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30 Plays10 days ago
In this episode, Rustam Irani welcomes AI marketing consultant and podcast host Dan Sanchez to dive deep into the role of AI in higher ed marketing. Together, they unpack the difference between AI hype and real, actionable strategies marketers can use today. Dan shares his journey into marketing, why AI has become his favorite tool, and how it empowers teams to move faster and smarter. From addressing security concerns to demystifying tools like OpenClaw and custom GPTs, this conversation offers valuable insights for higher ed leaders looking to thoughtfully integrate AI into their workflow.
Resources Mentioned:
- AI Driven Marketer Podcast - https://www.aidrivenmarketer.com/
- Dan Sanchez's Free Course - https://www.danchez.com/courses
Timestamps:
- 00:00 – Rustam introduces the theme: cutting through the AI hype in higher ed marketing
- 01:06 – Dan shares his marketing background and early adoption of AI tools
- 03:29 – Efficiency vs. shiny object syndrome: where AI offers real value
- 04:57 – The AI adoption curve and the dangers of lagging behind
- 06:32 – Exploring the risks of OpenClaw and agentic AI tools
- 10:28 – Why security is a top concern for higher ed institutions
- 13:47 – Where to start: focusing on one core AI tool like Copilot or Gemini
- 18:24 – What to avoid: automation tools and AI app-building traps
- 20:27 – Power of custom GPTs and how to build secure, scalable AI workflows
- 24:13 – AI-powered outbound: promising use cases and ethical considerations
- 28:04 – Using mascots as AI voices for fun and authentic user experience
- 31:36 – Dan's final advice: create dedicated AI project folders in ChatGPT
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Rustam Irani
Welcome back. If you've been in higher ed conference lately, you've heard some version of, if you're not using AI, you're probably already behind. And while AI is changing things, I've been in this industry long enough to know that panic sells.
00:00:16
Rustam Irani
Today, I'm talking to Dan Sanchez, the one and only AI marketing consultant and host of AI Driven Marketer podcast. He believes that most marketers think they've mastered AI, but they're really just doing more of the same.
AI Hype vs. Reality in Marketing
00:00:32
Rustam Irani
We're going to talk about what's real, what's hype, and what you should actually focus on. Welcome back to ROI University, podcast for higher ed marketers who want to change the game and themselves.
00:00:45
Rustam Irani
I'm Rishi Rani, your host, a recovering engineer and former higher ed CMO. Dan, welcome to the show.
00:00:54
Dan Sanchez
It's good to be here.
00:00:55
Rustam Irani
Yeah. So Dan, if you don't mind giving us a little bit about you and your background, and then we'll jump right into it. I'm excited about this conversation.
00:01:06
Dan Sanchez
Well, I am a marketer's marketer. I love marketing. I read marketing.
00:01:10
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:01:11
Dan Sanchez
It is my job and it is my hobby. I got here like many people, not because I wanted to be a marketer when I grew up or in high school. You know, I came here through the route graphic design and I got into web design and got into social media and then got into building websites and just all the things, right? Like,
00:01:27
Dan Sanchez
before I discovered how cool marketing was. And this was when digital marketing was becoming a thing. And I loved it so much. I couldn't just specialize in one channel. I wanted to do them all. So I've built websites and massive traffic with SEO.
00:01:41
Dan Sanchez
I've run massive ad campaigns on Facebook and Google ads.
00:01:43
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:01:44
Dan Sanchez
I've done YouTube. I've built podcast audiences. And right now, the thing that I'm most excited about is this thing that you just mentioned was called Because I feel like I've always, I always became this
Efficiency and Output in AI Marketing
00:01:57
Dan Sanchez
bottleneck. Like I can only do so much, but now with AI, it's almost like I'm at a different level now because I can execute so many different things so much faster.
00:02:05
Dan Sanchez
i can have my teams do the same thing. And I feel like it's changing the game when it comes how much, how fast we can go, how good the quality can be of our outputs when it comes to marketing.
00:02:17
Dan Sanchez
I had a boss tell me one time, that you could never give marketing enough. You could always give it more budget. You could always give it more talent. You could always give it more effort.
00:02:28
Dan Sanchez
And generally that's true, but I feel like I'm able to put out more than I've ever been able to put up before because of this thing, AI, and I can't stop telling people about it.
00:02:28
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:02:36
Dan Sanchez
I feel like it's a necessary thing, but it's also deeply satisfying and fulfilling thing if you know how to use it well.
00:02:43
Rustam Irani
Yeah. And I appreciate that. I think that's one of the challenges and opportunities right now. I can tell you, and this is why I love conversations we have together, because not only have you been on the marketing side, you also have been in the higher ed space.
00:03:00
Dan Sanchez
That's right.
