How to Use AI for Market Research

When used correctly, artificial intelligence (AI) can be a very powerful tool in a B2B marketer’s toolkit. It can help to analyze and aggregate large amounts of data, generate insights, frame the approach for the research, and make the entire process faster and more efficient. How can B2B marketers fully optimize AI for their work?

That’s why we’re talking to AI expert and “explorer” Dale Thomas (Founder, ActionableOps) about how B2B marketers can leverage AI for market research. During our conversation, Dale reiterated the importance of embracing the use of AI for research purposes. He also highlighted the pitfalls to avoid and how B2B marketers can better organize their approach when they plan for market research, find experts, and synthesize data.

https://youtu.be/S589ojh3N7A

Topics discussed in episode

[2:03] The importance of AI in market research – accelerate the research process, reduce human error, and increase data accuracy
[5:41] How to use AI in an ethical manner:
- Human oversight is important
- Be transparent in AI usage
- Be aware of the bias in data
[9:47] Pitfalls to avoid when using AI for research:
- Relying too heavily on AI without human interpretation
- Issue of bias in AI models
[13:40] AI’s role in organizing market research:
- Help create research strategies and methodologies
- Find experts
- Analyze and synthesize data more efficiently
[20:53] How to deal with the issue of plagiarism when it comes to AI
[24:05] Dale provides some actionable tips:
- Start with clear objectives and strategies before using AI
- Invest in tools that align with specific needs and integrating them into existing workflows
- Combine AI insights with human expertise
- Have ethical guidelines and governance frameworks in place
[25:23] Strategy for AI adoption:
- Have a short-term strategy for AI, focusing on the next 6 months
- Understand your values around AI and ensure that your tools and usage align with these values
- Be aware of local and international regulations related to AI usage
[29:03] Dale’s go-to AI tools for market research

Companies and links mentioned

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Christian Klepp, Dale Thomas

Christian Klepp 00:00

Dale Thomas is the founder of ActionableOps, a company that specializes in AI driven business optimization. He’s had the privilege of leading businesses and witnessing firsthand the transformative power of AI and its implementation in practical, meaningful and ethical ways. He’s also the author of the number one Amazon bestseller, The Ultimate AI guide for small business success. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. Okay. Mr. Dale Thomas, welcome to the show, sir.

Dale Thomas 00:35

Well, thank you for having me.

Christian Klepp 00:36

Great to have you on. And I’m really looking forward to this conversation because, man, it is relevant to businesses. It is relevant to B2B marketers. So let’s get started. Shall we?

Dale Thomas 00:45

Sounds great. Let’s do it.

Christian Klepp 00:47

You’re quite the expert when it comes to helping, I’m going to say B to B companies unlock the power of AI, so you help them to look into tools and techniques and these then help take their businesses to the next level. But for this conversation, let’s zero in on a topic that I think is very relevant to B2B marketers, and that is how AI can help you conduct market research faster and more efficiently. So let’s kick off this conversation with this question, why do you think it’s important for B2B marketers to embrace the use of AI when they conduct market research?

Dale Thomas 01:20

Sure, and that’s a good question. And as we’re… and I’ll take a quick step back, I love to tell people that when I they use the term expert, I don’t consider myself an expert. I consider myself more of an AI explorer, because for most of us, AI is very new, even though it’s been around since the 50s, and the concept has and there are some true experts in the field who’ve been doing machine learning and all the different AI technologies for the last 10 years. Those are who I look to as experts. I can again consider myself more of an explorer as this is kind of like the Wild West and a new frontier, and we’re all kind of learning. I just may happen to be a few steps ahead of of most people. But to answer your question around B2B marketers and embracing AI and market research, there’s a lot that can be gained when using AI and market research, because it will definitely accelerate the research process, which will allow you to gather your data a lot quicker, and you can do analysis way faster than ever before. It reduces human error and increases the accuracy in the data processing. That said, I encourage everybody to never solely rely on the return from AI, and there should always be human oversight. So it does reduce the human error, and it does increase accuracy in data processing. There always should be somebody there that’s validating the data as you’re reviewing it, or as it’s coming back in, and then AI can uncover a lot of hidden patterns and insights that that humans may miss out on. And that’s something I that I really like to touch on, because especially when you’re doing like surveys and customer surveys, the sentiment analysis that AI can do, and it’s not just like one comment a person makes, but maybe some of the words that they’re using, but across 20, 30, 40, 100 different customers, or how many customer interviews you’re doing, there could be phrases that people say that you don’t catch, but AI may catch. And I’ve done surveys for different organizations where there was red flags that were being called out that we would have never seen have we were just looking at Survey Monkey data, or whatever the survey company is. So there’s so much that can be gathered or gained from embracing AI in your market research.

