May 15, 2024 • 33 mins
Ever wondered how tech entrepreneurs catapult their side hustles into full-blown AI revolutions? Rajeev Kapur, a visionary in the Artificial Intelligence arena, President and CEO at 1105 Media and best selling author of AI Made Simple, graces us with his story. He illustrating the relentless hustle that propelled him from tech sales to penning the bestseller "AI Made Simple" in the aftermath of ChatGPT's launch. Merging insights from his time at Gateway and alongside Michael Dell, with his own ventures leading to lucrative exits, Rajeev's narrative brims with strategic pivots and the thrill of seizing tech opportunities the second they arise.
Navigating the global marketplace, our conversation with Rajeev delves into the endurance test of entrepreneurship. He sheds light on the indispensability of a sturdy team and alliances that have catapulted him into the realms of authorship and public speaking, asserting his expertise in tech. Beyond business savvy, Rajeev underscores the power of personal branding and social media's role in sculpting a professional visage that echoes the ethos of a flourishing brand, all while recounting tales from various corners of the globe that have honed his appreciation for value-driven customer engagement.
But it's not just about triumphs and trajectories. We confront the darker side of technology by dissecting a deepfake debacle in Hong Kong, which swindled a business out of millions, and what that means for our digital defenses going forward. Furthermore, we dissect how AI is redefining the landscape of business marketing, with Rajeev offering practical advice on how tools like ChatGPT are reshaping the productivity paradigm. Join us as we traverse the evolution of business into the digital age, celebrating the courage to innovate and the newfound accessibility of technology that brings the luxury of entrepreneurial spirit to the masses.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Today's special guest coming tous from California, rajiv
Kapoor.
How are you doing Great?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Adam, how are you buddy?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Thanks for having me on.
I'm doing okay.
So, man, best-selling numberone best-selling book about AI
on Amazon right now.
That's a feat, that's wild.
There's got to be a ton ofbooks out there right now.
It's such a hot thing andNVIDIA's stock is flying.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah Well, you know, the difference is I actually
wrote my book.
I didn't have catchy PT writingit.
So there you go.
But that must be the difference.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Actually, the quality is probably much better if you
don't have a ghostwriter, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well,how long did it take you to
write the book?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So you know it's interesting.
You know I got certified in AIabout 10, 11 years ago more on
the machine learning side fromMIT, and I wrote my first book
during COVID, a leadership bookcalled Chase Greatness, and that
did really well, and so I'vebeen involved in the AI space
for a long time.
And then, on whatever November30th of 2022, when ChatGPT was
released, I got it.
Whatever November 30th of 2022,when ChatGPT was released, I
(01:27):
got it.
I remember looking at my phoneat six, three in the morning,
california time.
I'm in the bed going what the Fword is this?
Right, this is crazy talk, whatis this?
And then I'm like, oh my God,what is this?
So, literally the day after, Istarted taking notes and saying,
okay, I'm going to.
Every single person on theworld is going to have to get
trained in AI at some point.
And so I uh, I couldn't callthe book AI for dummies for
(01:49):
obvious reasons.
And so there you go AI madesimple.
That's the so.
So, to answer your question, Iliterally started taking notes
for the book probably the dayafter JetGPT was released and
probably got really seriousabout it early January 2023.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, oh gotcha.
Well, what I love about youOrange County guys is you move
quickly.
You.
You understand that things haveto happen fast and you've got a
lot of competition out there.
Anybody that's in the techindustry like first mover
advantage, right?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, you know.
You know, when you work for acompany like Dell and all those
types of big companies, you knowyou gotta, you gotta, be nimble
.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So yeah, and what's and what's your background, like
I mean, before you were anentrepreneur.
I mean you didn't start out anentrepreneur, obviously you
probably you got a history ofworking in the tech world.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, so my first job .
Do you remember the oldcomputer company Gateway?
Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.
So my first job was 100%commission sales selling
computers on the phone to peopleover in South Dakota, looking
for gateway.
Oh, sales, selling computers onthe phone to people over in
South Dakota oh rough, and thatwas my first job.
So I did that for a couple ofyears and from there I got
(02:52):
recruited and joined Dell.
So in back in the earlynineties I joined Dell and I was
one of Michael's firstassistants back in like 93, 94
and was at Dell for about 12years and then I was recruited
to be the CEO of a e-commercecompany, did that for a while
and then became and then CEO ofan audio tech company that
(03:14):
competed with Dolby, built thatbusiness up, sold that business
to Sennheiser you know, thecompetitor to Bose.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I believe I have that .
I believe I have that brand inmy car.
I believe I have that.
I believe I have that brand inmy car.
I think Genesis uses that yeahsure, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And then from there, you know, now we're at 1105 for
the last 10 years.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Wow, so a decade yeah , that's about how long I've
been in my place too.
So it can get.
It can get brutal man.
It becomes your child in a way,and I think that's what I try
to stress to people.
It's you know, when you go downand start going down this
entrepreneurial path, it's youknow you go from working 40
hours a week If it's tough foryou to work 40 hours a week.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Imagine just double that Easy.
You know, yeah, I mean, look,it's a lot of hard work and you
know early on it was.
It was a ton of hard work.
I built an amazing team and gotsome real good partners in the
business.
That makes my life a lot easier, which has allowed me to write
the book and do some speaking onthe AI stuff, which helps the
business, the company.
(04:22):
We're very much a technology,b2b, marketing and media-focused
company.
Anytime I can get out there andtalk to more people, whether
it's about the cloud or big dataor analytics or about AI.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
it helps the business and so you know, yeah, it's
going to work out well.
I mean the good thing for youtoo is is I mean, you've got
some great accolades.
I mean I'm sure that there'speople reaching out to you,
especially after the book, but Imean you were the finalist for
CEO of the year from 11 to 12from Tech America.
Entrepreneur of the year fromOrange County Business Journal.
(04:51):
I mean you got your MBA fromUSC.
I mean there's a lot that I cansee from your career where you
were able to probably build anetwork or get some earned media
that brought attention to youand helped you build your brand.
So a lot of the times, too, Itell people hey, look, you got
to be able to, like, alwaysfocus on building your brand.
Don't post crazy stuff onsocial media, you know, unless
(05:14):
you're running for politics andyou can say whatever crazy stuff
you want.
But you know, make sure thatyou're always building your
brand, you're doing the rightthing, you're taking advantage
of opportunities and it lookslike I mean, just based on your
career, that's what you've done.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, no, I mean, look, I to your point, right.
I mean I kind of like, if yougo to my Instagram whatever it's
pretty sanitized, Like I don'tpost anything all that
controversial.
You know, social media to me is, um, you know, unless you are
an influencer and helping todrive some sort of brand
engagement, you know, really is,you know, really it's more for
those around you to understandwhat's happening in your life,
(05:50):
and I don't use Twitter all thatmuch, so, if any place, it's
probably more Instagram andLinkedIn, probably more than
anything, and, and so that'swhere it is.
And so, you know, I think, look, I'm 56 years old, I'm not 26.
If I was 26, maybe things wouldbe a little bit different in
terms of how I approach things,and but right now, being 56
years old, you know it's good,it's a fun little playground,
(06:10):
it's a nice place to have funand, looking, quite frankly, I
don't even use facebook anymore.
So I don't think you're alone inthat yeah, I mean, you know
there's just, it's just too muchnonsense.
And yeah, I'm not interested infighting with people and you
know it's.
You know it's just there's toomuch, uh, there's too much
disruption happening in anegative way, I think, on some
of these platforms, and sothat's the way it goes.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
well.
Where do you want to focus yourattention?
Do you want to focus yourattention on, you know, building
this reputation up as somebodywho just argues with people
online, or do you want to buildup your reputation as somebody
who is building things?
I, I mean, and on a globalperspective too, I mean, you've
worked in 20 different countries.
That has to have benefited youin a major way, because
(06:54):
Americans are very much isolatedand you know, most of us don't
travel.
Most of us, you know, if you dotravel, maybe you go to England
, which is, you know, americaEast, I guess, but you know what
?
