Building AI Autopilots for growing businesses: Sha-mayne's journey with Friyay.ai

0:02 Georgie Healy: Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deel.com Day 1 that's-e l.com Day 1.

0:25 Sha-mayne Chan: There's confusion, lots of complexity and confusion about AI right now, right? There's so much and I think everyone feels overwhelmed and bombarded, especially small business, right? They're busy. The last thing thinking about is, oh, how can AI help me? They just want to get stuff done.

0:42 Georgie Healy: Hello and welcome to In the Blink of AI where I speak to the brightest AI startups and innovators each week. I'm Georgie Healey and this week I am speaking to Charmaine, co founder at Fryay. Fryay helps small businesses grow with specialized AI assistants and agents. We talk about how Frya are currently building autopilots to help companies use and adopt AI tools, helping them streamline and connect their services. And they don't need to be deeply technical to get the best out of AI products. We talk about Charmaine's co founder role. She's the non technical co founder and leverages her deep knowledge in human centered design. I somehow managed to swing the conversation into Taylor Swift and politics for a while there, but it's only brief, I promise.

1:33 Georgie Healy: Thanks so much for tuning in. Hi Charmaine, thank you so much for joining me today. I am thrilled to speak to you about Friday. It's a sunny Friday morning here, so perhaps you can start by telling me about your business.

1:51 Sha-mayne Chan: Well, actually it's Happy Friday

1:55 Georgie Healy: discuss.

1:57 Sha-mayne Chan: Look, thank you for having me. It's really great to be part of this podcast podcast. So we're fria and really our mission is to help small businesses set their business on autopilot. Right. So it's basically your business on autopilot and the whole idea there is, you know, with generative AI, how can everyone free their time for what really matters most? Right. So, and what matters most is for some people it's quite growth. You know, how can I free my time for growth? How can I free my time to really focus on the things I love to do as opposed to, if you think about small businesses, they're constantly doing things that they don't necessarily want to do. But as a small business you have to do all of it, lots of hats and then also maybe you just want to spend more time with your family.

2:48 Georgie Healy: Amazing. I actually before we jumped on the podcast, saw a friend who has a full time job by the way, has hit bunnings for like beating the weekend rush, got some weekend projects and I remember thinking, man, I wish I was at Bunnings right now. So you're freeing up time for people to go to Bunnings.

3:09 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah, I think when, when we started Friday and when it, when it first. Oh, jeez, I'd like to start two years now, right? I think about two years. When ChatGPT first came on, we just saw the potential of what generative AI was going to have and the impact on not only our work lives but also our personal lives. And obviously they're tied in together, right? It's not just like work and personal, they're slippery boundaries. And basically we just went, wow. The potential to really change how people live and work and live is for phenomenal. So we just got to take this and really support companies and people and how they work. And that's how we all jumped in.

3:59 Sha-mayne Chan: We just went, this is, this is basically. And that's how we started Friday. And hence Friday. The name being, you know, that every day should feel like a Friday that you've, you know, it's got to the end of the week and you've achieved so much as opposed to getting to the end of the week and you're still frustrated. It's like yay. Every day.

4:18 Georgie Healy: I love the philosophy, I love the name and you touched upon GPT and a feeling that many of us had when we started playing with the app and getting immediate value from it. I remember typing in a few prompts about, you know, going away for a long weekend and what should I do instead of like endless searches on, on the Internet with out of date articles and things like that. How is Frye different from a ChatGPT then? Why should we not just go to ChatGPT?

4:51 Sha-mayne Chan: That's an awesome question. So look, we're a year old and it feels like a lot has happened already, but what has been really interesting for us is the conversations we're having with small and medium business. There's three of us and our backgrounds are slightly different and slightly similar. So my background is in design and service design and digital transformation. And when you put that all together, what's really important is the overall holistic approach and experience.

5:22 Georgie Healy: Right.

5:22 Sha-mayne Chan: So in companies I've worked in the past, what we always found was people in the past past. Right. So the first development of technology and adoption technology would be people just going. In a large organization you'd have someone business going, you know what, project management's really irritating or this process of ours is really irritating. So we need to find a tool, we need to, we need to make it better. And then they'd go to tech and tech would go, oh yes, we will solve this problem for you. And then tech will come up with the tool, although, you know, assass. Or they'll create something and they go here guys or girls. And they will go, hang on.

5:59 Sha-mayne Chan: But. But it doesn't do this and it doesn't do this and it doesn't do this and it's like. So the whole thing about our approach, which comes from our backgrounds of being service designers and experienced designers, where an experience design, meaning how does the person who's using it experience it? And service design's all about. It's the journey, right? So it's not just one point in time. You need to actually think about the overall context of it and how it affects other points in time. Because you change one point here, it's going to change what happens downstream and upstream, right? So how. Where we're different is that we firstly want to support with this confusion, lots of complexity and confusion about AI right now, right?