00:03:00
Rustam Irani
That's exciting as well. And, you know, everybody's trying to find ways to utilize, you new tools to create efficiencies,
AI Adoption Curve and Security Concerns
00:03:09
Rustam Irani
right? Like you can always have, like you say, you can always do more, you can always have more. But the interesting thing, and where I've seen the biggest opportunity with AI is the efficiency part, like, can you get more done with what you have?
00:03:24
Rustam Irani
And I think that's where really some of the focus is. Now, the other side of that is there's a lot of shiny objects. You know, a lot of software tools that claim to have agents that'll do everything for you. And I've been to many a conference where that's kind of a conversation.
00:03:43
Rustam Irani
i also hear it on the side where they talk about, you have to be listed in the AEO results, right? The LLMs have to list your company, otherwise you're not known, even though it's still such a tiny little percent of actual searches going there.
00:03:51
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:03:58
Rustam Irani
But still, that's not what sells, right? So tell me, what's your honest take on where you think marketers are maybe kind of spending too much time chasing gold versus actually finding the shovel so they can actually do some work?
00:04:19
Dan Sanchez
You know, it's funny because like you either end up on one side of the path, like there's a path and you're in one ditch or the other ditch on the side. One side is you're just not doing anything. And that's pretty common in higher ed. Like people just like, oh yeah, tried it one time, but no, I don't even have an account.
00:04:35
Dan Sanchez
I've run into that frequently. I'm like, come again? You don't even have a chat GPT account? Okay, download it on your phone right now. You're going to create account. Here, let me tweak some of the basic settings for you. need to start using this all the time.
00:04:47
Dan Sanchez
Just start throwing all kinds of things at it. Anything you're putting in Google, put in chat GPT and see how it goes. Just start using it to become familiar with it because if you're not using it yet, you probably are starting to fall behind a little bit.
00:05:02
Dan Sanchez
I'd say we are just now as marketers, even in marketers, marketers are pretty early adopters when it comes to tech. More than some other people, like maybe accountants or something else.
00:05:09
Rustam Irani
Oh
00:05:12
Dan Sanchez
I don't know.
00:05:13
Rustam Irani
yeah.
00:05:14
Dan Sanchez
Marketers are pretty early to adopt things. But we're only just in the early, early majority as far as the adoption curve goes, right? When you have, you know, the adoption curve where it starts off, then we have a big bell curve shape, and then it goes off to the laggards. You have the innovators, the early adopters, and then we get up to the early majority, the big part of where people really start adopting that. Remember when that happened for iPhone?
00:05:36
Dan Sanchez
It was like when 3GS hit and the app started hitting it. And then 3GS really started becoming the early majority.
00:05:43
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:05:44
Dan Sanchez
And then like five years later, even a 12 year old kid had an iPhone or an Android or something like it just it happened fast after the three GS.
00:05:49
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:05:53
Dan Sanchez
But one in two, like I know one person that had one. don't think I ever met somebody with two. You know what i'm saying?
00:05:58
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:05:59
Dan Sanchez
Like there's an adoption curve and some people still haven't even started because we've only hit the early majority.
00:06:05
Dan Sanchez
So that's a lot of teams right there. It's probably most, like half the teams have, or half of many marketing teams, especially in higher ed, haven't even started. Of course, the other half are the people that are way over on the, they're the innovator groups and they're off experimenting with things that going to get them in trouble.
00:06:20
Rustam Irani
Yeah. So that's very interesting that you talked about getting them in trouble. I don't know if you saw recently that CloudBot came out, right?
00:06:31
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:06:31
Rustam Irani
But maybe 12 days ago or something like that.
00:06:33
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:06:33
Rustam Irani
It's already like taking over with what people are using it for.
00:06:38
Rustam Irani
Apparently, I saw that somebody, it got access to their computer, got their phone number, actually dialed. I don't if you saw that, Dan, that one where it dialed.
00:06:45
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, I did see that. It's an amazing case study. It just goes to show how smart these things are becoming and how now truly agentic they are. Everyone's been talking about agents for year and CloudBot or now they've rebranded twice because they got sued twice or not.
00:06:57
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:07:00
Rustam Irani
Right, right.
00:07:01
Dan Sanchez
They got sent a cease and desist letter twice. They're now OpenClaw is the official name.
00:07:04
Rustam Irani
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:05
Rustam Irani
Open cloud is great.
00:07:06
Dan Sanchez
But they created this open source agent platform that pretty much hooks into all the other AI APIs out there.
00:07:13
Dan Sanchez
So they don't have AI, but they created a place where it works.
00:07:18
Dan Sanchez
really cool. And it's able to actually be agentic. Like you can give it something and it's going to act like a really smart human.
