AI Doesn't Replace Escapees — It Supercharges Them

88% of small business owners are interested

or know they should be doing something with AI,

but only 14% are actually doing something right now.

So that gap is 74% which can be filled ideally

by Priscapes who can leverage the power of experience

with the technology.

Welcome back to the Corporate Scapey Podcast.

I'm your host, Brett Tranger.

And today I'm going solo and I want to talk about AI

and the escapee or AI in this solo pannuer.

In two ways it's creating incredible value

for solo pannuers.

One, you can probably imagine is automating a lot of the tasks,

but here's the thing.

Corporate is using AI to eliminate jobs.

And honestly, that's just one more reason

to stop depending on corporate for your income,

but that's a separate kind of thing.

So I'm going to talk about AI and the escapee,

but that's a separate conversation.

Because the same AI, they're using dense workers,

escapees get to use it for themselves.

And when you combine that 20 plus years, 10 years,

four years of experience sometimes with the right AI tools,

you become a one person army.

And that's what today's episode is about.

So let's get into it.

All right, so the first thing is,

I want to talk about is how I use AI in my own business

and I am not a power user.

So if you're looking for somebody to teach AI

and the 2.0 version of it, that's not me.

But I will share with you that I use it every day,

probably an hour a day, it really depends.

And in multiple ways, the first is around content creation

and really not creations.

I like to keep the content in my own voice,

but now I've got a built in editor

that can take my concept, take my voice

and help me format it and edit it.

Because I contend, if you listen to the podcast,

you know, I can get wordy sometimes and continue on.

And it just helps me get to the point quicker

using that from a content editing,

more from an editing standpoint

than actually creating the content.

I'm not a big fan of that.

Because one, it's just, you gotta go back and review

every edit it says to make sure you agree,

right into the line with your point of view.

Even as AI gets to know you and like I said,

it gets to know my voice and has a pretty good idea

where I stand on corporate, I don't trust it

or what I want to put a post out there just drafted by AI.

I want it to come from my ideas

and then they can help me just refine that.

I also use it for the podcast.

I was sharing this the other day

with somebody when I first started the podcast six years ago,

I had to send the files basically to Australia

where they could edit, improve the sound,

all those, and this was just an audio podcast back then.

And now with the tools that are actually built in,

and I'll share with that when I talk about the tools at the end,

but with the Riverside basically helps me edit

the entire thing.

So where I used to have to spend a day or outsource it

to have it edited, I literally will record this call.

So for example, I'm recording this podcast on a Friday afternoon.

By later this afternoon, I should have it edited,

cleaned up, produced, and ready to go

and distributed into the podcast platform.

Literally we're talking an hour or less to basically do this.

So if you're thinking about starting the podcast,

there's no better time to do it.

As long as you've got the right ideas,

don't let the tools or the production throw you off.

So podcast, again, I talked about content newsletter,

but that's basically, again, I would encourage you

to look at it from an editing standpoint, refining,

and not necessarily writing it for you.

I will ask it for ideas based on some of the more recent posts

that I did or my newsletter article was

and helped me think through, if I'm missing anything,

which is a good segue into where I'm also using it

as a strategy and thought partner, right?

It gives me somebody or something.

In this case, in my case, I use multiple tools.

I'll use perplexity, then I also use Claude

and just starting to test Gemini.

To balance, I use it for different ideas.

For example, perplexity, I'm using it to help me do research.

If I find an article or some stats on what I was looking

at, pensions, when those ended to see

when basically the shift in the oil

would be stopped with corporate.

It does a really good job of digging the stats out.

If I wanted to look at how many layoffs

that were happening, it can give me and verify the news

that I do from research.

I also look at it from an operations standpoint

to help me clean up, again, my thoughts

and my strategy thoughts on what I'm doing.

Because again, I can write four pages right in a notebook

of what I'm thinking and it can help me pare it down,

organize it and get me focused on the right thing.

There's an accountability piece of this

and I know with co-worker and complexities,

computer, there's some other ways to really start

to make this more of a strategy partner.

I'm still leading it.

What I have found is it's really good

at thinking through what other people have done, right?

So if I'm testing it with my community

and some of the other ideas of how to improve this,

it's only going to give me what it's able to learn,

which makes sense, right?

So it's pulling from other communities

and what they're doing where I want to think outside

of the box, it's not giving me outside of the box ideas.