6:47 Sha-mayne Chan: There's so much and I think everyone feels overwhelmed and bombarded and what we want to do is say, especially small business, right? There's. They're busy. The last thing thinking about is, oh, how can AI help me? They just want to get stuff done, right? So where can you start? So the whole idea of helping them with adoption and assessment tools of where am I in the journey, where is my team? And then from there, identify. Well, what are the kind of roadmaps and where do we start and where can it take us? And how do we not just start in a. In like this huge kind of everything and all it's like, well, you, you start small but identify where's important, what's going to be the best place to start?

7:32 Sha-mayne Chan: And then you bring your team on the journey with you too, right? It's not just about. It's just not about you. You've got to bring your team on the journey and what does that mean? Where are they on the ChatGPT link curve? So that with the adoption assessment tools, that's like the place you can start if you want to. Then the other part we're really. And that you'll see it in all our linkedins and youtubes and so forth is the actual tips and tricks and training, right? So it's not just about picking up a tool and going just use it actually it's thinking about how you use it and giving you the know how and the mindset to use it because it's. Otherwise we've had Lots of conversations with people.

8:15 Sha-mayne Chan: One of our favorite tools right now, and I should have bought shares, is Otter. Otter is a transcription service. It joins meetings now. We started using it when it first came out and it was fantastic. Like it just. Well, as a service designer, it changed our lives for interviews, right? Because all of a sudden I wasn't madly scribbling notes and spending hours transcribing, I was suddenly having this whole transcript right in front of me that I could analyze straight away. Now that in itself is saving me hours. The incredible thing about Otter is that people go, oh great. So they use it and then they get their meetings transcribed. It's the note taker.

8:52 Sha-mayne Chan: It can actually go to another meeting for you if it's not, if you're not the key person in there. So that saves you time. But what a lot of people didn't understand was there's this feature called Otter Chat now that is you can push how you use it. So Otter Chat is like your own little GPT in there. It can critique the entire transcript. You can get it to summarize, you can get it to write emails for you. It's not just, you know, buying a tool and saying, hey team, use it. It's actually giving them the mindset of curiosity was one of them. And then actually just the training to actually go, oh, this is going to be the most effective way that my team can use it and not to use it in necessarily the same ways that you've always used tools. You need to think about how it's going to change your flow in your, in your process, how can it improve it?

9:45 Georgie Healy: This human centered design is becoming so clearly such a valuable thing. The early stage. Right, because you don't have to wait to get value.

9:57 Sha-mayne Chan: Well, and the third thing is that we're currently building autopilots to just help companies just use and adopt tools that don't need that technology, know how to use to help them streamline and connect their services. So that's what we're in production in basically internally. So that's the next exciting thing we're doing basically. So then ultimately what we want to do is give a small business an understanding of what their roadmap can look like, where they can go to and then provide them with the training. Workshops are online and then also when they're ready for it, they can actually then go, okay, well then I can use this. After I've tried other tools, I can now use this tool and connect everything together or actually just do something really fast and really simple.

10:43 Georgie Healy: Give Me, a customer example or an industry example. I'm dying to hear what it would look like.

10:48 Sha-mayne Chan: One thing that we're actually looking to focus on is lead generation. We've had lots of conversations and there are a lot of pain points as well, right? Like small businesses. Like, if you think about a small business owner, you started the business because you are passionate or an expert at one area, right? You're an accountant or you're a designer or you. Or whatever, right? So that's your expertise. And you're like, I'm really good. This is going to make money out of this. That's going to be my, you know, my business. And then all of a sudden they suddenly go, oh, my God, I've got to do lead generation. I've got to do marketing, I have got to do admin, I've got to do, you know, I've got to do invoices, I've got to, you know, all that, right?

11:29 Sha-mayne Chan: It's all the different parts of your business that you suddenly have to fulfill. And this is why we sort of go, wow, you know, generative AI has a real potential to help you there, right? So we all know about marketing and social media, right? How can. There's so many tools out there for you to create posts, to create videos, to, you know, really accelerate that, right? And even just to get ideas. So, I mean, that was one example. But what we're finding, it's really interesting is that lead generation is a. Is. Is really important for growth and sales. And I think there's two things about lead generation that is interesting. One is actually just depending on who you are and how you want to do it, is how do you attract, right?

12:09 Sha-mayne Chan: So entice. And that could be your marketing in terms of how do you do your marketing faster in more efficient way, get your ideas out there quicker. So that could be how to write faster. What are the tools to actually write? Because, you know, not everyone's a great writer, but everyone's got ideas and learnings and insights from just being who they are, working in whatever industry they're in. So, you know, if you're a. I'm just going to choose like a gardener. They might not like writing or maybe there are lots of gardeners that do. But let's say you're an industry where you just like, oh, I don't, you know, I didn't do this to write. I mean, I was the designer.