00:07:23
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:07:24
Dan Sanchez
That's going to, that's going problem solve. And you know what, if it can't figure it out, it will start getting creative, which is what we saw in that case study. somebody asked it to get, to essentially to book a hotel reserve or, uh, no, wasn't hotel as a restaurant reservation.
00:07:38
Dan Sanchez
but that restaurant only took reservations via phone call. It didn't have the ability to make a phone call. So I went and figured out how to create a voice chat or how to create a voice agent within itself and then how to actually get a phone number to actually make the call, put in the order and then actually achieve it.
00:07:55
Dan Sanchez
I'm like, wow.
00:07:57
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:07:57
Dan Sanchez
Because that takes a human to figure out, but that's next level. The problem with OpenClaw is while it has all this ability to do all this stuff, it's almost the biggest cybersecurity nightmare of all time.
00:08:01
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:08:10
Dan Sanchez
Because with all of its access... We destroy all the layers of security we've been building over the last 15 to 20 years. And so that's the downside of it. And there's not a lot you can do to it. You can't, you could try to hamper it, but it's like the thing in itself is like not secure, but it is a good case study. And I think it'll drive forward over the next three to six months. We'll start to see much more secure versions of this that might be a little held back a little bit still,
00:08:10
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:08:38
Dan Sanchez
But I think this is a picture of what's coming in the near term. So it is interesting to start seeing what's possible now we can actually do securely maybe three to six months from now.
00:08:49
Rustam Irani
And Security to me is one of the biggest factors, right? That especially in higher ed or any kind of industry, even on my own personal side, you know, I've got Clyde, Clyde Cowork.
00:09:04
Rustam Irani
I've toyed with code a little bit. But you want to limit access to your personal files.
00:09:06
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:09:10
Rustam Irani
I mean, one of the first suggestions I saw was to go and let it organize all your desktop and all your downloads and your files.
00:09:18
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:19
Rustam Irani
But once you do that, you're basically giving it access to everything, right? So there's a security risk there. And I think that's real. And I think that's part of the fear that's out there. What are your thoughts on that? Like, is that a true fear? I mean, should people be afraid? Like, how do you kind of manage that? think that's one of the biggest conversations. Like, I know when we talk to some of our clients in the education space, like,
00:09:46
Rustam Irani
They don't want to give access to these tools, right? To their proprietary data or their information. Claude works directly with Excel now, or Claude Sheets, I think it is.
00:09:57
Rustam Irani
I forget, think it's Excel.
00:09:58
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:09:58
Rustam Irani
And it can be pretty powerful. I put some data, my own data in there, and it was pretty cool when it popped out. But what are your thoughts on that, like security? Because I think that's a serious challenge.
00:10:11
Dan Sanchez
It is serious. Colleges have to be pretty particular about this because colleges are actually huge targets for cybersecurity attacks.
00:10:14
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:10:21
Dan Sanchez
Huge. Because they usually have lots of really valuable data and usually can't afford the top, the best cybersecurity protocols or people or whatever it is like the
Selecting and Integrating AI Tools
00:10:32
Dan Sanchez
enterprise do. Enterprise companies have that too. They were big target, but they also can afford the best. So colleges get hammered, even small colleges. So, and because we also have FERPA on the higher ed side, you gotta be really careful. So I wouldn't suggest really exploring any of this kind of stuff with higher ed yet.
00:10:55
Dan Sanchez
unless it's built into the system that you're already using. So like maybe like element 451, great system. They have agents within the system, but it's already within a FERPA compliant area and it can do a lot within it because there's a lot of tools baked into the system. So I would trust that to go and do small things and have some autonomy.
00:11:17
Dan Sanchez
so there's, in-house systems like that are safe and you have to kind of evaluate them case by case. High level has some agentic abilities in it, but light, you know, so like if it's in a system and you have that system well-maintained, like there's some room there, but for the most part, like, uh, Claude co-work or open claw.
00:11:21
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:11:36
Dan Sanchez
No, I wouldn't be recommending any of this.
00:11:37
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:11:38
Dan Sanchez
I'd be writing policies against it if I were a higher ed institution right now, because,
00:11:43
Rustam Irani
And that's very hard.
00:11:43
Dan Sanchez
Again, you're a bigger target and you have sensitive data that you're legally required to protect.
00:11:49
Rustam Irani
Yeah, and that's, you know, it's interesting because there are some schools who have policies. There are some companies that have policies, right? There are others that have never put a policy together and they could be having team members that are just kind of running roots with this stuff.
00:12:03
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:12:05
Rustam Irani
So to me, that's like a really scary part is do you even know what your team members or employees or staff are doing and what they're utilizing and not?
