angishields, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

BRX Pro Tip: Completing a Project? What’s Next?

June 19, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: Completing a Project? What’s Next?

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, when it comes to completing a project, in your experience, what is or what should be next?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, there’s something that I heard a phrase somebody used that really resonated with me, Done but not over. We’re so used to just crossing off things on to-do lists. We think we’re done. But even though you finished a project or done a task doesn’t really mean that your work is done.

Lee Kantor: Done but not over to me means that the real value often comes well past the finish line. That’s when you follow up. That’s when you gather feedback. That’s where you look for ways to improve. So, definitely celebrate finishing and completion, but always ask yourself, what can we learn? Who needs to hear about this? How can we even make it better next time?

Lee Kantor: Remember, the best businesses don’t just finish, they follow through.

Alicia Todisco with Ace Handyman Services and Jim Hilber with Merchant Gladiator

June 18, 2025 by angishields

Alicia Todisco is a Georgia Native. She opened ACE Handyman Services serving Acworth, Kennesaw and Powder Springs area. Has recently expanded to include Hiram, Dallas and west cobb to the Marietta Square.

Before ACE Handyman Services Alicia was involved in the technology world for 12 years. As a sales leader in the working with other sales professionals to teach them to sell with the need of the client as the priority.

She spent the last 3 of 12 years working as the Director of Learning and Development creating programs to teach and train on those processes companywide to create a productive sales professional selling the most ethical way to sell any product.

Her transition was not an easy decision, however, made with three very important factors. Grayson and William, her 8 and 6 year old sons being the most important aspect of her transition. She has gone from 50% travel to coaching soccer, at Legacy Park and running club, at Swift Cantrell and is seeing a major change in the way her boys are developing and responding to her work life balance.

The third reason is to be more engrained in a local community. Ace Hardware and Ace Handyman Services are both companies that encourage and support their owners to make an impact in the community and that is exactly what Alicia is here to do.

Connect with Alicia on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Jim Hilber is the President of Merchant Gladiator and a Champion in his industry.

He is armed with viable payment solutions for every industry type. He is sworn to serve and protect local businesses.

He is fighting for good and has been victorious in the merchant payments arena for over 30 years.

Connect with Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to another great episode of Cherokee Business Radio. I’m Joshua Kornitsky. I am a professional EOS implementer. And your host. This morning and today in the studio, I have two fantastic guests. Let me start by introducing Alicia Todisco of Ace Handyman Services. She is the owner of Ace Handyman Services. Uh, good morning and welcome.

Alicia Todisco: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s a wonder to have you here. I really appreciate it. So, Alicia, I’m so happy to have you in the studio because I have so many questions. But I want to start by explaining how involved in the community you are. And the way that I met you was through the Acworth Business Association. But I also know that you now sit on the board of the Acworth Business Association. You sit on the board of the Kennesaw Business Association, where I was this morning. Uh, and that you’re now on the board of the North Cobb Rotary as well?

Alicia Todisco: Yeah. That’s right, actually, president elect for the Acworth Business Association. So I’ll take the reins next year.

Joshua Kornitsky: That is, uh, a pretty impressive accomplishment, but not as impressive as how you yourself spend your time. Because I understand you’re one of the only female franchisees of ace handyman.

Alicia Todisco: Yeah, there are me and maybe 1 or 2 others. Um, the other ladies, uh, partner with a father or brother husband. Uh, so it’s really it’s really an interesting place to be in my world.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and did you say you’ve started a women’s group.

Alicia Todisco: Within the Ladies of ace? Yep.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s really great. Uh, and there was even an article about you recently.

Alicia Todisco: So it was actually a couple of years ago, but they did a, excuse me, an article that is called resiliency. It’s just a Women in Franchising Blazing the Path article so well.

Joshua Kornitsky: And in the in the field that you have established yourself in I’m sure as you just indicated. Right. There’s not an abundance of women operating in that space. So you really are trailblazer. That’s really, really great. Um, what got you here? What did you do before you decided to become, uh, the the the first female franchisee, or at least one of the only female franchisees of Ace Handyman.

Alicia Todisco: Get me in trouble by calling me the first.

Joshua Kornitsky: But sorry, one of them.

Alicia Todisco: One of the only. Yeah. So, um, my background is in sales. Um, I owned a couple of small businesses in my 20s. Um, but then I went into corporate America selling payroll and HR technology through a company called Paychex.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. I know that name.

Alicia Todisco: Yep. Most people would. But then I started working for a company out of Louisiana called Netflix, and I spent seven years there in sales, leadership, sales management, national or regional management. And then I took over the director of learning and development for them, and spent about three years developing their sales program.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow. So you’re a process driven person.

Alicia Todisco: Very process driven. Mr..

Joshua Kornitsky: So, well, thank thank you, thank you. So, uh, all of that sales experience and then learning and development on top of that, how did that prepare you for where you find yourself now? Do you spend a lot of time having to educate your prospective clients?

Alicia Todisco: It’s no, you know, my prospective clients still mostly with our office team. Okay. Um, I am more community focused. So we’re brand building, brand awareness, driving sales. And so it’s 100%, 90% of what I do every day is sales.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So let’s talk about what you do. What type of services do you provide.

Alicia Todisco: So my company is Ace Handyman Services. We provide services for both residential and commercial. We say we do 162 different things in the home. That’s it. Yeah. That’s all.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So let’s I’d like to ask let’s put commercial to the side because I want to come back to that. Let’s talk about the residential side so people know what you can do to help them around the house.

Alicia Todisco: Yep. So it just depends on their need really. I always encourage if they’re curious what a handyman does to call us. Um, so we can do everything from installing a door, uh, you know, closing in a room, building a wall. We’ve done that for one of our fellow networkers and the associations you discussed to something as simple as hanging pictures on the wall. If you could see this beautiful wall in the studio, um, with command strips, uh, it doesn’t really matter. It’s where the need is and what provides value to our clients.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’re really able to sort of customize the offering to fit whatever it is they’re after.

Alicia Todisco: A beautiful long honey to do list is one of the guy’s favorites. Yep.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wonderful. I think I told you this before. I just need somebody to live at my house because I don’t know how to do any of this stuff. So? So what’s a good rule of thumb? When. When should somebody call you on the on the let’s again, let’s stick to the residential side. Then we’ll get to the commercial.

Alicia Todisco: Sure, sure. Um, so I’ve had people sit on a honey to do list thinking that it was going to take forever. Um, and then we go in and knock it out in two hours because of the skill set of the guys. Right? They’re used to doing this every day. They’re in and out of the hardware stores a lot faster. Um, so when someone’s thinking about a project, just call and ask questions. My team is very, uh, well, they’re sales oriented, right? Because of of what I do. Right. So they’re happy to consult and really dig in and ask a lot of questions that will help the customer. Self-actualize maybe I can do this piece of it myself. Um, and maybe I really do need to get to this. A lot of times when people sit on a project for too long, the damage that son gets worse. Um, let’s say you have a leak in a gutter and it’s dripping on a door. Well, instead of replacing the bottom of the door, now you have to replace the entire door. So if we can help to protect and preserve the home, it’ll help to prevent issues in the future.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’re telling me my long standing practice of turning up the radio so I don’t hear the noise in the car, is not the way to do things correct? I know I’m talking about a car versus a house, but. But I can turn the TV up real loud too, so I don’t hear the dripping.

Alicia Todisco: Both. Assets? Yes.

Joshua Kornitsky: So? So what you’re saying is that’s not a good strategy.

Alicia Todisco: Not the.

Joshua Kornitsky: Best. But but in that circumstance. So so you know, ace itself always had this helpful persona. Right. So let’s talk about the the types of people that you bring on board to, to execute on the services that you provide. Are they just, you know, any anybody knows how to swing a hammer?

Alicia Todisco: It’s funny. Um, we we say we bring helpful into the home. Right? So we’ve, we’ve taken that helpful hardware folks and we, we do bring it to the home. I mean, it starts with, uh, the ladies in the office. So that is a specific skill set that we, that we hire for. Um, they have to be patient. They have to be kind. Um, they have to also be able to remain in control because if someone’s calling the office, they don’t know what they don’t know. So for us to offer a lot of education is really important as far as the craftsmen are concerned. The number one thing I hire for is humble and kind. Within our industry, there are a lot of peacocks.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. That’s an excellent description of of someone who perhaps wears their perceived accomplishments out front. Yeah, right. Doesn’t mean they have those accomplishments, but they think they do.

Alicia Todisco: Yeah. So I’m not a skilled, handy professional myself. Um, I really rely on them to be good at what they do. And so they have to be humble enough to, you know, talk in layman’s terms to me and to the ladies in the office, which translates to how we’re speaking to our customers. We’re speaking to them in a language that they understand. We’re not talking over their heads. We are very cautious not to belittle them. So humble and kind is really important. What I’ll tell you is over the years, um, the craftsman quality has gone up because we’ve learned what we’ve learned. Right. Um, and that becomes really important. So it becomes kind of hard to hire.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, it’s I gather that it becomes kind of hard to hire because you’re, you’re hiring at a higher standard based on the what you’ve come to expect from your craftspeople, your tradespeople, when they’re executing on your behalf.

Alicia Todisco: Precisely.

Joshua Kornitsky: So holding people to a higher standard so that so that the higher quality output, that’s a positive, that’s not a negative. If it makes it a little harder to hire, I understand. But I also suspect that you get a much better hire when you do find someone.

Alicia Todisco: And that leads to a higher retention in our clients. They come back.

Joshua Kornitsky: So do you. Do you have a fair repeat rate with your clients?

Alicia Todisco: Yeah, we hover around 35%. Um, we’re pushing for a goal of 50%. Um, but 35% of our customers come back on a regular basis, whether that’s monthly, whether that is quarterly, whether that’s annually.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s great because that’s truthfully that’s the Google reviews are great, online reviews are great, but repeat business tells you how much they find value in what they’re getting and what they’re paying for. Um, do you get a lot of referrals from your customers?

Alicia Todisco: We do, we do. And one of the biggest compliments is when a parent, um, has an experience with us and they bring us into their children’s homes. Um, they know that they’re going to be able to offer an experience that’s protecting them, that they’re safe. They feel confident with the guys that we’re sending in. Um, on the other side of that, they send us into their parents homes. Sure. Um, so for the same reason.

Joshua Kornitsky: I can understand that because those are, uh, we’ve all heard horrible stories of of people, uh, let’s just say making bad decisions about who they hire. And it costing them a lot more than just a few bucks. Uh, so that’s great to know so that you’re a resource for that. Um, let me now ask, tell me about the commercial side of your business. What type of, uh, services do those skilled craftspeople bring to to the businesses you work with.

Alicia Todisco: So sitting in a meeting with Ace a couple of months ago, and I guess I hadn’t thought about it through this lens, but it is really valuable to know that if you are a business owner and you have a ladder in the back, your insurance may not cover your employees getting on that ladder. So if something happens, uh, with them doing that, it’s it’s really more of a liability to them than the cost would be to hire someone to come in and do simple things around the office. Um, so we do things like, you know, change light bulbs, um, change HVAC filters that are in high awkward spaces. Um, we just did one at Vino Market in downtown Acworth, for example. That was kind of cumbersome to get to. Um, but Toby would rather hire us to do that versus sending one of his people up into the attic space in the rafters.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. And that makes sense. And when you engage on the commercial side, I imagine in addition to simply paid service, like I need light bulbs put in at a high ceiling. Do you also offer agreements?

Alicia Todisco: We do, we do. We have a membership program for both residential and commercial. Oh, wow. Um, and so let’s say that a client has multiple locations and they want regular maintenance, those simple things that keep them in compliance. The light bulbs, the air, the air filters. But maybe they also have some projects they need to paint a bathroom door. They need to rearrange a couple of offices, paint an office space, hang a couple whiteboards, you name it. Simple tasks that we can do for them. They can hire us for a bundle of hours that will offer them a concession. And that concession we do throughout the course of the year, if for whatever reason, they don’t use those bundled hours throughout the year, we can allocate those. They can share those as incentives for their employees where we can do projects in their homes.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow, that’s pretty amazing.

Alicia Todisco: Um, we can do it in combination with one of our giveback programs, like if we go into the VFW or if we go into a battered women’s shelter, they can donate those hours. Wow. In which case we would then give them the write off, obviously. But they can allocate those however they choose if they don’t use them all for the business.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a really compelling offer and a really kind thing that you as a business owner are offering to your clients. So that’s that’s an aspect of your business I was less aware of. So is that something that you’re continuing to to grow and get out there? And when people want to learn about either side of this on the commercial or the residential side, two different phone numbers or all one thing.

Alicia Todisco: It’s all the same phone number. Um, so the office manages both commercial and residential. So they would call our main line. Do you want me to share that?

Joshua Kornitsky: Now I’m going to come back to it. But yes, let’s go ahead and share it because we’re talking about it.

Alicia Todisco: So what’s that number? Uh, the office line is (770) 627-7770. We have an amazing office team that can troubleshoot either. Um, so that we can take care of our clients on either side, residential or commercial.

Joshua Kornitsky: Awesome. So we’ll come back again to to how people can best reach to you in just a minute. But there’s one other thing on my list that I that I was looking through that we had talked about before that I really want to ask you about and, well, really two things you were talking about the, the skill of the craftspeople that you’re bringing on board. And, and when it comes to that, how important is that as you kind of look to the future, how do you ensure that you’ll have those tomorrow and next year and the year after?

Alicia Todisco: So we, uh, the skill of the craftsmen, I always say I’m as good as my craftsmen. So oftentimes people will come up and say, can you do fill in the blank?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Alicia Todisco: Can you do tile work is probably a good one because tile is very specific. It’s very tedious. Historically, we’ve said no. Right. Um, partially because we’re hourly. And that would become very expensive for them to take on with an hourly model. But tile has gone up. If you call a tile professional, it’s just as expensive as an hourly model would be, for whatever reason, right? So we’ve started taking on tile jobs, and as long as I have a craftsman who is skilled to do that, we can take on those jobs. Um, sometimes we have a new guy, got a new guy starting today that I’m very excited about. We understand his his skill set from his history. Um, so he’ll do some projects at my house. He’ll do some projects by my craft, my field supervisor’s side. So we really get a chance to inspect what he’s good at. Um, we do talk a lot about transparency. Communication, integrity and teamwork are our three core values. So if a guy can’t do something, we highly encourage him to be very, very transparent with us about it.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m only laughing because I’ve been that guy not working for you where I thought I could do something that I well, I didn’t know how. And it turns out that fixing it after the fact usually costs a lot more than if I’d called somebody ahead of time.

Alicia Todisco: So much more money. Yep. Um.

Joshua Kornitsky: So what advice would you give to somebody that was looking to get started in the trades. Now what what can they do to improve?

