In this intelligent episode, Jason Sherman, Entrepreneur & Consultant of jasonsherman.org, shares how he helps new tech founders fast-track their success through AI. If you’re an entrepreneur unsatisfied with just another great idea and ready to launch a great company, you won’t want to miss this episode.
You will discover:
– When to start selling your tech product (and it’s probably not what you think!)
– How technology has dramatically changed the startup space over the last 2 decades
– How to prove (or disprove) your great idea without having to build a thing
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is the one and only Jason Sherman, who’s a successful entrepreneur, award winning filmmaker, journalist and tech startup expert, over 10 media outlets featured him, including the Wall Street Journal USA Today, Fox News and ABC News. His methodologies on entrepreneurship and data driven decisions are his main source of education for those he helps worldwide. He’s got a book called strap on your boots, which is the culmination of his life’s work to help other entrepreneurs succeed. And he’s focused, as of course, on startup essentials and then also in Udemy, he regularly volunteers his time and skill set to the Philadelphia tech community, and he’s here with us today, Jason, I’m so excited to have you on the show. Reading through your book has been around for a couple years now. It’s just struck by how true it still is today, which is quite the feat. You know, in the technology space, there’s so much that’s changing. And what I’d love to explore with you is, because you’re right at the front of this, what does the launch world look like? What does launching a company look like in the age of AI and so before we jump into a lot of the specifics on that in your book, and several places I saw online, you make the point to talk about starting being hard. Why do you think it is that so many people try to make it sound easy?
Jason Sherman
I would say, first of all, thanks for having me, and you’re bringing up a lot of interesting points. I would say, if you asked me this question 20 plus years ago, the answer would be dramatically different, because we would live in an age of massive data servers and coding that had to be done by hand, not a lot of tutorials on YouTube to make a physical product. You didn’t have Kickstarter to kind of vet the product ahead of time, and so many more things I can bring up. So if we reverse that now, things have become much easier. You have the cloud. You don’t have to have servers. You have coding tutorials out the wazoo. You can have AI code for you, which we can get into, and products can be vetted on Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and what printers, you know? So it’s just a lot easier to make a product to show people, but to start a business is always going to be difficult, because starting a business has a lot of moving parts. It’s very time consuming. There is some financial, you know, piece to it, and you have to be committed. I mean, you’re gonna have to spend a lot of time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, and you’ve you brought up just a number of technologies that have made the actual functions of it harder, um, dialing in specifically on the area of AI. How do you see AI changing both non tech and tech startups?
Jason Sherman
I mean, AI just changes your personal life in general. I mean, if we just kind of break through what it’s really doing, you can talk about it changing, you know, entrepreneurs, businesses and non, you know, non technical or whatnot. But really it’s transforming productivity for me personally. When I first started using it, you know, years and years ago, before chatgpt became popular, I was using it just for recipes and like itineraries to travel and figuring out, like dietary, you know, exercise regimens and like learning new languages and things like that. So it was kind of more for my personal life. And then, of course, it translates very easily into business, because now it’s like, well, write me a marketing plan. Write a blog post for me. How can I, you know, really make a good video script to target my market for my new product and and things like that. And it’s always going to do better than you are. It just is, it’s, it’s artificial intelligence. It is smart. So, I mean, if you want to dive deeper into, you know, where AI, you know, what it can actually do for businesses. I mean, we can have all other episodes just for that. But I wanted to kind of keep it short for you.
Scott Ritzheimer
No, I think that’s that’s helpful. And what I want to kind of look at, kind of the unique facet of this is, how do we understand when and where to use technology, right? Because it can change everything at this point, should it change everything? So how do you know if a given technology, or maybe even your approach to it is helping or hurting your chances of success?
Jason Sherman
Man you got some loaded questions. Man, these are, these are these are definitely digging in, because I’m going to be biased. I’m always going to say, to use it. You know, if you go back and I like giving this analogy many times, why wouldn’t people have used electricity when it came out? Why would they keep using candles? Why would people keep using horse and buggy instead of a car? Why would you keep using a flip phone or a rotary phone instead of a smartphone? It just doesn’t make sense. So the technologies continue to evolve. You know, from the glider to the airplane to the space shuttle. Now we have aI so you have to use it, or you’re going to get left behind and. Your competitors and all your peers and all your friends and friends that are using it are going to excel in their field. They’re going to upskill their career. They’re going to earn more money. They’re going to learn and produce faster results. And to my friends and family out there, or people who I know who have been complaining about AI because I see it all the time, oh, I’m a writer, and it’s destroying my business. I can’t get jobs as a writer anymore. I say you have to adapt. What can you do with AI to improve your writing business instead of complaining about it? Now focus on the creative part of it, because AI doesn’t have that creative essence that we as humans have, and that’s the piece that everyone has to remember.