00:12:05
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:12:10
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:12:17
Rustam Irani
To me, that's, I think, where a lot of this stuff, especially the shiny new objects, it's like, oh, everybody's using it.
00:12:22
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:12:23
Rustam Irani
Get on it. And I can't tell you how many YouTube videos are out there now on, you know, on what's it called now? Open claw.
00:12:32
Dan Sanchez
Whooping Claw.
00:12:32
Rustam Irani
Open claw, right?
00:12:33
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:12:34
Rustam Irani
You need to be using this. This is going to create so much efficiency. Like, man, that's amazing. So I guess one question I would have another one, Dan, is like,
00:12:40
Dan Sanchez
Don't recommend.
00:12:45
Rustam Irani
you know A lot of higher ed marketing leaders, marketing directors, even just leaders and directors in general, we speak with and kind of listen to the show.
00:12:57
Rustam Irani
know, if they're a little overwhelmed, I can tell you, I'm still overwhelmed. Even though I feel like I've got a little bit of a grasp, I still feel pretty overwhelmed. And plus, there's so many tools. Gemini, Clog, Perplexity, ChatGPT.
00:13:11
Rustam Irani
That's just to name a few, right? And so like, Where would you kind of suggest that they start? Like what's the best place to kind of start and stay away from?
00:13:24
Dan Sanchez
I highly recommend just having one core tool that is like company wide. You can just release it to one team for starters if you really want to, but like we're getting kind of beyond the point where we're like, oh, we're just experimenting with one team.
00:13:37
Dan Sanchez
Like pick one tool. If you're, if you're on a system already, probably if you're, if you're higher ed, you're probably on Microsoft office, like just commit to getting copilot. Like that is your AI tool. Yeah.
00:13:55
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:13:57
Dan Sanchez
We'll see what Microsoft does. But if you're in Microsoft, just use Copilot and then give everybody access. But you can't just give them access and hope for the best. You're going have to do trainings.
00:14:07
Dan Sanchez
You're going to have to incentivize leaders to try to incentivize the employees that work with them in order to actually learn how to use it and leverage it. And this is going to be important. This is going to be a multi-step training kind of rollout, kind of like if you were rolling out a whole new CRM or something like that. You're not just going to put it there and then hope that it works, right? No, you have to have someone who's a champion, who's giving the lessons, who's following up with people, and then having leaders set goals goals for utilization of it. Right. worked for one company recently that actually had like, it was part of the reporting process at the end of every single week. It was kind of like, Hey, how did it go this week? What were some things that were setbacks? And then how did you use AI this week?
00:14:51
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:14:51
Dan Sanchez
It was like a constant, like, hey, you need to be thinking about this. Hey, you need to be thinking about this. Because how everyone's going to make the most of AI is going to be different depending on what role you're in.
00:14:56
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:15:00
Dan Sanchez
There's a lot of different ways. It's a general tool. It's like going to someone and specifying how to use Excel or Word or PowerPoint. You're like, well, depends on the role, right?
00:15:10
Dan Sanchez
It's a general tool.
00:15:11
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:15:12
Dan Sanchez
It's going to change dramatically from use case to use case. So let the leaders specify how to use it in the department, but give them access, give them training, and then create incentive structures to get the most out of it.
00:15:26
Rustam Irani
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I'm actually curious your take on this. Like I was also been spending a lot of time watching YouTube and getting information from there on kind of what's the latest, what's happening. And then X is a great place to get definitely what people are actually using these tools for. So my question is like,
00:15:49
Rustam Irani
I was even going down the route of picking up a Mac Mini to have and use it separately where it would have access to whatever it did on there, and then I could kind of run with it that way.
00:16:01
Rustam Irani
I don't know. What are your thoughts on that or having something completely separate? Again, hopefully for organizations, they have a sandbox or an environment where, okay, this is where it's going to access the data from and nowhere else. But I don't know what your thoughts are on that.
00:16:18
Dan Sanchez
I wouldn't buy a Mac mini I wouldn't install open claw, not on my machine, not on the Mac mini separate computer, not on a web server where you can contain it.
00:16:27
Rustam Irani
yeah yeah
00:16:27
Dan Sanchez
I just wouldn't be using that unless you're a developer specifically, only if you're a developer and understand the environment and the complexities that it's operating in, because then you can understand a little bit more of the risks. I'm not playing with it. I'm not a developer. I don't understand all the different ways these things interface with each other.
00:16:44
Dan Sanchez
And that's where people are getting in trouble is they don't, they don't, they don't know what they don't know. So like, they're going to get hacked. Like it's, I like, I don't mind watching the case studies of what other people are doing, but it's like so early right now with that, that trust me, like waiting on this particular thing called open claw, it's not going to hurt you. I know everybody's, everybody's trying their best to like get algo, like trick the algo and get as many views like, Oh, if you're not trying this, you're going be left behind in three months. I'm like, no, you're not.