Christian Klepp 03:52

Absolutely, absolutely. I think you just inadvertently helped me come up with a title for this episode, the wild west and the new frontier. I love it. Absolutely it does sound like the sky is the limit, certainly when it comes to AI and the way that it can be used in market research. I mean, I find, like, not too long ago, it must have been like, at least, like a little over a decade ago, I had colleagues that were doing data analysis with Excel spreadsheets, and it would, it would take them days, right?

Dale Thomas 04:25

It’s super hard too.

Christian Klepp 04:26

To synthesize all that data. Well, yeah, and it’s going back to your point, right? I mean, like you can, you can plug in the formula in the spreadsheet, but if you overlook something, and you make a mistake, then it, it renders everything invalid, right?

Dale Thomas 04:40

Absolutely. And I had an executive come to me a C level of a company that needed to do a quick survey and survey analysis, and they and they told me, point blank, that I was able to turn around in about an hour what would have taken them several days to do. And they they didn’t have that. They had, you know, only a couple hours of time before they had to present it to the board. So it’s, it’s great.

Christian Klepp 05:02

Absolutely, time is of the essence, because correct me if I’m wrong, but as human beings, I think we become a very impatient species, right?

Dale Thomas 05:11

Of course.

Christian Klepp 05:11

Everything has to be delivered instantly, right?

Dale Thomas 05:15

Well, and I mean, with when the internet came along, it kind of changed the world, yeah, where you could get everything instantly, and especially now with AI. It’s absolutely incredible.

Christian Klepp 05:25

Absolutely, absolutely. I’m gonna move us on to the next question. You touched on it a little bit. But like, how do you how do you think AI can be used ethically to conduct market research? Because there’s that part of it as well, right? That equation. Like, how do you use it in an ethical manner?

Dale Thomas 05:41

Sure. Sure. Well, one of the things I’ve already touched on was that there absolutely needs to be human oversight in anything that you’re doing and verifying the data. The challenge that we see with a lot of these models that are out there, and there’s there’s… they’re getting, I think, better and better, is the bias that’s in the models. And people need to be really aware that if these and I won’t pick on any particular company or particular model, but if it’s gone out and just scraped whatever it was on the internet, and the internet is biased in whether it’s politically or racially or whatever it is, then those results will return, come back very biased as well. So people really need to be aware of that bias that’s there. And then as you’re using AI, I think that you need to emphasize the transparency around your AI usage. I don’t think it’s, you know, when you’re using AI, and maybe your grandma, your spell check is AI based, you know, I don’t think you need to be transparent in that case, but I do think that if you’re using a lot of AI to generate content, that you may need to be transparent of not only that you’re using AI, but how you’re able to collect some of that data, and you would need to be able to explain how you came to those conclusions with AI, just in case you need to be able to do that, there also needs to be… people need to be aware, as far as like, from an ethical perspective around the data privacy and making sure that you’re getting the proper… using AI the proper ways. For example, never, ever, upload customer PII, personal data to ChatGPT, unless, I guess they have a new switch that you can turn off, that it doesn’t train their models. But a lot of times, if you’re going right to the source, and I can’t say Perplexity or Claude, do the same, I don’t know, I don’t use those front ends, but a lot of the data that you do use train their models. I know there was a big kerfuffle a couple days ago, and I apologize about that. I thought I turned off my email. Those are email notifications coming in. But there was a big kerfuffle on Facebook where, apparently, since I think it was 2009 that any of your public posts were training their models. That’s only if you made the post public, open to the world, where hopefully people stop doing that years ago. But and even on LinkedIn, there’s, a lot of people posting about how LinkedIn, all your posts that are that you’re putting on there are training the models, which to me, if I’m posting on LinkedIn, I don’t really care who sees it. Post in the public, publicly anyhow, but I know there’s some folks that are very sensitive to that.

