Practical ways to use AI to save time and money (and avoid the pitfalls!) with Hollie Whittles

Your Dream Business

This episode is an insightful discussion of me and my very lovely guest Hollie Whittles, an award-winning TEDx speaker and director of two digital companies. The conversation explores the impacts of AI on businesses, highlighting practical applications that can save time and money, and provides examples and guidance on how business owners can effectively integrate AI into their operations. We also touch on the ethical considerations and potential biases associated with AI use. Hollie shares her personal career journey from talent management to leading her own companies, and her ongoing voluntary work promoting digital skills and entrepreneurship in schools and small businesses. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

1. AI is a valuable tool for businesses: AI can automate tasks, improve efficiency, and provide valuable insights, leading to cost savings and increased productivity.
2. Ethical considerations are crucial: As businesses adopt AI, it's essential to address ethical concerns such as bias, privacy, and transparency.
3. AI is accessible and adaptable: There are numerous AI tools and platforms available to businesses of all sizes, making it easier than ever to integrate AI into operations.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful. LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Hollie on Linkedin, Website Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Teresa: AI is everywhere, but what does it really mean for our businesses and can it really save us time and money? And is there anything that we should be looking out for and steering clear of? That is what I'm discussing today with my guest, Hollie Whittles. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, and thank you so much for joining me. Honestly, I appreciate you taking your time out. and hanging out with me. It's really, really awesome. So this week we have an interview and I'm actually interviewing one of my very good friends who I have known for quite some time, and we joke that she's quite a big deal. Hollie Whittles is an award winning TEDx speaker, author and director of two digital companies, Fraggleworks and Purple Frog Systems. Her passion is to educate, entertain, and engage. Spending more than 7, 000 hours speaking to audiences across the UK. She has helped hundreds of business owners to grow their businesses. Hollie is in constant demand. Her charismatic and knowledgeable approach empowers people to get results. They want their adoption of the right technology, strategic planning, and digital marketing. Hollie is also the national policy skills [00:02:00] champion for the Federation of Small Businesses, FSB, and is the vice chair of the CompTIA Community Executive Council. She also sits on the boards for Digital Leaders, Career and Enterprise Company, and the Digital Poverty Alliance. So she has quite a bit of experience in this sector. So Hollie is all about technology and AI. Basically one of the businesses you run, as you will hear, is a is at the forefront of doing some of this stuff. So what I wanted her to do was to come on and talk a bit about AI, maybe demystify it because Hollie isn't a techie person. Her husband who she runs her business with is more techie than she is. And one of the things that she does and one of the things that she speaks about is AI and how we can use it in our business and all of that good stuff. And I don't know about you guys, but at the moment I am seeing everybody talk about AI, I mean I have for a while but I am literally seeing you know, how to run social media using AI, how to do a webinar using AI, how to, [00:03:00] like everything just tags on the end using AI. So I think this is a really good conversation. We give some really practical ways in which we can use AI in our own businesses. I give a couple of examples of how I'm doing it. And hopefully it gives you a little bit to think about from the AI point of view. So without further ado, here is the lovely Hollie. Hollie, welcome to the podcast. Hollie: Hi Teresa. Teresa: I'm very excited to have you on. As I've already said, you are a very dear friend of mine and we've already been laughing because we just stumbled over the first bit, which was. Hollie: No, I forgot how to say hello. Teresa: It's tricky sometimes. It's tricky remembering who we are, what we do, how to say hello. It is tough sometimes. Hollie: Yes. Teresa: Molly, I always start my podcast the same way. One day I might change it. I'm going through a lot of tweaks at the moment, but for the time being, we'll stick with it. Please tell us who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Hollie: So thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So my name's Hollie. I'm from Purple Frog Systems. I'm one of the directors. We set up in 2006, I [00:04:00] think from a place of working for really big corporate where I'd burnt out and we were like, what can we do? My husband was in the same position. So we set up our own company and then we've gone from strength to strength and we do data analytics, machine learning, AI. So very much on the kind of the cutting edge of IT and wouldn't change it. I'm probably unemployable now. Teresa: I think we all are. If you've had your own business, like that's it. No one can ever employ you ever again. So let me go back a bit. First off, corporate, what did you do in corporate world? I feel like I should know these things about you, but I'm not entirely sure that I do. So I'll ask. Hollie: Yeah. So I used to work in talent management. So we ran sort of corporate programs across an entire enterprise level