00:17:13
Dan Sanchez
No, you're not.
00:17:13
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:17:14
Dan Sanchez
Like, wait.
00:17:15
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:17:16
Dan Sanchez
Wait for a more secure version to come out. Clawed Cowork is probably a more secure, but way less vulnerable version of Open Claw, but it's obviously not nearly as robust as Open Claw.
00:17:21
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:17:27
Dan Sanchez
But as robust as OpenClaw is, it's way too vulnerable for even advanced users like myself or you to really stay safe with.
00:17:38
Dan Sanchez
I wouldn't touch it yet unless you're an extremely advanced user, like specifically an advanced developer user.
00:17:46
Rustam Irani
So I guess to that end, then what is, what is something that you would tell people like, just stay away from, especially with like beginner kind of intermediate, uh, folks like,
00:18:00
Rustam Irani
you what's like the area where it just doesn't make sense. Don't waste your time. Don't go down there. Really execute and get really proficient in this other area, right?
00:18:13
Rustam Irani
What's one area where you just say like, stay away.
00:18:13
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:18:15
Dan Sanchez
to kill your, yeah, to kill the FOMO of all the things you're like, what should I be trying? Generally, do not think you need to build an app like, or with VibeCode, like just kiss that goodbye.
00:18:23
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:18:25
Dan Sanchez
I actually thought about it yesterday. I'm like, needed a really simple tool that's been done a million times, like a Trello type board, Kanban board.
00:18:27
Rustam Irani
I'm guilty. I'm guilty of that. Yeah.
00:18:34
Dan Sanchez
I'm like, maybe I could just VibeCode that.
00:18:35
Rustam Irani
Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:37
Dan Sanchez
It's funny, I was talking to ChatGPT and Chat's like, do you really want to maintain the code for that? And then build in like, Like I just wanted one for an internal team situation. And I was like, no, I don't want to maintain the code. We have all had that. Like, I don't even like maintaining WordPress and that's a pretty standard way to maintain that. I'm like, no, I don't want that. So you could stay away from that. Don't get into make.com, N-A-N, all the AI automation tools. I promise they're way more complex. You will spend 10 hours and not be able to move the needle forward after watching 10 hours of YouTube videos and trying to figure it out. They're not worth your time.
00:19:12
Dan Sanchez
Where to spend your time is in these things called custom GPTs, custom GPTs in Gemini.
00:19:12
Rustam Irani
And so, yeah, go ahead.
00:19:17
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:19:19
Dan Sanchez
They're called gems. I don't know what they're called in Microsoft's co-pilot, but, They're in there.
00:19:29
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:19:32
Dan Sanchez
You just have to Google it. Claude has projects. ChatGPT also has projects that work a lot like custom GPTs. That's where I tell everyone to go. And this is for intermediate to advanced users.
00:19:43
Dan Sanchez
There's a couple different ways to approach these things, but they're really not hard to understand. They're essentially just... you're giving chat GPT or Gemini pre-made instructions.
00:19:55
Dan Sanchez
It's almost like it has an initial really long first prompt, and then you start the conversation.
00:20:00
Rustam Irani
Hmm.
00:20:00
Dan Sanchez
And the first prompt might be like, Hey, you're a show runner for this podcast. Here's the step-by-step instructions to follow. Every time I get a conversation started about how to get all the pre-production done for a show.
00:20:13
Dan Sanchez
Okay. And then, you know, you kick it off and it runs through the step-by-step. It's like, great. What are we talking about today? Great. Who are we interviewing? What want to interview them about? It's essentially pulling the information out of you and doing all the work to speed it up. It's my showrunner. You can actually go and preview it for yourself. My showrunner.com. I've published like a generic version of this exact custom GPT. You could just copy the instructions and just look at them and see how I made it. It looks, if you look at it, it's just instructions. Yeah.
00:20:39
Dan Sanchez
That's it. It's not code.
00:20:40
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:20:40
Dan Sanchez
It's not fancy. It's literally just a very clean set of instructions for the AI to follow. Because if you can get it to replicate your processes, well, all a sudden things that used to take you 30 minutes to 45 minutes, like it used to take me to prepare for an interview,
00:20:57
Dan Sanchez
Now it only takes five minutes. I've literally shown up to some interviews, five minutes until, and then I'm quickly running my show runner, the custom GPT to get a sense of who I'm talking to, what they're about, what questions, how it, how it pairs well with my show titles.
00:21:10
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:21:12
Dan Sanchez
So I know what we're creating and then questions and an intro outro and it's like done. But you could do all that in a custom GPT. That's partly why I'm not even interested in OpenClaw. sure OpenClaw can do a lot more stuff and make it even fancier and email the guest and all that for me and I don't even have to deal with it.
