July 18, 2023 • 22 mins
EPISODE SUMMARY
By now, almost every software business owner has heard the tales of OpenAI's language-learning model. Software founders have set their sights on upgrading their systems by integrating ChatGPT. Does your company need ChatGPT, and if so, how do you absorb it in your SaaS and business operations?
In this week's episode of Scale Your SaaS, ChatGPT Consultant Shanif Dhanani educates about the potential of ChatGPT-powered software along with its flipside as he talks with Host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Matt Wolach. He also shares valuable insights about the field of AI for curious software founders looking to get right into it. Wield the exponential learning of AIs to reach breakthroughs in your bottom line constantly!
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach
Episode: Episode No. 273, "Where to Start with ChatGPT - with Shanif Dhanani"
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Guest: Shanif Dhanani, ChatGPT Consultant
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
- Determine if Machine Learning Fits Into the Problem
- Automate Unessential Tasks
- Access Your Data Quicker Using AI
- Use ChatGPT for Outlines and Revisions
- Properly Store Your Data
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
- NLP is Best for Databases
- Bard Will Catch Up to ChatGPT
- Most AI Projects Do Not Launch
TOP QUOTES
Shanif Dhanani
[5:34] "And if I can help someone by building a project for them, great. And if not, I'll try to do what I can for them."
[6:14] "I think that people are going to get better and better at identifying AI generated content and sort of glossing over it. There's something to be said about the human element."
[19:22] "And the more you start to automate away these things, and the more you start to systematize your processes, the better off you're going to be."
Matt Wolach
[4:34] "A lot of times people don't know how to solve their problem… So being that expert in guiding and advising is really critical."
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Locusive, visit: https://www.locusive.com/
You can also find Shanif Dhanani on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanifdhanani/
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/
Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Wolach (00:10):
A lot of people are talking about ChatGPT. What is
it? How can it work? How can Iuse it in my business?
Fortunately, Shanif came on theshow Shanif Dhanani. He is an
expert at Chat GPT. In fact,he's a consultant he helps
businesses Connect ChatGPT intotheir business for use it in all
sorts of ways. And so he randown a really good list of
(00:32):
things you can do with jazz upand other AI like Google's Bard.
So check this out. If you'rewondering where do I start with
chat GBT? This is where youstart.
Intro/ Outro (00:42):
Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that
gives you proven techniques andformulas for boosting your
revenue and achieving your dreamexit brought to you by a guy
who's done just that multipletimes. Here's your host, Matt
Wallach,
Matt Wolach (00:58):
and welcome to Scale Your SaaS super excited to
have you here. Thank you verymuch for coming. My name is
Matt. Our goal today is help yougrow. So we're going to talk
about some amazing things andI'm really excited for Shanif
Dhanani. who's with us, Shanif,how you doing,
Shanif Dhanani (01:06):
I'm doing great, man. Thanks for Thanks for
having me on the show.
Absolutely. I'm
Matt Wolach (01:17):
really glad to have you here. Let me make sure
everybody knows who you are. SoShanif is a ChatGPT consultant,
definitely something that I amin the dark with. I know
everybody's talking about chatGPT. But Shanif helps businesses
understand and build systemsthat connect their internal and
proprietary systems to chat GPT,enabling internal employees,
customers, and otherstakeholders to reap the
(01:37):
benefits of using large languagemodels on their own data. Sharif
has built machine learninganalytics and software systems
at large companies like Twitterand Booz Allen smaller startups
like Aptio, where he was thefounder and tap commerce, where
he was one of the world's first,which was one of the world's
first mobile advertisingplatforms. So he absolutely
knows his stuff. Once again,Sinead, thanks for coming on the
(01:59):
show. It's my
Shanif Dhanani (02:01):
pleasure. You know, I, it's always great to
chat with folks like yourselfwho are curious and interested
about this stuff. And it's, it'sjust fun. So I appreciate you
having me.
Matt Wolach (02:10):
Absolutely. So tell me what's been going on with you
lately. And what's coming up.
Shanif Dhanani (02:14):
You know, lately, it feels like the worlds
sort of change I was, you know,before the show, we were joking
that six months ago, there wasno such thing as chat GPT
consultants, or even necessarilychat GPT. So, a lot has changed
for me in the past past three,four months. You know, I've been
doing a lot of work with withcompanies who are really
interested in this technology,maybe they don't know much about
it, or what it does. They just,they just know that they kind of
have to use it. Because if theydon't, their competitors are
(02:36):
going to use it. And so it'sbeen a busy past couple of
months for me, but good.
Matt Wolach (02:40):
I can imagine. So, how did that come to be? By the
way? How would you say I'm gonnabe a chat? GPT consultant?
Shanif Dhanani (02:46):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. Um, last year, I was
actually running my startup, theone that you mentioned after you
and we were we were using AI buttotally different way, what we
were doing was helping ecommercecompanies basically predict what
their customers were going tobuy next, or, or which ones were
going to churn, and then helpingthem create marketing campaigns
from that. And then eventually,we sort of went through that we
realized, hey, look like theeconomy is not doing so hot,
(03:09):
ended up shutting it down. Andthen I decided, look, I really
want to, I really want to keepworking with AI, I want to keep
working with technology. So letme do some consulting. It's a
way for me to get anunderstanding of what businesses
want, and get a feel for whatproblems they have. And I did it
for like, two, three months, andI got no business man. And so I
was like struggling, I wastrying to find customers. Not
(03:29):
easy. And then eventually, Istarted doing a couple of
projects with companies whowanted to just see what chat GPT
could do. And I started doingmore and more of those. And then
as soon as I sort of advertisedwhat I was doing there, I got a
lot of influx. And so you couldsay kind of fell into it. I sort
of purposefully fell into it. Iknew I wanted to do something
with tech, but I didn't realizeit was going to be chat GPT and
it was one of those things thatthe market just sort of drew me
(03:51):
in.