How is your travels and how isall this business in all these
different countries?
How does that expanded yourunderstanding of
(07:17):
entrepreneurship?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Look, I think, if anything, quite honestly, adam,
what you find is that doingbusiness internationally it's
not hard, it's not complicated.
The problem is that we make itcomplicated.
And, at the end of the day,people want the same thing.
They want to be able to makemoney, fend for their family and
enjoy and live a good life.
99% of the people want that.
(07:41):
There's always that 1% of thepeople that want to see the
world burn, but 99% of thepeople really, really want that
more than anything, and I thinkonce you can tap into that and
understand your brand value andunderstand how to engage with
your customer.
Now engaging with the customermight be a little bit different,
but for the most part, becauseeverybody wants the same thing.
They want good value.
That's it.
(08:01):
You know, just want good valueand you know it doesn't matter
if you're doing a side hustlemaking YouTube videos or if
you're doing, you know, ifyou're selling whatever B2B lead
gen campaigns or whatever thecase might be, just make sure
you're providing good value.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Well, yeah, and in your book.
I mean AI, I would feel like,just depending on where you're
at around the world, is beingadopted in different ways.
Depending on where you're ataround the world is being
adopted in different ways.
Do you touch on any of that inyour book, or does your
experience, your globalexperience, did that help you at
all when you started writingthe book, and were you able to
(08:34):
tap into some of thoseexperiences and say, hey, look,
I can see AI being veryimportant in Asia, in East Asia.
I could see AI playing thisrole in Africa.
I could see it playing thisrole in certain parts of Europe.
How do you see that Was that?
Did that play into your book atall?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean it did.
I mean I didn't specificallywrite about Africa or India or
China when it comes to AI, youknow, but what I did was I wrote
this book so my 78-year-old momcould understand what AI is all
about.
To give you an example of that,two weeks ago I was invited to
a book club meeting from thisgroup of people, this group of
(09:11):
women who are all 80 years old,who really, really love and
wanted to learn about AI, and sothey had bought my book and
invited me to be a guest attheir book club discussion.
So I jumped in on a Zoom call,like you like right now, and I
spent an hour with them talkingabout AI a bunch of 80-year-old
women.
It was awesome and they were soengaged and they want to learn.
(09:32):
And what I find from an AIperspective and my thought
process here was when I wrotethe book was I don't want to
write a really advanced levelbook.
There's plenty of those right.
I wanted to write the ABCs andone, two, threes of AI.
So if you're looking for anadvanced level programming book,
this is not for you.
Honest to God, this book is howdo you go to ChatGPT and log in
?
Well, and then now you don'tneed to log in anymore, you can
(09:52):
do this for free, or like oh,it's $20.
Like, how do you even pay for a$20 membership or $20
subscription on's?
So that's so.
That's what this book is.
It's literally designed for anabsolute beginner Right Now.
My thought process when I wrotethe book was if you think about
(10:15):
AI, anybody with a smartphone,as long as you have access to an
Apple store or the Androidstore, you can download, whether
it's Gemini by Google orChatGPT or the ChatGPT app or
whatever case may be.
You can download an app and youhave AI on your phone.
Right, and so you can be avillager in India with a
smartphone, with AI on yourphone.
(10:35):
Like, what does that do?
That completely democratizesthe way people can live.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Right.
And so you can literally be,you know, maybe a small business
owner that's got a small standin Africa and you want to use
Chachi, PD or Gemini or whateverit might be anthropic to say,
hey, how do I get more trafficto my little stand?
Literally in 30 seconds he'llhave an answer that he probably
which you know, he never, he orshe never would have had to have
(11:01):
access to.
And if they did what, itprobably cost him $20,000 from a
consultant to come in and tellso now it costs them nothing,
Right?
So in my mind, my thoughtprocess is that every single
person on the planet will have,can have access to it.
Every single person on theplanet needs to be trained on it
.
The good news is that everysingle person on the planet can
use it.
The bad news is that everysingle person on the planet can
use it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Because what comes from there, then, is these
challenges you're starting tohear prop up, which is all this
deep fake bullshit sorry for myFrench that's coming up now,
right, and that's the stuff thatkeeps me up at night when it
comes to AI, right, all the deepfake stuff putting Taylor
Swift's face on some porn star'sbody, or these young kids in
high school doing stuff, whatthey shouldn't be doing with,
(11:47):
with maybe some of their fellowclassmates, or you know just the
other.
You know, during the electioncycle, and you know, the other
day, new Hampshire, where theyhad a fake robocall come in
pretending to be Biden, sayingdon't vote.
So that type of stuff is goingto get worse and worse and worse
.
Did you hear about whathappened in Hong Kong recently?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
No, no Regarding AI yeah, no, what happened?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, I can tell you the answer While I'm talking.
Do me a favor, pull it up onyour laptop.
So I want your listeners, Iwant your listeners, I want
everybody to pull up, I wanteverybody to Google.
Hong Kong CFO AI.
And basically, what happenedwas the CFO of this big company,
of this company out of HongKong, got deep faked oh, look at
(12:35):
that.
Yeah, but by a fake, but by hisCEO.
It wasn't his CEO.
Someone deep faked his CEO and,by the way, not just the CEO,
but other members of the teamand they got him on a Zoom call
and they told him hey, we justentered in a new partnership.
Why are this company $25million?
And he's talking to literallythe screen on a Zoom call which
(12:57):
looks exactly and sounds exactlylike his CFO and the CEO and
his team.
So he said, sure, so he wires$25 million.
And it was all fake.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Oh, five different bank accounts.
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, and so that's the type of stuff that keeps me
up at night.
That's the stuff that worriesme.
That's the type of stuff thatfor your listeners who are doing
, you know, into side hustles ordoing things.
Do you want to worry about AI?
I'm not worried about theoutput that AI gives, right?
Ai is young.
It's going to make mistakes.
Double check your work, always.
Double check your work, right?
Don't ever take it a hundredpercent for gospel.
You want to verify something?
(13:26):
Go to Google, verify something.
But man, I'll tell you, thedeep fake stuff is what worries
me the most.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Oh, I 100% agree with that.
I mean, especially when it'sthe young kids to get involved
with it.
I mean that's that could be,you know, really, really bad.
And you know, with the schoolsand everything, it's just it's
they're dealing with enoughright now.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Adam, look, I mean, look, if you, if you've got a
young kid, I mean you know allsomeone has to do.
So let's assume for a minuteyou have a son and let's say
your son is 10 years old andsomeone gets a recording of your
son talking off of some videosomewhere.
All they need is five secondsof your son's voice to clone his
voice and then in the middle ofthe day you can get a phone
call saying hey, dad, I've beenkidnapped, send $10,000 and it
(14:09):
would sound just like your son,or a video of it.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I mean, you could just do a deepfake video with a
kid, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
But that's where you have to get smart about it and
come up, figure out a safe wordand all those different kinds of
things Like what's that safeword going to be right?
So maybe your safe word happensto be mighty just because I'm
just picking on that, becauseit's on your sweatshirt.
But you know people are goingto have to get smart.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
I is, it is, and that's why it's important for
people to read the book and takea look at things.
But as somebody who understandsthis on a different level right
, you wrote the book so that youknow, like you said, your
grandma could understand it.
But I mean, you understand thisstuff on a different level,
especially with that MITbackground.
You know what.
How does this affect yourbusiness?
Just going into what you do andyou know I was looking through
(14:56):
your site and everything itseems like you guys have a lot
of different brands connected toyou.
There's a lot of differentthings you guys could help with.
It looks like a focus on B2B.
Explain the structure of whatyou've built.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, so 1105 Media is a B2B marketing and media
technology services company,right, and that's a fancy way of
saying.
We help businesses grow.
Yeah, so you know, 1105 Mediais a B2B marketing and media
technology services company,right, and that's a fancy way of
saying.
We help businesses grow.
That's our job, right, we'relike a middleman.
Our tagline is your growth isour business and that's what we
do.
