Ready to get more productive in 2023? The Entrepreneur Exchange opens the year with a bang as Small Business Center Director Todd Lyden joins the podcast to share productivity tools and technology to help your business operate more effectively. Artificial intelligence is now accessible to all businesses, so listen in as hosts Jeff Neuville and Gary Muller discuss the AI trend with Todd and try to figure out whether Todd is real…or a bot sent from another galaxy. Plus, get some small businesses to check out including some tasty treats and the answer to your customer service frustrations. It’s all here on this month’s Entrepreneur Exchange!
Productivity Recommendations: ChatGPT, IMAGE AI, DALL-E , Playground AI, Thing Translator, Topaz Labs
Legal AI: Do Not Pay, Legal Robot, Harvey AI
TEXT/Content: Rytr.me, Copy. AI, Quillbot
Business validation: Validator.AI
Directories: Futurepedia, AI Tools Directory
Mentions: Air Room Planner, Google Muse
Helpful Links: Manufacturing Solutions Center, CVCC Small Business Center
Small Businesses of the Month included in this episode: Fayetteville Pie Company, Jazzy's Cheesecake, Karens for Hire
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
[00:00:02] What you want when you want it, where you want it. This is the MESH. Welcome to the Entrepreneur Exchange on the MESH podcast network. A monthly conversation about startups and small business with ideas, tools, and advice to operate your business more effectively.
[00:00:25] Happy New Year's to all of our listeners. On today's show, it's our annual, I'm going to get more productive this year's show with our returning friend and guest star, Todd Lyden, who is director of the Small Business Center
[00:00:39] at Blading Community College in Eastern North Carolina. Todd is going to be sharing his updated and new top productivity tools for small business list so you can be operating more efficiently this year.
[00:00:52] My co-host Gary Muller and I will again be sharing our top reasons for avoiding exercise this year. So you can look forward to that. I'm an expert at that. We'll also have our small business of the month feature where we'll recommend some interesting
[00:01:06] businesses that you should be checking out. My name is Jeff Neuval. I'm your co-host. I'm director of the Small Business Center at Todd Valley Community College. Actually, I'm not. I'm reading an old script. He gave me this script.
[00:01:17] I'm going to be that if you'd like. I'm now director of the Manufacturing Solutions Center in kind of her North Carolina, this 2023 today. This is 2023. I'm joined by my co-host Gary Muller who is executive dean of the economic development and corporate education at all of the community college.
[00:01:34] I don't know if I said that right. Did I get that right? You got that right. You're really done well with that. Oh, I guarantee how are you doing? Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year.
[00:01:42] Doing well. We had a great Christmas hope you did. I look into 2023 with a lot of optimism. Well, good. And I'm going to get more efficient after today's podcast. Oh, I hope that you are. I need to. I'm looking forward to that and you know,
[00:01:58] have a good holiday as well or our daughter got to bring her new puppy home to visit with me. Fantastic. What kind? It's some sort of a happy terrier type kind. That really didn't get along with my dog too well.
[00:02:13] There's an only child dog and very territorial, but other than that we had a good holiday. Good deal. So anyway, but I'm very happy because my friend and our guest Todd Liden is with us. Todd, how are you doing? I do well. It's a good New Year.
[00:02:28] Well, welcome. Welcome. We hope that you had a good holiday and we hope that you'll have a prosperous 2023. And we appreciate you coming back to our podcast. Well, I appreciate the invite once I got the invite.
[00:02:42] I was like, OK, well, I've got to up the game this year because it's going into a brand new year. We got to make sure we're doing the new and different. Well, and you and just background on Todd, he is a small business director.
[00:02:59] And his, he works with folks who are starting businesses, existing businesses to help them. Grow and thrive and survive. He's also a regional director where he provides support and assistance to seven additional small business centers. So Todd does some very good work and is a busy fella.
[00:03:21] He is. And in my experience, he more than most people I know stays very up to date with the technology and help businesses. And he always seems brave enough to be one of those first adopters and try some new things.
[00:03:36] So we're always happy to have Todd on to see what he's getting into these days. So you know, sometimes Todd, we've had like, you know, your top 10 apps.
[00:03:46] But you know, I we throw that out the window and you know, we're going to give you the floor to sort of talk about some of the productivity things that you've been working with.
[00:03:56] And you know, and don't know if you might have any surprises for us, but you know what we trust you.