00:21:28
Dan Sanchez
But for now, most people don't even leverage custom GPTs and it's way simpler, way more secure and way you can build tools for
AI in Outbound Marketing and Ethics
00:21:36
Dan Sanchez
yourself. You can build tools for your team.
00:21:38
Dan Sanchez
You can share it with other ChatGPT accounts. You can build shared projects where you're both collaborating with a shared set of instructions in a shared folder in ChatGPT. That's the kind of stuff available that like 99% of users don't use.
00:21:48
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:21:58
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:22:00
Rustam Irani
we realized there were still limitations there. You really couldn't share files within there and so on. So we just came out of that and then, yeah, we just started working on custom GPTs that we could kind of share and work within.
00:22:14
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:22:14
Rustam Irani
There's just so many amazing use cases like you've got brand guidelines, right? You've got your ICP, you've got all this information on, you know, at least for us, when we work with school clients, we have these folders where it has this insight. And we want to do some research, we want to ask it some questions. It's right there. And, you know, I think custom GPTs, I remember,
00:22:37
Rustam Irani
Maybe eight months ago, you had mentioned that to me. And you even have a course, a free course that people can take and do. And I can, if you're all right with it, I can leave it in the show notes for people to grab that and kind of go through it. Do you still have that course available, Dan?
00:22:56
Dan Sanchez
Yes, it's on danchez.com slash courses.
00:23:00
Rustam Irani
Awesome. And so, you know, custom GPTs just seem like such an amazing way to do a lot of this stuff. And it's not difficult.
00:23:10
Rustam Irani
Like you said, it's just kind of following a certain format and then kind of putting the inputs in.
00:23:14
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:23:20
Dan Sanchez
Yep.
00:23:23
Rustam Irani
I guess the other thing, Dan, on my end, we hear lot is all of this talk about outbound and AI that's kind of creating outbound calls and speaking with an agent.
00:23:37
Rustam Irani
And will people enjoy that experience? Will they not enjoy that experience? I've had both sides of that conversation. There's some pretty amazing AI bots out there.
00:23:50
Rustam Irani
I just heard one, two, three weeks ago. was just a great conversation. actually sounded like it was coming from a call center. It had sound like it was coming from a call center.
00:23:58
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:00
Rustam Irani
So that was neat. But what are your thoughts on, do you think... prospective customers or students or clients at some point or maybe even today are okay with it.
00:24:12
Rustam Irani
I have my opinion. I'm pretty impressed with it, but I might have a bias being a marketer.
00:24:19
Dan Sanchez
I've never been a fan of outbound, even when it was human done.
00:24:20
Rustam Irani
Okay. Okay. Yep.
00:24:22
Dan Sanchez
I respect it.
00:24:23
Rustam Irani
Yep. Yep.
00:24:25
Dan Sanchez
I get for people who know how to do it well and they get results out of it.
00:24:28
Dan Sanchez
But because I never really, really disliked it as consumer.
00:24:32
Dan Sanchez
I've never really sought out how to do it well. So I know there's like a whole game in a system for outbound and I've never really explored it.
00:24:37
Rustam Irani
Yep.
00:24:39
Dan Sanchez
I know AI can do it, but I like the idea of that even less. I'm like, eh. Now, there are some kinds of outbound that's more inbound, but it's kind of a mix of the hybrid.
00:24:43
Rustam Irani
Yep.
00:24:49
Dan Sanchez
So this is where i would be interested in testing right now. Let's say a student comes in puts in an inquiry. They want to learn more. They request the brochure. And then within 15 minutes, as long as it's between 8 a.m.
00:25:01
Dan Sanchez
and whatever that cutoff time for you is, 7.30, whatever, they get a call back as if a human call center, because this is what the for-profit universities do. They're really good at following up on the phone, right?
00:25:11
Dan Sanchez
But AI follows up and be like, hey, saw that you just requested information about the university.
00:25:12
Rustam Irani
Sure.
00:25:15
Dan Sanchez
Here to help you answer any questions. Or if you want, I can even get you set up to time to talk to an actual student. Or have some kind of lead That would be a more interesting use case than just going cold outbound.
00:25:29
Dan Sanchez
I feel like cold outbounds, we're all going to be really tired of that really fast. Yeah.
00:25:34
Rustam Irani
Yeah, understood. I think the other side of that, again, like you said, is also being very open and positioning it. Like, hey, I'm so on so-and-so's chatbot, right?
00:25:47
Rustam Irani
Or I know they personalize chatbots with names and so on.