So people come to us and sayand we're very much technology
focused in the technologyindustry.
So companies will come to usand say hey, we're launching a
(15:33):
new product.
Can you help us with lead gen?
Can you help us get oureditorial message out to people?
Can you do an event with us?
Can we sponsor some of yourevents?
Whatever the case might be,help us.
We want to attract the peoplethat you're pulling off of your
(15:53):
different sites and all thedifferent brands you own,
because that's our audience.
So the audience they want areCIOs, ctos, network
administrators, people whoinfluence the IT and technology
decision-making in anorganization.
So they use us to come and helpthem get access to those people
and then you know.
So we basically provide thataudience.
So we have a massive databaseand we do a lot of email
marketing.
But where AI is coming in forus is we're starting to explore
(16:14):
AI in terms of how to leverageit for search engine
optimization, how to use it forour email creation, how to maybe
get the right subject line anda header that goes out in an
email, whatever the case mightbe.
But those are just some of thethings that we're doing to
figure it out Now over time.
I would imagine you know if weneed to go higher, let's say we
(16:34):
need to hire.
I think we're staffed prettywell, but if the team came to me
and said, hey, we need to hireanother X, y, z person, I'll say
wait a minute, have you tried?
Well, what can AI do for youthere?
And you know, and we probably,you know, we'll probably see
first.
You know where AI can play a,so you know.
What I want to be able to do istake my existing team and say,
(17:05):
hey, if you use AI tools, ifthat can save you an hour or two
a day, do we really need to gohire another person?
Or are we good by just usingthe AI tools, just like you
would use an Excel, word,powerpoint, the calculator?
Those are all tools, that'sright.
So if you think aboutaugmenting intelligence and you
think about using these thingsas tools.
These tools are designed tomake you more productive and so
you know, if, all of a sudden,now you can get yourself,
(17:25):
because you're using AI, back anhour or two time of your day,
do I really have to go hireanother person, or can I take
that?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
save that money and put it into the raise pool or do
whatever else with it.
Well, I run a digital ad agencyand I've done this for 13 years
now and also had a technologystartup.
We built it, sold it.
But when you start talkingabout AI, what I use it for a
lot of times is recall.
There's so much going on in ourheads and there's things that
you may know that you may havegotten educated on, you don't
remember.
You know, or just to speed upthe process and help you reply
to clients faster, I've got aclient right now that's working
(18:04):
on some blockchain, web three,uh, mobile technology, telecom
stuff right now, and all thattogether at one time.
And then throw in ai.
Right, it's, it's wild and thisguy is at this level, way up
here, worked for the defensedepartment, lives in dc.
Every time I get on the phonewith this guy, it's like he's
(18:25):
talking up here, right, and I'mlike look, if you want to sell
this thing, you want to go.
He's looking for investorsright now.
You want to go out and getinvestors.
You need to take all this andmake a simple message out of it,
right, and be able to explainto these different persona
groups.
You know, maybe there is acrazy technology group that he
wants to talk to.
Well, let's, let's talk incrazy tech, speak to those guys,
(18:46):
but your average everydaycustomer needs to understand
this.
So what I've done is, you know,I take his deck, upload into
chat.
Gpt, say, hey, here, here'swhat's going on.
Take some of the emails he sentme, pop those into chat.
Gpt, break this down for me,help me to even understand what
this guy's talking about.
Right, and it's able to do thatinstead of me doing a bunch of
(19:08):
online research.
I can have that.
Do it, explain it back to melike I'm a teenager, and then I
can take what he's got,understand what's happening and
then turn that into a marketingmessage that's palatable for
most people, right?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, yeah, and the good news is that it's now
integrated into Outlook and it'snow being integrated.
It's now integrated into WordExcel.
Word and everything, it'severything, right.
So you just need to getMicrosoft Cop co-pilot and
that's, you know, 30 bucks amonth, but it's worth it.
It's worth it.
So if you can have I, if I toldyou you can have your own
assistant for 30 a month, who'sgoing to say no, right?
So the good is what youdescribe, right, like I can take
(19:46):
.
Like, right now I have outlook,I can open up my outlook, you
can send me an email and I canput that email and I can respond
with, uh, with the co-pilot,with the chat GPT version of
Copilot right there, and it'llcraft the email for me, an email
that maybe would have taken mefive minutes to write.
Now it gets done in 30 seconds,right?
And guess what those four and ahalf minutes add up.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, a ton, A ton.
I tell my people all the timelook, you got a bill for your
time.
I mean an email to readsomething, comprehend it and
then come up with a reply.
Every email you get from aclient is at least 15 minutes of
your time to put that stufftogether.
You don't think of that as likea billable thing, but I mean
(20:27):
those add up, I mean over thecourse of a week, that's two,
three hours.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Just think about if you just say it's let's just say
you're using the ai tools in anoutlook, for example, right.
And let's say it's saving you20 minutes a day because you're
using outlook.
You're using the chat, gpt,co-pilot option and outlook and
it saves you 20 minutes a day.
Times five days, it's 100minutes.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
That's an hour, a little over an hour and a half
right.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Well, that's that, that's 22 minutes a day or
whatever.
Roughly an hour, roughly by 20minutes a day.
So I guess what you know.
My point is that what can youdo in 20 minutes?
Well, you know what you can do.
You can go get a working good,get a quick workout, and you can
go go walk around the block,you can.
You can follow up and maybestart a little side hustle on
the side doing something else.
Right, you can start, you can.
You know.
(21:12):
To me, I love using these,these tools for research, right,
and so you know, now thatChatGPT is connected to Bing
search, there's no reason why itwon't give me accurate
information because it'sconnected to Bing search now and
so so to me it's, it's a greatresearch tool as well.
So, if you want to research amarket, you want to research a
new product idea, you want toresearch a side hustle, that you
(21:33):
want to do, you want to.
Whatever you want to do, it'sall right there.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, and I think yeah, you're right.
I mean, you know there's largelanguage model and the
information that it had accessto is now tied into Bing or
whatever search engines that itcould be utilizing, whatever
service you're using.
So, yeah, now you're going toget a lot more accurate stuff,
(22:00):
and I've noticed that, you know,with GPT-4, I've definitely had
much more accurate responsesthan I had when I first started
using ChatGPT.
But now tell us a little bitabout how your background led
you to start this agency, and itsounds like you've got a focus
on B2B, but in the technologyspace.
So I'm guessing your years atDell and things like that,
you've built up a network ofclients, you've built up a
reputation in technology andthat's what kind of pushed you
(22:22):
in that direction.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think for me, I think the
opportune thing for me was, youknow, this business was kind of
constituted a little bit earlierbefore I joined and it was
really struggling and it was, itwas, it was something that
needed an entrepreneurial spiritor person brought in, and and
(22:46):
so we're working with the rightpartners and we brought, came in
and restructured the wholething.
And you know, I was a customerof this business a long time ago
, all right.
So I, you know, and so Iunderstood, I understood the
world, like I, you know, Iunderstood some of the brands
that that existed, and so youknow, and I knew what needed to
(23:08):
be done, like you know, when,when, when we came in and kind
of reconstituted this business,you know, I remember looking at
some of the, the, the financials.
You know this thing used to bepretty, a pretty heavy, you know
, initially up front, a prettyheavy print business.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Wow, this used to be a print business.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Interesting, Okay, I mean I've seen that evolution
firsthand.
But yeah, it used to be apretty heavy print, you know
technology you know, think about, right, you remember the pc
magazines.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh yeah, shoppers and all that stuff.
This was.
You know where.
Those were consumer-based, b2cbased.
This was a b2b.
You know, you have your littlemini little print magazines and
you know, and so that's, that'swhat this was.
And so having to change thatwhole thing, reconstitute events
, fix the digital business Imean we did all that stuff.
It took a while, but you knowit's been a fun ride.
(24:01):
We took a big hit during COVID.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
But we survived and now we're back and you know it's
doing well.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, that takes some kahunas to take a business that
was built for print and thenchange it over to what it is now
.