Alicia Todisco: Um, this is my favorite. And honestly, probably one of the hardest things that I had to find coming into this industry was I’m a very mentor driven person.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Alicia Todisco: I’ve had some crazy, amazing people, um, in my path, um, very, very lucky. Probably. Probably more than most. Right? That’s just me being very blessing, right? Um, silly about it, but also really, really true. Um, I had a really hard time finding a good mentor, uh, when it came to the trades industry. Um, I come with a very different background of mindset. I’m not the technical side. I am way more into the business side. Um, so we had some nice shared value there. Um, but what I’ve done is I’ve had the opportunity to, to generate a lot of great people around me that are trades professionals. It was one of the first things I did when I came into Acworth Business Association at the morning jolt, in fact. Right. Um, was I looked for other trades professionals who could do the things that I can’t do but operate with the same level of professionalism that I expect out of my team. So if I ever have to send a referral, you know, Jim calls and he needs a plumber. I know where I can send him, where he’s going to get top notch service as an extension of my business. And that, to me is invaluable because we work very closely with other trades professionals. Um, if a mover hits a wall, for example, and they need someone to come and fix that, they’re going to call us. If an HVAC company steps through a ceiling, they’re going to call us. We’re going to fix it. We’re responsive. We’re on time. We’re quick. We’re offering that same level of professionalism. And if you are a trades professional that wants to do things differently, I really encourage that behavior.

Joshua Kornitsky: So that’s a really great point and a great tie back again to the commercial side of things. So that if you are, uh, someone already operating a business in the trades, if you’re a plumber, if you’re HVAC, if you’re an electrician, uh, no one wants these things to happen. But sometimes these things do happen. And rather than trying to scramble and spend the valuable time of a plumber and electrician or an HVAC technician, they can just call you and you can mitigate the issue.

Alicia Todisco: Yeah, we can get them in touch with great people. It’s worked on both sides. You know, when we were brand new, we would we would step in it from time to time and we would need someone to come in. So we have great general contractors that we can call on if we made mistakes. And thank God we haven’t done that in a long time.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, that’s how we all learn.

Alicia Todisco: But yeah. And so it’s cool to for the tables to have turned, you know, three and a half years later and we’re that resource for other trades professionals.

Joshua Kornitsky: Now that’s that’s a wonderful thing. I am grateful to have a few clients in the trades, and I will make sure they know to call us. Last question that I have is, is really, uh, related to what you shared with me ahead of time. One of your passions was we were talking and you touched on something that’s near and dear to my heart because my wife was a professional, uh, a collegiate soccer player. Pardon me? I almost said softball, and that’ll that’ll cost me later. I’m gonna say, uh, my my wife went to Florida State on a soccer scholarship, but you and I were talking about soccer.

Alicia Todisco: Yes.

Joshua Kornitsky: So share with me or with us. Uh, what? Your passion is there. What? What is it about soccer? About kids?

Alicia Todisco: It’s kids. Yeah. For sure. Um, I played soccer growing up in high school. Okay. Um, and then I happened to have this little rock star soccer kid. Um, he’s ten. And a few years ago, he started to get involved on a soccer team. Uh, about a season in, his coach quit. Um, and it was about the same time.

Joshua Kornitsky: Whoever would fill in that song.

Alicia Todisco: Who would it be? Um, I stepped in as the assistant coach for a few seasons, um, with some amazing, uh, other coaches. And, you know, I was still traveling, uh, half. You know, part time with my last company. So it was a good way for me to get ingrained in the community without really having to transition yet. So I got to see. Well, did I like the community? Is this a community I wanted to be a part of? Sure. But it’s really interesting to me. I don’t know that people talk to kids the way that I talk to kids a lot do. Right. I don’t mean.

Joshua Kornitsky: In a positive way, I hope.

Alicia Todisco: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? They deserve to be held accountable. Sure, they deserve to be treated like humans and not little breakable, fragile things. They they really thrive in an environment where you’re teaching them integrity and balance and rules and consequences. Um, so between running club and between soccer, those are those are good platforms for me. And to watch them thrive, um, is pretty incredible.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s really awesome. And what an incredible way that you give back. So thank you for that. Speaking as as a soccer dad and a soccer husband, it’s, uh, it’s really something. And the only thing I’ll say on that, and it’s not my interview, but the only thing I will say on that is they’re not little adults. They’re children.

Alicia Todisco: Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: And and people who treat a child like a little adult. Yes. You’re correct. Discipline. Yes you’re correct. Rule set. But you have to understand that this is this is a unique individual that’s learning. And you can’t treat them like they’re a small 38 year old individual. They don’t have the skills and the knowledge. And I’m grateful that you’re there helping them see that.

Alicia Todisco: Thanks.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, uh, Alicia Tedesco, the owner of Ace Handyman Services. What’s the best way for people to reach you again?

Alicia Todisco: So our office can be reached. We multiple people see this. So the best way to do it is to call the office line or the office email, which comes to three of us. Okay. Um, the line is (770) 627-7770. And our email is Acworth, like the city of Acworth at Ace Handyman Services. Com.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s awesome. Well, we will also have your phone number, your website, and all of your social links posted on the Cherokee Business Radio site when the interview goes live for download. Uh, we’re live right now as well, but thank you so much for sharing your background and your story. And I’ve got one more guest here in the studio. If you don’t mind hanging out. We’d sure love to to have you here. Uh, I’d like to introduce someone who I’m very pleased to say I’ve known for a few years as well, uh, and has made a great positive impact on me because he’s such a giving guy. I’d like to introduce, uh, Jim Hilber, truly the champion of merchant payments and the president of Merchant Gladiator. Welcome, Jim. Good morning.

Jim Hilber: Good morning. Joshua. A pleasure to be here. Alicia. Great to hear you speak.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m just so happy to have you here in the studio with us. You and I met early on in my journey, uh, kind of reaching out into the networking universe. And I think it’s fair to say, with due respect to Alicia’s board seats, that you are a very effective networker because I think you get the value of it.

Jim Hilber: Yeah, absolutely. Are you networking or not working right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, nice. Nice. That sounds like something my dad would have said. So I understand, uh, first and foremost, because this is a really unusual thing, that you’re actually a certified payments professional, and that’s that’s a designation that not a lot of people have or know about. Tell us what that is.

Jim Hilber: Correct. I’m actually in the inaugural class of the Certified Payment Professionals. And, uh, it’s something not a lot of merchants know about. And I think everybody should. Uh, when I first, uh, went for that certification, it was to really rise above the competition like we all want to do. Uh, but the truth of the matter is, I do believe in the ethics of the industry and doing things the right way. And it’s a very loose industry. Believe it or not, payments for merchants are non-regulated. So, uh, I believed in it, and, uh, it didn’t get the traction I thought it would globally or nationally. But ultimately it is something showing that I have, uh, worked a little harder than the average Joe to, uh, make the industry great.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and you. So you touched on the ethics of the industry, and I won’t crack any any jokes this way simply to say that, you know, ethics to me, tie to core values and core values are pretty much what an organization needs to run on in order to be who it says it is. Not not aspirationally, but in reality, you know, so so I think the the fact that that, uh, was what drew you to it, it speaks a lot to what your character is. But, you know, how long have you been involved with, with this type of business, with, with payment processing and specifically with with what you’re doing now?

Jim Hilber: Probably my greatest achievement. Thank you for the question. I’ve been 30 years victorious in the payments arena. Wow. I came.

Joshua Kornitsky: Undefeated.

Jim Hilber: Undefeated, undefeated. Well, I don’t know about that. I think I failed more times than most people have tried in a tough industry.

Joshua Kornitsky: But you gotta fail to move forward. It’s the only path.

Jim Hilber: Michael Jordan, right? Michael Jordan uh, but yeah, 30 years in, I came from the days of when there was a little thumb buster, if anybody knows.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, I remember that.

Jim Hilber: Listeners, uh, you know, I went to a chamber event and I said, everybody, close your eyes. And I made that sound with the old chunk chunk and half the room knew what it was. The other kids in the room were like trying to YouTube it. What was that?

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, but for that other half, if you played the Apple Pay sound, they all know that.

Jim Hilber: Yeah. There you go. Exactly. Excellent.

Joshua Kornitsky: So 30 years in, in in merchant payments. Uh, I guess you’ve probably seen a lot of change because just looking back over it as a consumer and as a business owner myself, the landscape, just with my limited understanding, is completely different than it was a two years ago versus now. What are some of the changes that you’ve seen over over time that help give you perspective?

Jim Hilber: Oh, I absolutely love it. Previous to being a merchant payments professional, I managed grocery stores. Joshua, if you don’t remember this, but a lot of the listeners might relate to this. I was a manager and I got called to register seven and I ran right up to that cash register. Are we on fire? Are we being robbed? No, sir. I have a credit card over $50.

Joshua Kornitsky: Over. Wow.

Jim Hilber: And I really had to take this card out of the customer’s hand. I had to walk it to what they called the lobby, the lobbies, where we rented VHS tapes back in the day, and we called a square DVD. Yeah, there we go. Square DVD. Exactly. It had a sticker on it, said, be kind, please rewind. Okay, that’s a different hot topic.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, we’ll have that as a totally different dialog.

Jim Hilber: At any rate, I had to call a bank Joshua an 800 number, and I had to request authorization for a $51 card payment. And I had to recite the 16 digit card number over the phone. No, not a 773. I’m sorry. Seven. Three. Two. Starting again. And then they gave me a six digit authorization code. I had to look for a crayon, a pencil, write it on a piece of paper. That’s the short version. Right. And then take it back to the cash register. And I say thank you, customer, for your $51 in grocery payments. Carry out register for.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. But in those days, $51 probably filled your grocery cart too. So. So there is that. But but still that’s that’s a really amazing piece of perspective kind of looking back, and I imagine that helps inform what you do now. To a large degree.

Jim Hilber: Fast forward to today. You’re waiving your watch over a Coke machine in the airport and something pops out.

Joshua Kornitsky: So. So let’s talk about specifically what is a merchant gladiator, right. I love the term. He’s got a great badge on on all of his stuff in his shirt. And he has the coolest business card I’ve ever seen. It actually looks like a credit card. Yeah, I’ve tried the number on it. You can get Jim on the phone, but you can’t buy anything.

Jim Hilber: You know? Uh, really, the gladiator comes from. If you study the history of gladiators. They weren’t all slaves. Many of them were servants. And I believe to, uh, you know, nothing really happens in this country to something gets bought and sold. Uh, and merchants are out there in the wind. You know, it’s a huge industry. You see those big logos Mastercard, visa, American Express, discover, and, you know, they need someone who can unravel the madness, but more importantly, that not just getting the facts, it’s about who’s going to protect them, who’s going to fight for them. And that’s really where the premise of Merchant Gladiators started is I am unraveling the madness for merchants and protecting them, along with the great taglines armed with viable payment solutions, sworn to serve and protect local businesses fighting for good in the merchant service arena. I’ve said that a couple of times.

Joshua Kornitsky: I think that’s awesome though, man. That and and because here’s the other part of it, right. And I and I want to touch on this, but just based on on the clients I’ve had the pleasure to interact with throughout my entire career, um, let’s just say there’s a lot of assumptions that are made with regards to any type of electronic payment, right? Sure. But what are some of the misconceptions that you encounter when when you meet somebody new? And I want to come back and specifically talk about protection, but let’s talk about first what are some of the things that everybody knows. And if everybody knows it, chances are it’s probably not 100% accurate.

Jim Hilber: Yeah you’re right. There’s always exceptions to every rule. Uh, there’s a great photo album in my, uh, in my iPad here. Uh, and it shows what customers see when they go to pay and you went to go buy a donut or get your car fixed, isn’t there a little sign written on the back of a piece of paper in Sharpie marker? No payments over this amount. The $3 surcharge for this 5% surcharge fee. So, um, you know, this is affecting things every single day from the consumer side, but keep in mind, being a merchant gladiator, I’m on the acquirer side. My job is to put myself in the side of the merchant, not the payer. But if you’re going to be a merchant like Alicia, I have the pleasure of having her as one of my clients. She knows more importantly, what her customers think and do and how they operate is super important. So ultimately, um, it’s those queues that we see that are misunderstood. Why did they charge 3%? Why did they charge a dollar? Why are they trying to add money on? Can they do that? Can they not do it? So again it goes along those lines, Joshua unraveling the madness of the queues we see every day when we buy something.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay, so what are some of the things that people get wrong on the merchant side. So let’s talk about that because that’s who we’re this show is is a business to business show and and most of the most of those that are listening are on the the business owner or the business leadership side. Beautiful. What are some of the challenges that that you often encounter that you’ve got to overcome?

Jim Hilber: Yeah. The two hottest topics. Thank you for the question is again what I mentioned that Surcharging, you know, what percentage are they legally allowed to charge? Are they allowed to do it? And they’re still cardholders saying, are they allowed to do this? Right. You know, it’s a difference of a guy saying, hey, you know, remember the guy on the movies when your car breaks down in that little town and he’s holding that big wrench? Sure. They say, well, how much is it going to cost? Well, how much you got? Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: You know.

Jim Hilber: Right. That’s what it is. It’s almost like they’re holding your cup of coffee, you know, hostage with this, you know, surcharging amount. But the truth of the matter is, it used to actually be, for lack of better terms, illegal to surcharge. And that’s where people are confused. You should not be able to allow it. It was a cost of doing business.

Joshua Kornitsky: You couldn’t do a pass through charge.

Jim Hilber: You could not do a pass through. That’s correct. And now you can if you do it the right way. But the biggest challenge you see for merchants is they are in good faith trying to say, hey, I need to work on costs. I am choosing as a merchant to pass this through. Many have, but there’s the right way to do it. And so Merchant Gladiator can help unravel that and make sure they’re doing it in the word of compliance which comes under the shield, the safety doing it the correct way, but doing it in a way to benefit them. And what merchants have to understand is there’s good vendors like myself out there that our job is to really focus on them being, which is not a dirty word. Are you ready for it? Profitable profit is not a dirty word for anybody.

Joshua Kornitsky: You’re speaking my language. I always joke with my clients is it doesn’t say on your website, you’re the last thing I want anybody to be is an accidental nonprofit. If you choose to be a nonprofit, that’s your business. And that’s great. But they still have to. Even in the instance of merchant processing, it’s not like the banks are going to give them a pass on on the execution charge or the processing charge just because they are a nonprofit, correct?

Jim Hilber: That’s correct. Absolutely. It has to be paid for. And then just a quick recap on the other challenges, very common for both merchants and consumers. Um, if I say square on this podcast, everybody knows what square is. And then, of course, I can be at a networking event with Alicia and I say, don’t be square and do the little hand signal making a square. Um, but the truth of the matter is, Square’s a fine product. Nothing wrong with it. And it might fit some merchants, but once merchants compare truly apples to apples and understand what they’re getting. Um, the misconception to your point of your question is that they are, um, just saying they’re all pretty much the same. That’s just not true. They’re not the same. There’s a lot of differences.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you help your clients kind of sift through the differences and understand what’s going to be advantageous for them.

Jim Hilber: Absolutely. Just give them the facts. Because once the facts are clear, the decisions will jump at you.

Joshua Kornitsky: So how often if I. So I am a merchant. I occasionally accept a credit card. It’s not my preferred because of that same surcharge. Um, and I and I don’t always want to pass that along, because I do think it can, in the circumstance might, might give somebody a bad taste or bad impression. That’s case by case. So I’m not going to ask your opinion on that. But, um. What what how often excuse me, should someone reexamine who is handling their merchant services? Because that’s something I know. Uh, when it’s like an embedded payment system, they may have the right to change it, but, you know, it’s just easier to leave the way it is.