Matt Wolach (03:52):
Very cool story. I love it. Now as a chat GPD
consultant, how do you approachunderstanding a client's needs
and tailoring the solutionsaccordingly? I mean, right now,
most clients, I would guess,have no idea what it does or how
it can do. So I bet it's hard tofigure out how can we approach
this? How do you do that?
Shanif Dhanani (04:10):
There's there's a lot of education. So there's
sort of two types of customers,let's say there's the ones who
are pretty savvy and who know alittle bit or maybe even a lot
about what GPT is, you know,maybe they go to the website,
they use it sort of on a dailybasis, maybe to do some research
or something. And they're like,hey, wouldn't it be cool if we
could do this with our database?
Or if we could do this with ourexisting SAS product and maybe
(04:32):
add a chat app on top of it. Sothose folks, they come to me and
they're like, Hey, I knowexactly what I want built? Can
you do it? And then I'll talk tothem. I'll say, hey, you know,
you might want to think aboutthis. And this. If all looks
good, I'll start a POC withthem. Then there's the other
side of people who are like Ihave, I have no idea what I
want. I know this thing isawesome. I just want to I just
want to do my job better,faster, stronger, and for them,
(04:53):
it takes, you know, a handful ofmeetings and sort of diving deep
into what it is that they haveActually you're trying to get
done what it is that's taking upa lot of their time to get a
sense for what they need. And alot of times, it's not judging
beauty, a lot of times, it'ssomething totally different.
Maybe it's more traditional AI,maybe has nothing to do with
tech. And so for those folks, Itry to walk them through what it
is that they're trying toaccomplish, and help them out as
(05:14):
much as I can to see if if wecan get a project up and running
for them. Or if we need to dosomething else.
Matt Wolach (05:21):
I love it. It's good framework, because in what
we're doing in software, whichis what a lot of our audience
is, it a lot of times peopledon't know how to solve their
problem. They just don't theyhave a problem. Maybe sometimes
they don't even know that. Andso we do need to do some deep
discovery to understand whatreally are the challenges,
sometimes they come saying Ineed to do this. But in many
(05:44):
cases, they don't know that theyjust know that there's a
problem. And it's us that needsto be the expert to help them
understand what's the best wayand like you said, sometimes
it's with Chad GPT. Sometimesit's with that some of this. And
so being that expert in guidingand advising is really critical,
right?
Shanif Dhanani (06:00):
It's really important, especially now, this
is such a new technology, likeI've been doing machine learning
for a long time. But thisparticular technology is really
new. And so a lot of people,either they have this amazing
expectations of what he can do,where maybe it falls short of
reality, or maybe they justdon't even know what it does.
And they're like, Hey, I havethis problem. I just don't know
how to how to fix it. Soeducating people is really
(06:22):
important. And it's somethingthat I'm not a sales guy by
trade. So what I like to do isjust sort of be helpful and sort
of consultative. And if I canhelp someone by building a
project for them great. And ifnot, I'll try to do what I can
for them. Well, the
Matt Wolach (06:35):
good news is that I am a salesperson, but I took me
a long time to learn, youactually sell more when you
help. So you're helping you'reeducating, you're going to
actually sell a lot. So kudos tothat. What are the advantages
and drawbacks of AI languagemodels? What what what do we
learn in there?
Shanif Dhanani (06:51):
You know, there's, there's a lot of really
cool thing. So let me just startwith what what the heck is a
language model, just if peopleare familiar, you guys probably
have gone to the chat GPTwebsite and asked a question and
seeing it sort of type out aresponse to you. language models
basically do one thing, theypredict the next set of words
that come next, you know, yougive it something and they'll
predict the next set of wordsthat come next. Now, as simple
(07:12):
as that sounds, it's reallypowerful. Because what you can
do is when you predict the rightset of words, you might look
like you're thinking reasonablyor rationally or you might look
like you're reasoning aboutsomething and you can open up a
world of possibility. So thebenefits are, you can start to
automate things a lot moreeffectively than you might have
been able to in the past. Somaybe whereas before you had
(07:33):
sort of, maybe you had somethingthat was more like robotic
process, automate automation,RPA. Now, and that's like
basically taking a set of rulesand just coding it up. Now you
can have sort of this machinestart to, you know, kind of
think about things for you. Andthen based on its output of what
it concludes, you can dodifferent things. So automation
is huge. I think you've probablyheard a lot of people being
(07:54):
really productive with it. Youknow, they a lot of folks are
saying, hey, look like I don'teven Google anything anymore.
I'm just typing it into chat, itgives me the answer. I'm a
software guy. So I use it tocode and it helps me code
probably, you know, saves me abunch of time, by giving me
answers and things that I wouldhave had to spend a lot of time
looking up. So it's a way forone better automation and to
just being more productive bywasting, you don't have to waste
(08:17):
as much time now trying to findthings or learn things as as
much as he used to.
Matt Wolach (08:21):
Very cool. And then for SAS businesses, which a lot
of people listening are, how canthe SAS businesses use AI to
drive their growth ininnovation?
Shanif Dhanani (08:30):
There's a few things so you know, most SAS
businesses, there's like, 80% ofpeople are coming to me saying,
hey, I want to be able to usechat GPT with my own data. And
so, you know, what does thatmean? Like maybe they have an
internal knowledge base, andthey want to let their internal
employees search that knowledgebase, you know, maybe you're a
first year employee and you wantto know how much PTO you get. Or
(08:51):
maybe you're a customer successperson and you want to be able
to answer a customer's questionon a quick chat bot. You might
have a bunch of text data orknowledge, you know, and you
want to be able to have chat GPTyou know, ask a question to chat
GBT. Now the thing with chat GPTis it wasn't trained on your
data, it doesn't have access toyour to your private data.
Right? So it's not going to beable to answer a question. And
(09:12):
so a lot of businesses want tobe able to add to ask a question
of their internal data, and thenhave a reasonable response, come
back and be confident that thatresponse is not made up, or
what's called hallucinated. Andso that's sort of where SAS
companies are coming to me, thiscould apply to customer success.