I mean that's scary to a lot ofpeople.
Right, change is scary and youknow you're risking jobs.
You're risking, you know, yourinvestment.
There's a lot of things theretoo.
I mean I'm sure you stayed upat night thinking about it, but
(24:30):
I mean you knew it had to bedone and you pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, I mean.
That's why I'm not all thatworried about AI in the
workplace, right, because, ifyou think about it, we've been
through so many differenttechnological revolutions, right
?
The first, the first internetbrowser, came out.
Oh, what is this?
You know, I remember being in ameeting with Michael Dell and
Michael Dell walked in and threwthe mosaic and that's gay
browser on the desk and saidfigure out how to sell computers
(24:54):
on this thing.
We all looked at him like he wasstupid, like who the hell is
going to buy a computer on thisthing, right?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
You know, we thought he was dumb, but little did we
know right Now, when people saidoh, who's going to buy a $5
book on Amazon and pay $5 forshipping?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Little did we know.
Look, oh, amazon's a fad.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh God, I remember those days, and they were afraid
of the the people didn't wantto put their credit cards in you
remember that Nobody would wantto put their credit card in the
you know, and then that wasfigured out.
It's you know, technology findsa way.
But my point is technologyevolved and new companies came
from that that figured out howto put your credit card in there
, right.
How to do deliveries, how to doconfiguration.
You know, you saw thedevelopment of you know.
You saw the dot-com bust, butthen you saw the boom afterwards
as well.
You saw the mobile revolution.
I mean, who thought that oursmartphones were going to be as
(25:40):
powerful and as strong and wewere going to do everything on
our phones?
Now that our phones aren't evenphones anymore, right?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
No, I don't even use it for a phone.
I you know it's right.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, let me look.
Do you even answer the phoneanymore when you, when you do no
, the phone anymore when you,when you do no, it's all go to
voicemail.
Yeah, if you don't recognizethe number, you're not answering
the phone, right?
So the point of it is from your, from your, from your listeners
perspective, the phone has madethe side hustle easy peasy,
right?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, and that brings up a good point.
Like you know, a lot of peoplecan start side hustles.
Like they could start a digitalad agency.
Like when we were doing ourstuff, it wasn't, you know, the
barrier to entry was much higher.
Now it's, you know, anybodycould start a video business
with the phone.
Like you could have a videomarketing business using your
iPhone, honestly and and youknow, you got your editing tools
in there you could do a socialmedia business.
(26:27):
You could do tons of differentbusinesses from that.
But I mean, in a way you'reyou're kind of positioned to
help people.
Like, if you do have a digitalagency and it's a, you know, I'm
not sure what kind of revenueyou guys are looking for from
customers.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
But I mean, you're here to help businesses like
that.
Yeah, I mean, look, you know wetypically focus more on the
larger tech type companies,right, because you know we have
a fairly large infrastructurehere in terms of people and you
know a lot of employees andthings like that and so, but
yeah, there's a huge market outthere, right for for people like
, if you want to go service, youwant to go to the digital
agency to service that mom andpop zero to 20 employee base,
(27:12):
fine, look.
But I'll tell you, one of thethings that's going to happen is
that you're going to see a lot.
So, you know, 10 years ago,nobody knew what an Uber was,
nobody knew what Airbnb was,nobody knew what Shopify was,
right.
So my point is all these thingsare not popping up, right.
So you know, if you fastforward now, what the future is
going to look like.
(27:32):
I think what you're going tosee here is you're going to see
a lot more new companies comingup, but you probably won't need
as many people.
So in the past, you may haveneeded 20 employees to do what
you needed to do.
Well, now, with AI, you mightneed only 10.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Exactly.
And yeah, and think about thistoo All of these businesses
somebody made a really goodpoint one time the things that
were once available to thewealthy are now available to the
masses.
So, when you think about it, aprivate driver right.
The only rich people used tohave a private driver.
You know Richard Gere in PrettyWoman.
You know private driver.
(28:10):
Well, now you got Uber, you gota private driver, right.
Oh, I want to stay in a housein, you know, palm Springs.
You know, to buy a house inPalm Springs back in the day you
had to have a lot of money.
Now you can, whenever you feellike it, go rent a house in Palm
Springs.
So it's kind of democratizingassets that were only available
to the wealthy.
And I would say personalassistance, you know.
I mean, a personal assistantisn't cheap, you know,
(28:30):
necessarily.
And now you've got a technologythat you have a personal
assistant.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Did you ever watch the Iron man and Avengers movies
?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Okay, so look, in the next five years everybody's
going to have their own Jarvis.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, there's even an AI right content writer that
was called Jarvis.
Now they had to change the name.
But yeah, you're right 100%.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, I mean, you know robotics are coming.
People are going to have theirown personal robots in their
home.
You know there's the Optimusrobot demo from Elon Musk.
Apple yesterday said they'renow exploring putting in
building robots in the home,right, you know, Disney, believe
it or not, is probably one ofthe leading companies in robotic
technology because of theirimaginary group of what happens
at Disneyland, right?
(29:14):
So you're going to see, I think, robotics start to come into
home and the workplace over thenext 10 to 20 years.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Wow, I love it.
Man, Do you have anyforecasting in your book?
Is there anything that you'veput in there where you're like
look 10 years from now, 20 yearsfrom now, or do you have a blog
?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
or anything where you have thought leadership in the
AI space that people cansubscribe to or anything.
No, I mean not yet.
I mean this initially startedoff as a fun thing that I wanted
to do to just make sure peopleunderstood what to do and the
book's done well.
And people hired me to come inand speak and I do a lot of
talking now.
So if people want to hire me tospeak, they're welcome to do
that.
But in know more stuff beyondthat.
(29:57):
You know it's hard because Ihave a day job CEO of a company.
It takes a lot of time, right.
So but yeah, I mean we'll seewhere it goes.
I mean I've thought about doesit make any sense to look at
long-term, does it look anysense to have some some you know
AI for beginner trainingcourses or things of that nature
and all that stuff beyond that?
So we'll see where it goes.
I think, just like most peopleI mean most people like who are
(30:20):
listening when they have theirlittle side hustles, they have
to pick and choose their battlesand in my case, you know the
book is easy, because I don'tmake any money on the book,
cause you don't make any moneyon selling books, to be honest
with you, and I didn't really doit to make money.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
I did it.
I and I didn't really do it tomake money.
I did it more for my ownpersonal satisfaction and brand
awareness more than anything.
When you go through thatprocess, I mean you have to be a
determined person and aself-motivated person even to do
that, especially if you'redoing it on your own and you've
got to do research, and one ofthe benefits of not hiring a
ghostwriter to write your bookis that you learn a lot more.
(30:55):
There's probably things youlearned writing that book that
you didn't even think you didn'tknow about before and now that
helps your business.
And also the fact that youwrote a book and it's I mean,
it's doing great.
People are going to see that.
They're going to say, wow, thisguy wrote a bestseller.
It's a best.
You know the bestselling AIbook on Amazon.
Bring him in.
You know Dell's probablycalling like hey, you remember
(31:16):
us.
You know Michael Dell.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Hey, rajiv, you know you would come back in.
We need everybody who'slistening to go at least buy the
book or download the Kindle.
So, and then leave a review,because the way Amazon's
algorithm works is you need toget to about 100 reviews for it
to kick up even further, and Ithink I'm like 87 or 88.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Oh man, I'll go.
Yeah, we got to get on that.
I get a.
Yeah, I'd get on Kindle orwhatever.
Download that sucker.
But it's AI made simple abeginner's guide to generative
intelligence.
That's the name of the book andthe website 1105mediacom.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yep.
And then people can find me onInstagram at the Rajiv Kapoor.
They can find me on LinkedInOthers quite a few Rajiv
Kapoor's, because I happen to beIndian but I was born and
raised in LA, but Rajiv Kapoorin India is like Steve Smith.
So so make sure you find theright Rajiv Kapoor and then if
people want to email me, theycan email me at at they want to
(32:15):
talk to me about coming out andspeaking.