00:25:47
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:50
Rustam Irani
But if you're open about it right off the bat, then at least they know it's that outreach and then going from that to the next step. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I think I mean, there's a lot of people, a lot of companies that are pushing that at huge volume across many B2C industries. So it's going to be interesting to see.
00:26:10
Rustam Irani
I've talked to both sides. talked to some leaders that are all about it and want see how they can create efficiencies and utilize it.
00:26:17
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:19
Rustam Irani
And then there are others that say, I'm not there yet. I do not want a bot talking to any of our prospective students or anything along those lines.
00:26:29
Dan Sanchez
There's a big opportunity for higher ed in this.
00:26:31
Rustam Irani
Thank you.
00:26:32
Dan Sanchez
And I think this will take a little bit to catch on. I've actually been thinking and talking about this for about two years now, and it still hasn't really come. And I think it will. You know, I feel like it's inauthentic to pretend that AI is a human, which is why even like adding like, hey, I'm an AI, but I can actually understand and have conversations answer a lot of your questions, or I could just book a conversation with the human. Fine. Fine.
00:26:53
Dan Sanchez
But you know what you could do that does, you don't even have to say you're AI because nobody's going assume it's human is if you're a character, but most colleges have mascots.
00:27:04
Dan Sanchez
So wouldn't it be cool if your mascot answered the phone? And I mean, a lot of them are already doing it on site chat with AI anyway, and it's your mascot answering the calls.
00:27:11
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:27:13
Dan Sanchez
Then nobody, nobody's pretending to think it's human. Both sides are very clear about it. But then you can brand that sucker and give it a voice and maybe give it a little drama, give it a personality.
00:27:18
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:27:24
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:27:24
Dan Sanchez
Imagine you're calling in for customer support on Disney and Mickey answers the phone and talks and walks you through it and then connects you with a human. That's going to be a brandable and very interesting experience. But I think a lot of companies can actually... When you think about Disney doing it, you're like, oh, of course, that's going be great.
00:27:42
Dan Sanchez
And it's actually going to take probably a bad phone tree situation that Disney currently has to a nice, pleasant experience talking to AI Mickey and then getting connected to someone that can help you. Or AI Mickey can serve you himself.
00:27:53
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:27:53
Dan Sanchez
But imagine you can do it with like your mascot.
00:27:55
Dan Sanchez
If it's a Lancer or something, you kind of give it like... a thing with some background noise and just make it really, that's just kind of cool. Like, I think that's what I would want to experience as a consumer.
00:28:06
Dan Sanchez
And, i think a lot of people would buy into it and it wouldn't be weird. It'll just be like normal and it'll be fun and you can have a lot, you can do a lot with it.
AI for Personal Productivity and Branding
00:28:17
Rustam Irani
Yeah. I like that idea. and Look, I think it's going to be like every person's a little unique in kind of how they experience things, right?
00:28:28
Rustam Irani
And what type of experiences they appreciate.
00:28:28
Dan Sanchez
yeah. yeah. yeah.
00:28:30
Rustam Irani
i can tell you like any live chats where it tells me it's an agent and then I'm good with at least if they can get me the information, I'm good personally.
00:28:38
Rustam Irani
But if I want to talk to somebody, it gives me that option. So I like that as well, right? But it's very open, bright about it. Yeah.
00:28:44
Dan Sanchez
They've gotten better at actually being, because AI chats have been around for a while and they always sucked.
00:28:45
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:28:49
Dan Sanchez
Like they never could answer the question. Now, especially if they hook up to a whole database, they're actually pretty good. You're like, thank you. It's like, have I answered your question? You're like, yes, you have. Thank you very much.
00:28:58
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:28:59
Dan Sanchez
Like they're actually getting good at contextualizing it just right and they can answer questions, you know?
00:28:59
Rustam Irani
It's interesting though.
00:29:04
Rustam Irani
I think maybe it was two and a half, three years ago, I remember when we were looking at some live chat options. And I think Bank of America was one where they had done this study of their customer satisfaction score on an AI-based agent versus a live agent on live chat.
00:29:22
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:23
Rustam Irani
And it actually scored higher. The AI support live chat scored higher in customer satisfaction than the actual live chat agent.
00:29:32
Rustam Irani
This was like literally two and a half three years ago. This is way before all this stuff. So anyways, I just think, again, really depends on what context and kind of how you're using it and so on.
00:29:42
Rustam Irani
So... But no, I appreciate it. Dan, this has been great. There's a lot here to unpack and for people to kind of take away. And I appreciate that.
00:29:55
Rustam Irani
And so like, what's... Like if you were to say final bit of advice to kind of anybody out there that's looking kind of really jump into this and spend some time, like what would be like your one kind of nugget of advice and how to kind of take advantage and just be ahead of this stuff?