Jim Hilber: Absolutely. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it or. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let me say it correctly. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right. No you’re right. That’s a that’s a harmful statement for merchants. So as a blanket statement, for the sake of our listeners today, merchants should evaluate at least annually. And it’s one of my qualifying questions when I’m networking or meeting with people or referral partners is I have them ask Mask it. Hey, I know this guy, Jim, but let’s pocket that for a minute. Josh was talking to a great business owner. How often do you evaluate your merchant payments? And if they’re being honest, they’ve never evaluated them.

Joshua Kornitsky: Or they signed up. And whoever provided the equipment provided the processing, and they. And that was that.

Jim Hilber: You’re talking about every day. Joshua. Wow. Yeah. So so.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s.

Jim Hilber: Really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow.

Jim Hilber: Yeah. That’s and beyond that, you know, it’s like when you work with someone, you know, versus an 800 number or a.com like Alicia. And a matter of fact, Alicia, you do for your evaluation. We need to probably do that. Yes. At any rate, truly the the you don’t close deals, you open relationships. And when you say that on the front end when you’re selling the deal, hopefully you’re available on the back end to do that as well and kind of put your money where your mouth is or I guess your credit card where your mouth is.

Joshua Kornitsky: So, so all joking aside, you you just mentioned to Alicia, do you actually help your clients do this annual review once they’re working with you?

Jim Hilber: Absolutely. And it should be done because things change. Uh, you know, volume and average ticket are the two most important things volume and average ticket. So when I met Alicia in a little coffee shop in Acworth when we first met. Day one. Do you think her volume has grown since then over her last years of success in the last.

Joshua Kornitsky: Couple of years? I suspect so.

Jim Hilber: So possibly. Maybe she needs to sharpen the pencil with her vendors a little bit. Again, she knows as well as I do. Profits is not a dirty word for me as her vendor either. Sure. And so that’s part of it. Um, so yeah, the valuations are super important, but you need a good, viable option, not just somebody. What’s your rate. What’s your rate. That’s the most dangerous statement that can be made. What’s your rate. Because if you say oh I’ve got a good rate, the guy gave me 2%. If you look at that bill and drill it down, he could be paying 4.5% overall effective rate. Because what matters is not what your rate is. Every merchant. This listing will know this. How much money comes out of your bank account is what the important number is, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right, right. Well, and it sounds like, uh, not maligning the, the processing providers, but it sounds like there’s a lot more nuance to it than just the rate.

Jim Hilber: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely. So that’s why you’ve got to have a gladiator in your corner.

Jim Hilber: Glad you got to say Gladiator.

Joshua Kornitsky: Gladiator. So one of the other things that we, uh, we chatted about ahead of time, because I was curious to know, is you had shared with me a concept that resonated with me. You talked a little bit about something called the 12 week year, and I wanted to ask you about that, because that aligns a lot with what what I work with my clients on talking about a 90 day world. Almost the same, but not so. Can can you share that with us? Because I think that’s a really insightful thing that you brought to my attention.

Jim Hilber: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Uh, the 12 week year is a book by Brian Moran. Um, that whole concept could be an entire another podcast.

Joshua Kornitsky: And so I’m going to stick a pin in you. We’ll come back and talk about that.

Jim Hilber: Yeah. Yeah. Um, it’s a beautiful thing, but, um, the 12 week year is based on the premise of, I think, from the insurance companies. Remember how, like, these insurance guys were always bonused for annual, um, you know, production. And they always made their bonus and they were most busy. And if you look at their, um, flash reports for the year, December, they crushed it and they crushed it. It was an annual bonus. It was available January 1st, but they don’t make their bonus till December. So what happens is they’re all just kind of waiting, you know, things are going good, you know? I’ll get there. I’ll get there next month. Oh, I’ll make it up. Stacking your goals. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: So we used to call that sandbagging.

Jim Hilber: And then all of a sudden magically have a great year. So, um, I think the pressure that puts on salespeople, um, especially when you’re trying to stack goals, which you should never do, should recalibrate, um, I think is is monumental. And I’ve again failed more times than people have tried in sales. And so ultimately, I think that, uh, when I was reading Brian’s book, it spoke to me. It’s like, why don’t we break this down in a way that if you put your entire year into 12 weeks and it’s not 90 days and it’s not quarterly.

Joshua Kornitsky: I understand.

Jim Hilber: That’s a that’s a different.

Joshua Kornitsky: Concept, simply drawing a broad comparison. No, you’ve got it.

Jim Hilber: You got it. Um, it’s really just, um, you know, uh, setting those goals to be in 12 weeks. And guess what? The fast forwarding to the end result. If you have a bad year, that’s pretty detrimental for any business.

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely.

Jim Hilber: But if you have a bad 12 weeks, do you think you could bounce it back and save the true calendar year? 1,000%. And more importantly, if you have a great year or 12 weeks, do you think that’s time to put the hammer down and make it even better? So, you know, it helps minimize the challenges of the industry, but it helps capitalize on the actual strength of it. And um, ultimately, like I said, it’s it’s celebratory. You get 12 weeks and you’re doing the happy dance or saying, okay, I got to bear down. And what mistakes did I make?

Joshua Kornitsky: So is this how you run Merchant Gladiator?

Jim Hilber: Absolutely. I’ve been doing it for the past five years, and it’s really helped me, um, grow in a way that’s very systematic, because at least I know very much of a process. Person by nature, I am not. I’m like, uh, I’m the president of Merchant Gladiator, the guy who runs a pretty loose ship. Okay. I mean, I’m a I’m a field player. I, you know, and I’m in a tough industry that needs to have, you know, decimal points in the right position. Sure. But ultimately, this that process allows me to be intentional with how I use my time. And if you open my iPad right now, the first thing on the screensaver says script your day. So every day, because in the 12 week year, to finalize that thought in a 12 week year, a day becomes a week becomes a day, a month becomes a week, and a year becomes 12 weeks. So it’s it’s really scaling things down and just helps you just succeed in a faster way.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. Well and obviously it benefits and trickles through to your clients because you’re helping keep them ahead of things that could potentially impact them.

Jim Hilber: Absolutely, absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, thank you very much for sharing that with us, Jim. That’s that’s just great. Uh, anything that enhances the business relationship between you and your clients and helps your clients get a better view down the road. That ability to predict is everything, right? Nobody. Nobody knows for sure what’s around the corner. But. But if we make educated predictions, we we have a tendency to do a lot better than just randomly guessing and hoping. We come around the corner to a bridge and not a gap in between the mountains.

Jim Hilber: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I always say, what’s a man? But I say, what’s a what’s a business without energy? Nothing, nothing at all. So that’s where the, you know, the motivation and all that type of stuff comes in. Gladiator motivator sounds great, right? But I learned a very.

Joshua Kornitsky: If there was a motive, if there was a gladiator behind me, I’d be pretty motivated.

Jim Hilber: But that’s awesome. But I learned a sad fact. I’ll be honest. I learned that you can’t motivate anybody. You must inspire them. But Gladiator inspire just doesn’t click. So I’m going to stick to Gladiator Motivator at this point.

Joshua Kornitsky: So. So my last question for you before I ask how people can get Ahold of you is, is you had said this earlier on and I just want to ask about it. You had said that you you don’t close deals, you open relationships. Absolutely. Um, tell me what you mean by that.

Jim Hilber: Um, I see a lot of salespeople, and I’ve been one for my entire 30 year sales career. And, um, you know, most of the things once that that that app gets signed, I guess it’s now digitally. I used to literally get them signed on paper and Fedex them at the airport.

Joshua Kornitsky: And then you rode the dinosaur to the delivery.

Jim Hilber: Exactly. Uh, somebody tried to send me a fax. I said, I can’t get a fax. He goes, oh, where are you at the 21st century? Um, so yeah, I think relationships are everything. Um, not only is it good for business, it’s really good for our spirit and our heart. Uh, the energy that’s created in a room with Alicia and I seeing her run a meeting or be a participant in a meeting is absolutely contagious. Joshua, I saw you operating in northwest Georgia and just taking names, and I loved your style. I loved it, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here today. So, yeah, let’s, uh, let’s talk about relationships more than just deals.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s fantastic. Well, Jim, what’s the best way for people to reach you And it sounds like if I’m going to ask this question, but I’m asking Alicia as well, it sounds like both of you are willing to answer questions from people that are just curious. Is that.

Jim Hilber: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Is that a fair?

Alicia Todisco: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So, Jim, how do people reach you if they have a question?

Jim Hilber: Yeah. You know, um, I always say, you know, everybody in the industry has a help desk, and I’ll be honest, I’ll help desk suck. And we hope ours sucks the least. But let me tell you something. Uh, I like to talk to people, and I give every client and every prospect and every person out there my direct number. It is (770) 883-2080. And a lot of listeners like to text. I’m happy to take one of those as well. Um, but yeah, reach out to me or Jim at Merchant Gladiator.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wonderful. And as I mentioned before with Alicia, we will have your contact information, your phone number, your website, any social links. All of that will be on the Cherokee Business Radio website. Uh, as soon as we get everything posted and live. Well, I can’t thank you enough for being here, Jim. Uh, the champion of merchant payments, the president of Merchant Gladiator. Uh, Alicia Tedesco, the owner of Ace Handyman Services. I felt like I needed to give it more emphasis.

Alicia Todisco: A little oomph.

Joshua Kornitsky: A little oomph. Yeah, I like it. The gladiator. Now, that doesn’t work. Uh, I thank you both for coming in. It was a wonderful dynamic between the two of you. I think you both are focused on helping the people that just are are brave enough to ask for the help. Uh, and that’s the last thing I thank you for being here. I appreciate your time and your energy. Um, this has been another wonderful episode of Cherokee Business Radio. I’m your host, Joshua Kornitsky professional US implementer. We’ll see you next time.

BRX Pro Tip: Content Strategy

June 18, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: Content Strategy

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, you know we’ve been at this a while. We produce an incredible amount of content day in, day out, week in, week out. But we do try to apply some strategic direction to how that’s distributed, how that’s leveraged. Speak a little bit to your perspective on content and content strategy.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think it’s important to understand that every piece of content that you share has a job to do. And you shouldn’t just be producing random pieces of content, because those are rarely going to deliver any type of meaningful result. So, you have to think strategically. Each post, every video, every podcast, every article should have a clear purpose and be tailored to the platform it lives on. You have to ask yourself, what outcome do I want from this piece of content and who am I trying to reach?

Lee Kantor: And every platform has its own culture and its own strengths and its own language. For example, LinkedIn is great for building authority and building and nurturing professional relationships. Instagram and TikTok, they’re about visual storytelling and quick engagement. YouTube is great for in-depth education and building brand loyalty over time. And even Twitter or X is good for real time updates and conversations.

Lee Kantor: But remember, before you hit publish, think about what you want each piece of content to achieve, what is the outcome you desire. And think about it in these terms, do you want traffic to your website? Do you want more leads? Do you want to be building community? Do you want to be building brand awareness? Once you’ve decided on those outcomes, then match your message and format to the expectation of each of those platforms and each of those platforms audience.

From Test Anxiety to Triumph: The Entrepreneurial Leap of Sarah Michelle Boes

June 17, 2025 by angishields

In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Stone Payton talks with Sarah Michelle Boes, founder of Sarah Michelle NP Reviews. Sarah shares her journey from nurse practitioner to entrepreneur, building a successful online test prep business during the pandemic and selling it after rapid growth. Following her daughter’s diagnosis with congenital heart disease, Sarah became an advocate for awareness and research. She discusses her advocacy work, memoir writing, and new podcast projects, offering insights on resilience, business transitions, and the importance of supporting congenital heart disease initiatives.

Sarah Michelle Boes, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, is the Founder of Sarah Michelle NP Reviews and also served as the Chief Nursing Officer at Blueprint Test Prep.

With a robust educational background including a BSN from the University of Kentucky and an MSN in Nursing Education from Western Governors University, Sarah has extensive experience in oncology, intensive care, and nursing education. After obtaining her family nurse practitioner degree in 2020 she launched SMNP Reviews, an innovative platform that rapidly grew to a seven-figure business within seven months. Following SMNP Reviews’ acquisition by Blueprint in 2022, Sarah transitioned to a role where she continued to oversee the nursing vertical while integrating cutting-edge educational technologies.

Sarah’s entrepreneurial journey is deeply intertwined with her personal life. Her daughter Meadow, born with severe heart defects, has required extensive medical care, inspiring Sarah’s commitment to pediatric cardiac research and care. In recognition of Meadow’s journey, Sarah has become a congenital heart disease activist and philanthropist. She serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations that support and advocate for this cause.

Beyond her business success, Sarah is a passionate advocate for mental health and female entrepreneurship. Her own experiences with anxiety and OCD have fueled her mission to help others manage mental health challenges, particularly within high-stakes environments like healthcare. She leverages her platform to support female entrepreneurs and promote awareness about the importance of mental well-being in professional settings.

With a significant social media following and notable media features, Sarah continues to influence the healthcare and entrepreneurial communities. She was recently honored with the Baylor Landrum Jr. “Leave a Legacy” Award in recognition of her leadership and dedication to improving the community through giving. Sarah aims to further her impact through philanthropy, focusing on congenital heart disease and mental health advocacy, while supporting ongoing advancements in pediatric healthcare.

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Episode Highlights

Sarah’s transition from nurse practitioner to entrepreneur during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Development of an online course for nurse practitioner test preparation.
Overcoming challenges related to test anxiety and inadequate traditional review courses.
Rapid business growth and revenue milestones achieved within months.
Decision to sell the business to focus on teaching and education.
Advocacy for congenital heart disease following personal experience with her daughter’s diagnosis.
Importance of raising awareness and funding for congenital heart disease research.
Insights on the emotional journey of selling a business and negotiation strategies.
Current projects, including memoir writing and podcasting.
Emphasis on resilience, personal transformation, and the impact of advocacy.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast founder with Sarah Michelle NP Reviews, the lady herself, Sarah Michelle Boes. How are you?

Sarah Michelle Boes: I am incredible. Thank you so much for having me today.

Stone Payton: Well, it’s a delight to have you on the program and I got a ton of questions, but I think a good place. There’s just so much I don’t know, Sarah. Uh, I think a good place to start, though, would be if you could articulate for for me and our listeners. Mission. Purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Sarah Michelle Boes: You know, honestly, I’ve thought about that a lot this year. And I think at my core, I really just want to rewrite what’s possible and kind of help people reframe their brains about what their lives could look like. Because if you had told me five years ago that I was going to create and sell a business and become a mom and all these incredible, exciting things I’ve been able to do, I would have never believed you because I was very risk averse, and I never would have thought I would have been entrepreneur. But being an entrepreneur has just really opened up a whole new season in my life that I am forever grateful for.

Stone Payton: So say more about that journey. How did you land here?