It's requestrajiv at gmailcom.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I love it man, rajiv, thanks for being a part of this
, thanks for giving us someadvice.
I think you know you are what alot of us are aspiring to be.
You know, taking thatbackground, that experience,
those nine to five jobs or, youknow, in a lot of our cases you
know maybe seven to seven jobsthat we used to have, and then
(32:41):
turning that into a business andyou know selling businesses and
, oh man, this is great.
Well, guys, check it out.
Check out the website.
We're going to put things inthe show notes so you guys can
read it.
Click on some links.
Check out his book.
Rajiv, thanks so much for beingon the show.
Thanks, buddy.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,Side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(33:22):
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
(00:24):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Today's special guest coming tous from California, rajiv
Kapoor.
How are you doing Great?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Adam, how are you buddy?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Thanks for having me on.
I'm doing okay.
So, man, best-selling numberone best-selling book about AI
on Amazon right now.
That's a feat, that's wild.
There's got to be a ton ofbooks out there right now.
It's such a hot thing andNVIDIA's stock is flying.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah Well, you know, the difference is I actually
wrote my book.
I didn't have catchy PT writingit.
So there you go.
But that must be the difference.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Actually, the quality is probably much better if you
don't have a ghostwriter, right?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well,how long did it take you to
write the book?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So you know it's interesting.
You know I got certified in AIabout 10, 11 years ago more on
the machine learning side fromMIT, and I wrote my first book
during COVID, a leadership bookcalled Chase Greatness, and that
did really well, and so I'vebeen involved in the AI space
for a long time.
And then, on whatever November30th of 2022, when ChatGPT was
released, I got it.
Whatever November 30th of 2022,when ChatGPT was released, I
(01:27):
got it.
I remember looking at my phoneat six, three in the morning,
california time.
I'm in the bed going what the Fword is this?
Right, this is crazy talk, whatis this?
And then I'm like, oh my God,what is this?
So, literally the day after, Istarted taking notes and saying,
okay, I'm going to.
Every single person on theworld is going to have to get
trained in AI at some point.
And so I uh, I couldn't callthe book AI for dummies for
(01:49):
obvious reasons.
And so there you go AI madesimple.
That's the so.
So, to answer your question, Iliterally started taking notes
for the book probably the dayafter JetGPT was released and
probably got really seriousabout it early January 2023.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Okay, oh gotcha.
Well, what I love about youOrange County guys is you move
quickly.
You.
You understand that things haveto happen fast and you've got a
lot of competition out there.
Anybody that's in the techindustry like first mover
advantage, right?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, you know.
You know, when you work for acompany like Dell and all those
types of big companies, you knowyou gotta, you gotta, be nimble
.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So yeah, and what's and what's your background, like
I mean, before you were anentrepreneur.
I mean you didn't start out anentrepreneur, obviously you
probably you got a history ofworking in the tech world.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, so my first job .
Do you remember the oldcomputer company Gateway?
Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.
So my first job was 100%commission sales selling
computers on the phone to peopleover in South Dakota, looking
for gateway.
Oh, sales, selling computers onthe phone to people over in
South Dakota oh rough, and thatwas my first job.
So I did that for a couple ofyears and from there I got
(02:52):
recruited and joined Dell.
So in back in the earlynineties I joined Dell and I was
one of Michael's firstassistants back in like 93, 94
and was at Dell for about 12years and then I was recruited
to be the CEO of a e-commercecompany, did that for a while
and then became and then CEO ofan audio tech company that
(03:14):
competed with Dolby, built thatbusiness up, sold that business
to Sennheiser you know, thecompetitor to Bose.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I believe I have that .
I believe I have that brand inmy car.
I believe I have that.
I believe I have that brand inmy car.
I think Genesis uses that yeahsure, yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And then from there, you know, now we're at 1105 for
the last 10 years.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Wow, so a decade yeah , that's about how long I've
been in my place too.
So it can get.
It can get brutal man.
It becomes your child in a way,and I think that's what I try
to stress to people.
It's you know, when you go downand start going down this
entrepreneurial path, it's youknow you go from working 40
hours a week If it's tough foryou to work 40 hours a week.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Imagine just double that Easy.
You know, yeah, I mean, look,it's a lot of hard work and you
know early on it was.
It was a ton of hard work.
I built an amazing team and gotsome real good partners in the
business.
That makes my life a lot easier, which has allowed me to write
the book and do some speaking onthe AI stuff, which helps the
business, the company.
(04:22):
We're very much a technology,b2b, marketing and media-focused
company.
Anytime I can get out there andtalk to more people, whether
it's about the cloud or big dataor analytics or about AI.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
it helps the business and so you know, yeah, it's
going to work out well.
I mean the good thing for youtoo is is I mean, you've got
some great accolades.
I mean I'm sure that there'speople reaching out to you,
especially after the book, but Imean you were the finalist for
CEO of the year from 11 to 12from Tech America.
Entrepreneur of the year fromOrange County Business Journal.
(04:51):
I mean you got your MBA fromUSC.
I mean there's a lot that I cansee from your career where you
were able to probably build anetwork or get some earned media
that brought attention to youand helped you build your brand.
So a lot of the times, too, Itell people hey, look, you got
to be able to, like, alwaysfocus on building your brand.
Don't post crazy stuff onsocial media, you know, unless
(05:14):
you're running for politics andyou can say whatever crazy stuff
you want.
But you know, make sure thatyou're always building your
brand, you're doing the rightthing, you're taking advantage
of opportunities and it lookslike I mean, just based on your
career, that's what you've done.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, no, I mean, look, I to your point, right.
I mean I kind of like, if yougo to my Instagram whatever it's
pretty sanitized, Like I don'tpost anything all that
controversial.
You know, social media to me is, um, you know, unless you are
an influencer and helping todrive some sort of brand
engagement, you know, really is,you know, really it's more for
those around you to understandwhat's happening in your life,
(05:50):
and I don't use Twitter all thatmuch, so, if any place, it's
probably more Instagram andLinkedIn, probably more than
anything, and, and so that'swhere it is.
And so, you know, I think, look, I'm 56 years old, I'm not 26.
If I was 26, maybe things wouldbe a little bit different in
terms of how I approach things,and but right now, being 56
years old, you know it's good,it's a fun little playground,
(06:10):
it's a nice place to have funand, looking, quite frankly, I
don't even use facebook anymore.
So I don't think you're alone inthat yeah, I mean, you know
there's just, it's just too muchnonsense.
And yeah, I'm not interested infighting with people and you
know it's.
You know it's just there's toomuch, uh, there's too much
disruption happening in anegative way, I think, on some
of these platforms, and sothat's the way it goes.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
well.
Where do you want to focus yourattention?
Do you want to focus yourattention on, you know, building
this reputation up as somebodywho just argues with people
online, or do you want to buildup your reputation as somebody
who is building things?
I, I mean, and on a globalperspective too, I mean, you've
worked in 20 different countries.
That has to have benefited youin a major way, because
(06:54):
Americans are very much isolatedand you know, most of us don't
travel.
Most of us, you know, if you dotravel, maybe you go to England
, which is, you know, americaEast, I guess, but you know what
?
How is your travels and how isall this business in all these
different countries?
How does that expanded yourunderstanding of
(07:17):
entrepreneurship?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Look, I think, if anything, quite honestly, adam,
what you find is that doingbusiness internationally it's
not hard, it's not complicated.
The problem is that we make itcomplicated.
And, at the end of the day,people want the same thing.
They want to be able to makemoney, fend for their family and
enjoy and live a good life.
99% of the people want that.
(07:41):
There's always that 1% of thepeople that want to see the
world burn, but 99% of thepeople really, really want that
more than anything, and I thinkonce you can tap into that and
understand your brand value andunderstand how to engage with
your customer.
Now engaging with the customermight be a little bit different,
but for the most part, becauseeverybody wants the same thing.
They want good value.
That's it.