12:45 Sha-mayne Chan: I didn't go into design to write. Let me tell you. I just wanted to create beautiful things and I had to write. I was like, oh, wow. Because you got to communicate. But anyone who isn't strong in writing, I'm not a huge strong writer. I can write, but I'm. But you know, wow. I can now write faster and better and it can actually be improved. So what are the tools to help people in small business for things like marketing, image generation, but with clarity, you know, like not just so that you get exactly what everything looks like a robot. And then the other one that we think is really interesting is lead generation. So what is the lead generation flow for a business?

13:23 Sha-mayne Chan: And how can generative AI really support that? And one example is, for example, is creating proposals. And this is a pain point that we see a lot. You have a meeting and you have to create a proposal because you don't get the proposal out, you don't get the buy, you don't get the sale. And what we find is that people get back to the offices and they're ready to write the proposal and go and get it sent out, but it doesn't happen. Right. You get to your desk and next thing you know, you have emails, you have meetings, you're being distracted, and next thing you know, your proposals are now for like three or four days or maybe two days. And you, and you don't want that.

14:01 Sha-mayne Chan: You want to get it out while it's inverted commas, hot and present in the mind of that potential customer. So the idea is we want to help support that with an autopilot and training to just literally when you, you finish your meeting, it will do the proposal for you and get it out at, you know, probably 80%, 90%.

14:20 Georgie Healy: I think so many people that have been on this journey, even myself included, you don't actually know all of these jobs that are required until you started the business. You're in the business.

14:31 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah.

14:32 Georgie Healy: And you think, you know, you're going to get efficiencies of scale as you get bigger, but the jobs just get more complex and the customers are just more. And there's just more things to answer. It actually doesn't necessarily get easier even if as your team grows, you've just got more people to manage.

14:51 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, well, then that gets even harder.

14:53 Georgie Healy: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's fascinating about the proposal piece. And I'm guessing you have existing customers, you've got to answer their needs. So getting more lead gen while also looking after your existing customers, very complex. This is a horizontal AI play.

15:11 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah. Yes.

15:13 Georgie Healy: And there's so much talk about horizontal versus vertical AI and which is better. And maybe you can Have a shot at why horizontal AI for sobs as opposed to going really deep on a certain industry vertical.

15:28 Sha-mayne Chan: I think the key thing here is that when you look at how you work, right? And this really comes from our background as in service design and design and experience design. What you always find that's really interesting is that there's a whole process, right? When I say process, it's like whatever you do as a small business is an experience for your customer and whatever you do affects the customer eventually. And what we've found is that a lot of time people try and solve just this one area and that's great because sometimes it's a huge pain point, but they don't think what happens when they solve it or don't solve it. So in the past we've worked with large customers organizations where we find that the problem right at the end, right at the end where they're losing money or their huge pain point is because of a problem right at the beginning.

16:26 Sha-mayne Chan: And if you had just focused right at the end, you wouldn't necessarily solve all of it. And the main problem that's coming from the beginning. So I think the reason why we go look, it's, we believe it's a horizontal view. And one of our co founder Ben talks about this a lot. It's two things. One, it's this notion of skeuomorphism and skeuomorphism is this idea. And there's two examples I can use where when television first came out, was released, the way it was used was they would actually film people talking with a microphone in front of them, with just two people talking, a microphone. So they basically filmed people on radio like us.

17:09 Georgie Healy: Right now they're doing this. People would watch that

17:16 Sha-mayne Chan: and that was what all TV was, right? They used it in the way that everyone's been used to consuming media at that point, right? So that's how you would listen to people and watch people know for once you can see them, but all they're doing is doing the same thing, talking to each other. And the other example, skeuomorphism is like, you know, when, when, when the iPhone first came out and basically you remember you had your calendar looked like a book, so it with pages and tabs and your contacts looked like a actual, you know, contact book like your Filofax Charmaine.

17:52 Georgie Healy: I'm a Android user, so I don't remember this, but I I old enough that I do remember the Nokias and what they looked like. So I can imagine. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

18:06 Sha-mayne Chan: I'm just Thinking people are telling me these things. Personal experience. No idea.

18:11 Georgie Healy: No.

18:12 Sha-mayne Chan: So the whole idea is that this is something that we, we keep testing ourselves internally. Like in our, in our team. Go, don't look at and use AI in that same way. Like really try and pull, push how you think about your current processes and how it's done. Because that's where you get real change and shift. And the horizontal view of that is the same. Right. As an example, one of the biggest practices that we've changed when our team with using Otter is that we actually end up talking to Otter in meetings or just ourselves. And then we actually then generate the content. We don't necessarily sit there and write anymore because what we find is that when we're discussing things, so we'll jump into a meeting, there'll be whoever needs to be there and we will alter it and then it will create all the points. And that could be our proposal.

19:09 Georgie Healy: Fantastic.