I have to come up with those and then we kind of bounce off

to help me make sure I'm thinking through the right questions

that I should be asking and as I go forward.

So speed to market on new ideas.

And if you follow my newsletter, keeping you updated

as I'm the drive for 500 members into the collective

and things I'm trying, I mean, literally it's a week

by week update because I'm able to move that much quicker

again, without moving too quick.

We're not giving it enough time for strategy to set in.

There's just ways you know where it can move much quicker.

And honestly, it's just a really good tool

to keep me organized because if you looked at my notes

and I use notes or apples note all the time,

it just again helps me keep things simpler,

organized and outlined.

So that's how I'm using it personally.

And again, I'm just scratching the surface.

There's power users that have taken this to the next level

that can create, well, I guess I should take that

from a graphical standpoint.

It does help me with, you know, some logos.

So just about anything, I would again,

I wouldn't bank and go have it go unchecked,

but definitely can act as a small team for you.

So if I'm a solo player, which I still am, right?

With everything I've been building

and what I'm doing with the collective,

I'm still the only person.

Now I'm getting ready to off outsource a few pieces

of what I'm doing in the business.

But again, I'm more comfortable with testing it myself.

And then when I really get to a comfortable place

with refinement, then I'll look to either completely

automated or delegated.

So that's how I'm using the tools.

But where I have real opportunity for, you know,

escapees, corporate escapees, solopreneurs,

is helping small business owners leverage the power of AI.

And it's a, there's research and thanks Paul Derelli

for sharing the research that probably for the next 18

to 24 months, there's a real opportunity

from a AI consulting standpoint.

Now I'm not talking to a program.

You can learn how to code and program

and do all those things.

What the real opportunity lies is teaching other people

and leveraging quite honestly your experience

and your wisdom to provide value to those SMBs.

And again, I think this is going to be a really big opportunity

for probably two to three years, right?

The early movers are starting now.

But, you know, one of the reasons why I shifted my emphasis

to launch the small business hotline earlier

than I probably would have was planning on.

It was just because the market is right for it right now.

There is a demand for folks

that can help small business owners think through how to use it,

not just think through how to use it,

but actually leverage experience that corporate escapees have

to help them get the value from what they're doing with the tool.

So I think there's a couple of pieces there.

The one is, one, getting a business owner comfortable with it.

And it's, again, it's not going to be programming.

I'm not going to do any programming myself.

I am going to work with small business owners

to two things that I'm doing with the small business hotline

just to give you an example is one flex staffing, right?

That's what I'm doing for six years.

It's the fractional work solo consulting, right?

Solo agencies, these types of things.

There's so many flexible specialists available

to small businesses.

They do not need to hire full-time people, right?

So part one of my equation is

finding the right resources for that business.

It doesn't have to be a full-time equivalent, right?

We talk about talent density and ops.

But for the sake of this podcast,

I want to focus more on the AI.

And I think this really comes down to two things

that these business owners have to get right.

First, first one is the data, right?

If you don't have clean data,

you're really going to struggle with leveraging the power of AI.

And two is the processes.

Are they even documented?

Now, some of the things like with agents

with answering your phone and doing some other things,

I'd still really like to have a process in place

before I do that.

So again, I think there's a real opportunity

to help educate the small business owners

because the data shows, I think of the last note

as I was 88% of small business owners are interested

or know they should be doing something with AI,

but only 14% are actually doing something right now.

So that gap is 74%, which can be filled,

ideally by corporate escapees

who can leverage the power of experience with the technology.

And again, if you've been in corporate for a while,

you've been through the evolution of technologies

from the internet to mobile and now AI

and understand how to start to build processes around that

to really leverage the tool.

So I think this is an underappreciated

and under marketed opportunity right now.

And again, don't be afraid of it

because if you don't know it, it's okay.

I have resources I know that know AI inside out

that can actually build me agents if I need to do this.

But to me, the real value is building the right model

for these businesses so they can then leverage the AI.

Then if I want to stick around and help them

with the fine or I can introduce an AI specialist

that can help them build some of the tools,

but the real value so they don't waste money

and optimize for it is going to be building the processes

get the data right, get the processes right,

then you can start to think about it.

So the acronym I'll use with this is right eliminated.

Think about it, are they doing tasks today

that just don't need to be done, eliminate it,

automate it and this is where AI can come in

or if you can't even use AI to do it

and you do have to get a human, then it's delegate.

So again, I think the real value is going to come from

not just the technology, but the human

and the technology married together.

