or an AI stack?
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Test your offer and talk to your people.
Talk to your people. Before we build anything, we consistently talk to our client base and say, hey, what do you like about what we do? What do you want more of? In every single community we've built, we have a community suggestion box. The best and the easiest thing that you can do is ask your people what they want and then give it to them. It's really that easy.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. I mean, I've been a bit. I've been in business coaching and consulting for a decade and really I was more before, but I didn't know that you could charge for it. Like. Like that didn't used to be a thing in like 2003. Nobody was a business consultant. Nobody was a business mentor. Like, who knew you could charge for this? I think about that and I'm like, man, the good old days, you know, prior to, you know, 2013, 2015, when people charged for all this, we used to give all that mentorship for free.
Anyway, what I'm hearing is, folks, talk to your audience. Like, that's what I've done. I always, I run, I've ran a weekly group for seven years. It's called CEO Mondays. And literally, I'm always asking, what topics do you want? What do you want more of? Do you want me to bring experts? Yes, please. So I bring experts and it keeps people. I mean, I've got people who've been with me for five years because I do exactly that. So what you're hearing from Ramsha is 100 proven. I've done it myself. And it definitely does.
It definitely does give us results. Ramsha, we are getting to the end of our episode. Unfortunately, guys, I know all good things come to an end. How can people reach out to you and Mario, if they really liked what we were talking about, they want to learn more. Maybe they were interested in school or some of the other things that you're doing.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. They can reach out to us on LinkedIn and they can find
[email protected]. that's S K O O L S K A L E dot com.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the expertise that you've bring.
Listen, folks, I am a coach. I can't Turn it off when you know we got action steps. So here's your move. This week, my biggest takeaway is talk to five people in the audience you already have have. Ask what problem keeps coming back, what have they tried? And whether help from you and others like them would be worth paying for. Test before you go. Always. Then test one experience that helps them make progress. Ask them what is it that got them to change their behavior? Remember we talked about this way back in the first segment of today?
What was it that got them to change their behavior? Then measure. Once you launch, who shows up, who participates, who gets a result, you're looking for that transformation. Because we already went over this. Information without transformation isn't something that people are going to keep coming back for. If you're an ex, if you're an executive, look for a customer relationship that gets stronger after the sale. If you're an investor, ask where the revenue lasts, whether customers can be reached, and whether business works without the founder. In every conversation, you know, follower accounts get attention and like Ramsha said, they're vanity metrics. AI can make information and execution cheaper, but a business still has to continue to deliver value after the attention moves on. So unfortunately, all good things do come in an end. But you have an action step. Go ahead and do it. Don't wait. Do it today so that you can create that positive momentum that's going to bring your business forward. And without further ado, we will see you same time save station next week. Week. So go win today, win this week, and we'll see you next time.