19:10 Sha-mayne Chan: At the end of meeting, instead of just doing the next thing, we literally have changed the way we schedule our meetings. We will schedule a 15 minute meeting straight after that meeting we've had with someone, the potential customer, and we will create the proposal then and there.

19:28 Georgie Healy: Amazing.

19:29 Sha-mayne Chan: Using Otter and the transcribe. So then we get it straight out. The difference of what we want to achieve for our customers is that us at this point was very simple, but that we have people we're talking to where the proposals are much more complex. It's not just, you know, words, it's like, well, what's the actual template that they use and what's the actual products that they have? So how can we reduce that complexity too, to make it something really simple as well. But you change the way you work with the tools that you have, because then that person who may be the salesperson who maybe would have done that proposal three days later is doing it 15 minutes later and having a check.

20:11 Sha-mayne Chan: Because you always check, of course, because you're still. We call it the human in the loop. We believe AI is in our loop, by the way. We're the ones in the process, we're the ones doing everything. And AI is in our loop. And you can send it out. You know, imagine if you just send it out, even if it's just at the end of the day versus three days later.

20:32 Georgie Healy: Yeah, you raise a really compelling case of just humans going with the path of least resistance. Right. If. If this solution really does make your life a whole lot easier, even if there's an education required to learn the tool or get the team on Board. If it saves you time and energy and it's seamless, people will, will adopt it.

20:58 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah.

20:58 Georgie Healy: How do you measure the impact you guys are making with Fry? Like what are you looking for, for to see those signals that you're making an impact?

21:09 Sha-mayne Chan: Gee, Georgie, that's a good question. Early days for us.

21:13 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

21:13 Sha-mayne Chan: There's a few things that it which we even measure ourselves. Right. Which we're really passionate about. Though it's hard to say that because you're a startup and you're like, oh, just an hour's doing this because we're a startup. That whole idea of autopilot is so that people have the freedom to do what they want to do. Right. And I think it's using your time smartly, but there's so much to do. So one of our personal measures for us, which I think we'd like to definitely track in terms of our products and our solutions, is how much time are you saving so that you can do something else? How much more are you doing as well? So we really believe in generative AI, not as a tool or a solution or a technology because it's everywhere to replace people.

22:02 Sha-mayne Chan: Like for us it's really about augmenting. Right. And improving. So if your one man salesperson or one man owner is selling X times more in six months, like, am I getting my proposals out faster? Because you know, sales is a numbers game. Right. So am I getting more proposals out and am I getting them out faster and am I getting more wins?

22:35 Georgie Healy: You can control that, right? You can control the number of proposals you're putting out and ipso facto, probably the likelihood of selling more.

22:44 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah.

22:45 Georgie Healy: Amazing metrics. And you make sure you guys are early, right?

22:49 Sha-mayne Chan: Yes.

22:50 Georgie Healy: I mean, early stage startup, building a personalized AI assistant. I'm sure there's challenges involved.

22:58 Sha-mayne Chan: Yes.

22:59 Georgie Healy: What is the hardest part? Like, tell me as someone who's never done something like this and finds it fascinating, what's hard about building something like this? What's. What's something that people wouldn't understand?

23:12 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, gee, there's so many things, Georgie. Oh, geez. Sometimes you think the technology is the easy bit. When you're a small business, when you're a startup and I know they, everyone talks about, oh, you know, we built this platform and it was amazing and all that stuff. But I think there's. We've been on a little journey, you know, even if it's just been one year, it's actually being really learning a lot in terms of what potential customers want. Right. Who are our customers? I think the whole idea of the research, the understanding of the market, there's so much out there, there's so much AI, there's so many companies and they're all doing really incredible things and really amazing. But the alignment of what you're good at with what is needed in the market, it's not easy.

24:04 Georgie Healy: Right.

24:04 Sha-mayne Chan: To land that. And it's like the whole idea of. And we've changed a few times.

24:08 Georgie Healy: Right.

24:09 Sha-mayne Chan: And I think one thing is actually being able to say, well, we started here and it's no longer what we should be doing. Yep. So at this point, it's actually going. Getting really concrete on that. And what does that mean? Right. Because now we've got to hit the hard things like the numbers, the. What's the roadmap, what are we going to start with and where are we going to keep growing? And then the technology is an interesting one because we do have a CTO working with us. But I think we're trying to challenge ourselves to go faster using the tools that there are. So it's not just us telling SMBs, hey, try this and do this. We actually, we actually do it too, because we actually need to be the ones that. Unless we're doing it, then how can we tell people what they're doing?

24:56 Georgie Healy: Right.

24:57 Sha-mayne Chan: And I'd love to hear other startups. Unless. Unless every startup we know is basically, wow, you know, I got it. And I just went, that's it. We're like, like, how did you do that?

25:08 Georgie Healy: I don't think that happens very often, does it?