So maybe you're trying to makeyour customer success seemed
more efficient by spending lesstime with each customer. Maybe
(09:34):
you're trying to automate awayyour whole customer success
team. I don't think that's agreat idea. But it's certainly
something you could try to do.
Other companies are doinginteresting things. Maybe
they've got millions of piecesof content, like user generated
content. And they want to startto categorize those content and
show how categories change overtime. This is really useful in
the world of E commerce forpeople who have, you know, lots
of user reviews and things. Andthen other companies have an
(09:54):
existing SAS product, and theymight want to just use chat GPT
like may We take chat GPT andmake a chat extension of their
existing SAS products. So theuse cases are varied. But if I
had to give one use case, it'smostly hey, look like I have
data, I want to be able to askquestions of it and know that
the answers that are coming backare not beta.
Matt Wolach (10:14):
And so is that what you do you kind of integrate it
into your tech stack? Or how'sthat work?
Shanif Dhanani (10:20):
Yeah, you know, a lot of what I do is sort of
building the pipes between yourexisting tools and your existing
data, and chat GPT. So there's acouple of steps that go into
that. So you know, if you weretrying to just go to church abt
asked a question about, let'ssay, your Salesforce account, it
doesn't have access to yourSalesforce account, it doesn't
know what you're trying to ask.
So the first thing I'll do isI'll build the pipes to let you
(10:41):
connect your Salesforce accountto some sort of central
database. And then I'll buildsome sort of chat interface
where you can ask a question,and then I'll connect that
central database with chat GPT.
And, you know, I'll have some,some pipes in the middle that
say, Oh, you're, you're you'retalking about Salesforce. And
you probably want this and soI'll make sure that chat GPT has
(11:03):
access to your Salesforceaccount through my own API. So
it's really building the pipes,you can think of it as like
middleware that connects all ofyour existing data, your
systems, maybe you havedocuments on Google Drive, takes
all that and makes it availableso that you can talk to your
data, which at GPT, whenever youneed to.
Matt Wolach (11:20):
I mean, I think that's critical, because there's
so many companies that haveaccumulated these drives of tons
and tons of data and informationand these backlogs of stuff that
would just be mind numbing totry and search through figure
out. So to be able to have an AIin there helping you out and
just providing answers for youto be amazing. I bet people are
loving it.
Shanif Dhanani (11:39):
You know, I started slow, I've sort of done
a handful of early projects withearly customers. And they they
do tend to like it a lot. Youknow, they they're excited about
the idea of being able to getaccess to their own data with
just a quick question. Becauseright now, like you said, they
might have 1000s, sometimes insome cases, millions of
documents and just kind of apain to get access to them. So
(12:01):
they're excited. I think thatthey're interested in the idea
of improving their productivity,and hopefully making their
existing employees a little bitmore effective at their jobs.
Matt Wolach (12:10):
Very cool. Now, Google's come out with theirs.
It's hard. Yeah. And I've seen abit about that. So how does Bard
compare to chat GPT.
Shanif Dhanani (12:18):
I'm really excited about the industry, I
actually think Bard is probablygoing to catch up. So right now
you can think of the world oflarge language models, kind of
like how I think about thecloud. So AWS is the leader in
the cloud, but you've gotMicrosoft, Google, you got all
those guys. In the same way,chat GPT right now is sort of
the leader with large languagemodels, they're widely
(12:38):
considered the most, the mostuseful. Now, that doesn't
necessarily mean they're alwaysthe most accurate, although I
think they are. But they havebuilt a tool that's able to chat
with you sort of in the mostnatural and effective way
possible. Bard is is hot ontheir heels, they're close
behind bars is something thathas, it doesn't have as many
(12:59):
guardrails, and it's sort of notas effective in certain areas,
for example, maybe cogeneration,that things, but Google is going
to catch up really quickly. Nowoutside of just Google, Bard and
chat GPT, you've got probably 20other models that you could use,
but I would say, you know, toanswer your question, Matt chat.
GPT is the leader right now. Andthey've got it's their market to
(13:20):
lose. And so I'm really excitedto see what happens next with
them.
Matt Wolach (13:23):
Do you see them continuing to innovate and make
it better and better?
Shanif Dhanani (13:27):
Oh, yeah, you know, it's one of the it's
funny, because as good as theyare now, there's still a lot of
issues. Right now, for example,one thing I'm doing is helping a
company categorize, you know,nearly 80 million pieces of
documentation. And I run intorate limits on Chachi t. So I
can only categorize maybe 30documents at a time. And so you
(13:47):
know, I've had to write thiswrite code that normally, if
this wasn't the case, I wouldsort of write code that can take
all these documents into a hugechunk, all at once. But now
because I'm limited to 30documents at a time, it's slow.
It's, you know, it's sort ofbrittle. I think they have a
long ways to go for improvingthe rate limitations. If you're
(14:08):
a paying customer or chat, GBT,you're still getting things
like, Hey, we're overloaded.
Sorry, you can't use us rightnow. And so there's a lot of
issues that they're working on.
I'm sure that they're going tosolve it because they're really,
really smart over there. But youknow, like I said, it's so early
right now, there's a little bitof a growing pains. So I think
they're going to have a lot ofreally interesting things coming
down the pipeline in the nextsix months.
Matt Wolach (14:30):
Very cool. What would you say is the best way
for someone to learn about theseAI?
Shanif Dhanani (14:35):
There's, I'm kind of a proponent of, there's
nothing like trying it yourself.
And the cool thing about chatGPT is you can just go to their
website, free ask you to sign upfor free ask a question and kind
of get the response right away.
It's instantaneousgratification. And I would say
start playing around with justthe website. And if you're like
(14:56):
me, you're gonna have sort ofthis lightbulb go off over your
head and you're gonna want todive In a little bit. So once
you're sort of at that stage,you're gonna do a little bit of
research, maybe you're a coder,and you want to plug into their
API, like I said, you're gonnastart reading about their API's,
and maybe building a couple oftoy apps. Or maybe you're going
to just start using existingtools that plug into chat GPT.