(08:01):
You know, just want good valueand you know it doesn't matter
if you're doing a side hustlemaking YouTube videos or if
you're doing, you know, ifyou're selling whatever B2B lead
gen campaigns or whatever thecase might be, just make sure
you're providing good value.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Well, yeah, and in your book.
I mean AI, I would feel like,just depending on where you're
at around the world, is beingadopted in different ways.
Depending on where you're ataround the world is being
adopted in different ways.
Do you touch on any of that inyour book, or does your
experience, your globalexperience, did that help you at
all when you started writingthe book, and were you able to
(08:34):
tap into some of thoseexperiences and say, hey, look,
I can see AI being veryimportant in Asia, in East Asia.
I could see AI playing thisrole in Africa.
I could see it playing thisrole in certain parts of Europe.
How do you see that Was that?
Did that play into your book atall?
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean it did.
I mean I didn't specificallywrite about Africa or India or
China when it comes to AI, youknow, but what I did was I wrote
this book so my 78-year-old momcould understand what AI is all
about.
To give you an example of that,two weeks ago I was invited to
a book club meeting from thisgroup of people, this group of
(09:11):
women who are all 80 years old,who really, really love and
wanted to learn about AI, and sothey had bought my book and
invited me to be a guest attheir book club discussion.
So I jumped in on a Zoom call,like you like right now, and I
spent an hour with them talkingabout AI a bunch of 80-year-old
women.
It was awesome and they were soengaged and they want to learn.
(09:32):
And what I find from an AIperspective and my thought
process here was when I wrotethe book was I don't want to
write a really advanced levelbook.
There's plenty of those right.
I wanted to write the ABCs andone, two, threes of AI.
So if you're looking for anadvanced level programming book,
this is not for you.
Honest to God, this book is howdo you go to ChatGPT and log in
?
Well, and then now you don'tneed to log in anymore, you can
(09:52):
do this for free, or like oh,it's $20.
Like, how do you even pay for a$20 membership or $20
subscription on's?
So that's so.
That's what this book is.
It's literally designed for anabsolute beginner Right Now.
My thought process when I wrotethe book was if you think about
(10:15):
AI, anybody with a smartphone,as long as you have access to an
Apple store or the Androidstore, you can download, whether
it's Gemini by Google orChatGPT or the ChatGPT app or
whatever case may be.
You can download an app and youhave AI on your phone.
Right, and so you can be avillager in India with a
smartphone, with AI on yourphone.
(10:35):
Like, what does that do?
That completely democratizesthe way people can live.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Right.
And so you can literally be,you know, maybe a small business
owner that's got a small standin Africa and you want to use
Chachi, PD or Gemini or whateverit might be anthropic to say,
hey, how do I get more trafficto my little stand?
Literally in 30 seconds he'llhave an answer that he probably
which you know, he never, he orshe never would have had to have
(11:01):
access to.
And if they did what, itprobably cost him $20,000 from a
consultant to come in and tellso now it costs them nothing,
Right?
So in my mind, my thoughtprocess is that every single
person on the planet will have,can have access to it.
Every single person on theplanet needs to be trained on it
.
The good news is that everysingle person on the planet can
use it.
The bad news is that everysingle person on the planet can
use it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Because what comes from there, then, is these
challenges you're starting tohear prop up, which is all this
deep fake bullshit sorry for myFrench that's coming up now,
right, and that's the stuff thatkeeps me up at night when it
comes to AI, right, all the deepfake stuff putting Taylor
Swift's face on some porn star'sbody, or these young kids in
high school doing stuff, whatthey shouldn't be doing with,
(11:47):
with maybe some of their fellowclassmates, or you know just the
other.
You know, during the electioncycle, and you know, the other
day, new Hampshire, where theyhad a fake robocall come in
pretending to be Biden, sayingdon't vote.
So that type of stuff is goingto get worse and worse and worse
.
Did you hear about whathappened in Hong Kong recently?
Speaker 1 (12:07):
No, no Regarding AI yeah, no, what happened?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Well, I can tell you the answer While I'm talking.
Do me a favor, pull it up onyour laptop.
So I want your listeners, Iwant your listeners, I want
everybody to pull up, I wanteverybody to Google.
Hong Kong CFO AI.
And basically, what happenedwas the CFO of this big company,
of this company out of HongKong, got deep faked oh, look at
(12:35):
that.
Yeah, but by a fake, but by hisCEO.
It wasn't his CEO.
Someone deep faked his CEO and,by the way, not just the CEO,
but other members of the teamand they got him on a Zoom call
and they told him hey, we justentered in a new partnership.
Why are this company $25million?
And he's talking to literallythe screen on a Zoom call which
(12:57):
looks exactly and sounds exactlylike his CFO and the CEO and
his team.
So he said, sure, so he wires$25 million.
And it was all fake.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Oh, five different bank accounts.
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, and so that's the type of stuff that keeps me
up at night.
That's the stuff that worriesme.
That's the type of stuff thatfor your listeners who are doing
, you know, into side hustles ordoing things.
Do you want to worry about AI?
I'm not worried about theoutput that AI gives, right?
Ai is young.
It's going to make mistakes.
Double check your work, always.
Double check your work, right?
Don't ever take it a hundredpercent for gospel.
You want to verify something?
(13:26):
Go to Google, verify something.
But man, I'll tell you, thedeep fake stuff is what worries
me the most.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Oh, I 100% agree with that.
I mean, especially when it'sthe young kids to get involved
with it.
I mean that's that could be,you know, really, really bad.
And you know, with the schoolsand everything, it's just it's
they're dealing with enoughright now.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Adam, look, I mean, look, if you, if you've got a
young kid, I mean you know allsomeone has to do.
So let's assume for a minuteyou have a son and let's say
your son is 10 years old andsomeone gets a recording of your
son talking off of some videosomewhere.
All they need is five secondsof your son's voice to clone his
voice and then in the middle ofthe day you can get a phone
call saying hey, dad, I've beenkidnapped, send $10,000 and it
(14:09):
would sound just like your son,or a video of it.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I mean, you could just do a deepfake video with a
kid, you know.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
But that's where you have to get smart about it and
come up, figure out a safe wordand all those different kinds of
things Like what's that safeword going to be right?
So maybe your safe word happensto be mighty just because I'm
just picking on that, becauseit's on your sweatshirt.
But you know people are goingto have to get smart.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
I is, it is, and that's why it's important for
people to read the book and takea look at things.
But as somebody who understandsthis on a different level right
, you wrote the book so that youknow, like you said, your
grandma could understand it.
But I mean, you understand thisstuff on a different level,
especially with that MITbackground.
You know what.
How does this affect yourbusiness?
Just going into what you do andyou know I was looking through
(14:56):
your site and everything itseems like you guys have a lot
of different brands connected toyou.
There's a lot of differentthings you guys could help with.
It looks like a focus on B2B.
Explain the structure of whatyou've built.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, so 1105 Media is a B2B marketing and media
technology services company,right, and that's a fancy way of
saying.
We help businesses grow.
Yeah, so you know, 1105 Mediais a B2B marketing and media
technology services company,right, and that's a fancy way of
saying.
We help businesses grow.
That's our job, right, we'relike a middleman.
Our tagline is your growth isour business and that's what we
do.
So people come to us and sayand we're very much technology
focused in the technologyindustry.
So companies will come to usand say hey, we're launching a
(15:33):
new product.
Can you help us with lead gen?
Can you help us get oureditorial message out to people?
Can you do an event with us?
Can we sponsor some of yourevents?
Whatever the case might be,help us.
We want to attract the peoplethat you're pulling off of your
(15:53):
different sites and all thedifferent brands you own,
because that's our audience.
So the audience they want areCIOs, ctos, network
administrators, people whoinfluence the IT and technology
decision-making in anorganization.
So they use us to come and helpthem get access to those people
and then you know.
So we basically provide thataudience.
So we have a massive databaseand we do a lot of email
marketing.
But where AI is coming in forus is we're starting to explore
(16:14):
AI in terms of how to leverageit for search engine
optimization, how to use it forour email creation, how to maybe
get the right subject line anda header that goes out in an
email, whatever the case mightbe.
