Franchise Your Business

Franchise Smarter: Using AI To Systemize, Differentiate, And Grow With Teri Moten

• Big Sky Franchise Team | Tom DuFore

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Teri R. Moten, MBA, CAIO, AI Consultant and Trainer, helps franchise-ready business owners and growing franchisors use AI to systemize operations, sharpen strategy, and fuel sustainable growth.

In this conversation, you learn practical ways to leverage AI to draft and organize SOPs faster, strengthen operational consistency, conduct competitive and market analysis, and refine marketing messages that attract the right franchisees.

Teri also shares how leaders use AI to stay ahead of franchise trends by gathering and analyzing industry data before opportunities become obvious.

This was a live recording on January 9, 2026 at approximately 1 PM Eastern USA.

Teri R. Moten, MBA, CAIO, is an AI Consultant and Trainer who helps business owners and organizations make AI practical, accessible, and impactful. With more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and business strategy, Teri specializes in showing leaders how to use AI as a strategic tool to systemize operations, improve decision-making, and fuel sustainable growth.

In the franchise space, Teri works with both franchise-ready business owners and growing franchisors to apply AI in meaningful ways—from building and documenting SOPs to conducting competitive and market analysis, and strengthening marketing messages that attract the right franchisees. She also helps leaders use AI to stay ahead of franchise trends by analyzing industry data and identifying opportunities before they become obvious.

Teri is a Certified AI Officer (CAIO) and is passionate about helping businesses scale responsibly by pairing smart systems wi

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Tom DuFore:

All right, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here on another edition of our Franchise Your Business webinar and podcast series. My name's Tom Dufour. I'm the founder and CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And uh before we jump into this, I'd love, if you have not yet, for you to subscribe to our podcast. So this will be repurposed on the Franchise Your Business uh podcast, available at your favorite uh podcast listening service. So feel free to subscribe there. We also have our uh premium podcast that we offer. There's premium and just in terms of uh uh the the product that we deliver and how that's uh developed. There's no actual cost for you there. It's at Multiply Your Success uh podcast. And if you just like one central spot, say Tom, these are just too many things to go and check out. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can get access to this live session uh to have access to the video as well as to the uh audio and over 600 webinars, podcasts, and other educational tools that are available on our on our YouTube channel, which is Big Sky Franchise Team. So, with that being said, I would love to introduce you to Terry Moton, who's been a guest on our podcast in sessions in the past. And she uh I I love on her screen, she is a business problem solver. And that's what I just love about Terry. She figures out a way to make things happen, and she is she is an expert on AI. And I know that this comes up a lot, but why I'm so excited to have Terry on, because sometimes you get AI overload. Oh, okay, another thing, another thing. Someone's trying to sell me something. Well, what Terry has done is taken this idea of AI to say, well, how can I actually apply this to my business? Or how can someone, an owner that tunes in, a leader that tunes in, say, how can I actually use this for real in my business to be more to be more productive? And stuff that might be more so than I know what I find myself sometimes using it for, just kind of helping with content writing or maybe ideas to kind of help brainstorm a little bit. So uh with that, Terry, I would love to turn things over to you to get us going.

Teri Moten:

Right, Tom. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. I absolutely appreciate it. Uh, to everyone out there, I'm gonna give just a quick little background on me and what you are gonna get from today. And it's gonna be very interactive. Tom and I are gonna going to go back and forth, but I'm gonna give you some really great nuggets that you as a business leader, a franchise owner, a potential someone who's in business who wants to franchise, that you can walk away today and have implementable nuggets. So, number one, you can probably hear with my Southern Twang. Uh, I am from South Texas. Again, my name is Terry Moton, and I help business leaders really be able to start implementing strategically AI into their organizations. Like Tom said, you've probably been inundated now over the last uh two, three years with AI this, AI that. Every other week, literally, there are hundreds of tools that come out. And I'm here to really help give you some ideas that are solid to help you start implementation. One of the things I was uh talking to someone about recently is that since COVID happened and we were all shut down in the pandemic, I think we have now a term that I kind of coined, I think I did, because I hadn't heard it anywhere else, but we've really become professional consumers of education. You know, when we were locked down, all we were doing was just listening to information. And I think we've gotten so used to doing that, we are in that kind of analysis paralysis mode, or just consuming information and not doing anything. So today you're gonna do something. I look at AI through the lens that you do. I'm not a data scientist, I'm not in, I don't have an IT background, you're not gonna hear tech jargon, but I'm an entrepreneur myself. I've worked with business leaders for 25 years. So when I look at AI, it's how is this going to affect the average, everyday non-tech business leader? So that's that's what we've got there. Tom, the first question, I actually have a question for you, and then I'd like to start sharing some things.