25:12 Sha-mayne Chan: Well, it does. I'm really jealous.

25:14 Georgie Healy: Yeah. They've struck lightning. Even the success stories. You make a good point about the fact that, that I don't know why I didn't realize earlier. You are an SMB that's also doing everything. So you are your own use case, which I guess comes. You know, that must be a huge benefit to you guys. Right. Because you're going to know very quickly and early on that either it works and it helps you or it doesn't. And. And you know your customer quite deeply, right?

25:44 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah. And I think that the main thing about what we want to provide is real solutions, not just in practical, practical examples. Real solutions. And, and I think, and I find this really interesting, and I've said it a few times, but there was a study done where they said Australians are the most nervous globally when it comes to AI. It was like 70% nervous versus 23%. The Japanese were the least nervous at 23%.

26:16 Georgie Healy: Really?

26:18 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah. I do have the Study, I'm happy

26:19 Georgie Healy: to share it with you would love the study.

26:21 Sha-mayne Chan: I heard it. Heard and I read it. And I went, that's really amazing. So we're like 70%. And I think the global average was like about 60 or 55 or something like that. And I just thought, wow, you know, what does that mean? And you know this hypothesis about that, is it because we hear so much about, you know, ethics and regulation and, you know, so I'm too scared to jump in, or is it about there's just overwhelm, you know, everything. There's so much to do. I'm already doing so much as a, as a small business owner. Even large organizations are the same. Right, but how can I possibly do this as well? Gee, I know it's going to help me, but where do I start?

27:02 Sha-mayne Chan: And there's 60,000 tools coming out everywhere and so forth. So I think the idea is to just be. It's really practical. And the thing is, you don't actually need to have special skills to do this. So the other reason why we sort of saw this as this incredible opportunity is that this tech is in your pocket, right? It's in everyone's pocket. It's not like you need a whole technology team to do this. You know, you've got to be able to just jump in. And it's the skills like communication, it's all the transferable skills that everyone has as part of their roles. You know, talking, communicating, brainstorming ideas. It's not something where you basically have to have an expertise, you know, you can get started.

27:52 Sha-mayne Chan: And I think that's what's exciting about it. And it actually means that you can just anyone can do it. The opportunity's there. The nervousness is interesting. Do you have a theory?

28:04 Georgie Healy: I don't know if you notice, I was madly typing in the background what the median age in Japan versus Australia was, because I'm like, it's the boomers. It's got to be the boomers. It's funny though, like, I don't know if this is relevant, but the amaze were two nights ago or something. Taylor Swift has a big sway on voting and.

28:28 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah, yeah.

28:29 Georgie Healy: And what the younger demographic choose to do. And her backing Kamala Harris as opposed to Trump and referring to being scared of AI now she's. She's not a boomer and she's really impacting the younger demographic traffic. I know we talked about an actual study that you've done and now I'm speculating, but it is interesting to see the fear mongering about AI and adoption and yeah, she was referring to AI making it look like creating deep fakes, essentially saying that she was backing Donald

29:04 Sha-mayne Chan: Trump and that wasn't her. Yeah, yeah.

29:07 Georgie Healy: I'm curious if you think that'll change.

29:10 Sha-mayne Chan: Look, I've always believed in education, information, right? Like, I think that if you understand, if people really know how it works and it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily need to be in a deep, deep, deep level, but just even understanding how it works and what it can do, and I think jumping on and testing it yourself, there's not, you know, you don't have to put in all your data in there. It's not like, you know, you can completely anonymize it and still have a great time learning. And, and it's personal as well as, as commercial or business. So, you know, you get a great example of travel, you know, getting a travel plan. I, I, when my daughter was in school, I got it and she was such a fussy lunch person, you know, I got it to write her lunch recipes for her because I was going nuts.

29:58 Georgie Healy: Ah, that's lovely. Yeah, Yeah.

30:00 Sha-mayne Chan: I just said, so give me five. And all the requirements had to be gluten free. Couldn't it be cold? It had to be, you know, all these things. I was like, oh, I don't know, you know, and make.

30:10 Georgie Healy: I put my mom through the same thing. One day I was vegetarian, the next day pescatarian, pescetarian. I made up like a religion. Plus only eating fish. It's a, it's a thing I probably put my mum through. Like, yeah, it's impossible to keep up. Right. But my dad is a perfect example of fearful of AI, but also so obsessed with sci fi. And I'm like, dad, you, you would have a field day. It's not scary.

30:41 Sha-mayne Chan: You would love it.

30:42 Georgie Healy: You would love it. Like, he would just play with it forever and he refuses to even like open up a chatbot screen. Yeah. Isn't it interesting?