Christian Klepp 08:29

Yeah, absolutely. I’m just going back to that point. I had a guest on the show the other day, and we were talking about that, and in fact, it’s, it’s something in your LinkedIn profile privacy setting. So you got to go, really go deep in there to find that off switch, right? Because if you don’t switch that thing off, basically you’re allowing LinkedIn to use your content and your data to train the AI, right.

Dale Thomas 08:58

Absolutely. And again, you know, to me, I kind of joke going, Well, half that content people are all scared about is AI generated anyhow. So… I understand, I guess I get, maybe understand it. I haven’t turned it off, mainly because I forget when I go on LinkedIn, I don’t really care. Because I don’t. I’m not posting anything that is, like, so creative that I’m trying to, you know, make sure it stays with me. I’m not that good.

Christian Klepp 09:29

Yeah, I love the humility. I’m gonna move us on to the next question, which is a little bit related, but like, what are some of these? You know, when you’re using, or when B2B marketers rather, are using AI to conduct research. What are some of these pitfalls that they should look out for?

Dale Thomas 09:47

I think some of the pitfalls could be, again, you know, you know, using biased or limited data sets, which will definitely skew your results, which is, I think, is incredibly important, depending on you know what you’re marketing or kind of what marketing research you’re doing, you have to have quite a bit of data out there, and it has to be… you have to at least be aware of the bias and be able to know, know how to kind of circumvent that, and also making sure that there’s not an over reliance on a AI without any human interpretation. And for, I guess, marketers, and I’m thinking more like from, like a social media marketing perspective, if you’re getting AI to generate all your content, and you’re not looking at it before you post, that’s going to be on you, because you should be reviewing it before you do post. Because I have generated some AI posts. I have generated content from my website because Google apparently does not care if it’s AI generated, as long as it’s quality. Which I was really surprised when I learned that, because I kept on thinking words Matt Cutts when you need them, because I think he would be… Matt Cutts is a very old SEO guy for Google, and I think back in the day he would have been losing his mind over that. But when I found out that Google was no longer caring whether it was AI generated or not, I did create quite a bit of AI generated content. It drips out to my website every few days, so I have constantly fresh information. But I also read the articles before they get posted, just because you need to make sure that you’re not completely reliant on the AI, because it is, it’s so biased, and there’s so many potential issues. So I think those are, like the top two to three things really be considered out.

Christian Klepp 10:16

And in fact, there’s even, if I’m not mistaken, software available out there that helps you to detect if the content was AI generated or if it was generated by ChatGPT.

Dale Thomas 11:53

There is, but I’ll be honest, I’ve used some of that, and the content is getting so good that it’s passing like AI detection tools. And I know even when I’ve played around with it, I’ve had an AI written piece of content generated by AI, and then I fed it back into the A and go, What do you think of this? Is this AI or human? And they’ll say, Well, I think it’s AI. And here’s why. I was like, Okay, well, rewrite the content with those reasons why it’s AI and make it more human. And I would just do this rinse, wash, repeat cycle with it until it kept on saying, Nope, this is 100% human. And then I don’t know then of because, of course, by then, none of the detectors were detecting it. And I just think, as we go, and we’re just… it is what it is. We’re living in an AI world now. And you know, I know schools are very concerned about this. I mentor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and was talking to some of the professors about it. Some of the professors completely embrace it, and they like use AI to generate your content, because they know you got to go in there and evaluate it and read it and think it through. And yeah, but some of them are completely anti AI generated content.