Sarah Michelle Boes: You know, a lot of great businesses come out of your own pain in a way, and I was about to graduate nurse practitioner school. It was in literally the prom and thick of Covid, and the market for nurse practitioner review courses and test prep to take the exam was very archaic. And so during Covid, they took what they used to do in two day in-person conferences and threw it on zoom. And they thought that would be a good fit. But that’s not exactly how that works. And so I was having major test anxiety preparing to take this exam. It was getting canceled all the time because it was Covid. And then I finally got to take the exam. It’s one of the easiest exams I’ve ever taken. And I was like, oh my goodness. Like, I really feel like if you can graduate nurse practitioner school, you can pass this exam. You just have to be able to believe in yourself and manage your anxiety to be able to do that. And it was that very, very simple idea of this is really about test anxiety. It’s less about the content. And I already know I love to teach. Like, could I create something that would have been what I wanted and serve my own pain points? And so I literally did it in a single weekend. So Memorial Day weekend 2020. My husband was outside building a smoker out of cinder blocks because he desperately wanted a smoker and we were too broke to buy one, and I sat inside and recorded a course on zoom that changed the entire trajectory of our lives.

Stone Payton: What a incredible leap of faith. I mean, that had to take some some guts to do that.

Sarah Michelle Boes: You know, people say that I don’t know, you know, because I’m a little bit risk averse, which is funny now looking back. But I think like the guts came in the sense of like willing to be cringe almost and put yourself out there and just see what happens. But I do think very fortunately for me, like there wasn’t a huge monetary risk, like the real risk I was running was like loss of time. And I was like, it’s Covid. Nothing else is happening in my world, in sphere right now. Like, if I lose a week of my time, two weeks of my time this weekend, etc. building this course and it doesn’t work, That’s fun. Um, but that course really ended up being what people not only really wanted, but they also really, really needed.

Stone Payton: So did you find that people embraced this pretty early on? Did it take off pretty quickly for you?

Sarah Michelle Boes: Yeah. So I made over Memorial Day weekend and that following Monday, I put it out to all my classmates because me being overachiever me, I was the first person in my class to test, and there were like 30 or so of us. And so I gave it to my 30 classmates for free and said, look, I’m going to give you this course. You tell me what you think and invite one other person to my group. I made a Facebook group, and so I let in the first 100 people for free, and by day three I was like, okay, like I’m already getting some good feedback and people are liking it. And this is a three hour course that I have made over the weekend. I was like, I’m just going to try to sell it and see what happens. And so the very first person I went to sell it to, I was selling it for $25 for lifetime access to my three hour course. And she said, absolutely not. My friend got it for free. Why would I pay you $25? And so she ended up haggling me down to $15. So for the very first day of my business, I sold it for $15, and I made $1,000 in a day. And it was so insane to me that I could possibly make $1,000 in a day and not leave my house. And from something that I actually enjoyed and wanted to do, I was like, oh my goodness, I have to like, dive head first. Like, what if I made $1,000 every single day? How cool would that be?

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, what what are you finding the most rewarding? What are you enjoying the most about it these days?

Sarah Michelle Boes: Well, you know, it has been a wild ride over these last few years. So to kind of give a bird’s eye view of the business, I started at the very tail end of May 2020. By August of that year, I made my first hundred thousand. Um, and by the time we were seven months in, I had made $1 million. And so I was kind of riding this rocket ship, and it was so much fun building, and it was so much fun exploring and really co-creating with my students, because what a lot of people don’t see from the outside is there was so much co-creation because I talked to thousands and thousands of my first customers, and I’m like, what did you like? What didn’t you like? What did you want more of? And that co-creation, that iteration and pivoting piece is so important in a new business, which is also why you can start messy and pivot later. I tell people all the time, I’m like, don’t overcomplicate starting a business. Just start messy because you’re going to change it anyways. But that being said, I was writing this rocket ship. I didn’t know how long it was going to be a rocket ship. I just knew it was flying into space. And so that was ultimately about the time that I decided to sell, because it was growing so rapidly that we were breaking every piece of software that we were touching and Like every like literally all the problems of a big business. But when you’re kind of like running it as a solopreneur feel huge. I mean, even just figuring out how to pay sales tax in every state because it was an online business was a huge thing to tackle, and I was really wearing all these hats. But the thing that I love in my life the most is to teach and to educate.

Sarah Michelle Boes: And so the more hats I took on, the less teaching, educating I got to do. And so my hope and my dream was in selling my business. A we would get the resources and the software that we needed like so desperately needed. But b I would get back to the parts of the business I love the most. And I’m not sure how much we talked about this when we talked previously, but within a month of selling my business, I was pregnant and I found out my daughter was sick. And so that really kind of flipped on its head what I imagined the acquisition process would look like and what I imagine my role would look like. And so for me, now, I’m doing the thing I love most, which is educating and teaching, but I’m kind of doing it in a brand new way because my daughter, with being born with congenital heart disease, I’ve now become such an advocate for her, and I’ve become an advocate for the congenital heart disease community. And I’m trying to educate and teach people all the time that congenital heart disease. So heart defects are the most common birth defect there is is 1 in 100, but they’re one of the very least funded. And so my mission and my advocacy work is to change that because awareness is what creates the funding, and funding is what creates the research that’s going to change my daughter’s life and the lives of those like her. So in a long winded way, I’m still doing the thing that I love the most. I’m just not necessarily doing it within my previous business and the way that I was. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing either.

Stone Payton: Well, I wouldn’t think so. And it sounds like everything that came before is is now helping you be that much more powerful and productive in serving this new pursuit of yours. I think that’s fantastic.

Sarah Michelle Boes: I absolutely agree every day, like being able to have the entrepreneurial expertise for nurse practitioner expertise, because I am technically a nurse practitioner, but also like the personal advocacy story of almost losing our daughter when she was four months old. All of those come together to create a really powerful way to advocate, which is I mean, I was literally in Washington, DC a month ago, so advocacy work is a really huge part of my life these days. And I think even in my previous business, I was advocating for mental health because, you know, none of the other review courses were talking about mental health as part of that game. And I was really the first person to bring that to light. So I think I’ve just switched my advocacy hat.

Stone Payton: So now a day in the life of Sarah Michelle is a little bit different, but but a lot of common threads like you tell us a little bit more about how you’re investing your time and energy on a day to day basis now?

Sarah Michelle Boes: Man, I think today is a perfect example of me as a human because I got up this morning with my daughter, and it’s always super important for me to have a slow morning with my daughter and be really intentional and get to soak that time in. And then we actually were invited by the American Heart Association to a go red luncheon, where we did a survivor fashion show. So I got to be my daughter’s escort down the runway this morning and get to talk all about congenital heart disease and how important it is to us and our family and those around us. And then I’m doing podcasts this afternoon. I’m on the board at our local children’s hospital. I have a children’s hospital event this afternoon as well. So today is very much an advocacy day and an advocacy filling day for me, but also a lot of my time right now, outside of the advocacy work I do, is working on my memoir because I’m about 100,000 words in which I’m very proud of, but I’m not done quite yet. And I really I want to be able to tell my story in a way that shows people just like what is possible, because I grew up in eastern Kentucky. Five years ago, I was making $40,000 a year as a nurse. And now to be able to have, like, the freedom of time and flexibility and money to chase the causes I love the most. Like I can’t even begin to describe how lucky I feel every single day when I wake up.

Stone Payton: Well, I would certainly say that you are fortunate to be blessed in that way. I don’t think luck had anything to do with it. And hearing you describe how this journey has, uh, has, has unfolded for you, I do have kind of a tactical question that you might have some insight on. Uh, what do you think people sometimes get wrong or misunderstand about getting ready to, to sell and live through the selling of their business. Any insight on that?

Sarah Michelle Boes: Oh my goodness. It is such an emotional process. That’s what I want people to understand before they ever walk through the door of the first meeting. It is an emotional process and you want to be as clear headed as possible. And so I think one of the very best ways to do that, if you’re thinking about an acquisition, and one of the things I’m most grateful that me and my husband did together was that we decided what our number was before we ever talked to anybody. So that way, when we got our first letter of intent and we got our first offer and valuation, when we looked at it and it wasn’t our number, it wasn’t like, oh my goodness, we really liked these people or we really want to do this over here. It was no, it’s simply not our number. So I really think that’s a great place to start. And the other thing I tell people a lot is that the deal is not done until it’s done. And it can be really difficult when you’re excited and you’re thinking about the valuation, you’re thinking about how your life is going to change to get lost in that fact. But the deal closes when all the papers are signed and it can fall apart at any moment. And a lot of deals do. And it’s nothing to do with you necessarily. That’s just also part of the process. Normal, unexpected part.

Stone Payton: So I want to hear more about this podcast. Are you being a guest on a podcast or is this one that you’re hosting?

Sarah Michelle Boes: Oh, I’m a little bit everywhere right now. So I actually had a podcast episode come out today. Um, that is another medical parent, and we’re talking about different advocacy work that we do in medical play and the different ways that we prepare our doctors for their appointments. And also as a passion project side project. For me, this will sound a little out of left field. Um, but for anyone who knows me personally, it makes a lot of sense because I’m very multi-passionate and I like to do all the things just for fun. I actually have my own astrology podcast, so.

Stone Payton: Of course you do.

Sarah Michelle Boes: Of course I do. Um, but for me, I gotta have a little bit of fun in there. And the astrology podcast, which is called the Cosmic Group chat. Me and my best friend do it is my little bit of fun that I get to sprinkle in.

Stone Payton: I love it! So what do you need more of and how can how can we help?

Sarah Michelle Boes: You know, I think the most important thing for me right now is just building the foundation and letting people know about who I am and my story, because my memoir will be coming out later this year, and I’m very excited about that. But it’s obviously it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of marketing work. It’s a lot of getting it out there. And so everyone who could possibly even be remotely interested by reading the story, which is so much more than building and selling a business that was obviously a big piece of it. I’m grateful for every opportunity to do that.

Stone Payton: What an exciting time for you and for all of us. I we’re going to continue to follow your story, and I want to make sure that we leave our listeners with some coordinates to connect with you, to tap into your podcast work, to get their hands on this memoir when it’s ready. Well, let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Sarah Michelle Boes: Oh, yes. I think the easiest place to start is Sarah Michelle Bowes. Com and that is Sarah with an H. And that is Bowes spelled in as B, as in boy o e s. And then I also have a pretty heavy social presence. Everyone knows that they can get Ahold of me at my Instagram, which is Sarah Michelle MP, MP. Being as a nurse practitioner, I’m the one that runs that account, so I’m the one that answers the messages. So you’re not getting a robot or a different human. It really is me and I love having human to human connection with people. You can also find me on the more standard places like LinkedIn. I do a lot of writing there, and if for whatever reason you’re interested in astrology or that piques your interest, I do the My Beginner Astrology podcast for anyone who’s just, we call it Astro curious, and that’s called the cosmic Group chat.

Stone Payton: I love it, Astro curious. Now I have a new phrase at the cocktail party. That’s terrific. Well, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast. Keep up the good work. The the work you’re doing is so important and impacting so many. And we sure appreciate you.

Sarah Michelle Boes: Thank you so much. I really hope to change the world for children with congenital heart disease. So I got a lot of work ahead of me.

Stone Payton: You do, but I think you’re up for it. And it’s been my pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Sarah Michelle bows and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

Build Smart: Using AI with Purpose to Beat Overwhelm Part 2

June 17, 2025 by angishields

On today’s Women in Motion, Lee Kantor and Renita Manley are joined by AI expert Stephanie Nivinskus to discuss practical strategies for integrating artificial intelligence into business. Stephanie explains the importance of detailed prompts for effective AI use, shares top AI tool recommendations, and offers advice on overcoming overwhelm when adopting new technologies. The conversation emphasizes thoughtful, incremental learning and highlights Stephanie’s book, “Sizzle or Fizzle,” as a resource for business owners seeking to leverage AI for greater efficiency and impact.

SizzleForce Marketing is a very carefully curated team of certified fractional CMO’s, AI marketing strategy & execution specialists, digital marketing strategists, content marketers, copywriters, website designers and developers, branding experts, and social media marketers. Every day we strategize and execute marketing solutions for mission-driven, scaling companies. We service a broad range of clients, but we have an extra special place in our heart for pet brands. It might have something to do with the fact that we have not one, but two dogs on staff.

Everyone’s got a story to tell, and Stephanie Nivinskus, CEO of SizzleForce, knows how to tell them. Since 1995, she’s helped thousands of business owners, big and small, transform their mission and vision into strategic marketing plans, compelling brand stories and meaningful marketing messages that humanize commerce, maximize opportunities and win customers.

The international #1 bestselling author of Absolutely Unforgettable: The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Heart-Centered Brand That Stands Out In A Noisy World, Stephanie is well-respected in the marketing industry.

She has written for Forbes and Entrepreneur and shared the stage with some of the world’s most renowned marketing and business growth experts, including Les Brown, Jasmine Star, and Suzy Batiz at Digital Marketer events as well as at countless business-building conferences including Level Up Live, The Copywriter Club IRL, and more.

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here with Renita Manley, welcome to another episode of Women in Motion. We could not be doing this show without the support of WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories and covering these important topics.

Lee Kantor: And today, we’re digging in deep again on the topic of AI, and today’s episode is Build Smart Using AI with Purpose to Beat Overwhelm. And once again, we have our resident expert in AI, Stephanie Nivinskus, and she’s with SizzleForce, and author of the book, Sizzle Or Fizzle. Renita, this is going to be a great show.

Renita Manley: Yeah. So, this is part two of our AI series, and like Lee said, we’re discussing Using AI with Purpose to be Overwhelmed. So, we’re diving into how to thoughtfully integrate AI into your business, how to choose the right tools for your business goals, and how to avoid AI overwhelm and overload.

Lee Kantor: So, Stephanie, you want to kind of get us started on this topic, AI is everywhere but does it belong in everything?

Stephanie Nivinskus: AI is everywhere for sure, Lee. Does it belong in everything? I don’t think so yet, but yet is the key word in my answer. I think right now there are specific applications in life and business where AI is critical, and some other things not so much.

Stephanie Nivinskus: You know, for example, my daughter is almost 18, and she wants to get into the child care industry. And I don’t really see a place for robots running a classroom with 25 three year olds. You know what I mean? I don’t really see that happening. I could see it assisting in some ways, but there’s still going to be a human that’s needed in that space. But in terms of your typical office routines, your administrative operational tasks and marketing tasks, I think AI is a must.

Lee Kantor: Now, you’re using AI and robots kind of side by side. Are they a similar thing? Like, how are you kind of discerning the difference between AI and robots?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Well, when I’m thinking of AI, I’m thinking of bots, which is short for robot. So, you know, this is a complicated question, it’s kind of a funny one for you to ask this. Have you ever been to Vegas?

Lee Kantor: I have.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Okay. Have you met Aura, the humanoid?

Lee Kantor: No, I have not.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Okay. What about you, Renita, have you?

Lee Kantor: You’re muted, Renita.

Renita Manley: Yeah, I sure am muted. No, I have not met that robot.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Okay. All of you guys, the next time you go to Vegas – actually I think it was when I was in Vegas with WBEC the last time that I went to the Sphere, and they have a whole exhibit where you can meet the humanoid robots. And humanoid, meaning they’re built to kind of look like a human frame, and they talk and converse with you, and do all this stuff. That’s super kind of sci-fi-ish right now, right? It’s very entertaining. It’s fun to think of it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Like I asked it – her name was Aura – and I said, Aura, are you funny? Like can you laugh at a joke? And she went, “Yes, I can. Ha. Ha. Ha.” So, that’s a robot. It’s a humanoid. When I’m thinking of bots in an AI sense, they can also just be little worker bees behind the computer.