00:30:12
Dan Sanchez
I mean, usually if you're already listening to podcasts like this, you're already the kind of person that's out there that's learning. The problem is most people aren't listening to podcasts like this one. Like it's not doing anything. But if you're this kind of person, you probably already have ChatGPD installed. You're probably the person already pays for the license, which shows me that like it was valuable enough that the $23, $24 became Good.
00:30:36
Rustam Irani
yeah
00:30:37
Dan Sanchez
The next best thing you can do in order to take it to the next level is set up a project within ChatGPT. And it's a little folder. It's on the left-hand side. There's these things called projects. Set up a project for every area of your work.
00:30:50
Dan Sanchez
I would even set one up for different major areas of your life. I have one for my cars, one for my home, even one for my family. Okay. And then I start off every conversation within those projects, be like, hi, chat GPT.
00:31:01
Dan Sanchez
I'm starting a project around, let's just say my home.
00:31:03
Rustam Irani
Thank
00:31:04
Dan Sanchez
Cause it's easy to understand. I'm starting a project around my home for all the things that I might have to fix in my home someday, or want to understand, ask me, ask me bunch of questions that I can answer that we can use to then create the instructions that will give you the context, the most general set of contexts that you can use for all future conversations.
00:31:23
Dan Sanchez
Okay. So it gave me a bunch of questions like, well, what kind of home do you have? Like, what kind of grass do you have? What kind of HVAC system do you have? And asked me all these really specific questions that I went through. I'm like, okay, well, I got a two-story home. The HVAC is a split-level thing. I have Bermuda grass, front yard, backyard. Here's some of the story behind that. And here's what we got. And I kind of just ran through all the things about my home.
00:31:45
Dan Sanchez
And now when I have problems with things, I go to that project and I'm like, hey, recently it got really cold.
00:31:45
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:31:51
Dan Sanchez
There's a lot of ice here in Tennessee and my heater wasn't working as well.
00:31:54
Rustam Irani
That's
00:31:55
Dan Sanchez
So I go to it. I'm like, hey, this is the sound that it's making. This is what's going on. And troubleshooting with ChatGPT, but I don't have to give it the context because we already did that in the instructions. Everybody knows the model. Everybody knows how it's a split thing where it's like an attic and outdoor unit. how it generally works. So it's like we skipped all that.
00:32:11
Dan Sanchez
And it is now with every conversation I have in that one project on just my home, it's getting smarter and smarter.
00:32:18
Rustam Irani
great.
00:32:19
Dan Sanchez
It's able to retain more and more memory. Remember this memory thing of it being able to remember all this stuff is only a year old anyway. So within a couple of years, it's going to have a much better knowledge of all the conversations. So the more you start having in these folders around different big projects, maybe you're split between a bunch of different departments because you're one of those marketing teams that has all these different colleges going to the central university marketing team. You know, you're that big.
00:32:42
Dan Sanchez
create folders for them all. And if you might like an agency, you can have folder per client. There's even a setting in when you first set up the folder. So it's like, do you want to have access to the information across the account or do you want to limit it to just this one folder?
00:32:55
Dan Sanchez
So it's almost like you're talking to a chat, a chat GPT account within your chat GPT account.
00:32:59
Rustam Irani
Yeah.
00:33:01
Dan Sanchez
So it doesn't remember anything any of the other custom GPTs projects or just conversations. It only remembers what happens in this folder. And that can be really handy so you don't have information going between clients, right? So projects is the best place to start if you're paying for it and you want to start going to advanced.
00:33:18
Dan Sanchez
Setting up all these project folders is the next best place.
00:33:21
Rustam Irani
Love it. Awesome advice. Dan, so this has been great. I appreciate you joining the show. Really appreciate our, you know,
00:33:33
Rustam Irani
relationship over many years, your experience, your insights, all the advice that you've been giving me over the years. So grateful for that. And I think a lot of people needed to hear that it's okay and to be thoughtful instead of panic about being on top of the latest AI tools and so on. But I think you gave really, really great advice. Where can people find you and follow your work, Dan?
00:33:58
Rustam Irani
We'll definitely drop it in the show notes, but where can people connect with you if they want to learn more about your services and kind what you're doing with the clients on the AI side? Yeah.
00:34:07
Dan Sanchez
Yep. AIdrivenmarketer.com is where you can find the show. If you want to learn more about AI and marketing, that's where I highly recommend going. Listen to a few episodes. If you like what you're hearing, you go to AIdrivenmarketer.com and find the newsletter and other services and all kinds of things. But listen to the show first and see what you think.
00:34:24
Rustam Irani
Awesome. Well, Dan, again, thanks so much for being on. And everyone, that's all for this class of ROI University, where the biggest ROI is personal.