Christian Klepp 13:11

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. All right, I’m going to move us on to the next question, which is, how can AI help B2B marketers organize their approach and alleviate the burden of conducting market research. And I’m happy to repeat these because there are three points. Right. One is planning for market research. Number two is finding experts. I think that’s something that you and I had discussed in the previous conversation. And the third one is analyzing and synthesizing data.

Dale Thomas 13:40

AI can help find experts through… I know there’s a lot of different tools out there, and I’ve recently, I’ve purchased it, I haven’t used it yet. That’ll help me find experts, expert influencers, in whatever category I’m looking for, even running these tools are so connected to the internet that finding, I think experts is more… it’s easy now, but it’s finding experts that are truly experts, versus somebody who has raised their hand and said they’re an expert. And I kind of tease about this in my book, where there’s all these AI experts, and I know we’re not just talking about AI experts, but all the AI experts out there. But you looked at their LinkedIn profile, and they’ve only been in technology for six months, and before it was like retail at a clothing store or something. And I wonder, well, how do they get their expertise? But AI could definitely analyze some of those networks and a lot of the publications to identify the relevant industry experts. As far as analyzing the data and synthesizing it, AI could definitely process that large amounts of structured and unstructured document quickly, it can generate insights and visualizations from complex data sets. And that’s that piece, right there is really what got me very involved in in generative AI, is when I was taking a course on Gen AI, and I found out that you could feed it multiple data sets or data sources, whether it was an Excel spreadsheet, a SQL database, a company’s financials, and then be able to analyze all of that data as one. It was a game changer, in my mind, because it was able to find a needle in the haystack and identify patterns and trends that, and we said it earlier, that you just wouldn’t find any other way. I think that’s it, identify those patterns and trends, and then the go through the large amounts of data. And then there was one other question that you talked about, like, how could people plan…

Christian Klepp 15:58

Plan for market research. Yeah, that’s right.

Dale Thomas 16:00

If you’re using the right prompt, the prompt can help you, especially if you’re using Gen AI, to help you kind of identify what your plan is for the marketing research. It can help identify potential gaps and help you prioritize the areas of focus. And just like as I was writing the book. And I’m not trying to pitch the book or talk up the book, but the reason I wrote the book is I went in there and I said, if you were to plan a book on AI for small business, what would that look like? What would all those chapters look like? What would that roadmap look like? And when it came back, I actually said, Oh, I know 80, 90% of this already, so it really helped develop that roadmap and that framework and fill in those gaps. And I still use AI on a daily basis to help kind of identify those areas. It could make suggestions on different types of research strategies or methodologies, because AI is way smarter than me, and if you’re giving it your objectives and the available data, it could really help kind of, again, create those methodologies to make that marketing research just to another level. One of the things that we are doing is building AI agents to help entrepreneurs conduct market research and customer research, and we’ll be feeding meetings into models and coming up with hopefully some very interesting feedback as they’re going through the entrepreneurial process of starting a new business.

Christian Klepp 17:35

Yeah. No. Those are definitely some great points there. And I think part of the reason why I brought this up is because I’ve seen this happen, right? And you have as well, that when… not just people in the marketing department, but like when folks start conducting market research, if they don’t have the right experience, let’s just, let’s just filter it down to experience, it can become quite overwhelming, right? Because they don’t know where to start, and then when they do start, they’re not entirely sure what they’re looking for, so they start just collecting all this data. And you and I both know that. You know, when it comes to data, I mean, you just, it’s almost like a volumes game, right? And if you’re not, if you’re not entirely sure what you’re looking for, and what the goal of finding all this data is, you’re basically conducting research based on something that’s purely hypothetical that might not even help you generate the insights that you’re looking for. So that’s one part of the equation. The other part of the equation that I also found was after people have done their analysis and have synthesized the data. They may or may not know what the data is telling them, but I think they also struggle with, okay, so based on all of this, and you probably know where I’m going with this, you show this stuff to the board, and they’re like, Okay, so what do we do? Right? So I always say, like, you know, when you’re presenting data to somebody who’s, who’s not, you know, who doesn’t have a market research background, you always have to answer the what am I looking at? So what? And now, what? Right? So, based on all this, what do we do? Right?