Lee Kantor: And then, these worker bees are just code, though.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah.

Lee Kantor: I mean, for the listener who is not – you’re immersed in this technology all the time, so a lot of things I think that you maybe just take for granted or understand just through being in the world that you are so much, I don’t know if everybody who is working in another area understands it in the level you do. So, I just want to get clarity around some of the terms that we’re using.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, I think that the best way to break this down is to say that all bots are actually robots, but not all robots are bots. Okay? So, if that’s not clear as mud, here’s the difference. A robot has a body, not necessarily a beating heart body, but it has the figure of a body. It can move. It might have arms. It might have legs. It might have a head. It could be in the form of a dog. It could be in the form of a human, whatever. A bot is digital. It is. It’s just code. So, it is what automates the tasks inside the computer.

Lee Kantor: And then, by leveraging that code, we’re able to have the computer, we can lean on its knowledge base of lots and lots of data that it’s kind of accumulated, plus maybe some of our specific data in order to help us think through strategic questions or tactical questions, and help us physically create tools that can help us grow our business faster. So, the topic is overwhelmed, so this can help us kind of lessen our overwhelm, because we have this partner here that’s helping us with some of the things that are overwhelming us.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, a lot of people will refer to a tool like ChatGPT as an AI assistant.

Lee Kantor: And that’s how we should be treating it, right? We should be asking it to do things for us. We should ask it questions of things we don’t understand, maybe. And then, its job is to just answer the questions and be useful to us.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Renita Manley: Okay. So, I have a question for you, what’s the easiest way to gut check your current business operations to see where AI can actually lighten the load instead of overwhelming yourself?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Great question, Renita. Oh, so good. I think the best place to start is really by thinking about the tasks that are very repetitive in your business, and which of those tasks could an assistant help with little training. It could be something like, you know, summarizing a meeting or drafting a proposal or following up on a lead. If it feels repetitive, if it feels like a time suck, there’s a very high likelihood that AI will be able to help with it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, I always say, you know, you’re never going to know if it’s really going to help you unless you test it, right? So, run a small experiment with a tool or a workflow and see if it helps you. If it helps you, great, do more of it. If it doesn’t help you, figure out if it didn’t help you because maybe you didn’t give it the right instructions, or if it simply wasn’t helpful for you. Because even though there’s a million AI tools out there that can help people, that doesn’t mean every single tool can help every single person.

Renita Manley: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, right before we hopped on today’s podcast, Steph, I was actually scrolling on Instagram and I was getting bombarded with ads telling me that I’m almost 100 years old because I’m still using ChatGPT, and there are 50 other apps that I should be using. So, what do you say to WBEs and other small business owners who are like me, still on Instagram or scrolling on Instagram and we’re just constantly seeing, “Hey, you’re using ChatGPT. You suck”?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Okay. Well, that’s funny that you’re saying that. I have not come across that, so I must be 200 years old and they’ve just given up. But no, I mean that’s ridiculous.

Renita Manley: Let me explain it, I don’t know what actual ad it was, but if there’s anyone out there listening and maybe you have experienced this same thing with me. So, Steph, I’m scrolling on Instagram, there’s actually a horsy call, something that’s telling me that I can learn 50 AI tools in four weeks if I try.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I’ve seen that, yes.

Renita Manley: Okay. Well, what do you say to a WBE who sees that, and then they’re like, “Oh, my gosh. What am I supposed to do?”

Stephanie Nivinskus: I think it’s total overwhelm. I think it’s designed to give you the highest level overview of a whole bunch of tools, and you probably only need three or four of them. And so, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to learn about all these things and you’re going to be like, “Oh, my gosh. I can do this. I can do that. I can do the other thing.” And, “Oh. Well, that’s not really relevant in my business. I don’t really need that.” Or, “No, I already have a system that’s working just fine for me in this capacity.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: That’s my take on those things. I don’t think really anybody needs to know that many tools, unless this is your life like me, right? I need to know that many tools because this is my livelihood. But the rest of you guys, no. It’s silly. And it’s also like, okay, well, you can learn a tiny bit about a million different tools, or you can learn to use two or three or four of them really, really well, and you will get far better results if you do the latter.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you know if it’s better to hire an expert like yourself or just kind of dig in there? Because a lot of folks are feeling the overwhelm of this is too hard, there’s too many choices, and these ads are probably trying to do that and create kind of that fear and overwhelm. But as a business owner, how much should I be diving in and really having knowledge and ownership over this? Or should I just say, “You know what? I don’t do my taxes. I hire an expert for that. Why don’t I just hire an expert for this?”

Stephanie Nivinskus: I think it really depends how much you intend to use AI, as well as how much time you have to put into learning it. Because anybody could get on ChatGPT and enter in a couple of, you know, basic prompts and get something mediocre out. That’s easy and anyone can do that.

Stephanie Nivinskus: But if you really intend to integrate AI into multiple facets of your business, AI and automations, then I think you probably need to bring in someone like me. If you don’t have the time or maybe you just don’t have the interest, maybe you’re just like, “You know what? I don’t want to do this. I want to go play pickleball” or “I can’t do this. I need to be in a meeting closing a sale,” that’s when you bring in someone like me to come in and do the heavy lifting for you, and then simplify it into step-by-step solutions that we can teach you how to implement on a daily basis really easily and really fast, so it will shorten the learning curve substantially.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And really, for you to get the most out of these tools, there is quite a bit of a learning curve. Sometimes people will be like, “Oh, I’ve got ChatGPT figured out,” “Why do you think you have it figured out?” I’ll say, and they’ll say, “Well, you know, I know how to prompt. I tell it my tone of voice. I tell it a couple things about me, and I get great stuff. I’m really happy.” Okay, if that’s where someone’s at, well, more power to them. Run with that.

Stephanie Nivinskus: But I will tell you, you do not have ChatGPT figured out at all if that is what you’re saying, because it goes so much deeper than that, so much deeper, and it is capable of so much more. But you don’t know it because you don’t know the intricacies, and that’s where a professional can be helpful.

Renita Manley: I think that your book Sizzle Or Fizzle might be the perfect bridge between should I hire an expert or can I do this myself? Shameless plug, but do you think so too?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, I think it’s definitely an option for someone that’s in the middle, someone that’s like I want expert guidance. Because otherwise, what are you left with? You’re either left just kind of pushing buttons on your computer and hoping something works, or maybe you watch a random YouTube video here or there, or you go to a session at a conference once in a year, and then you try and implement it at home, you’re like, “Well, I don’t remember half of what I learned.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: My book, definitely, because it’s filled with these 30 day implementation plans at the end of every chapter. It will guide you through learning how to use AI if your goal is to build a personal brand, grow your influence, and become the go-to authority in your industry, because that’s what the book is about.

Stephanie Nivinskus: If you want to learn things like how do I make an AI avatar of myself, how do I make a clone, a digital clone of myself so I can have a YouTube channel, but I never have to actually show my face. I can have a digital replica of myself and my voice running the whole channel. If you want stuff like that, that’s not in my book, and that’s probably stuff that you don’t want to try and learn on your own, but it is so stinking powerful, oh, my word.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I have a girlfriend who did this. She’s actually a pretty big name in AI, and her name is Julia McCoy, if you guys want to look her up. She’s very much a thought leader in this space. And she started a YouTube channel, I want to say it was in January of 2024, if I remember correctly. And I think it was around June or July, we were on the phone one day chatting about all the AI nerdiness, and we started talking about her YouTube channel, and I think at that point she had something like 80,000 followers.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And I was like, “Oh, my gosh. Your YouTube channel is cranking. You did that in seven months. That’s great.” And she goes, “Oh, that’s nothing. No, no, no. I need to get it to a million.” And she’s like, “I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it by January.” And I was like, “All right. You know what? If anyone’s going to do it, it’s you, Julia. You go, girl.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: Well, fast forward and it’s now January of 2025. And Julia came down with this very mysterious, debilitating illness, to the point where, like, in bed for months unable to do anything. Now, turn back the hands of time a couple of months, and she had been working on creating a digital clone of herself on YouTube. Just experimenting with this.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Okay, so now we’re back in January, she’s super sick, but she has this clone and she’s like, “Hmm, what can I make the clone do while I’m sick?” The clone has since run her entire YouTube channel, and it has absolutely exploded, absolutely off the charts explosion. And she doesn’t get in front of a camera, ever. She does behind the scenes stuff, but there’s literally a digital clone of her. Does that make sense?

Renita Manley: It does make sense. That’s so cool. Sometimes I watch YouTube videos and I wonder, like, how does this person never sick? Like, they are always pumping out videos. I just wonder if they’re using AI clones.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, she has videos that are getting 113,000 views and it’s not her. It’s not her. She’s at home resting and healing her body.

Renita Manley: Definitely that’s so cool.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. So, it’s pretty amazing what’s possible. If you want to do stuff like that, bring in a professional. Don’t try and figure that out on your own.

Renita Manley: So, who do you think your Sizzle Or Fizzle book or what type of WBE is that perfect for? So, let’s say our WBEs out there listening and they’re like, “Hmm, I want to be an AI industry expert,” what kind of WBE do you imagine your book would be ideal for?

Stephanie Nivinskus: I think it is ideal for somebody who is really in a place of needing and wanting to establish themselves as a leader in their space. Maybe they’ve got, you know, a decent amount of experience doing what they do, but they’re kind of still a secret. You know, they have some clients, but they’re capable of so much more, they want to have a voice that’s bigger, they want to be known as a thought leader in their space, this book is perfect for that person. And that person has to have time to actually do the 30 day exercises. That is the ideal person.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And, you know, I mean, some of this stuff while I break it down and I make it step-by-step, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be done in 30 minutes. You’re learning a whole new technology. You’re learning an entirely new way of positioning yourself. So, you know, it’s a time investment, and if you have the time or you can make the time, and you want to be positioned as a leader, a thought leader, you want to become a bigger influencer, then, yeah, my book’s a perfect fit for you.

Lee Kantor: Is there any actionable advice you can share for the person other than get your book and follow the 30 day plan? But some things, the low hanging fruit they can be doing, you know, when they’re frustrated of being that best kept secret, what are some of the things that can elevate them a little bit, at least the baby steps? And maybe it’s kind of sharing some of the big kind of chunks that, that 30 day kind of game plan will allow you to do.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that somebody needs to do when they’re kind of on this mission is you need to figure out what your place is. Like, what is the unique value that you bring to the market, and how are you going to strategically position yourself, right? This isn’t an AI question. This is a you question. This is a, well, what do I want to be a thought leader for? What do I want to be known for? Where do I want to plant my flag, so to speak? That’s step one, and that’s something that you do without AI. You’ve got to figure out not just where you want to plant your flag, but also why people should trust you.

Stephanie Nivinskus: For most of us, you can throw a nickel and hit ten competitors, right? So, you’ve got to figure out where are you going to plant that flag and what makes you trustworthy. And that could be anything from, you know, your education, it could be your experience working with certain clients, it could be awards that you’ve won. There’s a million different differentiators, but you got to get clear on that stuff and you’ve got to be able to articulate that, and then you jump to the next steps.

Lee Kantor: And that’s where they should start before even attempting to kind of plug AI into whatever system.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Clarify your unique value proposition. Figure out why they should trust you. Oh, and one other thing, identify the unique problems that you solve for people. So, everyone’s got problems, what problems do you fix or solve really, really well? And what do you really like to solve?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Like, I love to solve the AI overwhelm problem. When people are overwhelmed, they’re like, “Ah, I’m pulling my hair out. I don’t know what to do” or “I’m just getting this mediocre regurgitated fluff from AI, and I want good stuff that sets me apart.” I love working with someone like that. Who do you love to work with? What fires you up and makes you feel like, yeah, today was a good day at work?

Renita Manley: I like that approach. So, what are two or three questions that a small business owner can maybe just go to ChatGPT, since we’re all so familiar with that, what are two good prompts that we can write down and save for later? Or, you know, ask ChatGPT to help us get started with integrating AI into our business.

Renita Manley: So, let’s just say, “Hmm. Steph is right. Let me see what I can do. I’m going to ChatGPT and I say, hey, ChatGPT, how can you help my business grow?” I know I wouldn’t start with that question because, you know, it’s just way too bland, but what are two very good questions that an unfamiliar WBE to AI can use to start off her prompt experience with AI.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Okay. Well, here’s something that I’m going to tell you about prompting that a lot of people don’t know. Most people will do prompts that are one to three sentences long. Unless every word of those one to three sentences is like sharper than a sword, you’re going to get very mediocre results from those kinds of prompts. They might sound better than something you could write yourself if you’re not a writer, but it’s going to be mediocre because you’re not giving the AI enough, in this case, ChatGPT, you’re not giving ChatGPT enough to work with for it to really give you the good stuff.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, a proper prompt is going to be longer. That doesn’t mean it has to be, you know, like I talked about in the last episode, my 46 page prompt, that’s not what I’m talking about either. But you need to think of it the same way you would if you were training a human being to do something for you.

Stephanie Nivinskus: You wouldn’t hire an assistant and say whatever – you wouldn’t hire an assistant and say something like write an email to this client. They would be like, “Well, who’s the client? What’s the email about? What’s the tone? I mean, are we happy and friendly? Are we congratulating them on something? Are we angry with them? Are we demanding payment on something?” You would tell them, otherwise that person would just sit at the computer and be like, “I’m supposed to write an email to this person, but I have no idea what to say.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: ChatGPT is the same way. It doesn’t know what to do unless you tell it what you want. And the more detail you can give it, the more it will dial in exactly what you’re looking for. So, yes, you’ll give it the command to write this email, but give it all the background information. Give it all the tone information. If you have a desired length for the email, tell it that.

Stephanie Nivinskus: If you want it formatted in a certain way – like a lot of people when we were growing up, most of us learned you have to have five sentences in a paragraph. I don’t know if you guys remember hearing that as as a kid, but that’s what makes a paragraph, five sentences. And you never, ever, ever have one sentence has its own paragraph.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Well, the digital world has completely changed that and turned that on its head. And now, one sentence paragraphs are the easiest way for people to digest information. So, if you want your emails written like that, you got to tell ChatGPT that’s what you want. So, I don’t have a specific prompt to give you to start with. I have more the concepts of the things that you need to share with it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And like I said in the first training that we did here or the first podcast, sharing examples of what you want it to do for you will do so much more than anything else. So, if you have an example of another email that you’ve written, or maybe another five emails that you’ve written that have gotten the desired result that you want from this email, feed it to ChatGPT. Let it see it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: You can upload a PDF, you can upload different kinds of documents and you can say, “Analyze these emails and tell me what patterns you see.” It will say, “Oh. Well, I see that you have a friendly greeting, and then I see that you bring up a shocking statistic, and then you talk about an action, or you explain why something is happening, and then you talk about a suggested solution, and then you have a call to action in it, and then you sign off the email.” It might say something like that.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And then, you say, “Great, let’s make that a framework for how I write emails for this particular reason. And so, now, I need you to write this email using that framework with this kind of tone, to this kind of person, in this length, in this style, blah, blah, blah.” Making sense?

Lee Kantor: Do you think that it’s possible to ask the AI to write the prompt for you, like you mentioned, like in a general way, I would like to write an email about this, can you write the prompt that will help me prompt you better, so that you will write the prompt that’s going to get the outcome I desire?