But those are just some of thethings that we're doing to
figure it out Now over time.
I would imagine you know if weneed to go higher, let's say we
(16:34):
need to hire.
I think we're staffed prettywell, but if the team came to me
and said, hey, we need to hireanother X, y, z person, I'll say
wait a minute, have you tried?
Well, what can AI do for youthere?
And you know, and we probably,you know, we'll probably see
first.
You know where AI can play a,so you know.
What I want to be able to do istake my existing team and say,
(17:05):
hey, if you use AI tools, ifthat can save you an hour or two
a day, do we really need to gohire another person?
Or are we good by just usingthe AI tools, just like you
would use an Excel, word,powerpoint, the calculator?
Those are all tools, that'sright.
So if you think aboutaugmenting intelligence and you
think about using these thingsas tools.
These tools are designed tomake you more productive and so
you know, if, all of a sudden,now you can get yourself,
(17:25):
because you're using AI, back anhour or two time of your day,
do I really have to go hireanother person, or can I take
that?
Speaker 1 (17:41):
save that money and put it into the raise pool or do
whatever else with it.
Well, I run a digital ad agencyand I've done this for 13 years
now and also had a technologystartup.
We built it, sold it.
But when you start talkingabout AI, what I use it for a
lot of times is recall.
There's so much going on in ourheads and there's things that
you may know that you may havegotten educated on, you don't
remember.
You know, or just to speed upthe process and help you reply
to clients faster, I've got aclient right now that's working
(18:04):
on some blockchain, web three,uh, mobile technology, telecom
stuff right now, and all thattogether at one time.
And then throw in ai.
Right, it's, it's wild and thisguy is at this level, way up
here, worked for the defensedepartment, lives in dc.
Every time I get on the phonewith this guy, it's like he's
(18:25):
talking up here, right, and I'mlike look, if you want to sell
this thing, you want to go.
He's looking for investorsright now.
You want to go out and getinvestors.
You need to take all this andmake a simple message out of it,
right, and be able to explainto these different persona
groups.
You know, maybe there is acrazy technology group that he
wants to talk to.
Well, let's, let's talk incrazy tech, speak to those guys,
(18:46):
but your average everydaycustomer needs to understand
this.
So what I've done is, you know,I take his deck, upload into
chat.
Gpt, say, hey, here, here'swhat's going on.
Take some of the emails he sentme, pop those into chat.
Gpt, break this down for me,help me to even understand what
this guy's talking about.
Right, and it's able to do thatinstead of me doing a bunch of
(19:08):
online research.
I can have that.
Do it, explain it back to melike I'm a teenager, and then I
can take what he's got,understand what's happening and
then turn that into a marketingmessage that's palatable for
most people, right?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, yeah, and the good news is that it's now
integrated into Outlook and it'snow being integrated.
It's now integrated into WordExcel.
Word and everything, it'severything, right.
So you just need to getMicrosoft Cop co-pilot and
that's, you know, 30 bucks amonth, but it's worth it.
It's worth it.
So if you can have I, if I toldyou you can have your own
assistant for 30 a month, who'sgoing to say no, right?
So the good is what youdescribe, right, like I can take
(19:46):
.
Like, right now I have outlook,I can open up my outlook, you
can send me an email and I canput that email and I can respond
with, uh, with the co-pilot,with the chat GPT version of
Copilot right there, and it'llcraft the email for me, an email
that maybe would have taken mefive minutes to write.
Now it gets done in 30 seconds,right?
And guess what those four and ahalf minutes add up.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, a ton, A ton.
I tell my people all the timelook, you got a bill for your
time.
I mean an email to readsomething, comprehend it and
then come up with a reply.
Every email you get from aclient is at least 15 minutes of
your time to put that stufftogether.
You don't think of that as likea billable thing, but I mean
(20:27):
those add up, I mean over thecourse of a week, that's two,
three hours.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Just think about if you just say it's let's just say
you're using the ai tools in anoutlook, for example, right.
And let's say it's saving you20 minutes a day because you're
using outlook.
You're using the chat, gpt,co-pilot option and outlook and
it saves you 20 minutes a day.
Times five days, it's 100minutes.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
That's an hour, a little over an hour and a half
right.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Well, that's that, that's 22 minutes a day or
whatever.
Roughly an hour, roughly by 20minutes a day.
So I guess what you know.
My point is that what can youdo in 20 minutes?
Well, you know what you can do.
You can go get a working good,get a quick workout, and you can
go go walk around the block,you can.
You can follow up and maybestart a little side hustle on
the side doing something else.
Right, you can start, you can.
You know.
(21:12):
To me, I love using these,these tools for research, right,
and so you know, now thatChatGPT is connected to Bing
search, there's no reason why itwon't give me accurate
information because it'sconnected to Bing search now and
so so to me it's, it's a greatresearch tool as well.
So, if you want to research amarket, you want to research a
new product idea, you want toresearch a side hustle, that you
(21:33):
want to do, you want to.
Whatever you want to do, it'sall right there.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, and I think yeah, you're right.
I mean, you know there's largelanguage model and the
information that it had accessto is now tied into Bing or
whatever search engines that itcould be utilizing, whatever
service you're using.
So, yeah, now you're going toget a lot more accurate stuff,
(22:00):
and I've noticed that, you know,with GPT-4, I've definitely had
much more accurate responsesthan I had when I first started
using ChatGPT.
But now tell us a little bitabout how your background led
you to start this agency, and itsounds like you've got a focus
on B2B, but in the technologyspace.
So I'm guessing your years atDell and things like that,
you've built up a network ofclients, you've built up a
reputation in technology andthat's what kind of pushed you
(22:22):
in that direction.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I mean, look, I think for me, I think the
opportune thing for me was, youknow, this business was kind of
constituted a little bit earlierbefore I joined and it was
really struggling and it was, itwas, it was something that
needed an entrepreneurial spiritor person brought in, and and
(22:46):
so we're working with the rightpartners and we brought, came in
and restructured the wholething.
And you know, I was a customerof this business a long time ago
, all right.
So I, you know, and so Iunderstood, I understood the
world, like I, you know, Iunderstood some of the brands
that that existed, and so youknow, and I knew what needed to
(23:08):
be done, like you know, when,when, when we came in and kind
of reconstituted this business,you know, I remember looking at
some of the, the, the financials.
You know this thing used to bepretty, a pretty heavy, you know
, initially up front, a prettyheavy print business.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Wow, this used to be a print business.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Interesting, Okay, I mean I've seen that evolution
firsthand.
But yeah, it used to be apretty heavy print, you know
technology you know, think about, right, you remember the pc
magazines.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Oh yeah, shoppers and all that stuff.
This was.
You know where.
Those were consumer-based, b2cbased.
This was a b2b.
You know, you have your littlemini little print magazines and
you know, and so that's, that'swhat this was.
And so having to change thatwhole thing, reconstitute events
, fix the digital business Imean we did all that stuff.
It took a while, but you knowit's been a fun ride.
(24:01):
We took a big hit during COVID.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
But we survived and now we're back and you know it's
doing well.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, that takes some kahunas to take a business that
was built for print and thenchange it over to what it is now
.
I mean that's scary to a lot ofpeople.
Right, change is scary and youknow you're risking jobs.
You're risking, you know, yourinvestment.
There's a lot of things theretoo.
I mean I'm sure you stayed upat night thinking about it, but
(24:30):
I mean you knew it had to bedone and you pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, I mean.
That's why I'm not all thatworried about AI in the
workplace, right, because, ifyou think about it, we've been
through so many differenttechnological revolutions, right
?
The first, the first internetbrowser, came out.
Oh, what is this?
You know, I remember being in ameeting with Michael Dell and
Michael Dell walked in and threwthe mosaic and that's gay
browser on the desk and saidfigure out how to sell computers
(24:54):
on this thing.