Dale Thomas 19:15

Absolutely. And you know, to that point, we did a, we did some survey analysis for a correctional institution out on the West Coast, and as they were going into labor negotiations. And kind of where this ties in is, we were able to get all this data, synthesize the data, but we were also able to provide that well, if we don’t do this, this is what our employees are thinking. But if we don’t do this for the employees, this is what’s going to happen, or if we continue going down this road, this is what will happen, and they’ll be able to inform the local union and the they’re going into negotiations, they’re able to really use it to kind of position themselves. And I didn’t know anything about correctional institutions from this perspective, and if it wasn’t for AI, I would have never been able to do it, but I know how to answer the right questions. And now it’s almost gotten to the point where it’s just like, back in the day when I Google and the internet came along and somebody would say they don’t know how to do something, and you would just play like, well, you know, you can Google that. And to me, it’s almost like I use it so much now that it’s become part of my daily workflows and almost everything that I do well, I ask AI all the time about different things, and it’s open on my machine now, and it now has a permanent place on my desktop.

Christian Klepp 20:34

It probably has a permanent resident card too (laugh)

Dale Thomas 20:40

Definitely so.

Christian Klepp 20:41

Yeah, you kind of touched on it earlier in the piece, but I’m just going to dig a little bit deeper here. How can B2B marketers deal with the issue of plagiarism when it comes to AI?

Dale Thomas 20:53

A lot of tools, I mean, and this is always, I think, kind of a interesting predicament, because any AI generated tool could be plagiarized. But there’s a lot of tools out there, you know, and Grammarly, is one that comes to mind. I know text cortex has a plagiarizer, plagiarism check checker in its toolbar. So a lot more of these tools do have the built-in plagiarizer checkers, but I think it’s also part of the responsibility of whoever’s creating this information to go out and double check to see if it’s plagiarized, especially when I think that the challenge comes when you’re creating images, and all those images were generated, or were generated from other people’s images, and that, I think, can lead you more into hot water. And I know there’s a lot of litigation around artists suing whoever they’re suing because of that. So, you know, people, I think, just need to be more aware that it can happen and that they’re being responsible enough to check before they’re just outright publishing anything.

Christian Klepp 22:19

Absolutely, absolutely, and only because you brought up music. I think I lost count of how many famous artists have gotten lawsuits, but I think Ed Sheeran was one of them, right? Like, there was a particular verse in one of his songs from two years ago, and somebody, somebody who, apparently, who composed the song in the 70s, claimed, hey, that was my, that was my line, right? So it’s something as as minute as that, right,

Dale Thomas 22:45

Right. Well, it brings up an interesting thing. And you and I talked before we started that I used to have a background in the business of music. And years ago, in the early, early 90s, I actually was getting a degree in the business of music. And I don’t know why I remember it, but I remember the music professor or the attorney that came in and spoke to us was like four notes. That’s how they can if it’s more than four notes that’s the same, then you’ve copied their… the artist’s music. But if it’s under four notes, that’s what the courts have said are cool.

Christian Klepp 23:18

Wow, so interesting.

Dale Thomas 23:20

I don’t know if that’s still true or if anyone was, but it’s always kind of stuck in the back of my head. Four notes…

Christian Klepp 23:25

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Dale Thomas 23:26

And especially, as you know, if you’re looking at any of these tools that generate songs, which I think is absolutely amazing, I’ve done it playing around with my daughter and create songs about messy she is, or just having fun. But.