[00:04:02] Well, I don't know if it's a surprise or not, but I've been working on this because the most one of the more popular things I do in as presentation is tools and apps for small businesses.
[00:04:13] And I do try to stay ahead of the custom and thankfully, I mean, I've been a little bit ahead of what I want to talk about today.
[00:04:20] And when you gave me the call, I was like, well, then I've got to I've already been doing this work for my presentation going into the new year.
[00:04:28] But this really forced me over the holidays and particularly to kind of coalesce this into something that was usable for you all. And I wanted to talk. You've probably seen all this stuff with chat GPT.
[00:04:40] You know, where are we live? We don't like get that stuff, you know, we're still reading newspapers and magazines here. So, you know, you know, you know, you're going to have to explain.
[00:04:52] Well, you've probably seen artificial intelligence, chat GPT is out and it's, you know, the latest version gone out. Or at the end of last year.
[00:05:04] And everybody got on board with this idea of now using and in essence, the chat GPT was just using open AIs, AIs modeling system to do, you know, a generated, generated discussion of what you were looking for.
[00:05:26] So you could ask it and the way I kind of explained this to some people is just think of it as, you know, we used to when we were talking about like Uber was.
[00:05:34] Everybody was doing the Uber model as a thing. This is really just text to blank. Whatever you can just verbalize whether it's written or literally spoken is something that can be generated elsewhere and let the AIs more or less do the automated work for that.
[00:05:53] So, we're all going to become pretty redundant here pretty soon. You know, let the computers officially take over and most folks have to realize is that this is AIs a subscription.
[00:06:08] The open AIs great it's, it is but if you look at their pricing structure there, you do have to pay for it. Most people forget is that while the computer does the work to have the capability does cost, you do have to have the functionality for it.
[00:06:26] Which is why, for example, when you look at most audio, it doesn't cost as much because the, the costing on doing any of the work for that is exponentially cheaper than the visual and video obviously, because then you're adding in the visual and then also the
[00:06:45] the motion and that kind of stuff. But it's amazing what you can do. So I wanted to talk about that today and some of the things that we're seeing that are some of the stuff that we have talked about in the past, I think I've mentioned in the past one of the biggest ones right out of the gate.
[00:06:59] It's been around for a while and it's one of the most useful ones considering where COVID was, auto AIs and there's a ton of them out there that do what,
[00:07:07] what that always put itself out there is being a meeting assistance, which in essence was just doing voice to text automated transcription as you go and in most cases,
[00:07:19] if you had a meeting that you recorded like what we're doing here, you could then produce a transcript of it pretty quickly and easily.
[00:07:27] And there are a lot of competitors in that space. That one was one that was well ahead of the curve because if you think about it, we've been helping Google Amazon, all of these big companies with all of the voice work we've been giving them for the past 15 years or so going, hey Siri, hey Alexa, hey Google, we've been giving them the data they needed to figure out how do we, how do we take somebody asking for something and turning it into a
[00:07:57] what they want, whether it's one of my favorite crazy uses that I'm really interested to see. I've sent it out to a couple of my attorney friends is the open AI actually has funded a legal assistant company called Harvey.ai
[00:08:13] that is going to and there's a couple of the oddballs like that that I'm really interested in seeing how that plays out because it's doing contract work and doing, because if you think about it,
[00:08:23] any kind of standard document is easy to do a fill in the blank kind of thing. If you just said fill in for Jeff Neville as the client and what he wants for all of this paperwork and let it do all of the,
[00:08:36] you're not even literally, you're letting it all just fill in the blank. Right. Oh, they're still going to charge me the same amount or will they charge me more?
[00:08:46] That's the interesting thing I think we have to think about it going forward is that while it in some respects makes it easier for the provider,
[00:08:56] they still are paying for the computing, but it is taking probably somebody out of the equation again you're automating somebody who's doing that. And there's a couple of interesting options for it like I said the Harvey AI was one that opening AI is actually funding,
[00:09:13] but two that I'm looking at the first one was called do not pay.com, which basically saying don't pay for someone to do these things for you pay us and that's it's,
[00:09:25] but that's a legal one and then the other one that's not off the ground yet, but it's in that ballpark,
[00:09:30] and I'm going to be following is called legalrobot.com, so that should be interesting to see how that plays with some of the ones that are out there that are already online,
[00:09:41] including like docu-sign and things like that. I think that's where you're going to start seeing some of these things plug into what folks are able to use is to take the AI and to supplement something that already exists.