And eventually corporate is absolutely going to step up

into this because they're going to realize

the real opportunity to save money

and at the end of the day, all they care about

is that bottom line of the profitability

shareholder value and that's going to come

from reducing expense.

So I think there's also a whole podcast

I can do on the future of work

and why one solar panoras or single business owners

is going to be the future

because at some point corporate is going to stop wanting

to pay all the benefits and the overhead

for 30% of a corporate worker's time.

And again, this is no fault of the worker.

It's just the way corporate is set up

and it's inefficient and effective.

And like the last point I'll make on this

before I move back to the AI is, you know,

in a given week if a corporate employee

is spending 20 to 30% of their time

on the actual job they were brought in

or hired to do, that's a good week.

So think about that.

The company's paying 70% of your salary

and all of your benefits for 30% of your time.

And again, this is on them because you're invited

to unnecessary meetings, the fire drills,

all that other busy work that you have to do, right?

To run the reports, et cetera, et cetera.

So at some point corporate is going to figure this out

but for now, the real opportunities

to help these small businesses and mid-sized businesses

grow leveraging, again, I'm using flex staffing

and AI because the automation piece

is absolutely so powerful for this.

So those are the two areas that I see escapees

being able to leverage it.

And so don't be afraid of it.

Again, if you're still in corporate,

if you're still there,

you're probably having to figure out AI

to pick up the slack from the other folks

that have been laid off because also

you've got a lot more work to do.

So the third and final part of this abbreviated podcast

is my current stack, right?

So I'm currently using, I mentioned earlier,

what Claude is kind of my thought partner,

my writing coach, my editor,

and I'm also using perplexity from the research standpoint.

It's a much easier tool for me to go deep.

I can plug in the deep research

and it really does a nice job of pulling the sources

and I can go dig in to understand

where they're getting the data from

to make sure it's validated

and sometimes when I'm doing a deeper research,

I'll actually bounce it off of both of the AI's

to validate that the research is right

and the data points make sense.

So those two I use, I'm just starting to use Gemini,

which haven't quite unlocked that one

or figured out how to use it,

but everything else I do is in Google.

So it just makes sense that it's got access

to my email and some of the other ones

and a couple of the features that I'm looking

and I just tested today was a computer on perplexity,

which is kind of a more integrated approach to AI.

Again, I'm not far enough down the path

to give any insights on that.

And Claude's also got co-worker

that looks to be super interesting.

So maybe this weekend I'll spend some time in this Gemini.

And I'm also using a bunch of other tools

that leverage AI like Canva has got to built in Riverside,

which is my podcast platform.

It allows me to create show notes super easily

because it's pulling from the transcripts

and I'm trying to think if there's anything else

that I'm using right now.

Now, but I'm sure again, some of the other tools

already do have it built in.

I'm just not familiar.

Oh, I guess I've just built a new website

for small business hotline that was durable.

It was all created through AI.

I have to go in and edit and clean it up.

But man, I created a landing page in the circle

for a new offering I'm offering there.

And it just gave me the HTML code to plug in paste in there

and paste it, cut and paste into there.

And it turned out absolutely beautiful.

So like I said, I'm not a power user yet,

but it's becoming more and more a part of my day.

And again, we can build.

I think you're gonna see,

and we're starting to see, right,

$2 million solar businesses have already seen

a couple examples of that.

But probably no reason you can't get to 10, right?

You may have to use some more specialists

and fractional folks on some things.

But man, as an owner, if you can keep things optimized,

you can really break through some of that

the owner, the career capacity issues are gonna be gone.

So I still believe in the who not how approach, right?

This is not your strength.

I mean, there's definitely the finance aspect.

I can run the numbers, create different tabs.

So curious if folks are using it in other ways.

If there is anybody out there in the audience

that's doing some interesting things with the AI,

please do drop me an email at bt at breadtrainer.com.

And let me know because I would love to have you

on the podcast and have a conversation about it.

And if there's other topics in other areas

that you guys wanna see,

I'm more than happy to bring them out as well.

So anyway, that's it for this power version

of the escapee podcast.

I just, I've been getting a number of questions on AI.

So I thought it was about time that I shared what I'm doing

and then to introduce the opportunity.

If you haven't thought about the small business

and AI opportunity, it is absolutely out there.

Again, welcome the comments.

If you do enjoy the podcast, please do share it

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and we'll catch up with you soon.

Okay.

Bye.