Christian Klepp 23:42

Yeah, yeah, no, no, for sure. For sure. Okay, sir, we get to the part in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips. You’ve given us some already. But if there’s somebody out there that’s listening to this conversation and you want, you want them to walk away with three to five things they can implement right away in terms of leveraging AI for market research. What should they do?

Dale Thomas 24:05

I think if they’re going to be leveraging AI for market research is to kind of least start with some kind of objective and strategy before you even begin. I think you kind of need to, you know. Need to know where you want to end up, or at least have an idea. But you can also use AI to help you kind of come up with some of those ideas and some of those strategies, then invest in tools that align with your your needs, and then incorporate them into your workflow. But be very careful. Do not buy every tool out there, because most of the tools are a wrapper for ChatGPT. You know, I had a meeting earlier, when we were talking about there’s so much overlaps between different tools, whether it’s AI or not, you have to have the tools that really address your needs. But there’s enough room for scalability and for growth within that tool set, I see all these tools that, do you know of content writing, and everybody’s doing that, but there’s they’re limited. So you want to get the tools that achieve what you’re looking to do, but also to be able to really integrate them in your workflow.

Dale Thomas 25:23

Also, I would say, you can combine AI generated insights with human expertise for more comprehensive analysis, if you have that expertise, or if you know somebody who has that expertise, and then understanding and implementing ethical guidelines and governance frameworks for AI usage in your organization. I would not if you’re a business owner or leader, I would not just start buying all these AI tools and letting people have free reins. You need to create what your policies are around them and how people are using them. You want to understand, you understand what you… make sure you understand what the regulations are in your area. I know New York, Colorado, California, have their legislation and their laws around AI usage. There’s, of course, GDPR in Europe. So you just need to be kind of aware of what those are, and then create guidelines. I think it’s the responsibility of the business owner or the manager, the leaders, to create what those policies are. And you better have very clear policies so people know what to follow. And then you have to have some kind of mechanism to really not be looking over their shoulder, but to really understand what the output is of those tools are

Christian Klepp 25:29

Yeah, to monitor, right? Yeah.

Dale Thomas 26:45

Some kind of something, yeah.

Christian Klepp 26:47

Absolutely, absolutely, no, great tips. Let me just quickly recap this here. So start with objectives and strategy, and I’ll get to that one in a second. Invest in tools that align with your needs, combining AI insights with human expertise. I think that one is really important. Yeah, it’s something that you brought up several times in this conversation. Don’t just like, you know, rely on AI for everything, and then don’t check the work, or don’t check what comes out of that, right? And then finally, have some kind of… implement some kind of ethical guidelines, or have policies in place that, I don’t want to use the word police, but to monitor, right? That is being used ethically. It’s being used properly, right? Okay.

Dale Thomas 27:29

Absolutely.

Christian Klepp 27:30

Yeah. Fantastic, fantastic, yeah. So I want to go back to the first point. So in your professional opinion, they probably should already be doing this. But do you believe that companies should have a long term strategy for AI, if they don’t have one already?

Dale Thomas 27:46

I think long term is really hard. I think they should have a short term stretch strategy, meaning, like the next six months. Because the challenge is the way this technology is moving so fast and it’s developing so quickly now. We don’t know what long term is going to look like, but I think a company should kind of understand what what their values are around AI, and make sure that they’re… that the tools that they’re using, and the usage of AI aligns with those values. But it’s, I think it’s going to be one. It’s going to be iterative, and you’re going to be constantly reevaluating and redeveloping what your strategy is around AI as more and more tools come online. Because I don’t think even, I mean, maybe there’s, like I said, there’s a lot smarter people out there than me, but a year and a half ago, I don’t think anybody would realize kind of where we’re at with it. So who knows what the next six months, next year, five years, is going to look like?

Christian Klepp 28:47

Yeah, yeah. No, that’s true. That’s true. Okay, so that was the first follow up question. Second follow up question. And I’m not expecting a laundry list here, but like, open your toolbox up for us a little bit. Dale, like, what are your go to AI tools for market research?