Stephanie Nivinskus: You can, but you have to be very clear, again, with the outcome that you desire to get the right prompt, because it’s going to give you mediocre at first.

Lee Kantor: Right, but then you can edit, once they gave you a prompt, now you’re not working off of a blank sheet of paper. Now you have a framework that the AI kind of understands. So then, now, you can take that framework and then change the words to get the outcome you desire.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, you can do that. It’s just that’s kind of like a step one thing. If you want something that is better quality and going to be more effective, then that would be your starting point, but not your finishing point. You can always ask ChatGPT, “I want to do this, what do you need to know in order to help me get this task done?” That can be a great place to start with all of this if looking at the blank page is overwhelming. That gets you started.

Stephanie Nivinskus: But you’ll notice the more you start using tools like this that it’ll give you an answer to something. And then if you push it, it might change its mind. It might take you in an entirely different direction. And what a lot of people do is they take that first answer and they’re like, “Okay. Not bad. I’ll take that and then I can dot I’s and cross T’s on it and make it my own.” But it’s like you’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible.

Stephanie Nivinskus: You can go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and you can say, “What is it about this email that’s not going to be effective? Tear it apart. Tear it apart like you are my biggest competitor that’s trying to outsell me.” And ChatGPT will take the email it just wrote for you and destroy it and tell you all the reasons it won’t work. “Oh, okay, ChatGPT, well, let’s go a step farther then. Tell me this.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, don’t say tell me what you need. Give it exactly what it says and then take that output and run with it, unless you think it’s absolutely spot on. Because by default you’re going to get mediocre from it. It was trained to be mediocre.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I don’t know if you guys know this, ChatGPT and many of these – they call them – LLMs, these were trained to be mediocre. They were trained to not offend people. They were trained to kind of just be please all generic kind of outputs. And so, if you don’t want generic, if you don’t want to sound like somebody that’s regurgitating the same information everybody else is saying, you’ve got to learn to prompt differently. And that’s a whole workshop in and of itself.

Renita Manley: So, LMS, that is Language Model System for anybody listening, is that correct?

Stephanie Nivinskus: LLM, Language Learning Model.

Renita Manley: LLM, Language Learning Model. Okay, got it. So, if you’re using ChatGPT, you can go in there and say, “I need you to sound edgy and rough. You can offend me if you need to.” And then go on with the prompt since it’s been trained to be, you know, mediocre?

Stephanie Nivinskus: You can say it —

Renita Manley: Or not be mediocre?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, you can, definitely. I train versions of ChatGPT for people that are so spot on. You would be shocked, that if you met this person and you talked to them in person, you would be shocked that they did not personally author every single word of what has been written, whether it’s a book or an email. But that that doesn’t happen with a few sentences.

Stephanie Nivinskus: When I’m doing stuff like that, I’m usually spending at least three hours developing my prompts for what it’s going to do. And that’s me as someone who’s been writing copy for 30 years. If you didn’t have 30 years of experience as a copywriter, this would take you weeks, months. I don’t even know if you’d be able to do it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, yeah, it’s an interesting thing that we’re talking about, but, yes, you can say things like write something edgy and whatnot, but again this is subjective. What does that actually mean? You know, what’s edgy to you might be mild to me. And I’m like, “Oh, Renita wants to be edgy,” and then I read it and I’m like, “This is so soft,” because you left it to ChatGPT to figure out what the heck that means. That’s where giving it examples is going to be a huge difference.

Renita Manley: Understood. So, before we head out of here today, well, in our previous episode, you mentioned that in addition to ChatGPT, you use this other app. It starts with the letter P. I can’t quite remember what you said.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Perplexity.

Renita Manley: Perplexity. Okay. So, besides ChatGPT, I’m going to ask you to share with us two or three AI tools that we all should absolutely be using and why.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, okay. I will give you the ones that I think most WBEs could really benefit from quickly. And the reason that I’m going to share these is because they’re pretty easy to use, even if you don’t consider yourself techie at all, and you’re not going to have a big old learning curve, and they’re going to help you do things that most of us have to do.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, obviously ChatGPT, you need to have that. For anybody that is writing a lot of stuff, Claude is much better at writing what we call long form content than ChatGPT is. So, for example, a blog, an ebook, an actual book, Claude is going to do that a lot better than ChatGPT. So, ChatGPT is great for your shorter writing tasks. Claude is better for your longer writing tasks.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Another one, and this isn’t going to take any training – these two don’t take any training on your end at all – Fathom. I love Fathom. Fathom is an AI that you can use to record and summarize your meetings that you’re in online, when you’re on a Zoom meeting or Teams or Google Meet, whatever it is. The thing I love about it is that it’s not just recording the meeting, it’s recording the video, it’s recording the audio, it’s summarizing all of it. Once it’s done, then you can send that summary to the other people that were on the call or you can just grab a clip.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, let’s say you were on an hour long call, and there was one part of that conversation that applied to somebody in your organization who wasn’t able to be on the call. You could just pull that one clip from that hour long conversation out and share it with that team member.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Something that’s saved my backside more than once is when I’ve been on these long, long, long, long calls and I’m like, “Gosh, I know we talked about something -” you know, it might be a week later, I’m like, “Gosh. I remember we talked about that one thing, but what was it that they said? Ahhh.” You know, I’ll bang my head against the wall a few times and it won’t come to me, and I can go on the Claude and I can literally enter the words that I do remember, or even one word, and it will search the transcript and find it and give me that clip. And then, I can watch it again and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That’s it.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: So Fathom, amazing. Also, it gives you like – I sound like I market for it. Maybe they should hire me. I promise I’m not involved with these financially at all, but maybe I should be. Fathom also will give you action lists. So, you know, you’re talking with someone, you’re like, “Okay. I’m going to do that. You’re going to do this. I’ll do that part. You do that part.” You can go into it after the call and it will say, “Who’s doing what?” I mean, it’s just so helpful.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Another tool that I love is – there’s not a lot of people that talk about it, and I don’t know why because it is awesome, it’s called Tango, like the dance. And you can use this tool to create SOPs effortlessly.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Like with my company, we have so many different SOPs. This is how we do this and that and the other thing, da, da, da, da, this needs to be involved. And that’s really important for all of us, because if you’ve got an employee that has a lot of knowledge in their brain, and then God forbid that person gets hit by a bus and nobody else knows the stuff that was in their brain, your business is very vulnerable. And so, you need to get everybody doing brain dumps.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And writing SOPs is painful for a lot of people, so any tasks that are done online, you can actually get Tango and it will watch what you do online. You just go through what you normally do every day. It will watch what you do, and while you do it, it will capture screenshots and summarize step-by-step exactly what you’re doing. It writes the entire SOP with screenshots, pictures, italicize things, bold things. It’s like a dream. I got 100 SOPs from that thing in a matter of less than an hour.

Renita Manley: That’s amazing. I’ve tried to create SOPs with my own screenshots and I never finished, so that sounds amazing.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, there’s a million other tools, but you asked for two or three, so there you go.

Lee Kantor: So, as we wrap here, is there anything you can share, maybe, to kind of differentiate between the overwhelm of a big picture I should learn about AI strategically and kind of in a macro view, and then tactically, there’s so many things within it, are there some do’s and don’ts when you’re kind of working kind of big picture and then small picture?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. I think big picture, you don’t need to become an AI expert at all to stay on top of what you need to know in the changing landscape of business right now. What you need to be is an expert in what you need to perform at the best capacity that you can, to be the most efficient and the most productive.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And you’re probably not going to know that off the top of your head, so that’s when you want to align yourself with someone who does this for a living that can teach you. Not teaching you generalities that apply to everyone, but teaching you what actually applies to you for your business.

Stephanie Nivinskus: On a micro level, I would say just learn one tool at a time, and maybe you make it a ten minute habit every day and say, for ten minutes today, I’m going to learn how to write better prompts, or I’m going to learn how to create better data sets. That’s the information that you feed it when you’re showing it what to do. And maybe you do that for ten minutes every day until you’re like, you know what? I’m writing killer prompts. And the reason I know that is because the outputs I’m getting, it doesn’t sound like what anybody else would say.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Can we talk real quick before we wrap? I have a list of over a thousand words that I have forbid my ChatGPT, Claude, et cetera, from using, because these words have become synonymous with you use AI, don’t you? I think everybody should have a list of forbidden words. They change, but in the beginning of all of this stuff, when it started taking off, the words – what were they? – unlocked, harness, leverage, those were words that everybody was putting in everything that they were writing. Unprecedented, that was a huge one. I will say now the word fluff is what unprecedented was two-and-a-half years ago. Everybody is saying fluff. Just look for it, you guys. Look at emails. Look at text messages. Look at blog posts.

Renita Manley: You know what I dislike?

Stephanie Nivinskus: What?

Renita Manley: You know what I dislike while you’re talking about this since we’re calling things out? I hate when I get an AI generated email from somebody, and I can tell because they just didn’t take out the bolded words and they leave all the hyphens in it, I’m like, “Come on, you could have at least unbolded it and took out the hyphens.”

Stephanie Nivinskus: And all the emojis, right?

Renita Manley: Oh, yes. Yes. AI social media post with numerous emojis, like AI goes emoji crazy. Take out your emojis, WBEs. If you’re using AI for everything, take the emojis out because it looks very AI-e.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Now one thing I will tell you, like you call them hyphens, some people call them em dashes or en dashes, that’s that long dash, right? It’s very trendy right now to rip on the em dash. A lot of people are doing that saying, “Oh, my gosh. I know you use ChatGPT because blah, blah, blah.” And ChatGPT does use those all the time.

Stephanie Nivinskus: But I will tell you also, as someone who has written copy for a living for three decades, the em dash is a beautiful, beautiful punctuation symbol and it carries great weight. And I’m in love with the em dash. Don’t kiss it off and say it’s evil because it’s not. It’s a beautiful friend. Just use it properly. Do I sound like a total word nerd? Yeah, I kind of.

Renita Manley: You sound like a writer. That’s exactly —

Stephanie Nivinskus: Thank you. That’s better than a word nerd.

Renita Manley: Okay. Well, any last parting advice for WBEs who are still feeling the overwhelm? Just one little piece.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Well, stop talking about how you’re feeling overwhelmed. Because the more you say you’re overwhelmed, the more overwhelmed you’re going to feel. And instead say, You know what? Today I’m going to spend ten minutes learning something. And every time you’re tempted to say “I’m overwhelmed by this. I’m not techie. I’m not blah, blah, blah,” say, “Ah, today I spent ten days learning how to do this, and I was able to get something better. Look at me. Yay, me.” Give yourself a high five and then take yourself out for lunch.

Lee Kantor: Well, if somebody wants to learn more, Steph, for your firm and your book, website, what’s the best way to connect?

Stephanie Nivinskus: My website is sizzleforce.com, sizzle like bacon, force like may the force be with you. And you can follow me on TikTok. I’m doing a lot of stuff on TikTok right now. Really, really, really short tutorials. I’m going to move them all over to YouTube and whatever eventually, as soon as I get my act together. But for right now, they’re on TikTok. And my book, Sizzle Or Fizzle, you can find on Amazon.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: And, Renita, before we wrap, can you share about that upcoming conference, the Unconventional Women’s Conference that’s happening at the end of July?

Renita Manley: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. July 23rd, Newport Beach, California. Make sure you guys go. Guys and gals who want to be WBEC-West. Wbec-west.org, go up to our events calendar and make sure you’re registered. And don’t forget to go on Amazon and look for the book Sizzle Or Fizzle. That’s what I’m doing as soon as we’re done recording because I’m in the gray area stuff. I need to be the bridge.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I got you, girl.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor for Renita Manley, we’ll see y’all next time on Women in Motion.

BRX Pro Tip: From Interest to Action

June 17, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: From Interest to Action

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about helping someone navigate the journey from interest to action.

Lee Kantor: As a marketing person, that’s something I think about all the time. You know, one of the first hard things is to get someone interested. First, they know you exist, then they’re interested in what you do, and then how do you get them to take action and actually buy something.

Lee Kantor: So, getting someone interested is just the first step, and that’s a hard thing, and I don’t want to dismiss that as an easy thing. But to do that is difficult. Then once you’ve done that, the next hard thing is then you have to get them to start using whatever you’re offering.

Lee Kantor: So how do you bridge that gap? First, make the first next step easy and obvious. Have clear calls to action, have simple onboarding, and make sure there are some quick wins that help turn that curiosity into commitment. And if you can remove as much friction as possible wherever you can, whether it’s by offering a demo, a free trial, a guided walkthrough, just make it organic, obvious, and just a logical next step, and you’re going to have a better chance of succeeding.

Lee Kantor: Secondly, show real value as quickly as possible. You can talk about benefits, but they have to be able to experience those benefits as soon as possible, not just some long term promise that’s going to happen at the end. There has to be some quick wins at the beginning. And then, if you can share some success stories and testimonials from other people that are doing a similar thing and getting an outcome that this person desires, this is going to help them build confidence in pulling the trigger and taking that action you desire.

Lee Kantor: And then, ultimately, you have to stay engaged. You have to follow up. You have to keep asking questions. You have to keep holding them accountable to doing the work that they need to do in order to get the result that you promised. So, you have to have some sort of support mechanism in there as well. But, really, sometimes just a little encouragement is all it takes to turn interest into action.

Lee Kantor: Remember, you can’t just attract attention. You have to guide people toward real results if you are going to get the results that you desire.

Adapt or Be Automated: What AI Means for Your Business Part 1

June 16, 2025 by angishields

In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor, Renita Manley, and AI marketing expert Stephanie Nivinskus launch a three-part series on artificial intelligence in business. They discuss the urgency of adopting AI, address common misconceptions and fears, and offer practical steps for getting started. Stephanie emphasizes the importance of human oversight, choosing the right AI tools, and using AI strategically. The episode encourages listeners—especially women—to embrace AI as a valuable tool for growth and competitiveness, setting the stage for deeper dives into AI integration and authenticity in future episodes.

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

Introduction to the significance of AI in the business landscape.
Structure of a three-part series on AI, focusing on its urgency and practical applications.
Overview of AI’s relevance and historical development in various sectors.
Discussion of common misconceptions and fears surrounding AI adoption.
Practical steps for individuals to start using AI effectively in personal and professional contexts.
Importance of communication etiquette when interacting with AI tools.
Implications of not adopting AI for businesses and the risk of becoming obsolete.
Gender disparities in AI adoption and encouragement for women to embrace AI as a tool.
Identifying market signals indicating the need for AI adoption.
Leveraging AI for strategic thinking and decision-making in business.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women in Motion. I’m so excited to be doing this series that we’re about to launch, it’s a three-part series on AI, and this episode is Adapt Now or Risk Being Automated. I’m joined with my co-host, Renita Manley. Welcome, Renita. How are you doing?

Renita Manley: Hi. Hi. Hey, Lee. How are you doing?

Lee Kantor: I am doing well. I am so excited that we’re talking about this topic, it’s so important and so relevant today. And I’m excited that we’ve got an expert, a true expert in this matter. We have Stephanie Nivinskus, and she has been in marketing for many years, and she’s an author, she’s a speaker, and she’s done so much work in this area. But before we get started, Renita, why don’t you kind of explain what this series is about?