We all looked at him like he wasstupid, like who the hell is
going to buy a computer on thisthing, right?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
You know, we thought he was dumb, but little did we
know right Now, when people saidoh, who's going to buy a $5
book on Amazon and pay $5 forshipping?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Little did we know.
Look, oh, amazon's a fad.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh God, I remember those days, and they were afraid
of the the people didn't wantto put their credit cards in you
remember that Nobody would wantto put their credit card in the
you know, and then that wasfigured out.
It's you know, technology findsa way.
But my point is technologyevolved and new companies came
from that that figured out howto put your credit card in there
, right.
How to do deliveries, how to doconfiguration.
You know, you saw thedevelopment of you know.
You saw the dot-com bust, butthen you saw the boom afterwards
as well.
You saw the mobile revolution.
I mean, who thought that oursmartphones were going to be as
(25:40):
powerful and as strong and wewere going to do everything on
our phones?
Now that our phones aren't evenphones anymore, right?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
No, I don't even use it for a phone.
I you know it's right.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, let me look.
Do you even answer the phoneanymore when you, when you do no
, the phone anymore when you,when you do no, it's all go to
voicemail.
Yeah, if you don't recognizethe number, you're not answering
the phone, right?
So the point of it is from your, from your, from your listeners
perspective, the phone has madethe side hustle easy peasy,
right?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, and that brings up a good point.
Like you know, a lot of peoplecan start side hustles.
Like they could start a digitalad agency.
Like when we were doing ourstuff, it wasn't, you know, the
barrier to entry was much higher.
Now it's, you know, anybodycould start a video business
with the phone.
Like you could have a videomarketing business using your
iPhone, honestly and and youknow, you got your editing tools
in there you could do a socialmedia business.
(26:27):
You could do tons of differentbusinesses from that.
But I mean, in a way you'reyou're kind of positioned to
help people.
Like, if you do have a digitalagency and it's a, you know, I'm
not sure what kind of revenueyou guys are looking for from
customers.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
But I mean, you're here to help businesses like
that.
Yeah, I mean, look, you know wetypically focus more on the
larger tech type companies,right, because you know we have
a fairly large infrastructurehere in terms of people and you
know a lot of employees andthings like that and so, but
yeah, there's a huge market outthere, right for for people like
, if you want to go service, youwant to go to the digital
agency to service that mom andpop zero to 20 employee base,
(27:12):
fine, look.
But I'll tell you, one of thethings that's going to happen is
that you're going to see a lot.
So, you know, 10 years ago,nobody knew what an Uber was,
nobody knew what Airbnb was,nobody knew what Shopify was,
right.
So my point is all these thingsare not popping up, right.
So you know, if you fastforward now, what the future is
going to look like.
(27:32):
I think what you're going tosee here is you're going to see
a lot more new companies comingup, but you probably won't need
as many people.
So in the past, you may haveneeded 20 employees to do what
you needed to do.
Well, now, with AI, you mightneed only 10.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Exactly.
And yeah, and think about thistoo All of these businesses
somebody made a really goodpoint one time the things that
were once available to thewealthy are now available to the
masses.
So, when you think about it, aprivate driver right.
The only rich people used tohave a private driver.
You know Richard Gere in PrettyWoman.
You know private driver.
(28:10):
Well, now you got Uber, you gota private driver, right.
Oh, I want to stay in a housein, you know, palm Springs.
You know, to buy a house inPalm Springs back in the day you
had to have a lot of money.
Now you can, whenever you feellike it, go rent a house in Palm
Springs.
So it's kind of democratizingassets that were only available
to the wealthy.
And I would say personalassistance, you know.
I mean, a personal assistantisn't cheap, you know,
(28:30):
necessarily.
And now you've got a technologythat you have a personal
assistant.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Did you ever watch the Iron man and Avengers movies
?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Okay, so look, in the next five years everybody's
going to have their own Jarvis.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Yeah, there's even an AI right content writer that
was called Jarvis.
Now they had to change the name.
But yeah, you're right 100%.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, I mean, you know robotics are coming.
People are going to have theirown personal robots in their
home.
You know there's the Optimusrobot demo from Elon Musk.
Apple yesterday said they'renow exploring putting in
building robots in the home,right, you know, Disney, believe
it or not, is probably one ofthe leading companies in robotic
technology because of theirimaginary group of what happens
at Disneyland, right?
(29:14):
So you're going to see, I think, robotics start to come into
home and the workplace over thenext 10 to 20 years.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Wow, I love it.
Man, Do you have anyforecasting in your book?
Is there anything that you'veput in there where you're like
look 10 years from now, 20 yearsfrom now, or do you have a blog
?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
or anything where you have thought leadership in the
AI space that people cansubscribe to or anything.
No, I mean not yet.
I mean this initially startedoff as a fun thing that I wanted
to do to just make sure peopleunderstood what to do and the
book's done well.
And people hired me to come inand speak and I do a lot of
talking now.
So if people want to hire me tospeak, they're welcome to do
that.
But in know more stuff beyondthat.
(29:57):
You know it's hard because Ihave a day job CEO of a company.
It takes a lot of time, right.
So but yeah, I mean we'll seewhere it goes.
I mean I've thought about doesit make any sense to look at
long-term, does it look anysense to have some some you know
AI for beginner trainingcourses or things of that nature
and all that stuff beyond that?
So we'll see where it goes.
I think, just like most peopleI mean most people like who are
(30:20):
listening when they have theirlittle side hustles, they have
to pick and choose their battlesand in my case, you know the
book is easy, because I don'tmake any money on the book,
cause you don't make any moneyon selling books, to be honest
with you, and I didn't really doit to make money.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
I did it.
I and I didn't really do it tomake money.
I did it more for my ownpersonal satisfaction and brand
awareness more than anything.
When you go through thatprocess, I mean you have to be a
determined person and aself-motivated person even to do
that, especially if you'redoing it on your own and you've
got to do research, and one ofthe benefits of not hiring a
ghostwriter to write your bookis that you learn a lot more.
(30:55):
There's probably things youlearned writing that book that
you didn't even think you didn'tknow about before and now that
helps your business.
And also the fact that youwrote a book and it's I mean,
it's doing great.
People are going to see that.
They're going to say, wow, thisguy wrote a bestseller.
It's a best.
You know the bestselling AIbook on Amazon.
Bring him in.
You know Dell's probablycalling like hey, you remember
(31:16):
us.
You know Michael Dell.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Hey, rajiv, you know you would come back in.
We need everybody who'slistening to go at least buy the
book or download the Kindle.
So, and then leave a review,because the way Amazon's
algorithm works is you need toget to about 100 reviews for it
to kick up even further, and Ithink I'm like 87 or 88.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Oh man, I'll go.
Yeah, we got to get on that.
I get a.
Yeah, I'd get on Kindle orwhatever.
Download that sucker.
But it's AI made simple abeginner's guide to generative
intelligence.
That's the name of the book andthe website 1105mediacom.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yep.
And then people can find me onInstagram at the Rajiv Kapoor.
They can find me on LinkedInOthers quite a few Rajiv
Kapoor's, because I happen to beIndian but I was born and
raised in LA, but Rajiv Kapoorin India is like Steve Smith.
So so make sure you find theright Rajiv Kapoor and then if
people want to email me, theycan email me at at they want to
(32:15):
talk to me about coming out andspeaking.
It's requestrajiv at gmailcom.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I love it man, rajiv, thanks for being a part of this
, thanks for giving us someadvice.
I think you know you are what alot of us are aspiring to be.
You know, taking thatbackground, that experience,
those nine to five jobs or, youknow, in a lot of our cases you
know maybe seven to seven jobsthat we used to have, and then
(32:41):
turning that into a business andyou know selling businesses and
, oh man, this is great.
Well, guys, check it out.
Check out the website.
We're going to put things inthe show notes so you guys can
read it.
Click on some links.
Check out his book.
Rajiv, thanks so much for beingon the show.
Thanks, buddy.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side
Hustle City.
Well, you've heard from ourguests, Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,Side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(33:22):
Thank you.
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