(15:16):
And so the best thing to do isjust go if you haven't used it
yet, try it out. I was a skepticmyself a few months ago, but
it's really cool. Try it out.
And then once you want to beable to use it for yourself, you
can start building your ownapplications, if you've got an
engineering team, or using likean outside consultant like
myself to connect it to your owndata. So start small.
Matt Wolach (15:35):
That's great advice, maybe I'll go play
around with it. I have heard alot of people in the content
side on businesses likemarketing, they like India, now
I have seen that Google andother search engines can
identify AI written content. Butsome of the best content people
said don't let it write yourstuff, let it give you an
outline, so that you can writeit and and you put some human
(15:55):
element into it. Have you heardthat the same thing
Shanif Dhanani (15:58):
I have, it's it's sort of a double edged
sword or a double edged coinhere, because on the one hand,
you have this capability ofchurning out large amounts of
content right away. On the otherhand, one, you know, the content
is not going to be one frequentcriticism I've heard is the
current content isn't as humanas somebody who just wrote it,
like as a human who wrote it.
Now what that means, you canargue, hey, look, maybe it's got
(16:20):
a little bit less character alittle bit less humor, it's,
it's fine. It's good forproducing fact based content,
it's actually pretty good forproducing blogs and things too.
But you know, a lot of peoplesay a lacks a little bit of
something. And so what I've seenwork really well is using chat
JpT is something to maybe youproduce an outline. And then
maybe you have it produced thehighest level topics for every
(16:41):
paragraph or every document. Andthen you can use it to fill in
the content, but you probablywant to create your own content,
and then use it to refine it, oruse it to either use it to guide
you with an outline or use it torefine it, I wouldn't have at
least not right now there is arisk and having it produce
everything for you. Becausethat, like I said earlier,
(17:03):
there's no guarantee what itproduces is 100%, factually
correct. And two, I think thatpeople are going to get better
and better at identifying AIgenerated content and sort of
glossing over it. There'ssomething to be said about the
human element. And so it's oneof those things where you want
to incorporate it into yourworkflow, rather than just have
it totally take over.
Matt Wolach (17:22):
Yeah, I think I think that's great advice. I've
heard the same. So what do youthink are some of the common
mistakes software leaders aremaking when using AI with their
business?
Shanif Dhanani (17:31):
It's funny, you know, I used to be, I used to
guide people on sort of machinelearning projects. And I still
do. And one of the things thatthey just they they need to
start doing is just collectingtheir data. As simple as it
sounds, a lot of people don'teven sort of store their data.
Or maybe they have userinteractions or chat messages
that they're not saving. So thefirst thing I always recommend
(17:51):
people to do is look, data ischeap, you can store it, and you
don't have to pay more than acouple of dollars, even with
large amounts of data set. Sojust start storing it. And then
I think a lot of people run intothe, into the roadblock of
trying to force using AI onsomething that doesn't really
need AI. They're trying to likefit a they're trying to find a
solution. Or, you know, they're,they know that AI can do
(18:14):
powerful things. But they mightnot have a problem that's
required by AI to solve. And sothe second thing I would do is
whenever you're thinking oftaking on a new project, start
with the problems you're having,or start with where you think
you can get better, and thenthink about the solutions for
that problem. And if AI happensto be one of those solutions,
(18:35):
then you can experiment with it.
But if if it's not, you know,you're the risk of being rude
the risk of doing an AI projectis you're spending all this time
all this money, paying all theseengineers to do something that
never comes to production. Ithink I read a stat somewhere
that, you know, a huge amount ofAI projects just never see the
light of day and never go intoproduction. And so there's a
risk that you're going to wasteyour time and money on that.
Matt Wolach (18:57):
So it's almost like people are trying to invent
solutions for something that'snot even a big problem.
Shanif Dhanani (19:04):
I think that either they don't know what
their problems are, like we weretalking about earlier, they
don't know what their problemsare, or they sort of have a
problem. That's not an AIproblem. And they're trying to
apply AI to it. And when they dothat they're sort of not setting
themselves up for success. Whenit comes to building a project.
People are smart, you know,they're everybody these days is,
(19:24):
is really busy. They're reallyoverwhelmed. I'm sure everyone's
looking for automationsolutions. Sometimes AI will
work really well and but notalways. And so, you know, just
make sure that what you're doingcan be solved by AI before you
start a new project, sort ofwhat I'm thinking.
Matt Wolach (19:38):
That's great advice. As we wrap up, if we
were to kind of give a piece tosomebody who's listening, they
can take it away. What advicewould you have for an early
stage software leader who's notusing AI now but wants to look
at getting AI into theircompany?
Shanif Dhanani (19:54):
Yeah, as as the flip side of what I just said, I
think that there is a lot ofopportunity for people to use AI
AI and automation is sort of theeasiest way to get started, you
know whether you're, if you'redoing something tedious, and you
find yourself doing it everyday. And it's not mission
critical, especially if you're asmall startup and you're
resource constrained, if you'redoing something that doesn't
have a lot of value, outsourceit, and you can outsource it to
(20:15):
a human, or you can outsource itto an AI. And the more you start
to automate away these things,and the more you start to
systematize your processes, thebetter off you're going to be.
So as a person who's done acouple of startups in the past
my my opinions would be well,one you know, know your market
and know your customers beforeyou dive all in, but to once
you're all in, start to automateprocesses and things that aren't
(20:37):
crucial for your business'ssuccess. And then if you do
think that you can automatethings that are crucial for your
business's success, just plan itreally well and use someone
who's an expert in machinelearning or or software
engineering at the very least,to help you think about how you
go forward with your processes.
Matt Wolach (20:54):
I love it. Super cool advice. I think we'll look
at that ourselves internally.
But Jeff, this has been great.
Thank you very much for comingon the show. How can our
audience learn about you andwhat you're doing?
Shanif Dhanani (21:05):
Man I appreciate you having me so you know I've
got a website you can reach us,reach me at lo que Civ ello see
you si ve.com My name is SherifSharif Lok, use of.com. Feel
free to shoot me an email if ifthere's anything I can help
with. Love to be resource ifagain.