Scott Ritzheimer
So I’ve heard it said in a couple of industries, and I think you and I could probably debate this for a while, but you’re not going to be replaced by AI, but you’re going to be replaced by someone who’s using AI. So so to some extent, that’s true, it depends on what you do, but the facet of this I want to dive into is you’ve got a new company again, tech or not, you’re out there trying to sell you’re trying to get the word out. How are you going to be beat by someone else who’s using AI if you’re not?
Jason Sherman
Well, because the results you’re getting are just faster. One of the things I noticed is in my previous startups, I’ve been running startups for two decades, it took a really long time to get to a certain point, and we’re talking years of like, a certain level of success now I can, I can get a startup up and running, coded, built, marketed, ready to sell in like, six months to 12 months. It’s a drastic difference from the before used to be, like, two years, three years, four years. Wow, you know? Yeah, so, and that’s because of AI. It just speeds things up to a level that you humanly cannot do. Your brain can do it, but you’re just physically limited to how fast you can work and how long it takes you to write one technical document. For example, whereas the AI, you say, here’s what my platform does, here’s the architecture, here’s some diagrams, whip up a technical doc for me, and within 30 seconds, you have a two, three page technical document that you can give to your developers, and it’s 100% accurate. It’s these people saying that they’re not accurate. I just don’t see it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So we’ve got technology in place faster than ever to get started. One of the questions that I have for you as someone who’s who’s done this many times, particularly in the tech spaces. When is it time to start selling inside of a tech company? There’s, relative to other industries, there’s a lot more that happens before a formal sales process begins. And I’m not talking about pitching investors or selling team members. I’m talking about two end users. When? When do you know it’s time to start selling?
Jason Sherman
This might be controversial, but I would say on day one, so before you have a product. And as we mentioned, my book, and I still use every methodology in that book every single day, and when people don’t want to use those methods, I kind of say, get on the train or wait at the station. And the deal is, you need to sell your product before it is built, because what you’re building may not be what the market wants. So you have to be giving them some sort of idea of what it does, whether it’s through a survey, a mock up something, something that they can see, tangible and give you feedback. That feedback is how you then start getting your customers underneath the, you know, underneath the folder. So, so you’re you’re getting these beta testers that are giving you feedback, but essentially, they’re getting invested into your product before you launch it. Then when you release it, you say, hey, you know, John, you gave me all these great, you know, feedback results. And now here’s the platform that you kind of helped me build. Are you willing to pay for it? And he’ll say, Yeah, I’ll give it a shot. Why not 30 day free trial, then I’ll pay the 100 bucks a month. You got yourself a customer times 500 if you do a lot of beta testing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So the now tying all this together, we’ve got our company used AI tools across the board. We’re out there. We’ve got the proof in the market, and it’s time to go, right? We’ve got to sell, sell, sell. You’ve got your early users in, but it’s go time. There’s traditionally a ton of legwork that goes into that, right? There’s lots of calls, lots of follow up, lots of appointments, lots of, you know, messages, whatever it may be. Seems like an area that would be right for AI. Is that true?
Jason Sherman
Yes, and no, AI is definitely doing the cold calling and the cold emailing. There’s a lot of tools out there for that, but essentially, at the end of the day, those customers still want to talk to the human in charge. That’s just how it is right now. That might not be the situation far in the future. They might just be meeting up to see that house after calling the realty place, and it’s a robot in person, but for now, it’s still you got to talk to the human. So there is definitely that middle ground. That’s what we do. We provide those leads through our platform, and then once those leads come in, I the owner, have to call that lead or email that lead, or use an automated, you know, AI platform to do. That for me, but essentially, I still have to intervene somehow, somewhere. AI is an integral tool. It’s definitely cutting out a lot of that legwork you talked about, but we still have to use our legs as humans. Yeah.
Scott Ritzheimer
So one of the things that can happen when AI comes into the picture, and you’ve kind of alluded this, is, one, we can lose creativity. To we can lose the human connection. What have you found, particularly in the world of sales, is the right balance of leveraging AI and automation versus one on one connection?
Jason Sherman
Well, you’re talking about relationships now, right? And human connection is the number one thing that AI can maybe, seemingly not overcome. I mean, there’s the Turing test, and people are saying, Oh, my God, my you know, my son fell in love with this AI and committed suicide. It’s terrible, but we don’t know what else was going on in his life. You know, it could have been a lot of factors. But yes, people can be completely fooled and connected to an AI because they’re lonely. And you know, the epidemic, the loneliness epidemic happening right now, is prevalent So, and that’s our original startup, where Van Gogh came from. So I would say, realistically, you can never really replace you. Even said it yourself, you can’t replace the human connection. Relationships are the number one way to connect any customer, journalist, peer investor or whatnot. Telling a story and AI is not good at doing that because it doesn’t have any emotion or feelings. It’s just good at telling a story or helping you tell a story, but you the storyteller have to connect.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So, Jason, there’s a question that I like to ask all my guests, and it is this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Jason Sherman
so many, I mean, one of the one of the biggest things that I wish people would know. Maybe they’re not entrepreneurs or not business owners, but they want to be, and that’s where I think this really should go to, is just because you have an idea doesn’t mean that investors are going to throw money at you. Because they all think they can. They really do. They come to me, Hey, Jason, I have this great idea for the app that’s gonna kill Facebook. I hear this all the time. It’s like, come on, I can build it. How can you help me build it? I’m like, Well, do you have $100,000 you know, to start? Oh, no, I don’t have, you know. Okay, well, then you can’t build it. So can I get investors? Can you help me get investors? You know, the secret, it shouldn’t even be a secret, is you have to put the time, the effort and the money into something, build it up to a certain point, so that you do gain the eyeballs of not only investors, but co founders, people who want to help you build this product and put it out in the market. Get those customers, like we talked about, get that revenue, show that traction, validate the product, and then investors will come to you. You don’t have to come to them.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I’ve heard it tossed around in all kinds of different circles. You’re one idea away from a billion dollars. And, yeah, well, there’s never been a billion dollars without an idea. I don’t know that it really works that way. So for someone who’s sitting there, but they do have that idea, right? And no, they’re not ready to go out and get a billion dollars of investment if you have that idea, what’s the best next step you can take today?
Jason Sherman
I mean, obviously we talked about my book and my course. Like you said, they’re very practical. I still follow those methods every day. Nothing you don’t have to take, you know, get my book or my course, but you can check out all my stuff online, and you’ll see that I do try to help you through my blog as well. And I would say, start to come up with an outline. Use AI if you have to ask it, if it has some traction, like, is this going to work? You know, is there some give me some ideas. Help me brainstorm this outline. Then look for competitors. What are the competitors for this idea? Because everyone, the one thing they fail to do is very simple, is go to Google and type in your idea. If you don’t find anything about it, then maybe you do have a unique idea. But you’re you’re you’re generally going to find, like, 20 other companies that are doing what you’re doing. So try to validate that there’s no competitors. Outline it. So you have an idea. And then try to come up with some sort of mock up, you know, a simple wire frame, something that kind of shows how it would work, you know. And then a simple free type form survey, five questions, you know, Would you like an app that does this? Or would you like to buy a product that does this? If so, what are the features you want? Et cetera, et cetera. And you do your five question survey, give it to your friends and family or peers, see what the reaction is. If, like 82% of people say they like this thing, then maybe you have something to work on, but at least you validated it without building anything. And that’s what people should do if they have an idea. Don’t just come to me saying you have an idea. Show me you put in at least a couple of days, a couple of weeks of work to show me that you truly care about this idea, and you did a little bit of legwork to show me that this is very unique and it could potentially be a winner.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s fantastic. Jason, folks want to know more. More about you, your course, your book, even the AI tools you have now, where can they find more out about you?
Jason Sherman
My website is jasonsherman.org It has links to everything on there if they want to check out vengoai.com for our AI agents, 30 day free trial use code vengo 30 and my AI gold guide is also available at AI gold guide.com and they can do 20% off with gold 20.
Scott Ritzheimer
Love it. Fantastic. Well, Jason, thanks for being on the show. Just a privilege and honor. Having you here for those of you who are watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. Hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Jason Sherman
Jason Sherman is a successful entrepreneur, award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and tech startup expert. Over ten media outlets featured him, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, FOX News, and ABC News. His methodologies on entrepreneurship and data-driven decisions are his main source of education for those he helps worldwide. His new book, Strap on Your Boots, is the culmination of his life’s work to help other entrepreneurs succeed and is the focus of his course, Startup Essentials, on Udemy. He volunteers his time and skill set to the Philadelphia tech community regularly.
Want to learn more about Jason Sherman’s work at jasonsherman.org/? Check out his website at https://jasonsherman.org/ You can get a copy of his book at https://amzn.to/4acrj2X
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