organization. So we had like apprenticeship, programs, we had graduates, we had vice president programs, and I organized some of those and we took people off and out the business and checked them off cliffs to see what would happen. And yeah, so it was all about sort of growing people and people development, but it was a big sort of IT consultancy. So they were all techie [00:05:00] people. Teresa: Okay. And your husband came from tech? Hollie: He did. Yeah. So he was running a gaming systems company. So he was their IT director, but it's a big American company. And they basically ran slot machines for all the casinos from Vegas all around the world. So he was always flying over there. Teresa: Nice. I mean, it's not a bad place to fly to. Hollie: No, exactly. Teresa: So you decided both at the same time to come out of your employed roles and start the business together. Hollie: Yeah, so he, he went first. I stayed an extra two years, but I was still a director of the business and then I, I sort of left my role to join him. So yeah, we, we kind of have, we got married, we bought a house, we went on holiday, we changed jobs, we did everything all around 2006. We just had some sort of midlife crisis. I think. Teresa: It was quite a year or two. Hollie: Yeah. Teresa: What made you go into, explain in very layman's terms, what it is you do for big businesses now? [00:06:00] Hollie: Yeah. So I always use the analogy of someone like Richard Branson or Alan Sugar, and they have very, lots of different arms off their business. So he has like Virgin balloons. He has Virgin Atlantic. He has all the different arms of Virgin. If he's sitting in his office thinking, how is the entire Virgin group doing? You've got all those different organisations and systems that don't talk to each other. So he probably just wants one dashboard that he can look at To view how well his entire organization is doing. He can drill down into which bits he's interested in. So what we do, if we put that reporting layer over enterprise solutions, it doesn't matter where the source systems are, whether they talk to each other or not, it could be SAP, it could be Excel, it could be access, it could be an HR system, it could be anything, it could be a webpage. And we allow people then to make meaningful decisions from that data. And then with the advances in AI, the next thing that we do is we apply machine learning to it as well. So what can we predict for the future using that data? So it's all about [00:07:00] empowering businesses to make better decisions. Teresa: So what made you guys think, oh, that's what we're going to do, like, because you obviously neither one of you had come from that specific thing. You have the tech background, yeah, and obviously tech knowledge. But what made you go, oh, let's have all the tech things, we'll pick this thing and we'll just go with it. Hollie: Yeah. So I think we went with what Alex's brain liked the best, really. So he's really good at sort of architecting systems and very much. It was before the cloud was a thing, really. So he was kind of designing these big data warehouses. So we started the business off doing that and it was called business intelligence then, but actually it's now more referred to as data analytics. So he was very much, that's the technical path. That's my area of expertise. At the time we weren't going to have employees. So we were like, just going to do it with ourselves. And then as we started growing, that's when I joined and we're like, maybe we do need some employees actually. So I bring all the people management, the strategy, the marketing, all the things that you [00:08:00] need to run a business that's non technical, so together we kind of cover all the different roles you need to be successful. Teresa: Yeah. And I think that's the thing, cause people often, especially in the techie industries, they are really good at the tech bit. They don't always necessarily have the other skill sets, but the same with, you know, it's like someone with our skill sets going into the tech, not being able to do that. So it's cool that there's two of you together that kind of bring both of those skill sets. So you were in the business, you have a big part in the business, but you have a whole side arm of things that you do as like, I want to say voluntary and it pretty much is all voluntary what you do, isn't it? So explain that side of what you do. Hollie: Yeah, so for me, while we were growing the business, I was really interested of pathways into that business. So the first kind of thing that I did was I'm going to go and do some talks in schools. So I became an enterprise advisor, which then connected me with the Careers and Enterprise Company. And then to promote the business, you start doing a bit of business [00:09:00] networking and I was approached by the Federation of Small Businesses, who kind of explained to me, as well as them being a membership organization, they also have these additional voluntary roles where you can kind of help them champion other businesses, and also you can get involved in policy. So, they kind of hooked me into that, and I started off being an area lead, so very much promoting stuff in our local region. I then became the regional chair, which was then, very much West Midlands focused, so I was sitting on negotiations about HS2 and digital infrastructure, 5G rollout, all that kind of stuff. And then they were like, actually, we've got another role for you. And it just kept escalating, which was a national role, which was all about skills and apprenticeships. So the next minute I'm chairing MP round tables, popping down to the treasuries, talking to the department of education. So that