Renita Manley: Yeah. Okay. Great. So, you know, today is kicking off our three-part AI series. Part one is going to be focusing on awareness and urgency and what AI means for your business right now. And in part two, Stephanie is going to be talking to us about building your business using AI with purpose, how to choose the right tools for your company, and how not to overwhelm yourself, because this technology is moving at a rapid pace and it can get very overwhelming. And in part three, we’re going to tackle staying authentic while using AI tools for your content and brand. All right.

Lee Kantor: All right. So, Stephanie, why don’t we get into it? Do you mind for folks who aren’t familiar, just kind of giving your macro view of AI in general and where you see it fitting into kind of a person’s marketing or even just their business nowadays.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Honestly, I see AI fitting into every aspect of business starting now, starting two-and-a-half years ago actually. But for those that haven’t jumped on the AI train yet, it is critical. AI is infiltrating every sector of business and personal lives. And so, it’s really, really urgent right now for everybody to start learning about this, to start embracing it, start using it, and start seeing what’s possible.

Lee Kantor: And can you kind of define some terms, like what is AI? Is AI like my Alexa at my house? Is AI ChatGPT? Kind of can you define some of the terminology and what the tools are?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, absolutely. So, AI stands for artificial intelligence, and technically it has been in development for almost 100 years, which always kind of freaks people out. They’re like, “What? I didn’t know that.” But to your point, Lee, yes, your Alexa is AI, your Siri is AI, ChatGPT is AI. So, there are a lot of different versions of all of this. It is a technology that is learning about how humans reason, like how humans reason, how humans think.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And what we’re going to be talking about today mostly is conversational AI, which is when you can go back and forth with the AI and literally have a conversation and work through an idea.

Lee Kantor: And then, for folks who aren’t using this, are they just not using it because, oh, that’s too scary or I don’t understand it? Or are they not using it because kind of philosophically they think it’s cheating in some manner.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I think both could be true. I think it depends on the person. I think there is a lot of fear around AI. And I think there’s also a lot of misinformation. There’s a lot of everything really. There’s also a real persistent myth that circulates that you have to be techie to use this, and none of it’s true, right? None of it is true.

Stephanie Nivinskus: There’s another fear, too, that I’m seeing people have, like they’re afraid they’re going to make mistakes. I remember when the internet first started becoming mainstream and people thought, “Oh, my gosh. If I strikethrough this word in a Microsoft Word, I’m going to blow up the entire company.” Do you remember that when people were so scared? It’s the same thing, people are afraid that they’re going to make some huge, costly mistake by using it. But, really. I mean, it’s possible, but it’s pretty hard.

Lee Kantor: Now, when a person is beginning using it, what are kind of some of the baby steps to ease your way into the technology? Do you have to, like, pick one of the AI kind of platforms? Because it’s not just ChatGPT, there’s quite a few platforms out there, Perplexity, Claude, I mean, Google has one, Facebook/Meta has one, X/Twitter has one. There’s a bunch of them floating around, do you kind of have to just pick one and just kind of start playing with it?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, that’s usually how people start. Most people start with ChatGPT just because it’s the most popular one, and, you know, you can get access to it for free, and it’s gotten the most buzz. It’s very user friendly and you can jump in and start using it right away.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And how you start using it, I like to think of it as if you all turn back the hands of time and go back to high school, and when you were in high school, your English teacher would say, “All right. Everybody’s going to write an essay about what they did over the summer.” And the prompt is, what did you do last summer? AI is the same sort of thing, you’re giving it the prompt though, instead of the English teacher. Does that make sense, Lee?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, I understand, but for some people it’s challenging because the blank sheet of paper is scary, because that means I can ask it anything, but because I can ask it anything, I don’t know where to begin, and so I don’t ask it anything.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Right, right, right.

Renita Manley: I think we’re going to actually get into more of that in our episode two, aren’t we, where we’re going to be talking about how to use it? More specifically, you got a lot of gems to give us. Is that true, Stephanie?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. We are going to be talking about that. But, you know, to help the people right now who just want to get started, I think one of the best things that you can do is start using it for a personal task before you use it for something professional.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Like literally, you can say to it these are the ingredients I have in my refrigerator, tell me what I can make for dinner tonight. That’s it and just see what it can do. That’s when you’re going to start to see that this tool actually works for you, not the other way around. And once you start doing some of these simple, simple tasks, then you’re going to feel more confident to start using it in a business capacity.

Renita Manley: So, what you’re suggesting to our WBEs and anyone else out there listening, if they’re feeling a bit overwhelmed just even introducing themselves to AI, just try using an AI tool, as you suggested ChatGPT, and just play around with it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah.

Renita Manley: Just play.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, just ask it questions. Pretend you’re going to coffee with your best friend and you have a question about something. You know, maybe it’s a question about what are people saying about the new movie, Mission Impossible. Throw that into ChatGPT, see what it says.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Or maybe let’s say you’re going to a dinner party and you don’t know what to wear, you don’t know what’s appropriate to wear, and you’re going to meet some big who’s who. You could go into ChatGPT and say I’m going to a dinner party, I’m going to meet somebody that’s very influential in my field, this is where the party is going to be held, what should I wear? What’s appropriate?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Don’t overthink it is my message. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overcomplicate it. Just ask it questions.

Lee Kantor: Is there an etiquette when you’re communicating with it? Like some people I noticed use like please and thank you. Some people just ask the prompt kind of directly. Is there some do’s and don’ts around that?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. So, it’s funny, this is a hot topic. Actually, there was a report that just came out probably about six weeks ago that talked about how all of the pleases and the thank yous are actually costing OpenAI, which is the company that owns ChatGPT, like millions, maybe even billions of dollars. So, they’re saying like, Don’t say that. But then, there’s all this fear people have that the AI overlords are going to take over the world, so they’re like I better be nice to them in case they do.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I don’t subscribe to any of that. I believe that this is a robot, and this is a robot that works for me, and so I don’t say please and thank you to it. I speak to it like I’m giving it commands because it is a tool that I am commanding, not a person.

Renita Manley: Oh, God. I’m one of those people that says thank you.

Stephanie Nivinskus: It’s lovely. It’s a lovely thing to do. It’s just funny. It’s very interesting, there’s like reports about how much more energy it’s taking, and therefore wasting, and that’s a whole other rabbit hole.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re using AI in your business, there was something that somebody told me a while ago at the beginning of some of these automations, that if you can put your work in a checklist form, that’s probably something that can be automated. Is that kind of a similar type of thinking when it comes to AI? If you can write kind of a list of things and tasks to do then there’s a good opportunity there to maybe have the AI help you with that.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, sure. But that’s not exclusively what it can do. But absolutely, if you have a checklist that is indicative of something that AI can help you with and oftentimes automate for you, making it so that you’re not having to do these redundant time sucking tasks that are just slowing you down and costing you money, because time is money, right?

Renita Manley: Yeah, it’s a lot of money and time is moving fast. So, I know we’re keeping everything light right now, but I do want to ask you one heavier question, I know you’re ready for this. But let’s say a small business owner refuses to adopt AI, are they risking sabotaging their chances of staying relevant? Like, if we don’t get with the program, are we going to fall behind as small business owners?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Absolutely. And honestly, it’s not just like you might fall behind kind of way. It’s more like you’re going to disappear from the conversation kind of way. AI, at this point, it’s not just a nice to have. It is a visibility tool. It is a decision making tool. It is a productivity tool. If you’re not using it, you need to be aware that your competitors are. And because they’re using it, they’re reaching your buyers faster. They’re showing up in more places. They’re pitching smarter. Their positioning is data backed. So, yeah, if you are refusing to adopt AI, it’s kind of like riding a tricycle in a formula one race.

Renita Manley: Okay. So, I’m thinking like a WBE right now, and, Steph, I heard you say I risk disappearing. So, with my WBE cap on, the first thought that I had was, how the heck am I going to disappear if I don’t use AI? So, can you explain what exactly you mean my business would disappear if I don’t start integrating AI? That scares me. I’m a WBE, it’s worrying me.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And I’m not trying to instill fear in anybody. I’m trying to instill awareness, all right? The reason the business would disappear – I said it would disappear from the conversation, to be clear, okay?

Renita Manley: Yes, you did. You did.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, your business isn’t technically going to disappear. However, if all of your competitors are using it and they’re faster and they’ve got more data and they’re doing more things than you are, then you’re just going to kind of slide back behind the curtain. You’re not going to be as seen. You’re not going to be as informed. You’re not going to be as fast. And that’s going to get in the way of you staying on top of things and staying a leader in your industry.

Renita Manley: Got it. So, if I heard you correctly, what you’re saying to all of our WBEs listening is, if you don’t start integrating AI, you’re going to be missing out on all the benefits of it, such as the data information that you can get. And other businesses are going to be using their data from AI to move their company forward while you’re still checking emails.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah.

Renita Manley: Okay.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Just for anybody that was around when the internet first became a thing, I always point people back to that. I know I touched on this a little bit earlier, but it’s so true, you guys. For the Gen Xers in the room that are listening and some of the older millennials, you guys might remember this, there were a lot of people that said I am not going to use that internet thing. I’m not going to do it. I don’t need it. I’m fine the way I’ve been doing business all of these years. And think about it, where are they now?

Stephanie Nivinskus: If there’s anybody on this planet that is still refusing to use the internet, how relevant are they? How much are they part of the conversation? They’re not. The same thing happened with, you know, social media, there is a segment of the population that’s I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to use it. I won’t do it, I won’t do it, I won’t do it. And the conversation continued, it just continued without them. I don’t think anybody in business wants the conversation to continue without them.

Renita Manley: So, I actually read a lot of articles, Steph, that kind of go into what you’re talking about. A lot of women – and this is not just me saying this. These are articles that I researched before coming on this podcast. I read these articles and women are more so not implementing AI. We’re implementing it. We’re integrating it at a slower pace than our counterparts. So, why do you think that’s happening specifically with women?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. I think women are more susceptible to being afraid of change than men are. And I know some people might be like, “What are you talking about? I’m not afraid of change.”

Renita Manley: We didn’t say this. It was the research.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I think that you are. I think that we are. I think we’re wired differently. We are. We’re wired differently. And that’s okay. That’s okay. But we have to decide, because we’re wired differently, how are we going to move forward.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And like I was telling Lee a little bit ago, you know, there’s so much fear around something new, something unknown. How is this going to work? Is this going to replace me? This is so overwhelming. You know, we have all of this negative mindset stuff, just like going around in circles in our brain, and we need to just stop. And we need to remember this is a tool. This is a tool that’s here to help me and I can start small. And no, I’m not going to blow up the world by asking AI the wrong question or giving it the wrong command.

Lee Kantor: Now, what are some kind of symptoms that I might be in a space in my industry or my work that others are using AI and kind of they’re out competing me? Or is there some kind of symptoms or signals maybe from the marketplace that are kind of telling you, but you may not be noticing it, that AI is around you and you’re slowly disappearing, like you mentioned earlier?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Well, I think, you know, sometimes when you get on a call for an RFP, you get on these group calls where they’re answering questions, I think those Q&A sessions are going to continue to look real different than they used to, because a lot of people are going to do their research with AI ahead of time so their questions are going to change.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And so, if you’re asking the same old, same old, and you hear other people asking questions and you’re like, “Wow. I didn’t even think about that. Oh, my gosh, that never occurred to me. Huh,” that’s an indicator that they’re using AI to help them come up with really insightful questions that will help them move forward. And that’s a red flag to you, like hurry up, get with it, get on the train.

Lee Kantor: And you mentioned that AI is extremely powerful. And it isn’t just for kind of some of the low hanging fruit, like you mentioned, regarding tasks or some basic automations. But you think that there’s also a place for it when it comes into, like, strategy and more of the kind of big picture thinking and maybe longer term thinking, like that’s an opportunity if you start leveraging in there.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that’s what I do. I’m an AI marketing strategist, and so I am constantly using it to help me play out different strategic initiatives. I’m constantly using it. I like to think of AI as my sparring partner. I actually tell it to act as my sparring partner. Because what I want it to do is not just give me answers to things, I want it to help me dig into a strategic initiative and a direction that I may be thinking of going.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And then, I want it to give me this different perspective and tell me all the reasons that might not work, or all of the blind spots I may not be seeing, things like that. And then, that makes my critical thinking process go even deeper and be more effective, because I’m not just thinking from one vantage point, I’m thinking from vantage points that are not like naturally at the top of my mind. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. One of the things I like to also do is I want it to be the expert in the area. Like I’ll give it parameters in helping it help me. And I want it to be best in class or I want outside the box thinking that, you know, an average player wouldn’t think of. And I want it to push and I don’t just want it to answer.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. And there’s a couple things I’ll say about that, Lee. One mistake that I see a lot of people make is that they will say things like be a smart assistant and give me time saving solutions. A prompt like that or a parameter like that is pretty vague and it’s up for interpretation by the AI. And so, you could get exactly what you want and you could get something that’s totally off from what you’re looking for.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And I’m a huge believer that AI responds much better to being shown what you want than being told what you want. And so, what I mean by that is when you go into ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude, or whichever one you choose to use, whenever you can upload examples of what you’re talking about, you’re going to dial in the results so much faster.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, for example, if you want it to help you work on an RFP, give it an RFP with any private or sensitive information blacked out. That’s critical. Make sure you do that. Because I’m going on a little tangent here, but just so you know, do not act like anything you do on any AI is going to be private. I don’t care what anybody says to you. You need to be very aware of the fact that, especially right now, there’s a court order out actually right now that is requiring OpenAI to save all conversations, including deleted conversations for a certain amount of time. It might get overturned. Who knows what’s going to happen with that?

Stephanie Nivinskus: But back to the point, once you’ve blacked out any sensitive information, upload that into, let’s say, ChatGPT and say analyze this RFP that I won. Tell me what I may have said in this RFP that made the people that hired me choose me over my competitors. Like, have it analyze things and then say apply this same framework to helping me fill out this next RFP.

Lee Kantor: And so, the more specific you are upfront and give it source material, then you’re going to probably get a better output from it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Absolutely. You know, even if you want it to help you write something, well, don’t just say write something that’s smart. Give it a little sass and make it friendly. Don’t just say that because it’s so subjective. Give it an example of something that you’ve written already that you love that is those things. Or it doesn’t even have to be your own thing. It could be something somebody else wrote, and say, you know, I love the way that this was written. This stood out to me because X, Y, and Z. Try to mirror this tone. Even asking it sometimes, how would you describe the tone of this communication? I want it mirrored in what you do for me.

Lee Kantor: Now, where do you kind of draw the line when it comes to delegating kind of this type of job to your AI? Is it something that you ask it to do something and then you cut and paste the answer, or is it more of you’re still having to kind of put your secret sauce onto whatever comes out of it. Like, do you delegate or do you abdicate when it comes to the outputs from AI?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. The biggest mistake people make is putting something into ChatGPT or whichever AI they’re using, and copying and pasting it without giving it their human intelligence. The biggest mistake they make. Number one, it makes you sound like everybody else. Number two, it can often be filled with inaccurate information. Number three, can misrepresent things. Number four – I mean, I could go on and on and on.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I am a huge believer also that AI without HI, meaning AI, artificial intelligence, without HI, human intelligence is dangerous. You absolutely need to be supervising it, overseeing every output that it is giving you. Now, things are advancing very, very rapidly, and there are now things called AI agents that are much more hands off than the basic things that a lot of people have been doing the last couple of years, you still have to oversee it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: I built an agent probably two months ago, and this thing is insane. It’s amazing what it was able to do for me. However, I still went through every single word it gave me, and I found inaccuracies, and I found things that I had to shift to make sure that it was relevant, full of integrity, and useful for the purpose that I had for it.