30:55 Sha-mayne Chan: And we also really believe that SMBs is the, is the place to democratize AI. Right. They can, it's a, it's a small team. It's a decision they can make on their own. You've just got to be smart about which products you use, which tools you use. It doesn't necessarily mean that you've got to spend thousands and thousands and thousands. We've got this other trick too, which is basically which we suggest to people, is that don't necessarily go all in on the one product and get the annual Subscription, Try it, try it for a few months and then if it really works for you, then get the annual subscription. Right. You don't have to lock yourself in.

31:33 Georgie Healy: I have done that with Canva so many times. Like sign up, create some invites for party invitations, delete the app, sign in. Oh my gosh, I've got another presentation I need to do. Delete the app altogether. Like it's. But it's true. And that's actually made me quite loyal because yeah, there's no switching cost to trying it and then, and then deleting it later.

31:58 Sha-mayne Chan: And we, and we definitely will try tools for a few months because a lot of these tools, the costs aren't really high. Right. And we'll try for a few months and then if we find that it's really supporting what we need to do, we use it.

32:13 Georgie Healy: Fantastic.

32:14 Sha-mayne Chan: And Canva is an interesting one. Right? It's, it's quite the, the AI tools are quite amazing. Leonardo now joining Canva Hughes is like it's going to be quite interesting. It's going to be incredible. So like that is a tool we use a lot.

32:30 Georgie Healy: Me too.

32:31 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah. And I think it's because it's really, it's easy, you know, maybe she got shares in Canva. Georgie. I wish I did.

32:41 Georgie Healy: And order Canva. Order Leonardo for really realizing where we've missed a few tricks. But not again frying stocks. Get on it guys.

32:54 Sha-mayne Chan: But yeah, so I think, you know, just experiment.

32:58 Georgie Healy: Yeah, agree. Switching, switching lanes a little bit. I'd love to kind of dig a little bit deeper on you yourself, Sinead. Like you've got such an incredible background, 30 years of experience in this human led innovation. I think in this conversation it's becoming very clear that that passion is being realized still. But what, what inspired you to take the leap and, and become a co founder of a startup Very different to what I'm sure you, you had been doing previously.

33:28 Sha-mayne Chan: When I started designing, I was a graphic designer. When I started designing it was basically pre digital. So it was, it was French curves and pen and ink and paper and sticking things down and it was beautiful and it was. But it was very labor intensive. It was crafty, it was fantastic, you know, phenome things. And then all of a sudden this like square box showed up and this square box was a Mac and oh my God, it changed our lives. Right. Suddenly we weren't designing on ginormous architecture tables anymore. We were design. We're all sitting in front of a computer designing our computers.

34:05 Georgie Healy: When was this? How old were you when that happened. Or maybe not ages. We don't have to get into ages. But I'm just like paint the picture.

34:12 Sha-mayne Chan: I'm going to think it was in the. I'm gonna say it's in the 90s. Yeah, it's definitely the 90s.

34:19 Georgie Healy: Was it one of those beautiful like multi colored apple.

34:24 Sha-mayne Chan: No, Georgie, it was the first square one.

34:27 Georgie Healy: Oh, sorry, never mind.

34:31 Sha-mayne Chan: I think with the bubblegum one too. Yes, I got the bubblegum one with the blue one.

34:36 Georgie Healy: I mean, so beautiful. You had a blue one?

34:39 Sha-mayne Chan: The round one with the. Yeah, I still have them.

34:42 Georgie Healy: They're beautiful. Why'd you pick the blue one? There were so many colors. You've got a visual design macro. Come on.

34:53 Sha-mayne Chan: The blue was really happy.

34:55 Georgie Healy: I get that.

34:56 Sha-mayne Chan: What happened is that every time there was a huge technological shift, my industry, which was design, shifted with it. And even Canva is a huge technological shift to design and so was 99designs. That was a huge technological shift. Design, design. So going from paper to this computer, Photoshop one, you can only go backwards once, you can only undo once. It was insane. We used to have millions of files and in little tiny floppy disks, no zip drives, you know, so. And then I had my own design company. And then also this thing, this, this Internet came with websites and stuff and also you had to like every company had to have a website. I just went, oh my God, I need to shift from branding and design to a completely.

35:38 Sha-mayne Chan: This is life is now digital technology. What does that mean? And then I moved into a iOS app building company. Design and building company. We built basically digital products for enterprise. And it was there that I started learning about. It's not just about the design. And design is a big word, right? Because design is how you live, how you use. But I just suddenly saw the whole notion of how you experience it, right? So the whole thing about how people use tools, how people use apps, you know, what you learn from it and what is the journey that they go on from starting onboarding to logging off, but then how does it fit within their day? So that whole notion of service, design, experience, design, and it was like, wow, you know, it's not just the app, it's everything around it.

36:31 Sha-mayne Chan: And you know, that's what Apple's amazing at and that's what Netflix is amazing at. You know, all those large companies. And then it was digital transformation for other organizations that we worked at. And then digital transformation was, you know, how can things be more efficient? How can things have better processes when. And so digital, right? So how we, how we work and play is all these different, different platforms. So when Generative AI came on, we just saw the value and potential of it and just went, this is going to change us. It's going to change how we do everything. And it's exciting for, for the better, you know, like, I want to spend less time, I want more freedom myself.

37:07 Georgie Healy: Yes.

37:08 Sha-mayne Chan: So that's what we're building. So selfishly, we're building it and want to share it. So we're going to get there and everyone else will too. So we just went all in. We just went, we need to do this. We have to do this. We need to create this business that helps. And, and if we can do it, everyone else can do it too.

37:29 Georgie Healy: It's interesting. You're clearly, you know, despite your, your skills in the visual arts and the background you talk about, you're not a purist in the sense of your all pen and paper still. And like, do you still, do you still use those skills in that, you know, that you have. Obviously I'm imagining you could sketch right now if I asked you to know, But do you still use those? And was it a hard battle that you had to fight when you saw the technology coming up? Like, some people might have found that quite scary, especially if that's what your domain experience had been so far and.

38:13 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah.

38:13 Georgie Healy: And you'd crafted such a lifestyle around that.

38:18 Sha-mayne Chan: No.

38:20 Georgie Healy: Okay.

38:21 Sha-mayne Chan: No, no. I, I really appreciate the tools. I love it. They're all different learnings. So I still believe in an idea, right. So you can't just necessarily jump on and with no thoughts and no ideas, you can chatgpt. It's just like any tool, right. You've got to use, use it in a really smart way. How can you get the best out of it? Right. And yet it does give you more. But it's just like with Leonardo, you can prompt and canva, you can prompt imagery, but if you don't know what you're trying to achieve, you're just going to get anything. And that's fine if that's what you want. But if something you're looking for, you need to then go, okay, well how do I prompt this?

38:58 Sha-mayne Chan: How am I smart about prompting it? So I get what I want, right? Because it fits my brand or whatever it is. So I find technology really exciting. I find development really exciting. I think what's really exciting is that you have to constantly evolve. This didn't exist when I started working, you know, it wasn't even an idea in any business's brain, you know, there's prompt engineer, you know, what's that? That didn't exist five years ago. And our lives are going to constantly change, our careers are going to constantly change. So I think the main thing for me is that I'm constantly evolving with my career and with what's happening around me.

39:38 Sha-mayne Chan: The reason why I closed my brand agency, I had that for like nine years and it was a brand agency with strategic design and we did, we built brands and all the collateral around it and it was, and it was paper. We were still doing business cards and letterheads and annual reports and so forth. Was a small company, we had the best time. But then I suddenly realized Nine. Nine Designs came along, right. And now you've got Fiverr, you have upwork, you have all of them and even more now. But when 99designs came on and then I, then, and then, and then Canva will. Canva came on a little bit later. But I just sort of went, this is going to change my industry.

40:20 Sha-mayne Chan: This is going to change small graphic design companies. And we were doing great and we loved it. But I can't compete with a freelancer on nine Design Designs who is a good designer and he's going to charge a thousand or for whole brand and suite of materials. So for where I've come from, technology has always had a huge impact on my, my industry and I've always gone, wow, what does that mean? Because, and, and you know, what's that going to change? How's it going to improve things? How is it going to really shift what we do and how we do it? Because I, I think the stuff that Nine9Designs is doing is incredible.

40:59 Georgie Healy: Agree. I mean some of us, me being very guilty of this thought I had to teach myself coding and I'm quite glad I didn't because now AI can do that for me. Yeah, there are some skills I'm really glad to outsource. Okay. She mean I've got a very rapid fire questions to finish on.

41:19 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, wow.

41:20 Georgie Healy: I am going to say something and you're going to tell me the first thing that comes to mind.

41:24 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh my God.

41:24 Georgie Healy: Okay, how does that sound?

41:27 Sha-mayne Chan: All right.

41:28 Georgie Healy: In person or remote working?

41:31 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, both.

41:32 Georgie Healy: Both. What part of your life would you immediately outsource to machines?

41:37 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh gosh. Or admin?

41:39 Georgie Healy: Yes. Anything you think is more hype than value.

41:44 Sha-mayne Chan: Does it have to be AI?

41:46 Georgie Healy: No, can be anything.

41:49 Sha-mayne Chan: I think what's more hype is the idea of. Oh, no, I can't say it because I was just going to say I used to believe social media was all hype more than value. But actually I'm finding that's not true because I think that people are actually learning a lot through social media these days. It's actually quite interesting.

42:11 Georgie Healy: Like what?

42:12 Sha-mayne Chan: So I can I can I. Can I answer it that way?

42:14 Georgie Healy: Yeah. Give me an example. What, what are they getting value from social media?