Matt Wolach (21:22):
Okay, cool. Well put that into the show notes. If
you're listening, click that.
You'll see all that right there.
But Sinead, this has been great.
Thanks so much for coming on theshow. Hey, Matt, thanks
Shanif Dhanani (21:30):
so much for having me. I had a great time to
chat.
Matt Wolach (21:32):
Likewise, I learned a lot myself. And I hope
everybody else out there. I hopeyou guys did too. Thanks for
listening. And thanks forwatching. Make sure you're
subscribed to the show. Youdon't want to miss any of the
cool stuff we have coming up foryou. So hit that subscribe
button. You'll get all thegoodies. It's been great having
you Thank you. Take care. We'llsee you next time.
Intro/ Outro (21:53):
Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for
more help on finding great leadsand closing more deals go to
Mattwolach.com
A lot of people are talking about ChatGPT. What is
it? How can it work? How can Iuse it in my business?
Fortunately, Shanif came on theshow Shanif Dhanani. He is an
expert at Chat GPT. In fact,he's a consultant he helps
businesses Connect ChatGPT intotheir business for use it in all
sorts of ways. And so he randown a really good list of
(00:32):
things you can do with jazz upand other AI like Google's Bard.
So check this out. If you'rewondering where do I start with
chat GBT? This is where youstart.
Intro/ Outro (00:42):
Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that
gives you proven techniques andformulas for boosting your
revenue and achieving your dreamexit brought to you by a guy
who's done just that multipletimes. Here's your host, Matt
Wallach,
Matt Wolach (00:58):
and welcome to Scale Your SaaS super excited to
have you here. Thank you verymuch for coming. My name is
Matt. Our goal today is help yougrow. So we're going to talk
about some amazing things andI'm really excited for Shanif
Dhanani. who's with us, Shanif,how you doing,
Shanif Dhanani (01:06):
I'm doing great, man. Thanks for Thanks for
having me on the show.
Absolutely. I'm
Matt Wolach (01:17):
really glad to have you here. Let me make sure
everybody knows who you are. SoShanif is a ChatGPT consultant,
definitely something that I amin the dark with. I know
everybody's talking about chatGPT. But Shanif helps businesses
understand and build systemsthat connect their internal and
proprietary systems to chat GPT,enabling internal employees,
customers, and otherstakeholders to reap the
(01:37):
benefits of using large languagemodels on their own data. Sharif
has built machine learninganalytics and software systems
at large companies like Twitterand Booz Allen smaller startups
like Aptio, where he was thefounder and tap commerce, where
he was one of the world's first,which was one of the world's
first mobile advertisingplatforms. So he absolutely
knows his stuff. Once again,Sinead, thanks for coming on the
(01:59):
show. It's my
Shanif Dhanani (02:01):
pleasure. You know, I, it's always great to
chat with folks like yourselfwho are curious and interested
about this stuff. And it's, it'sjust fun. So I appreciate you
having me.
Matt Wolach (02:10):
Absolutely. So tell me what's been going on with you
lately. And what's coming up.
Shanif Dhanani (02:14):
You know, lately, it feels like the worlds
sort of change I was, you know,before the show, we were joking
that six months ago, there wasno such thing as chat GPT
consultants, or even necessarilychat GPT. So, a lot has changed
for me in the past past three,four months. You know, I've been
doing a lot of work with withcompanies who are really
interested in this technology,maybe they don't know much about
it, or what it does. They just,they just know that they kind of
have to use it. Because if theydon't, their competitors are
(02:36):
going to use it. And so it'sbeen a busy past couple of
months for me, but good.
Matt Wolach (02:40):
I can imagine. So, how did that come to be? By the
way? How would you say I'm gonnabe a chat? GPT consultant?
Shanif Dhanani (02:46):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. Um, last year, I was
actually running my startup, theone that you mentioned after you
and we were we were using AI buttotally different way, what we
were doing was helping ecommercecompanies basically predict what
their customers were going tobuy next, or, or which ones were
going to churn, and then helpingthem create marketing campaigns
from that. And then eventually,we sort of went through that we
realized, hey, look like theeconomy is not doing so hot,
(03:09):
ended up shutting it down. Andthen I decided, look, I really
want to, I really want to keepworking with AI, I want to keep
working with technology. So letme do some consulting. It's a
way for me to get anunderstanding of what businesses
want, and get a feel for whatproblems they have. And I did it
for like, two, three months, andI got no business man. And so I
was like struggling, I wastrying to find customers. Not
(03:29):
easy. And then eventually, Istarted doing a couple of
projects with companies whowanted to just see what chat GPT
could do. And I started doingmore and more of those. And then
as soon as I sort of advertisedwhat I was doing there, I got a
lot of influx. And so you couldsay kind of fell into it. I sort
of purposefully fell into it. Iknew I wanted to do something
with tech, but I didn't realizeit was going to be chat GPT and
it was one of those things thatthe market just sort of drew me
(03:51):
in.
Matt Wolach (03:52):
Very cool story. I love it. Now as a chat GPD
consultant, how do you approachunderstanding a client's needs
and tailoring the solutionsaccordingly? I mean, right now,
most clients, I would guess,have no idea what it does or how
it can do. So I bet it's hard tofigure out how can we approach
this? How do you do that?
Shanif Dhanani (04:10):
There's there's a lot of education. So there's
sort of two types of customers,let's say there's the ones who
are pretty savvy and who know alittle bit or maybe even a lot
about what GPT is, you know,maybe they go to the website,
they use it sort of on a dailybasis, maybe to do some research
or something. And they're like,hey, wouldn't it be cool if we
could do this with our database?