Tom DuFore:

Yes.

Teri Moten:

What are you hearing, especially in the kind of that franchise space and those uh business leaders who are wanting to go into franchising? What are they thinking? What are they asking you about when it comes to AI?

Tom DuFore:

You know, that's a great question. It doesn't come up quite as much as you might think. And I think it's because so many owners and leaders we work with are enthralled in the day-to-day of leading and running a business. And so sometimes it's hard to see through the noise. Uh, the mostly what I get is uh they're using it, uh, they they or probably their team members in a lot of cases are using it for uh uh copywriting, which I've shared uh uh previously that they'll use copywriting or uh maybe helping with some marketing messaging a little bit, maybe brainstorming. Um but I think for many when they've tried using it or implementing it, um it hasn't gone quite as well as they had thought it was going to. I know we've in the past had uh a few clients over the last couple years that have used uh AI to produce um manual content for their business. And when when we read through it, we said, well, this doesn't sound like your business uh that has been produced. And we can we can tell that uh they just used AI to produce some content that the content sounded great, but it wasn't actually relevant for their business, and therefore we looked at it and said, Well, we can't use this. This should this is is not going to be used in creating any form of a manual. So now we have to go through and either edit it or flush it out and kind of start over um and going through this and and uh pulling that together.

Teri Moten:

So God didn't know and thank you. That that makes perfect sense. So, you know, one of the first things that I want to let the audience know is start thinking about AI. And I'm specifically talking about generative AI. Uh, start thinking about AI being on a spectrum. Um, and as you said, Tom, a lot of people initially, as you start using tools like you know, ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and Grok, again, those large language models, when people start using those, it is typically as a what I call to do task assistant work. So that's you know, you know, writing the emails, proofreading, you know, doing some social media captions. And I want people to understand, and in my opinion, there's kind of three big areas on that spectrum. And I want to walk you through on here's how you start changing your thought process. Yes, you have the task assistant things that can be done. Kind of the next step on the spectrum is what I would be I would call is kind of AI as a coach. And so people ask, okay, well, Terry, what do you mean as a coach? So for example, and especially relevant to your audience, many business owners I see are not very strong, say, in the financials of their business, how to understand financial documents, how to be able to read financial statements, what they need to be looking for. So you can use AI to be basically a financial coach to help you really learn and understand what are the important how do I understand these financial statements? How do these pertain to me as a franchise owner or a franchisee or someone again who is wanting to franchise in this particular industry? And then you can use AI to help coach you and guide you. And it again, it's it's that coach, it's great with personal development. You know, being able to be that personal development kind of coach for you, that guides you, leads you, kind of gives you suggestions. The area that most people don't even realize AI can be utilized for is what I call, you know, AI as a thought partner. And that thought partner is now where you're using AI to really be that it can be almost like whether it's a quote unquote, like a silent business partner, it can be a sparring partner that really challenges your ideas. And this is one of the ways that I love it, is because we're all defined just by our finite knowledge. We only know what we know and what we've been exposed to. But AI has, I can't, in my simplistic terms, access to all the information in the world, is the way I say it, all the experts in the world and kind of their philosophies and knowledge. And as a thought partner, you can then start using AI to challenge some of the things that you know you may know or or you may not may not realize. So when people are starting to use again these LLMs, I want them to start thinking, okay, do I need it now to act to do again more of these tasks? Am I needing more of it to be a coach for me in what I want it to do? Or how can I get it to be again that thought partner where it really is kind of working with me, kind of a co-partner working with me? One of the things I want to show you, and I tell everybody it now, I'm a Chat GPT girl, uh, just because you know, ChatGPT was the first on the market, and that's what I got used to to using first. Um, I have also started looking at, and I've of course, looking at, okay, well, what are the other large language models? What do they excel in, and how can those things be utilized? And Tom, one of the first pieces of advice I would tell to someone, especially who's very new in trying to implement AI and understand AI, is find one, and it doesn't matter which, find one large language model that you like. And those, you know, large language models that are out there, as I was saying, you got Chat GPT, you have Gemini, you got Copilot, you have Claude, um, Meta, which is Facebook. No, they also have an a large language model uh that's uh that you can use as well called Llama. Then of course you have Grok. So find one that you like and start to be proficient in it. Then you can start looking at how do the other ones, how can these other large language models, what do they do that excel that can add to what I'm doing? Because you will never be able to master them all. And you really need to start mastering one of them. So, with what I'd like to do now is show a couple of quick things and walk through a couple of things in chat GPT. And some of these things are gonna be agnostic. You can do it, the the thought process, you can do it across any of the LLMs. But for the audience who is actually watching the replay, what I'm gonna do is share my screen because for chat GPT, and if you're not using chat GPT, again, ask the ask the other models that you're using. Can this be done? Three things you need to know right off the bat. Actually, might be four that I'm gonna cover really, really quickly. First is with ChatGPT, most people don't realize whether you're using the free model or a paid model, there is a default setting in there that anything you're putting in there, Chat GPT is using it to train the model. You do not want your information training ChatGPT, and I'll tell you why. So let's say, again, you are a you're a business, you're getting ready to franchise, or you know, your existing franchise or a franchisee, you've been working with ChatGPT, let's say over the last couple of weeks, just developing the best, you know, Q1, Q2 strategy, and you're like, oh my gosh, we're gonna take over the world. We are just taking over the world in our industry. We've come up with a great strategy, we've got the marketing messaging, and you just you cannot wait to roll it out. If you have not toggled off this setting where again it's not the information you came up with, you know, partnering with chat GPT, will happen. What can happen is this when the competitor down the street is, you know, they are brainstorming with Chat GPT, and they say, Hey, I'm looking to, you know, roll this out in Q1 and Q2. I need some ideas. Give me some best strategy ideas for this, because your information training, the model, ChatGPT, can literally serve up everything you worked with it on to your competitor. So you want to turn it off. So for the audience looking, and I'll walk through for those who are listening on audio, in Chat GPT, you actually you're gonna go to your settings. So you end up going to your to the profile and you're gonna click on your settings. And it's really easy to get to. You click on your settings and you're gonna scroll down to data controls. Again, just simply scroll down to data controls. The very first thing you see is it says improve the model for everyone. I assure you, anyone who's using ChatGPT and listening and going through this, my bet is about 70 to 75 percent of you, you have this setting on where ChatGPT is training the model, using your information. So turn that off. First thing, again, right off the bat, turn that off. If you're listening to this while you're you know driving or something like that, when you get back situated, turn it off. For the other LLMs that you're using, just go back to that LLM and ask it how and you're prompting, ask it, how can I make sure my information is not training the model? And it'll walk you through if there's some settings or steps that you can take. So that's number one. The second thing, and this is also gonna be agnostic for most of the most of the LLMs out there, is when you're looking, and for those looking at the screen, and when you look at my screen, these are two very important buttons you need to start utilizing. First button is you'll see it's it's a microphone. So this is gonna be in the prompt window. You'll see on the right hand side, you see this microphone, you hover over it, it says dictate. Now I want to ask you, Tom. Tom, do you use, and I know I know you use several different large language models, but do you use the um the dictate in those models?

Tom DuFore:

I do not. Um, I know a lot of people like uh the dictate. Um uh well uh now that I say that I'm I guess I have a few times, but most of the time I'm sitting in front of my computer uh typing in, and it's a little bit easier for me to clear my thoughts as I'm typing because I kind of pause and think about what exactly am I trying to ask. Um so it's I don't use it, I've used it a few times, but but not often, I guess.