is all very much ticking my box of connecting people together, helping others, and also attracting young [00:10:00] people into our world, because you can have such an exciting career in digital. So it's just about securing those things. Teresa: That's amazing. Like, amazing that, A, you volunteered to do this stuff, because when you run a business, like, You know, we were just talking about it. We're friends, but we haven't like hung out for ages because we're both so busy. And like, so to then volunteer your time to do something like that. And it sounds like it takes up a chunk of your time. Hollie: It does. Yeah. And it is a cost to the business, but I think it's something that is really meaningful. It gives me my sense of purpose, to be honest. So I feel like I need that and I can, I can feel the difference that I'm making. Teresa: That's really nice. Cause like, You do deal with huge companies in a very tech way. So that probably like the giving back element doesn't feel as strong, whereas doing something that, and it's back to that whole, you have to design how your business looks and what works for you. Cause someone might look at you from the outside and [00:11:00] go, why would you volunteer your time doing this when you are super successful over here with this big business? And. But that doesn't light you up as much or that doesn't give you everything you need. And like you always do. And since I've known you've always gone into schools and done things, I mean, which honestly, I've gone into a couple of schools and done things that scares the living daylights out of me because these teenagers are terrifying. And I have one, so I know, but like, you know, so for you to be like, you know, going out there and having conversations with them. But this is, and this isn't what I brought you on to talk about, but this is really interesting because I've got my daughter at the moment working in my business, which is awesome. And I get her to do all sorts of different things. I'm really trying to encourage her to consider having her own business and to consider the options, not necessarily straight into work or straight into, like, I don't think schools do enough to go, well, one, what different, what different roles are there for starters? Because you are in a world that moves at the speed of [00:12:00] light, literally the speed of light. And so those roles, like when, you know, you and I like have some marketing background and my, when I did my degree, there wasn't even really websites as such. There were websites, but there weren't even that like bigger thing. There was definitely no social media, like the term content creator, like, no. So even in my role or in marketing, it moves at a pace, but like in tech is moving at such pace that roles are being created that were never created for roles that were being done and now being assisted by AI and all that sort of thing. So for you to go into schools and go, Hey, this is a world that you could get into and actually something that they might be interested in. So I've got Bea at the moment, my daughter doing, I say that like, you don't know who she is, but I'm saying it more for the audience in case like you. Who's Bea? That's my daughter. She is doing like a Pinterest course for me. So she's now getting this whole thing. Like she's on Pinterest herself from a personal point of view. And now she's starting to realize, Oh, like there's a business reason people use Pinterest. So, you know, again, trying to give her something that she would have an [00:13:00] idea about or an interest in and then going, let's learn how we can do it. So. I love that. I think it's awesome. Hollie: Yeah. And I think it's really important because like you say with the schools and the curriculum, it takes so long to actually change what the curriculum looks like. We have to then go in there and bring it to life. And what I'm trying to say to students is that you're not necessarily going to go into a role. A, we don't know what it is because it doesn't exist yet. But B, rather than just thinking about English and maths, let's think about entrepreneurship, creativity, problem solving, basic digital skills. Teresa: Resilience. Yeah. Why are you not teaching all those things? Hollie: Yeah. This is what we actually need. It doesn't matter what sector you're in, a carpenter still needs to know how to create an invoice and put himself on Facebook. So, and it's also breaking down those genders. Like I've just said him for carpenter, but I'm trying to sort of communicate. It doesn't matter what gender you are, you can go into any role. But what regardless of the role, we need those work ready skills and it's that [00:14:00] proactive attitdue can do and it's breaking down those barriers and just make it accessible for everyone. Teresa: Yeah. And I, I love that. I mean, I could go down a whole other direction here in saying that I'm currently having a discussion with my daughter's school because I want to take her out of school to where in fact, by the time this podcast comes out, we would been gone and back but we're actually going to Japan and the Philippines, which I am so freaking excited about. And in the Philippines, we're meeting Johanne and her family. Johanne works me. And we're meeting her family, and we're bringing them to us in another part of the Philippines and giving them a holiday. And like, I am like, surely to goodness, and Bea will understand more about what Johanne does in my business and how she lives. And like, surely that is much better than sitting in school for a week, but not necessarily agreeing with me at this point. So I'm arguing the toss with them because it's like, I would much rather give...