Or if we could do this with ourexisting SAS product and maybe
(04:32):
add a chat app on top of it. Sothose folks, they come to me and
they're like, Hey, I knowexactly what I want built? Can
you do it? And then I'll talk tothem. I'll say, hey, you know,
you might want to think aboutthis. And this. If all looks
good, I'll start a POC withthem. Then there's the other
side of people who are like Ihave, I have no idea what I
want. I know this thing isawesome. I just want to I just
want to do my job better,faster, stronger, and for them,
(04:53):
it takes, you know, a handful ofmeetings and sort of diving deep
into what it is that they haveActually you're trying to get
done what it is that's taking upa lot of their time to get a
sense for what they need. And alot of times, it's not judging
beauty, a lot of times, it'ssomething totally different.
Maybe it's more traditional AI,maybe has nothing to do with
tech. And so for those folks, Itry to walk them through what it
is that they're trying toaccomplish, and help them out as
(05:14):
much as I can to see if if wecan get a project up and running
for them. Or if we need to dosomething else.
Matt Wolach (05:21):
I love it. It's good framework, because in what
we're doing in software, whichis what a lot of our audience
is, it a lot of times peopledon't know how to solve their
problem. They just don't theyhave a problem. Maybe sometimes
they don't even know that. Andso we do need to do some deep
discovery to understand whatreally are the challenges,
sometimes they come saying Ineed to do this. But in many
(05:44):
cases, they don't know that theyjust know that there's a
problem. And it's us that needsto be the expert to help them
understand what's the best wayand like you said, sometimes
it's with Chad GPT. Sometimesit's with that some of this. And
so being that expert in guidingand advising is really critical,
right?
Shanif Dhanani (06:00):
It's really important, especially now, this
is such a new technology, likeI've been doing machine learning
for a long time. But thisparticular technology is really
new. And so a lot of people,either they have this amazing
expectations of what he can do,where maybe it falls short of
reality, or maybe they justdon't even know what it does.
And they're like, Hey, I havethis problem. I just don't know
how to how to fix it. Soeducating people is really
(06:22):
important. And it's somethingthat I'm not a sales guy by
trade. So what I like to do isjust sort of be helpful and sort
of consultative. And if I canhelp someone by building a
project for them great. And ifnot, I'll try to do what I can
for them. Well, the
Matt Wolach (06:35):
good news is that I am a salesperson, but I took me
a long time to learn, youactually sell more when you
help. So you're helping you'reeducating, you're going to
actually sell a lot. So kudos tothat. What are the advantages
and drawbacks of AI languagemodels? What what what do we
learn in there?
Shanif Dhanani (06:51):
You know, there's, there's a lot of really
cool thing. So let me just startwith what what the heck is a
language model, just if peopleare familiar, you guys probably
have gone to the chat GPTwebsite and asked a question and
seeing it sort of type out aresponse to you. language models
basically do one thing, theypredict the next set of words
that come next, you know, yougive it something and they'll
predict the next set of wordsthat come next. Now, as simple
(07:12):
as that sounds, it's reallypowerful. Because what you can
do is when you predict the rightset of words, you might look
like you're thinking reasonablyor rationally or you might look
like you're reasoning aboutsomething and you can open up a
world of possibility. So thebenefits are, you can start to
automate things a lot moreeffectively than you might have
been able to in the past. Somaybe whereas before you had
(07:33):
sort of, maybe you had somethingthat was more like robotic
process, automate automation,RPA. Now, and that's like
basically taking a set of rulesand just coding it up. Now you
can have sort of this machinestart to, you know, kind of
think about things for you. Andthen based on its output of what
it concludes, you can dodifferent things. So automation
is huge. I think you've probablyheard a lot of people being
(07:54):
really productive with it. Youknow, they a lot of folks are
saying, hey, look like I don'teven Google anything anymore.
I'm just typing it into chat, itgives me the answer. I'm a
software guy. So I use it tocode and it helps me code
probably, you know, saves me abunch of time, by giving me
answers and things that I wouldhave had to spend a lot of time
looking up. So it's a way forone better automation and to
just being more productive bywasting, you don't have to waste
(08:17):
as much time now trying to findthings or learn things as as
much as he used to.
Matt Wolach (08:21):
Very cool. And then for SAS businesses, which a lot
of people listening are, how canthe SAS businesses use AI to
drive their growth ininnovation?
Shanif Dhanani (08:30):
There's a few things so you know, most SAS
businesses, there's like, 80% ofpeople are coming to me saying,
hey, I want to be able to usechat GPT with my own data. And
so, you know, what does thatmean? Like maybe they have an
internal knowledge base, andthey want to let their internal
employees search that knowledgebase, you know, maybe you're a
first year employee and you wantto know how much PTO you get. Or
(08:51):
maybe you're a customer successperson and you want to be able
to answer a customer's questionon a quick chat bot. You might
have a bunch of text data orknowledge, you know, and you
want to be able to have chat GPTyou know, ask a question to chat
GBT. Now the thing with chat GPTis it wasn't trained on your
data, it doesn't have access toyour to your private data.
Right? So it's not going to beable to answer a question. And
(09:12):
so a lot of businesses want tobe able to add to ask a question
of their internal data, and thenhave a reasonable response, come
back and be confident that thatresponse is not made up, or
what's called hallucinated. Andso that's sort of where SAS
companies are coming to me, thiscould apply to customer success.
So maybe you're trying to makeyour customer success seemed
more efficient by spending lesstime with each customer. Maybe
(09:34):
you're trying to automate awayyour whole customer success
team. I don't think that's agreat idea. But it's certainly
something you could try to do.
Other companies are doinginteresting things. Maybe
they've got millions of piecesof content, like user generated
content. And they want to startto categorize those content and
show how categories change overtime. This is really useful in
the world of E commerce forpeople who have, you know, lots
of user reviews and things. Andthen other companies have an
(09:54):
existing SAS product, and theymight want to just use chat GPT
like may We take chat GPT andmake a chat extension of their
existing SAS products. So theuse cases are varied. But if I
had to give one use case, it'smostly hey, look like I have
data, I want to be able to askquestions of it and know that
the answers that are coming backare not beta.
Matt Wolach (10:14):
And so is that what you do you kind of integrate it
into your tech stack? Or how'sthat work?
Shanif Dhanani (10:20):
Yeah, you know, a lot of what I do is sort of
building the pipes between yourexisting tools and your existing
data, and chat GPT. So there's acouple of steps that go into
that. So you know, if you weretrying to just go to church abt
asked a question about, let'ssay, your Salesforce account, it
doesn't have access to yourSalesforce account, it doesn't
know what you're trying to ask.
So the first thing I'll do isI'll build the pipes to let you
(10:41):
connect your Salesforce accountto some sort of central
database. And then I'll buildsome sort of chat interface
where you can ask a question,and then I'll connect that
central database with chat GPT.
And, you know, I'll have some,some pipes in the middle that
say, Oh, you're, you're you'retalking about Salesforce. And
you probably want this and soI'll make sure that chat GPT has
(11:03):
access to your Salesforceaccount through my own API. So
it's really building the pipes,you can think of it as like
middleware that connects all ofyour existing data, your
systems, maybe you havedocuments on Google Drive, takes
all that and makes it availableso that you can talk to your
data, which at GPT, whenever youneed to.
Matt Wolach (11:20):
I mean, I think that's critical, because there's
so many companies that haveaccumulated these drives of tons
and tons of data and informationand these backlogs of stuff that
would just be mind numbing totry and search through figure
out. So to be able to have an AIin there helping you out and
just providing answers for youto be amazing. I bet people are
loving it.
Shanif Dhanani (11:39):
You know, I started slow, I've sort of done
a handful of early projects withearly customers. And they they
do tend to like it a lot. Youknow, they they're excited about
the idea of being able to getaccess to their own data with
just a quick question. Becauseright now, like you said, they
might have 1000s, sometimes insome cases, millions of
documents and just kind of apain to get access to them. So
(12:01):
they're excited. I think thatthey're interested in the idea
of improving their productivity,and hopefully making their
existing employees a little bitmore effective at their jobs.
Matt Wolach (12:10):
Very cool. Now, Google's come out with theirs.
It's hard. Yeah. And I've seen abit about that. So how does Bard
compare to chat GPT.
Shanif Dhanani (12:18):
I'm really excited about the industry, I
actually think Bard is probablygoing to catch up. So right now
you can think of the world oflarge language models, kind of
like how I think about thecloud. So AWS is the leader in
the cloud, but you've gotMicrosoft, Google, you got all
those guys. In the same way,chat GPT right now is sort of
the leader with large languagemodels, they're widely
(12:38):
considered the most, the mostuseful. Now, that doesn't
necessarily mean they're alwaysthe most accurate, although I
think they are. But they havebuilt a tool that's able to chat
with you sort of in the mostnatural and effective way
possible. Bard is is hot ontheir heels, they're close
behind bars is something thathas, it doesn't have as many
(12:59):
guardrails, and it's sort of notas effective in certain areas,
for example, maybe cogeneration,that things, but Google is going
to catch up really quickly. Nowoutside of just Google, Bard and
chat GPT, you've got probably 20other models that you could use,
but I would say, you know, toanswer your question, Matt chat.
GPT is the leader right now. Andthey've got it's their market to
(13:20):
lose. And so I'm really excitedto see what happens next with
them.
Matt Wolach (13:23):
Do you see them continuing to innovate and make
it better and better?
Shanif Dhanani (13:27):
Oh, yeah, you know, it's one of the it's
funny, because as good as theyare now, there's still a lot of
issues. Right now, for example,one thing I'm doing is helping a
company categorize, you know,nearly 80 million pieces of
documentation. And I run intorate limits on Chachi t. So I
can only categorize maybe 30documents at a time. And so you
(13:47):
know, I've had to write thiswrite code that normally, if
this wasn't the case, I wouldsort of write code that can take
all these documents into a hugechunk, all at once. But now
because I'm limited to 30documents at a time, it's slow.
It's, you know, it's sort ofbrittle. I think they have a
long ways to go for improvingthe rate limitations. If you're
(14:08):
a paying customer or chat, GBT,you're still getting things
like, Hey, we're overloaded.
Sorry, you can't use us rightnow. And so there's a lot of
issues that they're working on.
I'm sure that they're going tosolve it because they're really,
really smart over there. But youknow, like I said, it's so early
right now, there's a little bitof a growing pains. So I think
they're going to have a lot ofreally interesting things coming
down the pipeline in the nextsix months.
Matt Wolach (14:30):
Very cool. What would you say is the best way
for someone to learn about theseAI?
Shanif Dhanani (14:35):
There's, I'm kind of a proponent of, there's
nothing like trying it yourself.
And the cool thing about chatGPT is you can just go to their
website, free ask you to sign upfor free ask a question and kind
of get the response right away.
It's instantaneousgratification. And I would say
start playing around with justthe website. And if you're like
(14:56):
me, you're gonna have sort ofthis lightbulb go off over your
head and you're gonna want todive In a little bit. So once
you're sort of at that stage,you're gonna do a little bit of
research, maybe you're a coder,and you want to plug into their
API, like I said, you're gonnastart reading about their API's,
and maybe building a couple oftoy apps. Or maybe you're going
to just start using existingtools that plug into chat GPT.
(15:16):
And so the best thing to do isjust go if you haven't used it
yet, try it out. I was a skepticmyself a few months ago, but
it's really cool. Try it out.
And then once you want to beable to use it for yourself, you
can start building your ownapplications, if you've got an
engineering team, or using likean outside consultant like
myself to connect it to your owndata. So start small.
Matt Wolach (15:35):
That's great advice, maybe I'll go play
around with it. I have heard alot of people in the content
side on businesses likemarketing, they like India, now
I have seen that Google andother search engines can
identify AI written content. Butsome of the best content people
said don't let it write yourstuff, let it give you an
outline, so that you can writeit and and you put some human
(15:55):
element into it. Have you heardthat the same thing
Shanif Dhanani (15:58):
I have, it's it's sort of a double edged
sword or a double edged coinhere, because on the one hand,
you have this capability ofchurning out large amounts of
content right away. On the otherhand, one, you know, the content
is not going to be one frequentcriticism I've heard is the
current content isn't as humanas somebody who just wrote it,
like as a human who wrote it.
Now what that means, you canargue, hey, look, maybe it's got
(16:20):
a little bit less character alittle bit less humor, it's,
it's fine. It's good forproducing fact based content,
it's actually pretty good forproducing blogs and things too.
But you know, a lot of peoplesay a lacks a little bit of
something. And so what I've seenwork really well is using chat
JpT is something to maybe youproduce an outline. And then
maybe you have it produced thehighest level topics for every
(16:41):
paragraph or every document. Andthen you can use it to fill in
the content, but you probablywant to create your own content,
and then use it to refine it, oruse it to either use it to guide
you with an outline or use it torefine it, I wouldn't have at
least not right now there is arisk and having it produce
everything for you. Becausethat, like I said earlier,
(17:03):
there's no guarantee what itproduces is 100%, factually
correct. And two, I think thatpeople are going to get better
and better at identifying AIgenerated content and sort of
glossing over it. There'ssomething to be said about the
human element. And so it's oneof those things where you want
to incorporate it into yourworkflow, rather than just have
it totally take over.
Matt Wolach (17:22):
Yeah, I think I think that's great advice. I've
heard the same. So what do youthink are some of the common
mistakes software leaders aremaking when using AI with their
business?
Shanif Dhanani (17:31):
It's funny, you know, I used to be, I used to
guide people on sort of machinelearning projects. And I still
do. And one of the things thatthey just they they need to
start doing is just collectingtheir data. As simple as it
sounds, a lot of people don'teven sort of store their data.
Or maybe they have userinteractions or chat messages
that they're not saving. So thefirst thing I always recommend
(17:51):
people to do is look, data ischeap, you can store it, and you
don't have to pay more than acouple of dollars, even with
large amounts of data set. Sojust start storing it. And then
I think a lot of people run intothe, into the roadblock of
trying to force using AI onsomething that doesn't really
need AI. They're trying to likefit a they're trying to find a
solution. Or, you know, they're,they know that AI can do
(18:14):
powerful things. But they mightnot have a problem that's
required by AI to solve. And sothe second thing I would do is
whenever you're thinking oftaking on a new project, start
with the problems you're having,or start with where you think
you can get better, and thenthink about the solutions for
that problem. And if AI happensto be one of those solutions,
(18:35):
then you can experiment with it.
But if if it's not, you know,you're the risk of being rude
the risk of doing an AI projectis you're spending all this time
all this money, paying all theseengineers to do something that
never comes to production. Ithink I read a stat somewhere
that, you know, a huge amount ofAI projects just never see the
light of day and never go intoproduction. And so there's a
risk that you're going to wasteyour time and money on that.
Matt Wolach (18:57):
So it's almost like people are trying to invent
solutions for something that'snot even a big problem.
Shanif Dhanani (19:04):
I think that either they don't know what
their problems are, like we weretalking about earlier, they
don't know what their problemsare, or they sort of have a
problem. That's not an AIproblem. And they're trying to
apply AI to it. And when they dothat they're sort of not setting
themselves up for success. Whenit comes to building a project.
People are smart, you know,they're everybody these days is,
(19:24):
is really busy. They're reallyoverwhelmed. I'm sure everyone's
looking for automationsolutions. Sometimes AI will
work really well and but notalways. And so, you know, just
make sure that what you're doingcan be solved by AI before you
start a new project, sort ofwhat I'm thinking.
Matt Wolach (19:38):
That's great advice. As we wrap up, if we
were to kind of give a piece tosomebody who's listening, they
can take it away. What advicewould you have for an early
stage software leader who's notusing AI now but wants to look
at getting AI into theircompany?
Shanif Dhanani (19:54):
Yeah, as as the flip side of what I just said, I
think that there is a lot ofopportunity for people to use AI
AI and automation is sort of theeasiest way to get started, you
know whether you're, if you'redoing something tedious, and you
find yourself doing it everyday. And it's not mission
critical, especially if you're asmall startup and you're
resource constrained, if you'redoing something that doesn't
have a lot of value, outsourceit, and you can outsource it to
(20:15):
a human, or you can outsource itto an AI. And the more you start
to automate away these things,and the more you start to
systematize your processes, thebetter off you're going to be.
So as a person who's done acouple of startups in the past
my my opinions would be well,one you know, know your market
and know your customers beforeyou dive all in, but to once
you're all in, start to automateprocesses and things that aren't
(20:37):
crucial for your business'ssuccess. And then if you do
think that you can automatethings that are crucial for your
business's success, just plan itreally well and use someone
who's an expert in machinelearning or or software
engineering at the very least,to help you think about how you
go forward with your processes.
Matt Wolach (20:54):
I love it. Super cool advice. I think we'll look
at that ourselves internally.
But Jeff, this has been great.
Thank you very much for comingon the show. How can our
audience learn about you andwhat you're doing?
Shanif Dhanani (21:05):
Man I appreciate you having me so you know I've
got a website you can reach us,reach me at lo que Civ ello see
you si ve.com My name is SherifSharif Lok, use of.com. Feel
free to shoot me an email if ifthere's anything I can help
with. Love to be resource ifagain.
Matt Wolach (21:22):
Okay, cool. Well put that into the show notes. If
you're listening, click that.
You'll see all that right there.
But Sinead, this has been great.
Thanks so much for coming on theshow. Hey, Matt, thanks
Shanif Dhanani (21:30):
so much for having me. I had a great time to
chat.
Matt Wolach (21:32):
Likewise, I learned a lot myself. And I hope
everybody else out there. I hopeyou guys did too. Thanks for
listening. And thanks forwatching. Make sure you're
subscribed to the show. Youdon't want to miss any of the
cool stuff we have coming up foryou. So hit that subscribe
button. You'll get all thegoodies. It's been great having
you Thank you. Take care. We'llsee you next time.
Intro/ Outro (21:53):
Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for
more help on finding great leadsand closing more deals go to
Mattwolach.com
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