Teri Moten:

And and that's okay. I do hear people say that. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually push against you a little bit and give you some reasoning why, even if you are at your, you know, your laptop or your desktop, why you should consider kind of using that dictate. I know we're used to you know speak doing this the speech to text when we're on the go with our mobile phone and we're doing the you know texting and we're speaking it. But here's why you should consider, even on your laptop, having using dictation. With dictation, and specifically chat GPT, and all the models can do this, but with chat GPT, when you do that dictate, you can free flow talk for 10 minutes. And people are like, Well, I'm not tearing out talking for 10 minutes, you know, giving it a prompt. It's not, but what you will quickly find is you will start doing that free flow talk, you know, two, three, four minutes. And it's it's it's easy to get to that. Right now, the reason this is so important in how you communicate with your large language model, we are moving from the term prompt engineering. Again, if you've been using AI for any length of time, you've probably heard prompt engineering, and and that's how you structure your prompt. And of course, the prompt is just the instructions that you're giving that large language model, what you want it to do. But and with prompt engineering, you hear a thousand different ways, you know, structure it with, you know, give it a role, give it a task, give it an output, and there's all types of formulations. We are now moving to a world of what's called contextual engineering. The models, these LLMs, have gotten so good in understanding our natural language and what we want when we ask it to do something or tell it to do something, doesn't necessarily have to have that syntax, that that quote unquote proper structure. So here comes the reason you want to consider using dictate. Number one, we're lazy typers. I am, we're lazy typers. Number two, I promise I probably have undiagnosed ADHD. So I'm 53 years old. Uh so there's that whole memory thing there. So, but you know, if I start typing a couple of things, I'm thinking so quickly, I I get, you know, I type in a few words or a few sentences in my prompt, and then I have forgotten the direction that I was going. When you can speak it, you literally have the opportunity to just free flow talk. You don't have to worry about depending on your personality. And Tom, you mentioned, you know, you like to kind of have, you know, like that clear thought process in what you're asking. Perfect. And that is not a problem. The thing you have the ability to do is it sorts out your thought process because you can literally ramble, and you'll hear it when I'm when I'm doing mine and talking to it, I'll apologize. I am sorry for rambling, and it'll come back and Terry and tell me, Terry, you weren't you weren't rambling. I understood what you were saying. The bottom line is the benefit for the audience is it allows you to get your complete thought out. You don't have to speak the king's or queens English. You just simply free-flow talk. And if you mess up as you're going through and you know, you're you're talking to it and you think, oh no, I don't want it to go that direction. I want you to go another direction, you don't have to stop and re-record it. You simply just keep going. And you just like you're talking to somebody and you just tell it, no, actually, don't do that. I want you to start doing this. Think of it that way. But it allows the context that for that contextual engineering, it allows full context to be given. So that's the big benefit of using dictate. The other button that you will see. Enchant GPT and not all of the LLMs have this, but the other button that's right next to it um is called voice mode. So it's literally you know when you look at it, it's gonna be a now mine is orange because I'm a Texas longhorn, so I I had to have orange as mine, but you'll see yeah, again, it's a circle, it's typically going to be a black circle that has these white lines in it. And with voice mode, this is again the new way we are going to be communicating with our LLMs. You have the ability to select a voice, and you can do this with the free version as well. Don't think you have to upgrade to paid version for everything I'm telling you. You can pick a voice, there's about six to eight voices, you know, various. You know, you can have an Aussie accent or a Brit accent or uh American, whatever you like, or male or female. And now that Chat GPT will actually talk with you, and you can have a conversation back and forth, like you are speaking with someone. Uh Tom, some people tell me, okay, no, Terry, that's just that's a little bit too much. And I'm like, but you use Siri, so it's really not. Um, but you you literally can have this back and forth, and I'll tell you where it's great to use. Um, of course, hands-free, but you know, you're driving down the road and you want to strategize through something, you can have a strategy conversation. Click on that voice mode, and now you can again have this conversation going back. You're going to have a meeting with someone and you want to do some last-minute prep, you can click on that voice mode and say, hey, I've got I've got a podcast coming up with Tom DeFor and Big Sky franchise team. I just want to do a little bit of last-minute prep. You know, what are the you know top three things based on his audience that I should be, I should make sure that they know. And again, you can have this back and forth conversation. So those are two big areas. And I'm telling you, across kind of regardless of large language model you use, this is how communication is starting to go with AI. It is going to speaking and getting away from the typing. Tom, so what what what are your thoughts just in terms of uh kind of that thought process of using, uh especially like that dictate, uh, being able to use it to more so free-flow talk uh and not have such structured uh thought process?