[00:09:55] So from my small business perspective, are these things that I can use in lieu of a lawyer or are these things that are going to support support lawyers? We're both.
[00:10:06] Both, I mean it could be both, depending on what type of businesses we're talking about and that's where I was going to point out some of the uses for like I said that's where we're going with some of these.
[00:10:17] The obvious one that everybody has seen and you probably think is they were able to quickly turn around the model was doing the changed avatars for people,
[00:10:29] that if you just uploaded 10 to 20 pictures of yourself, selfies, they would generate a interesting unique different visual view based on a bunch of different basically just filters and models and things they had, they were just plugging you into things.
[00:10:48] And you saw a bunch of those turn around real quick at the end of the year because they were taking these different open-AIs and different models including a couple of ones we'll talk about for images in a second
[00:11:00] and allowing people to do that. Now you had to pay for it because to use the AI cost micropennies,
[00:11:10] but for every transaction in essence, they were able to upsell you to go, okay, we'll give you a hundred versions of this avatar, it only cost you 10 bucks for them. It may have cost not even 50 cents to produce it because they've already pre-paid for the computing power.
[00:11:30] And if you pay a little bit more, you can look like George Clooney or something like that. I'm sure you can ask, you know, let's like Jeff Newell actually looking at yourself. Oh, it depends on what pictures we send in. That's true. That's true.
[00:11:43] Well that and that's what you have to do. So for people who want to play around with that and I've already seen some really interesting ways in which you can. I mean, first off, if you get into the NFT space or any creative space, this is really useful.
[00:11:56] So when you're talking about social media marketing, anybody doing any sort of marketing, obviously, it's a huge thing. You do have to be very careful with any of these, whether they're paid or not, to make sure you check the usage rates.
[00:12:11] Because some of them don't and obviously most cases, you are going to be paying for something in order to get the usage rates.
[00:12:18] But one that I like because it allows you to play around in the almost literal playground of a couple of different AI's for images is called nightcafe.com.
[00:12:30] It allows you to play around with one of the big ones, which is called Dalie, D-A-L-D-E, which is really just the open AI's version of the, well it's one of the versions of open AI's visual stuff.
[00:12:49] And it's great because you can go on there and put in, if you get a request and I did something interesting because I wanted to see as I do a presentation. AI replacing farmers.
[00:13:02] So obviously in our area, if you think about what could be done using these types of tools for farm use and agricultural areas.
[00:13:11] I put that in to see what kind of images I'd get out of it and of course most of them were robotic looking things standing over a field, that kind of stuff.
[00:13:19] But you'd get a multiple variety of different looks and then you could go in and tweak them based on the prompts.
[00:13:26] So one of the things that I think is going to become a job in the future in essence is, how do you capitalize on the AI in a way and you're already seeing that work coming out of it is the prompting and the making the interfacing easier for people to actually produce what they're trying to produce.
[00:13:45] Okay. The other one that's like that and there's a couple of them that are off that beaten path a little bit, one is called playgrounda.com.
[00:13:54] And I'll get you the list. I know you're going to, you want to get these out there, but I'll get you the list. It's writing hard. I see that.
[00:14:02] But that's another one where you can just put in the suggestion of what you're looking for and then produce something.
[00:14:09] So I've had an idea for ever and a day as a, as a business kind of idea because you get this a lot with folks who want to get into t-shirts and clothing, a pair of all those kind of things.
[00:14:20] And when I have something unique if you think about it, you'd be able to produce something unique and different pretty quickly.
[00:14:27] If you pay for the licensing dev access and say one of my favorite ideas was to see if you couldn't get to high schools to compete against each other to purchase a t-shirt that's unique. To just their school mascot.
[00:14:41] You know, you'd have to have the school colors and whatever the mascot is and then you could put it in.
[00:14:46] I've produced a couple of interesting ones and I thought we're great that somebody would probably be interested in paying for because they were not something you'd probably seen before. Another one that's, it's an interesting one that gets more and again this is some of the tools,
[00:15:02] especially for marketers and anybody who doesn't either kind of work in the creative space. One's called topaeslabs.com. They have three tools that you download using their interface that does really good work with cleaning up and fixing photos.
[00:15:19] So if you have a photo, it can, it allows you to do really high end stuff to fix those things using AI. And just so folks know, I mean, and this is how much the space is going to become more and more competitive.
[00:15:35] I'm sure Amazon's probably working on something and Google's got one coming out. They just announced that this week called Muse that they've been working on. Of course, Google's got a bunch of different AI projects.
[00:15:47] The one that I thought was interesting in this space was, of course right now you could pull out your phone and Google lens can recognize almost anything.
[00:15:56] Somebody at Google would build one called if you go to things-translator.appspot.com, it will pull it up and you can find out what something is. But in essence, it's using the AI to link the visual recognition with the translator app that it already has.
[00:16:18] So it pulls it up and it recognizes, this is like, this is a cup, you know? And now we'll tell you in Spanish, what that is, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:16:27] So for somebody who's out and about, you know, you're now able to go and get immediate translation of items and things that you would otherwise have. But not even have to type in in or anything like that.
[00:16:38] So there's some really unique, and when I'm trying to think of, is, and I was working on this a little bit over the haul, either assist you's are going forward or assisting what you're doing now or as you described.
[00:16:56] The people that you're working with, what they're doing with it because again, you could see how if you're paying a marketer and they're just using AI to produce a bunch of stuff. So presumably you shouldn't be paying a crazy amount of money for it.
[00:17:14] But that's just one thing, and in that regard, text is the other big one you've probably seen. For this presentation I threw it into chat GPT and had it produce for me an outline for a new, how do we use what did I call it?
[00:17:31] I had it produce for me, you know, an online tools and, and it produced a killer outline for presentation.
[00:17:42] The ones that I've played, I've played, I've been playing with, and I didn't realize that most of them are built on different AI's is one of my favorites is called Quilbot.
[00:17:52] It's also called paraphraser Quilbot.com, and it's got that where you can ask it to produce different things for you putting in just the basic idea and then it would give you an outline or the just of an article along those same lines one that I was interested in seeing a guy.
[00:18:12] One of the things that folks are doing with chat GPT and these other things is plug it into the browser so that as you do a search you can say,
[00:18:20] hey, I was looking for this but I wanted it to do that and one that I was playing with the other day was a, it would do a summary of a YouTube video.
[00:18:30] So you wouldn't have to even watch the whole video, it would go in pull the transcript and then give you a summary of the transcript.
[00:18:39] One of the things I didn't understand, I still have to get a answer from is I looked at that because this kid had created this and it was really neat thing.
[00:18:47] Did the plug in, you put it on YouTube and it would pull up the transcript and then pull out the summary. But if I asked chat GPT for the summary of that exact same and the example he used was Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement address.
[00:19:05] And it did this nice little summary. I didn't do it and it pulled the exact not the exact same did a summary. It went, here's the, and it was, it was the summary but I asked where did you get this?
[00:19:18] Well we don't, we don't search the internet and we don't have direct text so I kept asking trying to get an answer. How does this happen? I didn't get an answer.
[00:19:30] So I'm still playing with that but these are some of the things you can do with this is the transcription like I said with auto-AI.
[00:19:37] Anything it goes, voice to text and text to voice are obviously very interesting tools for productivity for us where you can easily dictate and or just say hey write me an introductory email to so-and-so with these parameters.
[00:19:54] And it would, you know, you know each of us has had dabbles in the educational area and that was a good word.
[00:20:05] And you know, one, you know quickly what comes to mind mind is damn why was it this available when I was a student and, you know, are they ever going to have to think or work again?
[00:20:16] I'm thinking about all of the story talking about how much easier it will be in the future. Well I mean, well I got to be savvy so it won't be easy for me because I won't be able to do it.
[00:20:29] Well I mean the nice thing is most of the people that you're talking about do you have and do know that there are plagiarism detectors and anti-AI written detectors to make sure that it was a and you could throw those in.
[00:20:43] However, there is also the commerce of that and that's what that quillbot and a couple of the other ones that I'll mention are actually pretty good at it saying make this sound like a human. No, don't let this sound like it was written by a robot.
[00:20:59] The other one I like the two that I like that are in this space as well is one is called writer RYTR.me. Writer.me.
[00:21:09] Of course I got to be funny with it and give it the weird spelling and then copy.ai as another one that does basic these types of writing. Like I said most of it they have templates more or less baked in where you can just pull up.
[00:21:24] I want to do this, I want to do that and then gives you the guidelines and then you can start tweaking it down to what you need it for with particular details.
[00:21:33] And a lot of cases you're really just talking about kind of madliving your documents but another case is you know especially when you start thinking about how this could be applied for something that's unique and different.
[00:21:47] That's where it starts become more creatives can actually do things with it otherwise. So in that space the music and audio is fun like I said the audio is interesting because it doesn't take the processing power video and visual takes so it's a lot easier right now.
[00:22:05] So somebody would be able to get into creating music pretty quickly without any experience without any anything.
[00:22:13] I'm here. I've played with a few of them just just to see and it's interesting that you can say I want a song that sounds like it was written by this hype or this band or that.
[00:22:24] And with these different parameters and get things that sort of fit the bill. And it's amazing to think that that's where we're headed. So so you'll be all right songs or I could write songs or Gary could write songs. Be crazy maybe.
[00:22:41] I know but I mean you really haven't been in and in jellock voice and they were really good for you. Well that's not a lot of singing public.
[00:22:50] And then that's the other interesting thing when you look when you start getting into the video ones and that's when you start getting into we've talked in the past about some of the deep fake technology.
[00:22:58] That's an essence what we're talking about that they're basically more or less just taking. The visual and then now the audio and that's becoming the other scary part is that it is easy now with the AI to take snippets of someone's.
[00:23:14] Like this and their voice and recreate them. I mean you've seen that in the deep fake technology now you could think of it as if you. If you had enough audio or particular singer it wouldn't be difficult then to then reproduce it.
[00:23:30] Saying hey make it sound like pretty mercury is singing. Starts mangled banner. You know and it's potentially possible that they could do something like that if they had enough of the data. Oh okay.
[00:23:45] So what that means for for business I think it's kind of a scary thing that when you and you say you know what people can over promise you that gets produced and making sure that as you produce these things that you have the right to do them and use them.
[00:24:01] Like I said that's the other important thing to keep in mind. Obviously for customer service we've had it for years a couple of the ones that chat bots and different voice call and email recognition systems are already there. I mean I was amazed every day I saw it.
[00:24:21] I did a search for a restaurant on Google of a specific type of restaurant and then at the bottom and ask you what one nearby. You know so it's you know it's there even using it in those regards so you have to make sure that.
[00:24:37] What you're doing and you're putting out there matches these I've been saying that the people too for years if you're not gearing it toward being found by the voice to text technology.
[00:24:49] You're kind of missing the boat because you have to use it based on what people are asking for. So um.
[00:24:56] Couple of the other oddball ones and I'll kind of wrap it up for you guys is that um there's this one that you might be interested in it's like and they've seen a couple of these. This is the one I played with the most is called validator.ai.
[00:25:11] It's like give it a business idea and let it give you an idea if it works or not.
[00:25:19] And the nice thing is it's not going to in depth depending on how much you ask it but it will give you the basic, you know something you know we're it almost puts us out of a job at least in terms of the walk in person.
[00:25:35] I'll tell the other business counselors about this tide and you you'll be much more efficient than the restaurant. Much less stressed.
[00:25:44] Well I try I've done a couple things where we've done find me a business plan or an outline for different types of businesses and you easily find it. Okay. Good enough.
[00:25:56] I like to give you these things where you can find all this stuff and start doing that and that's one of the key things I think will help folks. There are two that I've been playing with the most one is called futurepedia.io.
[00:26:13] Which is actually a British company but that's a really nice one that breaks things down and you look at different uses of AI a couple things we've talked about already. And then AI tools directory calm. Okay.
[00:26:30] And those are both really good for if you're thinking about a lot of these different things like what could you do.
[00:26:37] So for example, like I mentioned that open AI had funded Harvey there's another one they call it's called Mem which is more or less like some of these other.
[00:26:49] Project management systems but it's assisted with AI and I think that's what you're going to start seeing is almost everything is going to start having some AI baked into it where it's going to start saying I mean we were already seeing it with most of the calendar systems.
[00:27:05] Mems systems where it'll say did you really want to send this did you really want to do this.
[00:27:13] You got a conflict you want to reschedule it and it'll start automating some of those processes you'll find those baked in and I think we're going to see a lot more of that going on.
[00:27:24] But to find out how people can use it like I said I think in the creative space there's some opportunities like I said for folks who want to think about.
[00:27:33] You know what's something that other people are doing and how can I tweak it and run with it especially in the creative space for example, and this is the one I loved playing with if you go to.
[00:27:44] What's this one? Oh AI room planner.com and you could take a picture of a space throw it into the AI and it will give you based on some of the parameters got baked into it a different look of what the room could be.
[00:28:02] So it clears out everything and then put stuff in. I think we're fortunate that I guarantee our wives don't listen to the podcast or else it would be having to buy some additional furniture. I think so.
[00:28:18] But that was a great one and there's some other ones like that that I've seen that do that worry it can find the dimensions and then give you some suggestions and I could see how that's going to be something where.
[00:28:29] And we talk about what this will be useful for is if you have inventory that needs to be described for listings and then cataloged this will start being able to do a lot of that at least you know virtually not you know although.
[00:28:45] Pull out your phone and scan I mean you're seeing that happening now a time too so. Sounds very cool.
[00:28:53] We will put links out there on on our show page so that we know we're throwing a lot of sites and what not so we'll you can you'll be able to link to these things. I know there's more than 10 there. I know absolutely.
[00:29:08] You're blowing our mind man because I don't know about you Gary but you know the last addition of a life magazine that I got did not have any of this stuff. And I'm about you but anyway, you know where that's why we love to talk with Todd.
[00:29:24] I look forward to this and he expands our brains and scares the hell out of us. That's exactly right. Listen and just go overwhelmed. Yeah, in a positive way. Todd.
[00:29:36] Anyway, you're you're always a few steps ahead of us which what we which is what we love and appreciate about you so that's why we want to that's why we will have you continue to come back if you will.
[00:29:47] So hopefully next year you know the AI isn't replacing me or or us. Or maybe I can yeah I mean I can we can work that out. Okay. Three eyes talking to each other. All right well look yeah we always like.
[00:30:02] Yeah, on a lighter note we like to always have our lightning round are you up for playing our lightning round today of course okay well this lightning round is sponsored by. Oh to stay in the nights do you need a band for your event.
[00:30:14] Oh to stay in the night's great for weddings bar misfis and fraternity parties cash payments are preferred. Oh to stay in the nights check them out on the internet.
[00:30:23] So Todd we've got some quick questions give us some quick answers don't be over thinking it don't don't resort to AI. This has to come directly from you. All right question number one what is your biggest pet peeve. People who complain without a solution.
[00:30:42] That's best of good one. Number two Christmas turkey Christmas ham or something else. I don't always in the lead at turkey. I'm with you and there was some controversy in my house this year about that so anyway I'm with you on that one.
[00:31:02] Favorite all time movie Raiders of the last arc. Classic and then there's another. Yeah in the Anna Jones coming out in 2023 so anyway. Last question what topping or toppings do you put on your pizza? I'm open to anything but I mean I'll go with just the classic pepperoni.
[00:31:31] Okay that's that's quite all right Gary what are you putting on your pizza? I just had it last night extra cheese and ground beef. Okay straight forward safe. There's much cheese I can get on my.
[00:31:43] All right Todd I know you also have a podcast that is called the Todd cast that people can find. I think on on all the traditional podcasting platforms and if people are looking for you and other venues work and they find you.
[00:32:02] Well obviously they can find me a bleed community call just small business center but if they look up Todd Lydon online they're going to find me pretty easily. Todd Lydon Lydon Lydon Lydon. Yes sir.
[00:32:14] All right well Todd we very much appreciate you joining us today we appreciate the information that you've put together for us. For the last three or four or five years I don't know how long we've been doing this but we appreciate it.
[00:32:26] Well any comment below your mind I'll stuff I'll stuff up not that hard but okay. We always like to end our podcast by giving a shout out to some small businesses that we have come across in our our respective travels.
[00:32:40] Todd you have anything that you want to give a shout out to. Just last evening I was able to try they've been around for a couple of years but in my next next door county at Fayetteville. There is the Fayetteville pie company.
[00:32:53] They do very nice both savory and sweet pies. Savory and sweet all right yeah and sir my wheelhouse. Do I have to come there to get them or will they send one to me?
[00:33:07] I don't know if they send or not I see people requesting them all the time but they do they do travel they have a little converted school bus for their food truck so they do travel I guess so maybe maybe you can convince them to make that trip.
[00:33:22] All right well I'm going to look them up so that sounds good I'm always up for some pie I appreciate that. So Garrett you have a small business to share well you know I do this month. Spotlight's going to be on jazzy's cheesecake which is right up mine.
[00:33:37] I was supposed to be guiding a bit most because of your jazzy's cheesecake. We will a little bit later in the UK. Yeah I discovered it over the Christmas holidays that came in and we're shopping of course.
[00:33:49] And you know as I said I'm always looking for small businesses or unique ideas as we're doing our shopping travels.
[00:33:56] And we were shopping in Charlotte, Huntersville and Cornelius areas and I saw this place and of course I stopped by to see if it might be something that I would like.
[00:34:06] And she's kick I do like it's a very pretty sword decorated in pink which I've caught my eye. I started taking pictures and the man she came over and said who are you and what are you doing?
[00:34:17] Which started the conversation I told him we had a podcast that we like to spotlight small businesses and then she was very nice for the beginning. And she was even more excited when I told her we were going to spotlight her.
[00:34:28] Get the entrepreneur exchange bump so that's exactly all right we now have a new listener. Kendra and as she was talking they have three stores and they opened their third store right next to UNC Charlotte.
[00:34:43] I told her we had to start hospitality academy and she talked about they have an intern from Johnson and Wales. So we started talking about that so we're going to see if there might be an opportunity for one of our students to be an intern with him.
[00:34:57] To family focus business owner is Jerry Brown Simmons and she named the business after her Uncle who had a very positive impact on her life. That was a very good story focused on the community focused on quality and focused on the 75 different flavors of cheesecake.
[00:35:15] I don't know how that could be but it's going to take me at least a month to find out how good they are. It's going to take work that exactly but you know and it's good chance for us to take a field trip.
[00:35:28] If there's two get sick yeah well we can go to faithful for pies we've got a Charlotte for cheesecake is all good. Yeah then we will be having to work on that exercise. All right how about you?
[00:35:39] I'm also having to work on the exercise but I came across a small business that that I think that you will both enjoy and appreciate very unique.
[00:35:50] And you're going to think it's not real but it's real okay so three to know how to call in the wash and post you know some people are just not good at standing up.
[00:36:02] In the system or they you get you get your your calling customer service you get on the phone and you're they put you on hold for five minutes ten minutes whatever it is. And you get frustrated to give up.
[00:36:16] So there are two people in Pittsburgh Chris Grimm and Falunzaka they are launching a small business to revolutionize the way people complain. They started business called Karen's for hire to serve as advocates for customers who have been abused by big companies. And I'm playing for you.
[00:36:38] I'll write and send letters to fight for your case they'll get on social media to share information to hopefully can to get businesses to do the right things. There was an article written by Steve Hendrix in a Washington Post some examples of cases that they're working on.
[00:36:55] A Massachusetts dressmaker being stiffed by a celebrity chef who wore her creation at a gala and then refused to return it or pay for it.
[00:37:04] A woman trying to enter a 4500 deal with a matchmaker service called it's just lunch after she asked her a man who loved hiking and was matched and said with a man who mostly wanted to try on women choose.
[00:37:18] The low income tenant in Memphis a single mother on disability being pushed out of her apartment in an apparent violation of rental laws. In the in that case they provide the woman with a pro bono tutorial and federal tenant protections and how to unlist housing and urban development.
[00:37:34] They helped a new Jersey woman draft a letter to the key a dealership that was refusing to replace her engine when she bought a lemon.
[00:37:42] The average fees around $65 so you know if you got abused by Southwest Airlines recently and don't feel like you're getting what you could you could go to karrans for hire dot com.
[00:37:56] The parents for hire dot com check them out they're on the internet as well but they're legit so check it out very cool so.
[00:38:06] If any of our listeners if you have a suggestion for the entrepreneur exchange small business and month you can email them to us at exchange at the mesh dot TV.
[00:38:15] And if we use her your your suggestion will send you a little bit of a prize pack that we've got here. We want to thank Todd Liden for joining us Todd it's always a pleasure. Thank you for having me again. Thank you.
[00:38:28] Thank the mesh podcast network if you go to the mesh dot TV you'll be able to see the whole network of podcasts that've got going on and a lot of interesting stuff going on out there. We want to wish everybody happy holidays and happy new year and.
[00:38:45] Good luck. Good luck in 2023 hopefully the robots will not have replaced us by the end of the year. Everyone be safe out there. We look forward to talking to you next month. Take care.
[00:38:58] You've been listening to the mesh and online media network of shows and programs ranging from business to arts sports to entertainment music to community. Our programs are available on the website as well as through iTunes and YouTube. Check us out online at the mesh dot TV.
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