Dale Thomas 29:03

So 95% of our research comes from one tool, and that tool is TextCortex. We’re implementation partners of them and we use TextCortex because it is connected to the internet. You can use all the different models out there, or all the popular models. I think there’s now 10 that you can leverage. You can create knowledge bases. So if you’re having a chat, you can save that chat to, let’s say, a folder. You can sync your Google or OneDrive files over to that folder and then have conversations with it. So if you have like a branding folder or a marketing strategy folder, you can be having conversations with both of those folders that keep everything about your company in mind as you’re driving forward. And then I use one prompt. There’s only one prompt. I use it 99% of the time in everything I do, and it’s a prompt called Professor Cortex, which is a cross between Professor Synapse, which is a prompt that has made its way around the internet, and then TextCortex, which is our platform, and I forked it to create Professor Cortex. And what the prompt does is… it’s a freely available on our website, is you’ll give it a sentence or two. You don’t need to write these very lengthy prompts and act as a marketing guy or whatever that everybody’s doing. You give it two or three sentences, and it’ll kind of quickly understand what your goals are. It’ll quickly understand what it needs to do. And then it’ll develop through the chain of thought process, three to five different steps of what it’s going to do to help you reach your goal. And it’s very transparent. It’ll let you know exactly what… see if I can mute those notifications, it’ll very quickly tell you, or it’ll give you the three to five steps in a very transparent way of what it’s going to do to those goals. And then it’ll summon experts in those fields. So if you’re asking about marketing, it’ll create a marketing expert, and these are little agents that know all about the marketing business and and then it’ll start giving you the information. What I did is, is added the ability to if you have a learning disability, and you tell it I have ADHD, or I’m dyslexic, or I’m autism, if you tell it that, all the information that it’ll give you is in a way that you can consume it better. So it’s not like ChatGPT or a regular return where it’s it’s all this information that’s very overwhelming that’s in paragraphs. For me, I like visuals. I like bullet points. I want to quickly see the information so it helps deliver it so and I know that kind of went off track, but that’s a tool that I use 99% of my prompts. Again, through the text cortex platform, we help businesses leverage the TextCortex, create the personas, create the strategy, onboarding chat bots. Those, those are really, yeah. I mean, I do use Grammarly, and I call it a an AI tool, since it’s become more and more AI based.

Christian Klepp 32:17

Yeah, yeah.

Dale Thomas 32:18

But that’s really what I use. I love AI tools, and I’m a tool junkie, and I’m always looking at on AppSumo all the time, looking at the greatest, latest, greatest tools. But I rarely start using anything, because to me, TextCortex does it all now. We do have platforms we use to build agents on, but that’s those aren’t part of our daily tool stack.

Christian Klepp 32:43

Okay, okay, well, I mean, in fact, I don’t think that you digress at all. I think you just went into detail to explain what the platforms and what the tools are that you use and why you use them. And I think, I think that’s fair enough, right?

Dale Thomas 32:57

Okay.

Christian Klepp 32:58

Okay, Dale, three more questions, and I’ll let you go.

Dale Thomas 33:02

All right.

Christian Klepp 33:03

Okay, a status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why.

Dale Thomas 33:11

That I disagree with, and why? I think, for me, one of them is this concept that, like AI, is going to take over the world. I don’t think I necessarily buy that. I think because, fortunately, we have people that really want to step in front of that and make sure that doesn’t happen. I mean, it may take over the world. Who knows, really. But I think people are just very aware of this, and there’s, there’s organizations and and we do, I think government does have a place in AI. I don’t know exactly what that is, and I’m not a big fan of government, but there, I think there certainly is a role out there, but I don’t think like AI is necessarily going to take over the take over the world.

Christian Klepp 34:00

Not in our lifetime anyway. (laugh) All right, okay, so here comes the bonus question. So Dale, I have it in good authority that you’re a bit of a barbecue connoisseur. So let’s just say you got a phone call after this interview, right from what’s that show on Food Network, oh, Barbecue Brawl, right? Okay, and they say you’re gonna be in the next cookout or barbecue showdown, right? So we want you to, like, come up with your, your best, your best barbecue dish. So if you were, if you were on Barbecue Brawl, like, what would you be cooking, and why?

Dale Thomas 34:41

Well, if I was on Barbecue Brawl, I would, I would, I would be, let’s see if I remember that show. It’s so I would, I’d be cooking ribs. That would be at the top of my list, because I love pork ribs. I always have. I’m a barbecue judge for the KCBS. I judge barbecue competitions and ribs are there’s something that’s just great about how sweet they are, and you can make them spicy, and it’s just, yeah, it’s delicious.

Christian Klepp 35:11

Are you allowed to, are you allowed to disclose what your recipe is like, what you put in there?

Dale Thomas 35:17

Sure. I mean, I I’m not one of these guys. I do a lot of… I don’t do as much smoking as I used to, but I’m one of these guys that’s super-secret, because I use, there’s a company here in Kansas City called Meat Mitch barbecue. I use their rub. I use their sauce, Whomp sauce. Whomp sauce goes on everything, and that’s, that’s my secret sauce. Now I have a way that I prepare them that’s not really secret, but that I actually have to look up every time I do it, because there’s kind of, there’s a bunch of few steps…

Christian Klepp 35:48

Yeah, there’s, like, there’s like, a gazillion things in there, right? Like.. (laugh)

Dale Thomas 35:52

There’s quite a few. And I always, I’m trying to new, to do different things, and sometimes I forget. Well, this worked last time. It didn’t work the time before. Now, what are we going to do? And, yeah, trying new methods. And, but, yeah, ribs are ribs are words.

Christian Klepp 36:08

Yeah, nice, nice. I do agree. I do agree. And that’s probably one thing that AI can’t do yet, right? Like, make some good ribs.

Dale Thomas 36:16

Well, I will tell you I have, it’s been a long time, yeah, but I did get, I forget who I was using at the time. I did get it to create a master barbecue recipe to help me win competitions.

Christian Klepp 36:32

Oh, wow.

Dale Thomas 36:33

And I cooked it and it was good. I can’t remember how good it was, yeah, but it, it, it came up with great recipes. I do use just a little, little side note, I do have and will continue using AI to come up with recipes for the house, because I like meat and I like certain things. My wife’s a vegetarian. I have a picky eight year old. The biggest challenge in the house is, what are we going to have that kind of everybody will like. So I do recipe planning through it, and I also without… now I’m going off on a little tangent, but I also use AI to help me decide what I can eat on the menu, as my doctors put me on a diet of low or low sugar, no sugar, low sugar or low carb. And I don’t know what these menus have. So when we go out to eat, we eat a lot. I’ll take a picture of the menu now, and I’ll upload it to vision AI, and it’ll tell me the three or four things I can eat, substitutions that I can make. And it helps me, and you know, it’s helped me lose weight and get my labs back to where they should.

Christian Klepp 37:37

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, fantastic, fantastic. Well, Dale, I’d love to sit here and talk talk to you about ribs all day, but like in the interest of time, I do appreciate your coming on the show and of course, and…

Dale Thomas 37:50

I really appreciate you having me.

Christian Klepp 37:52

Yeah. So quick intro to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you, especially if they want to talk about AI.

Dale Thomas 37:58

So they can always send me an email. It’s Dale@actionableops.com that’s also our website. You can get the prompt that I referenced, Professor Cortex at actionableops.com/professor. So you can get, get a hold of me that way. And then you can also get our book on Amazon and our book, if you don’t mind, me sharing, AI guide for small business success.

Christian Klepp 38:26

Fantastic, and we will put a link to that in the show notes for this episode. And…

Dale Thomas 38:31

Oh, perfect. Great.

Christian Klepp 38:32

Yeah, Dale, once again, thanks for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Dale Thomas 38:37

All right, great. Thank you again for having me.

Christian Klepp 38:39

All right. Bye for now.

Get the future of podcasts.