Tom DuFore:

Yeah, I mean, I when I think of it, um, you know, I have not used it in that capacity personally. I know a lot of people like that. Um uh I I I'm I'm unsure on how I feel about that. You know, I think I think that's been part of my hesitation is that it's you know, I'm conversing with a computer, and uh I think uh while I think there's a lot of valuable information that can be gathered, I'm I have I've put up kind of a guardrail for myself to say, well, if I start having a conversation with it, I might start trusting it more. And I want to be mindful to recognize that uh while a lot of the things it does, you know, I I've used these large language models to do various uh tasks and some things I just ask to see what's it gonna say in an area that I know stuff about, and and I and I feel like I'm pretty confident in. And uh, you know, what I find is it might be 80%, 90% accurate on a lot of it, but there's a lot of stuff, small things that are wrong and just wrong, or it's not even close. It's just I don't know if it's made up or just pulled a source that wasn't the right type of source. And um, so it's just a reminder for me to have be cautious with it. So for me, that that's been part of my caution on wanting to start having these conversations and to also avoid the feeling of like I as if I have a uh this relationship with this artificial thing that's not even real. So that's been part of the guardrail as well. That for me, where I've been just a little more cautious and delayed on pursuing that.

Teri Moten:

I just like that, and I'm glad you brought that up because I I I want to talk about that. That has been one of the scary things that has been happening, is as people are developing these literal, literal relationships with these LLMs. Not everyone is equipped enough to be able to separate. Like you said, you're talking, it's a machine, it's not your friend, it's not your therapist, you know, you're you're not talking to a significant other. And so that is a great way to, you know, to have to make sure you keep those guardrails around you. So I I agree wholeheartedly, it's it's something that not everyone should be going off and and using uh kind of more of this um uh again speech communication with with LLMs. And it's a whole different story. You know, don't get me on a rant when it comes to what it's it's doing um to children uh and to young adults who don't necessarily have that fully developed brain that can differentiate. Now, you talked about hallucinations, and I'm glad you brought that up because I do want to address that. You have to realize, okay, listening audience, you've got to realize these large language models, number one, they want literally, and I hear I am talking about, you know, like hey, it's my friend. No, they want to please you. You'll hear the term, you may have heard the term syncophant over the last year or two, but they they want to please you, they want to give you that information. You have to be careful because remember, you are the expert. You have the domain expertise, you know, in in the area that you're you're talking to it, you know, about. You have got to be the you are the final judge. You have to put your experience around looking at is what this LLM, the information it gave back, does it make sense? Is it true? Is it factual? You have got to, and especially when it comes to data, when you're asking it about data, you have got to fact-check that stuff. You just can't assume, okay, you know, my my NLM told me so, it it must be so. Um, when you're using it, because you do have the ability to, you know, upload if it's spreadsheets or things like that, for it to interpret data, you fact-check it because it will flat out miss some stuff, overlook some stuff, and like Tom said, it will make up stuff. So, in terms of hallucinations, what it'll do is it'll start citing sources that don't exist. But what I say, the term that I use is I say these AI platforms, they say it so convincingly, it's like they've got some bass in its voice when it's like, yes, Terry, this is it. And it doesn't even exist. So you've got to start asking, okay, take me to the publication for this citation. And you'll sometimes it'll come back, oh good catch, Terry. This actually wasn't, you know, a real citation. So you've got to push back and ask, you know, where did this information come from? The other thing it will do, and Tom, you hit the nail on the head because it wants to please you so much, it will just flat up. It's not going and giving a fake citation. It's, you know, I mean, it's just completely making up information. That's where you have to really, you know, remember you are the expert, and you can't just do audience, you can't just do a copy and paste of what it comes up with. And I want to show you one area in your settings. Again, I'm gonna show you in Chat GPT, but you should be able to do the same thing in all of the other LLMs. You can start to customize it more for how you like to receive information and kind of put some guardrails on the parameters you want it to operate under when it's getting information from you. And so the way you do these, and it's called, you know, custom instructions, where you do this, it's gonna be back in settings. You know, so we go back to our profile, we go back into settings, and we come down, and at least in trap GPT, it'll say there's a there's a personalization tab. And you can click on that. And a couple of quick things I'm gonna walk you through is that number one, at least again with ChatGPT, you can even give it a personality. So, you know, I I selected, I wanted mine to have a candid personality. I don't need a cheerleader or anything like that. I wanted it to be candid, but you can have friendly and quirky and nerdy. Um, you can have some different characteristics you ascribe to it. But this, in terms of custom instructions, you can tell it, you know, here's how I want you to operate with me. So, for example, I'll just give one example, one or two examples. One of the first things I said is, you know, I want it to have a balance of professional expertise and casual, relatable personality. You know, I came and I also said, you know, I want it to be empathetic and understanding, but direct when strategy demands it. Now, here is how you can start incorporating, ideally, minimizing the hallucinations that can happen. One of the last things I put is I said, double check double check and fact check all information, you know, especially data, because you know, again, I want it to eliminate or minimize. I know it's not going to eliminate, but I wanted to minimize hallucinations. And I flat out told it, if you don't know the answer, don't make one up. You know, don't lie. Just let me know that you don't know the answer. Um, and so it it will start telling me that, you know, as it's going through, and it I may ask be asking about a strategy or asking it to pull some data for me, and it'll tell me, okay, Terry, you know, I tried to find this, but uh, because I don't know the answer and I can't find the data, I can't provide it to you. And Tom, it was really funny, even just this week, it was fact-checking me. I was putting together some information for a presentation, and I pulled in um a statistic for the presentation, and I didn't cite it. And as it was going through and helping me refine the presentation, it said, now, Terry, do you have a citation for this statistic that you provided? Otherwise, I would suggest you not add in that statistic, or you need to soften it and not give an actual percentage. You need to say, you know, uh about this many or like over 50% and not say 52%. And I thought that was pretty funny. That fat-checked me. So use again, whatever large language model you're using, go to your settings and start seeing where you can start doing different kinds of pieces of custom instructions. And what goes along with that, uh, listening audience is remember, you still have to train the model. You know, you want to train it on your own terms. But what I mean is if you were bringing in an intern or if you were bringing in, you know, a new employee to your organization, you are not going to just, you know, right off the bat, you're not gonna say, Oh, come on in, you know, Terry, here's your new, here's your desk, here's your laptop, good luck, go get them. You're not gonna do that. You're gonna train them. So, whatever model, especially your foundational model you might be using, you need to train it. And the way you train it is you do what's called a master prompt. You develop a master prompt, and you're like, okay, well, Terry, what does this mean? And how do I do it? Always tell them, I'm always pointing people back to, you know, the the LLM you're using can help you develop that master prompt. But what it's gonna go through is, and I'll I'll give you the prompt that you know that you can use, what it's gonna go through is it's gonna ask a series of questions, and let's say it's for your business, uh, where it really gets to understand your business. So you're gonna share things with it, and again, as much as you're comfortable, you know, like your it's gonna be things like your mission, your vision, you know, your who your target audience is, you know, what's your, you know, what's your products, what your products are, what your goals may be, you know, for one, three, five years, those types of things, but you're really gonna start to to train it so it knows you know, it knows your business. It is imperative, in my opinion, that you get to get a better output, you've got to have better input and you've got to have that appropriate training. And what you do, again, if you're using whether chat GPT, Brock, Claude, or what have you, you simply go in and you start a new session, you start um uh again a new chat, and you say, I'd like to develop a master prompt for my business. Ask me questions one at a time to get all of the information that you need. Then it's gonna start to ask you questions to get the information. From there, you simply, once it has gotten all of the information, then you tell it, put this in a format that I can copy and paste and put on a Google Doc or a Word doc. Because what you got to do is you want to get that information out. You want to get the master prompt out of the LOM environment, and you want to put it somewhere where it is editable. The reason you want to do that is because that master prompt information, like your business information, it'll change over time. You know, you'll add new services, new products, you know, different things, different pricing or what have you. So you want to go ahead and put it somewhere else. And where you use it is depending on the model you're using, you know, you're working on something, you can say, okay, I am getting ready to do, you know, Q3 and 4 planning, you know, out chat GPT or what have you. I need your um assistance in helping to strategize, whatever. And you know, now you can upload that master prompt. So now it's kind of got a set of instructions and information about your business, but it's it's a part of that whole training process. And one of the final things that uh, you know, that I'll share is when you're using these models, and I rarely see people doing this piece that I that I train them on doing, we've got to move from using these models as an a monologue where we're just you know barking orders at it, do this, do that, do this, do that, and treat it more like a dialogue. What you don't realize is if these models could ask you questions, which they can, and I'll show you, if these models could ask you questions, they would have so much more insight to be able to give you better output and better information. And the way you get them to ask you questions is you tell them. So whenever you do a prompt, kind of typically whatever the prompt is, at the end of the prompt, the last thing you say is ask me clarifying questions one at a time. Simply ask me clarifying questions one at a time. And so again, why do you want to do that? Because remember, we know what we know. That LLM is not a mind reader. You know, it can only do what we ask it to do, and it will understand so much more context. Remember, contextual engineering, it'll understand so much more context of what we want if it could ask us some things that it knows would help them give a better output. The important thing that I said as well, ask clarifying questions one at a time, because for a busy business leader that only may only have a couple of minutes, they're doing a couple of minute session, you know, in their AI, nothing more frustrating than you say, ask me, oh Terry said, let me start, let me try this thing, Terry said. Ask me questions one at a time, and it rolls up 12 questions for you. You're like, Terry is crazy. I am never using this method again, because I'm looking at 12 questions and I don't have the time. So what you want to do is that's why you want to say, you know, ask questions one at a time. So, number one, you don't get overwhelmed. You can also, because it may have 12 questions for you, you can ask it. You can say, ask me clarifying questions, but tell me how many questions you have first. And it'll tell you, I've got three questions to ask you, I've got seven questions to ask you. And then you tell it, okay, go ahead and ask me two or three questions at a time, or go ahead and ask me all of the questions. And it will do that. The point is start adding that to your prompt. The end of your prompt, ask clarifying questions. You will get when I say like a hundred percent better output in the information and the answer it gives, it's amazing the difference that it makes. Tom, do you have any other questions?

Tom DuFore:

Or well, what I'd like to, yeah, no, I I uh appreciate uh the information you've shared here. This is, I think, super practical and just down to some uh information that just makes it easier to use these tools. And uh I know we've got some folks on with us live here. If anyone on the line, by the way, has questions specifically that you'd like to ask, uh just hit the raise your hand feature, type it in the chat box or the QA, uh, and I can uh either ask Terry for you or unmute you so you can uh go ahead and ask that directly. Uh but Terry, one of the things while we're waiting for some of those questions to come in, uh one of the things you do is you also train organizations and teams on how to use this for their business. So I'd love for you just to maybe talk a little bit about how you help companies with this and what are what an example of that might look like and how you work with companies.

Teri Moten:

Sure. And Tom, thank you for that. So one of the things is again, many companies, business leaders, the business owners, executives, the leadership team, you know, right now you are being put under pressure, whether by you know, however you're governed, um, or just the competitive pressure of having to incorporate AI. And I know for a lot of people. It is a daunting task to figure out how to do it because not only do you have the large language models, you've got different just tools, AI software and tools, and you're trying to figure out if I'm going to invest monies, we've got to see an ROI in where we're investing specifically as it comes to AI. So one of the things that I do is now I am a certified chief AI officer. And it just what that means is I do have a certification. It was not a weekend certification. It was a it's a true MBA style with a capstone certification. I have several other certifications. I'm in and out of AI day in and day out. For businesses and for teams, I come in and help you really understand what it is, number one, that you're wanting to do. Number two, help you kind of start to put together and talk through what's the most appropriate roadmap to start getting some things in place. Help with the strategy and help start doing training for you. And I'll give you some examples of what that might look like. Typically, one of the first things we get in place, and leaders, you have got to know this and understand this, is having an AI use policy for your organization. My guess is that easily 70 to 80 percent of the listening audience does not have an AI use policy for their organization. A lot of times it's enterprise level that has it. Um normally, you know, um small and mid-sized businesses don't. Why it is imperative, the reason you need it, is because your your employees are using AI. You might have said, you might have even told them, don't use AI yet until we figure out what we're gonna do. