Summary
In today's fast-paced world, AI agents can help you save time, like reducing email management from hours to just 30 minutes a day.
AI agents can automate tasks, allowing solopreneurs to handle workloads equivalent to multiple people, increasing efficiency tremendously.
Understanding AI history helps leverage its power: Stage one was chatbots, stage two involved reasoners, and now we are at stage three with independent agents.
Agents act autonomously, handling tasks like booking flights, drafting and sending emails, and managing social media posts, unlike traditional AI, which only guides you.
Deep research models, a type of AI agent, independently gather detailed information for purposes like competitor analysis, saving time on research tasks.
AI agents can manage customer service emails by generating responses based on your knowledge base, significantly streamlining customer interactions.
Advanced phone AI agents can sound human, schedule appointments, answer queries, and enhance overall customer service experience in businesses like medical clinics.
Cutting-edge agents like Manis can build complete websites in minutes, perform intricate tasks like creating branding assets, and assist with SEO, showcasing AI’s potential in business.
Tools like Manis encounter limitations such as login barriers, requiring human oversight, which is crucial to prevent undesired actions like unauthorized purchases.
Browser-based AI agents, such as those integrated into Opera, offer seamless task automation by utilizing existing logins to platforms like Canva and ChatGPT for design and content creation.
Future AI advancements may include agents managing entire computer systems, potentially automating video editing, file organization, and invoice handling as efficiently as an assistant.
While AI may displace some jobs, it also presents opportunities for those who learn to leverage it effectively, opening new avenues for business innovation and efficiency.
AI agents today can significantly boost business operations; for instance, using deep research techniques can improve website conversions by over 125%.
Embrace AI's current capabilities to enhance your business workflows, preparing for a future where more advanced features become standard.
Video
How To Take Action
I suggest starting with simple AI tools that can help you save time immediately. For tasks like email management, use AI agents to filter and reply based on your knowledge base. This way, you can spend less time in your inbox and more on growing your business.
A good way to handle repetitive tasks like social media posts or customer responses is by using AI agents to create and schedule content. These agents can work independently and follow your instructions, so your presence stays active without taking up your time.
Experiment with AI deep research models to gather detailed reports on topics like competitor analysis or customer preferences. These insights can refine your marketing strategy and improve engagement by using the language and issues your audience cares about.
Use AI phone agents to handle customer inquiries or appointments. These tools enhance customer interactions and free up your team to focus on tasks that need a personal touch.
For entrepreneurs creating content or branding, try AI tools like Manis to develop website pages, branding assets, and handle SEO tasks. This will quickly boost your online presence with minimal effort.
Remember that while AI is powerful, it still needs some human oversight. Monitor its activities to avoid any hiccups, like incorrect order processing or unauthorized purchases. This balance ensures you exploit AI benefits while keeping control over critical decisions.
Adopting these AI strategies can significantly enhance your efficiency, positioning your business for growth and innovation.
Quotes by Author
"Today she spends less than 30 minutes in her inbox"
"An agent can actually book your flight"
"Lots can get in their way, things as simple as login and captures"
"Opera browser just announced last week that they now have an agent built into the browser"
"It will affect people for sure on the flip side of that there's also a big opportunity"
Full Transcript
in a small consulting firm in Boston the owner gets over 200 emails a day six months ago this would have consumed hours of her time today she spends less than 30 minutes in her inbox meanwhile in a design studio in Austin a solarreneur manages a client load that would typically require three employees and in countless businesses across the country work that once demanded human attention is happening automatically what's changed well these businesses have deployed AI agents a technology fundamentally different from the AI tools that most of us are familiar with and it's reshaping what's possible for small businesses now I'm no stranger to AI i talk about it all the time on this channel but what's the difference between the AI that we've grown comfortable with like using chat GBT to help us write content or do basic research and an agent what do agents do that traditional AI if we can call anything about AI traditional can't do the thing is if you ask nine people what an agent actually is you're going to get 10 different answers so I'm here to get to the bottom of what makes some AI agents while others aren't and more importantly how we as service business owners can use them to get more done with less essentially doing the work of a much larger team even if you're a soloreneur to understand why everybody's hyped up about AI agents we need to know how we got here so think of AI development as happening in three distinct stages with each building on the capabilities of the previous one stage one was chat bots they're AI systems with natural conversation abilities but they're really limited to responding directly to your own questions within their training knowledge so think chat GBT using it to help you write blog posts or emails and asking it questions almost like you would Google something stage two are reasoners so these are systems capable of human level problem solving across a really broad range of topics when DeepSeek blew up the internet with its ability to not only provide simple search results and answers it actually used reason and a step-by-step thinking process to go a lot deeper and soon every other AI player followed suit google Gemini and ChatGpt both came out with their own deep research models both named deep research oh the creativity and believe it or not this simple ability to take in a request and reason its way through the steps to get to the right information is in fact a first step to agentic behavior so I sat down with AI expert Rick Morretti to help me understand why the deep research part is agentic because you're just giving it a question and then it goes out itself and does the research for you meaning like it's going to find all the articles and the whatever it's searching to come up with the research report so if somebody wants to look at like a very simple example of like agent behavior go use deep research for free on ChachiBT put in a search and you know 25 minutes later it's going to give you a detailed research report that is agentic behavior because you've given it one question or you've asked it to do something and then it goes out and does it and it decides where to go to get you that information and that brings us to stage three agents agents can act independently or following human instructions so they represent the current frontier of AI development where the AI can break through to not just think but actually do instead of just telling you about travel options an agent can actually book your flight rather than suggesting email responses it can draft and send them instead of writing social media posts it can create the posts and publish them across all platforms all on its own so now we know that deep research models are a low-level agent in that they take your goal and they act on their own to figure out the best way to get you the information you requested and that alone is incredibly powerful for any business you can use it to get everything from competitor analysis to customer research and even get a really detailed report on the words that your customers use when they talk about their problems and what they want the most that is gold when it comes to putting together a really persuasive marketing message you can even put an AI agent to work answering your customer service emails agentic behavior that is completely possible today is it can read the emails and then depending on a knowledge base basically knowledge files that you've given the AI it will look at the email that it's come in it will read it analyze it figure out the context of the email and then it will go look at your knowledge base and it will write a response based on the information that you've given it you can even set it up so that it does that all automatically and responds for you or you can set it up fairly easily to you know put it into say like your draft folder if you want to review it before it goes out which like to recommend to do there are even phone answering agents that sound exactly like real people that are trained on your own company data so they can not only answer questions they can actually set appointments take reservations and handle simple customer service tasks a medical clinic here in Chicago added one of these phone agents to their practice last year now when patients call after hours or when the front desk is busy the AI assistant can schedule appointments answer questions about services and even send appointment reminders so the actual people can now spend much more time helping the patients who are physically in the office improving everyone's experience but there's a brand new category of AI agent that can do even more for you in theory anyway you have like ChachiPT's operator which is an agent at the time we're recording this manis is all the the rage right now over the past few days it's browserbased and you tell it what you want it to do and you give it some guidelines and it will go do it these tools can literally take control of your internet browser and perform a lot of the same kind of tasks that a human could do online it has the ability to go beyond the what I like to call sort of the gimmicky stuff that you can do with agents right now like the gimmicky stuff for me is like go order me some socks go order me lunch and it get it delivered to my house by whatever 12:30 that's pretty common behavior right now for agents but what I'm seeing with with Manis is like yeah it can do all those things but now there's actual like business use cases that I'm seeing so for example create branding assets for you uh for presentations that you might be giving so it's like look at this now create me something similar seo consultant Julian Goldie reported that with a single prompt Manis built an entire lead generation website for his business that included multiple pages with accurate company information and a functioning contact capture system in just minutes and this wasn't just a static template the agent wrote code put together the content and deployed the whole site live but while tools like operator and manis show a ton of potential it's not completely autonomous lots can get in their way things as simple as login and captures can stop them dead in their tracks needing lots of human intervention at this point and that's because these tools usually run inside of a virtual browser environment it's not just taking control of your actual browser window where you could be you know logged into all of your accounts that would make it really hard to create you a logo design on Canva or even book your travel in that classic use case example but oversight is good right we don't necessarily want the AI having cart blanch to buy $1,000 worth of socks or a first class round trip to Australia the same weekend as your daughter's wedding so for now things like purchases tend to still be pretty locked up requiring you to step in before any critical decisions are made and that's a good thing but even that is about to change if you want it to the Opera browser just announced last week that they now have an agent built into the browser it's the first time we're seeing that within a well-known browser and it makes more sense because if somebody's using Opera on a day-to-day basis they're more likely to be logged into tools and and stuff like that so you know there's less friction if you will if you're using it to do certain things within the browser because you're already logged in so if you wanted it to make you a logo or a social post you could just use the Opera browser and you're logged into Canva or ChatgBT's image creation tool and that's going to be able to create whatever you need for you yeah and also like PowerPoint or Keynote or what have you you give it a little bit of guidance about like what you might be looking for and then it goes and does it not only will browserbased agents get better and more reliable but we can also look forward to this same idea going even further to where the AI is going to be able to take over your whole computer this will let it use any offlinebased software too so imagine if you're a business owner doing what I always recommend you know using YouTube as a client generation tool the worst part about that is usually editing your own videos well an agent that could take over your computer could technically learn how to edit your videos the way you like them and then do it and then it could use Photoshop to make your thumbnails think about an admin cleanup and organization day you know your desktop could be a mess and you can't find anything a scenario that I'm personally all too familiar with but then imagine that the AI agent sorts all your files into folders deletes duplicates organizes your downloads and creates labeled folders for all your receipts contracts and projects it could even rename files like this into this or what about building and sending your invoices you know you could just tell it "Send invoices to everyone I worked with last month." The AI would then open up your spreadsheet or calendar they would see who you worked with then create custom invoices in Canva or Word save them as PDFs then email them with a polite note and update your books all in one step how do you think that AI agents are going to change the way that we work as small businesses a lot i think that technology has a long way to go in terms of it becoming a true employee for us that doesn't take much oversight if you have an agency for example that I don't know like content marketing or something like that or data analysis or what have you and you know you take on projects that would normally require I don't know six seven eight people honestly these things can be done now with one person because of the AI opportunities and these agents that can go do things for you how long do you think it's going to be before we get to these fully autonomous agents when is all this going to be possible is sort of the million-dollar question you know if you ask say like the anthropic CEO you say like 2027 in a couple years other people come back and say "You're nuts." Like that's we're not even going to be close to that and of course we can't talk about AI taking over all of these processes in our business in the face of a possible recession without at least acknowledging the big ugly elephant in the room is it going to eliminate jobs and stuff like that it will but it's the people that understand how this stuff is working and getting in and using it and understanding it to the point where it's like "All right well maybe this opens a new opportunity oh I didn't know agents could do you know X Y and Z maybe I could use them to fill in the blank and I So I think yes in terms of human capital it will affect people for sure on the flip side of that there's also a big opportunity what does this allow me to do now and think about it from that standpoint which I think is is really cool to think about but for now let's just meet AI agents where they are today and use them to the best of their ability so my absolute favorite use case of agents is using deep research to improve your website conversions by 125% or more i've got the entire start to finish strategy in this video right here so click here and let's get you started using AI agents to move your business ahead starting today so click here and I'll see you there in a