42:18 Sha-mayne Chan: What way? What I'm finding and what we're finding is that social media is really fast in terms of getting the newest things. Right. So sometimes and things like Reddit and substacks and so forth, maybe less substack because they're long form. But when you want to find out something real fast, sometimes you just, you'll find it out on LinkedIn.

42:38 Georgie Healy: Agree.

42:38 Sha-mayne Chan: You'll find out on Twitter. Keeping up to date actually is faster on those platforms than it is in traditional media. I also find what's really interesting is that I get more ideas from people on social media sometimes than. And because it's fast. Right. I still love the long forms. I still have lots of substacks I follow. But I used to think social media was hype and I'd be like, oh God, who bothers? But now I'm like, wow, I think that's the fastest place for me and the quickest place for me to find things out.

43:10 Georgie Healy: I love the people that hate social media but then don't count, you know, being on Twitter as like, oh yeah. Actually not mentioning, you know, my partner or anything who thinks Instagram and me like being prolific on that isn't the same as him. Just on fintech, Twitter. Oh yeah, that's totally different. Yeah.

43:29 Sha-mayne Chan: Serious.

43:30 Georgie Healy: Yeah, you know, that's, that's important business related content. Okay. There is a term for the top tech companies called the Magnificent Seven. Not sure if you've heard of this.

43:42 Sha-mayne Chan: No, I haven't.

43:43 Georgie Healy: And I have yet to hear someone who has been able to list all seven. I'm going to put you on the spot now and see what you think they are. The Magnificent Seven. Who do you think they are?

43:54 Sha-mayne Chan: Okay. I'm going to be a bit torn between unicorns and large companies. Right?

43:58 Georgie Healy: So you're going to have a think large, think biggest. Biggest.

44:01 Sha-mayne Chan: It's going to be Google. It's going to be like video. It's going to be OpenAI. It's going to be Google. OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft. What's another big one? Google.

44:20 Georgie Healy: You talked about using one of these early in your career, which was a game changer for you.

44:27 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, Apple, of course. Jesus. How can I forget that one?

44:30 Georgie Healy: That's okay. Look, it's hard. You're on the spot. Okay, I'm going to cut you off. You definitely got four. We've also got Tesla. Believe it or not, those in this category.

44:41 Sha-mayne Chan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

44:43 Georgie Healy: Meta or Facebook.

44:44 Sha-mayne Chan: Of course. Facebook. Yes.

44:46 Georgie Healy: And that's an Amazon. That's it. So we've.

44:49 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, yes.

44:50 Georgie Healy: Yeah, well done, well done. No, that's very good. Very good. On the spot. Now, you know they're magnificent. Seven and the hottest a pot takes to finish us. Melbourne on the Sydney startup scene. Charming. One's better.

45:02 Sha-mayne Chan: Oh, come on, it's got to be Sydney.

45:06 Georgie Healy: Yeah, correct answer. I mean, come find us. Okay, I'm gonna put the floor to you now. This has been such an incredible chat. We've talked politics, we've talked horizontal AI, we've talked Apple maps and I've absolutely loved it. What would you like to shout out to the people listening about Friday?

45:29 Sha-mayne Chan: Look, follow us on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Instagram, because we've got lots of tips and tricks for using AI on it. And the reason why there are lots of tips and tricks there is because you can learn. Pick up things and learn things really fast. Right? It's not, it doesn't need a lot of time. And the other thing that we have that you can sign up on our website is our newsletter. It's called Useful, not playful. And what it's got is one handy tip, one like must try tool, one powerful prompt and basically one curated content that is worth your time. So we create them and it's just one, one of each that you can just test during the week and just stay in touch either on LinkedIn or on our website. We are going through a rebrand, Georgie Wear first year and we've had. This is our second brand. So because like, wow, when you're good

46:23 Georgie Healy: at things like logos, Charmaine, you, you keep doing them right, like, but that

46:29 Sha-mayne Chan: one, that's the wrong message. This is now the right message. The, the idea is that we're, we're mid brand and we're updating our website but we'll also be, you know, putting up all our, the, what we talked about. So the adoption assessment tools and then the autopilots and the training and if you join the newsletter, you'll know and on top of that you, you keep it on our website and LinkedIn you'll, you'll find out when we release them all bit by bit.

46:52 Georgie Healy: I've signed up to all of these and I love them. So thank you so much, Elaine. This has been an absolute pleasure and I can't wait to see what you guys do next. Can't wait to see the rebrand. Thank you again.

47:03 Sha-mayne Chan: Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.

47:06 Georgie Healy: Bye.

47:06 Sha-mayne Chan: Thank you soon. See ya.

47:10 Georgie Healy: Thank you for listening to In the Blink of AI. You can check out the the show notes for anything discussed in this week's episode and we will be back next week. This podcast was produced by Day One with music by Dan Hansen and visual artwork by Sophie Tyrell. If you loved the episode, please tell your mates and I love AI News. Please share your thoughts and suggestions to georgina rose healymail.com.