Lee Kantor: Can you explain what an AI agent is for people who aren’t familiar with that term? And is it something you purchase or is it something you create? Like what is an AI agent and how can somebody use one?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, there’s a lot of arguments out there about what an AI agent is, and there’s a lot of people that are calling things agents that are not actually agents, so I’ll start with that. But I will tell you that an agent in the truest definition is something that can work autonomously. So, something like ChatGPT is conversational. You write something, it writes something, you write something, it writes something.

Stephanie Nivinskus: An agent, for example, there’s one called Manus that I use. This is what I did a couple months ago on Manus, I wrote a very, very, very long prompt. It was actually 46 pages in Google Docs. I wrote a 46 page prompt of exactly what I wanted it to do, and then I said, go to town, have fun, I’m going to bed, Manus. And I went to bed. I woke up the next morning and I received a product that would usually take me about a month of time to complete, but it did it literally while I slept. It’s crazy. That is a true agent.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Like I said, I still went through it and redlined it because you have to. I mean, that’s just responsible use of AI. But the fact that it can do things like that, as opposed to just converse with you about things, write a social media post, write a blog post, respond to an email, blah, blah, blah, that’s the simple kind of starter point. The agents are more like, nope, we can do this from start to finish. Good to go without your involvement.

Renita Manley: So, what you’re saying is, if we have a more profound task for AI, we should be using Manus and not the conversational ChatGPT?

Stephanie Nivinskus: No, no, not necessarily. And again, that’s subjective, too, what makes something profound, right? You know, the reason I went to Manus was because I was testing if this could literally replace me in a certain aspect of my work. And so, I gave it an assignment that, like I said, takes me about a month as a senior level marketer. I’ve been in marketing for 30 years, you guys, I’m not new to this. As a senior level marketer, I laid out this 46 page long prompt explaining exactly what I do, how it needs to be done, da, da, da, and threw it into Manus and said, now do it and let me see how good you are. I wanted to evaluate my threat. And it was good, but it wasn’t good enough without human intervention.

Renita Manley: Yeah. Human intel, yeah, so that HI aspect was missing?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. The human intelligence, it was. It gets redundant too. That’s another thing that happens a lot. When you’re doing some of the more complex work, it will start to say the same thing 15 different times in 15 different ways. But then, if you read through it, you’ll be like, okay, I got it. I got it the first three times you said it. So, you’ve got to go through and you’ve got to edit. I like to think of AI is going to get you 90 percent to the finish line, the other 10 percent is where your human intelligence comes into play.

Lee Kantor: Now, for the folks that are going to do this now, they hear what you’re saying and they feel the sense of urgency. Is it something that you can just rely on the free versions of all these AI, or is it something that you have to really pay whatever, $20 a month or whatever it is for any given one of these tools?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. I think it depends on your usage, like what are you trying to do. I think that if you’re doing simple things like help me write an email response, you can get away with the free version of stuff. When you’re doing more complex tasks, when you are doing tasks – you know, I use probably about five different AIs every single day, multiple times throughout my day, and then I use other ones outside of that.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, for me, I might be considered a power user. And for me, I need to have the paid versions of these tools because I do get better results from them. I get access to different features than someone who’s just using the free version gets. I get access to things faster than a free user would get. Just like anything else, you can use an app on your phone, you can use the free version and you’ll be able to do some stuff. But if you want the really good stuff, you got to pay. AI is the same way.

Renita Manley: Okay. So, this might be a little bit intrusive, but I bet someone was listening and wondering what five AI apps is Steph using every day. So, don’t give us five because I don’t want you to give us all your secret sauce, but maybe share like two or three apps that you’re using every day. That already made me overwhelmed again.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, yeah. Don’t be overwhelmed. Be excited at the opportunity. Oh, my gosh. There’s so much I could do for you.

Renita Manley: I’m trying. I’m trying.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yay, AI. That’s what we’re doing. Okay. I have ChatGPT open all day, every day. I have Perplexity open all day, every day. For those of you guys that aren’t familiar with Perplexity, I am telling you it is your BFF. You will never use Google again once you use Perplexity. It is such a better experience.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Like you know how when you go to Google and you put in a query for something and it’ll serve up some ads, and then it’ll serve up ten different blue links that you can read the little Meta description of and decide whether or not you want to click on it to get more information, that’s the Google experience, aside from the AI overviews that they’ve started integrating up at the top.

Stephanie Nivinskus: When you go to Perplexity, it doesn’t give you a bunch of links that you need to research. It gives you the answers that you want, and then it gives you the citations that you can click on if you want more information on the topic. It’s so much more effective. It’s faster. It’s more thorough. Oh, my gosh. If Perplexity could be my boyfriend, it would be.

Renita Manley: It would be the perfect one, huh?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah. Right. Right. This coming from a very happily married woman for 25 years.

Renita Manley: Okay. Same. Hey, hubby.

Lee Kantor: So, let’s talk a little bit about your book. Can you share what kind of prompted you to write the book, Sizzle Or Fizzle? What was kind of the impetus for writing it? And what are you hoping the reader gets out of it?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yeah, the reason I wrote it is really because there is such a sense of overwhelm out there, and people don’t know how to use this stuff correctly, right? They’re getting a lot of mixed messages. And so, I wanted to write it as someone who is not just an AI expert, but a marketing expert, because those two skills combined make you see things from a different vantage point, if that makes sense.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, what I did in the book, it’s much more than just a typical book. It’s not something you’re going to sit down and spend a couple hours reading through and be done. At the end of every chapter, there are exercises for you to complete, there are terms for you to learn, there are step-by-step things that you’re supposed to do. Like it will say for the next 30 days, here’s what you need to do in days one through seven in order to reach this goal. All the goals are things about how to establish yourself as a leading voice in your field, how to build your authority, how to build your personal brand.

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, I have chapters on things like creating communities online, and a chapter on writing content, and a chapter on speaking, and a chapter on all these different things that people do to market their business, but I’m teaching you how to use AI to speed up the process.

Renita Manley: So, your book, Sizzle Or Fizzle, what you’re telling me is it’s all about how you can position yourself to be the go-to expert in your industry?

Stephanie Nivinskus: Absolutely. How to use AI to do that.

Renita Manley: Yeah, yeah, that’s really cool to know, but let me ask you this, why is it important right now for WBEs to be using AI to position themselves as the authorities in their industries, and specifically how can Sizzle Or Fizzle, your book, help our WBEs do that? And again, how can your book, Sizzle Or Fizzle, help us position ourselves as go-to authorities in our industry?

Stephanie Nivinskus: So, the book is going to help you with those 30 day implementation plans that are at the end of every chapter, starting with chapter three. So, that’s what it’s going to do, you’re going to read that chapter and then dive into the 30 day implementation plan. And it’s going to break it down into step-by-step things to do, so it’s going to crush that overwhelm. It’s going to crush that misinformation. It’s going to crush the lack of clarity, because I’m literally telling you day one, do this right, and when you read the chapter, you’ll understand how to do it.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Now, the one thing I did not include in the book that a lot of people are like, “Oh, how come you didn’t include a list of AI tools?” And I’ll tell you exactly why I did not do that. I would have loved to do that, but I’m telling you, my book would have been irrelevant by the time it went to print if I did that because the AI tool landscape is changing literally on an hourly basis.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And so, if I had written like, “Oh, yeah. You need to use Claude for this,” that answer would have been totally different today, right? You need to use, you know, ElevenLabs for that. Well, maybe, maybe not. So, I don’t have a list of recommended AI tools in there for that very reason.

Stephanie Nivinskus: But if anybody has questions about specific tools that I recommend for specific purposes, you know, please reach out. That’s what I do. I’m here to answer that question. I’m actually on TikTok, so those of you guys that are TikTokers should find me. My handle is @sizzlefrce, the name of my company, S-I-Z-Z-L-E-F-O-R-C-E. Sizzle like bacon, force like may the force be with you. I am on TikTok usually two or three times every single day dropping very relevant, very practical AI usage tips. And anybody, whether you’re a beginner or you’re an advanced user, anybody can learn from this.

Lee Kantor: And kind of the bottom line message from today’s episode, though, is don’t wait. There’s no perfect time to start. Today is the perfect time to start.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Yesterday was the perfect time to start. Today is the next best choice.

Renita Manley: Today is the perfect time to go to sizzleforce.com – is that what it is? – and get Stephanie’s book.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Oh, yeah. Actually, you’re going to find my book – I need to put it on my website. It’s not there yet. Just go to Amazon, because then if you’re a Prime user, you can get it shipped for free.

Renita Manley: Oh, that’s fancy.

Stephanie Nivinskus: And so you guys know, it’s available as an audiobook, it’s available as an ebook, it’s available as a softcover book, and it’s available as a hardcover book. So, however you like to read, I’ve made it possible.

Renita Manley: If you want to get started with AI today, then I recommend you all go check out our WBE certified Steph Nivinskus. Go to Amazon, type in Sizzle Or Fizzle and it should pop up, is that what you’re telling us?

Stephanie Nivinskus: That’s exactly what I’m telling you.

Renita Manley: And that’s exactly what any WBE listening to this should do right now.

Stephanie Nivinskus: That’s right.

Lee Kantor: And, Renita, what is the second episode going to cover?

Renita Manley: Well, let me see here. Let me check my notes. I believe we’re going to be talking a little bit more about some current tools. So, I know she doesn’t have those listed in her books, but we’re going to be talking a little bit more about some tools that you can use to help with your overwhelm, and that’s pretty much it. That episode might be old in like three months, according to Stephanie.

Lee Kantor: Right.

Stephanie Nivinskus: But it’s going to be really helpful for people that listen to it right away. It’s going to be real helpful. And we can always do a follow up conversation. This is what’s neat, honestly, you guys, this is one thing, if I could just drop this before we wrap up.

Stephanie Nivinskus: It is so important to stay on top of all of this stuff. When you’re running a business outside of this space, it probably feels impossible. I tell you honestly, this is my business and it still feels impossible. So, that is my strong suggestion to you, find an expert who makes this their life, and look to that expert to summarize things for you quickly and what you really need to know. Because a lot of it you don’t really need to know, right? But there are some things that will absolutely change everything for your business, and make you so much more productive, so much more efficient, and honestly, so much more profitable if you use it right. It’s good stuff, you guys. The opportunity is amazing and I hope you will start using it.

Renita Manley: Today – or yesterday.

Lee Kantor: And, Renita, before we wrap, can you remind the listeners about the upcoming Unconventional Women’s Conference.

Renita Manley: Absolutely. If you are not registered to attend our Unconventional Women’s Conference, it is coming up July 23rd at Newport Beach in California. You just want to go visit our website, wbec-west.org, click on events at the top of the page, look for the month of July and register to come to Unconventional Women’s Conference, July 23rd, Newport Beach, California.

Lee Kantor: And, Steph, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Stephanie Nivinskus: Thank you for having me. It was a joy.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor for Renita Manley, we will see you all next time on Women in Motion.

The Art of Networking: Building Connections in a Tough Job Market

June 16, 2025 by angishields

In this episode of Greater Perimeter Business Radio, Lee Kantor and Rachel Simon interview Nancy Gamble, CEO of Hire Profile. Nancy shares insights on the current job market in the creative and marketing sectors, discusses the impact of AI on recruitment, and offers practical advice for job seekers. The conversation covers the importance of networking, personal branding, and cultural fit, as well as strategies for standing out in a competitive landscape. Nancy also highlights the value of authentic employer branding and provides tips for both candidates and companies navigating today’s evolving hiring environment.

Nancy Gamble brings people together. She uses her connective superpowers for good as the founder and CEO of Hire Profile Inc.

This former California girl got her marketing degree from CSU Long Beach, then worked in advertising in Los Angeles and recruitment in London and Atlanta, where she led the Creating Staffing Team at Aquent. Strong industry vision led Nancy to launch Hire Profile in 2003.

When she’s not matching Atlanta’s top talent with its leading creative and marketing employers, Nancy volunteers on the AIESECLife National Team, cooks, and gardens. She is a roadie for her musician husband. She lives in Alpharetta with her husband and their rescue dachshund mix, Scruffles.

Connect with Nancy on LinkedIn and follow Hire Profile on Facebook.

Episode Highlights

Current challenges in the job market, particularly for job seekers in creative and marketing fields.
The impact of economic fluctuations and significant events on hiring trends.
The importance of networking and building relationships for job seekers.
Strategies for job applications, including applying to a diverse range of positions.
Navigating the interview process and addressing extensive project requests.
The evolving role of AI in recruitment and its implications for the creative industry.
Practical tips for leveraging AI tools in the job search process.
The significance of cultural fit between candidates and companies in recruitment.
The importance of employer branding in attracting top talent.
Innovative approaches to showcasing candidates’ skills and experiences beyond traditional profiles.

About Your Host

Rachel Simon is the CEO & Founder of Connect the Dots Digital. She helps B2B companies close more business by leveraging the power of LinkedIn.

Rachel works with professionals, both individuals and teams, to position their authentic brand on LinkedIn so they can connect organically with ideal clients, attract the best talent, and stand out as a leader in their industry.

Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn.

BRX Pro Tip: Getting Ready

June 16, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: Getting Ready

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, from time to time you will share some of your pet peeves when we do these Pro Tips. Well, one of mine is the person who’s getting ready to get ready. It just drives me nuts.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, the fact is no one’s ever ready. You’re never completely ready. There’s always something else you could be thinking about or expecting or fearing. But if you’re going to wait until you feel 100 percent ready, you’ll be waiting forever.

Stone Payton: And this is the thing, like you said this is one of my pet peeves also, is that so many people, they just have meetings, they have meetings to just play out every possible scenario, the best case scenario, the worst case scenario, and just time keeps on ticking.

Lee Kantor: The truth is no one’s ever ready. It doesn’t matter what the thing you’re trying to get ready for, whether it’s a new job, a big launch, the next move you should make in your business. Growth happens when you just go for it and you take a step forward. Even if you have questions or if you have doubts, just take some action.

Lee Kantor: I’m not saying not to prepare. You have to prepare somewhat, but don’t let the pursuit of perfection stop you. You have to trust your experience. You have to trust your gut. You have to lean on your team. But you have to take action.

Lee Kantor: You’re going to learn no matter what you think. Once you put something out to the public, you’re going to learn something. And at that point, you better adapt. And if you do those things, you’re going to get stronger. And the thing that you were trying to achieve has a better chance of success because you’re learning as you go. It’s not going to be perfect on the whiteboard. It’s going to be perfect when people get a hold of it and they tell you what they want to need, not what you think they want to need.

Lee Kantor: So remember, progress beats perfection. The best opportunities come to those who are willing to start before they feel totally ready.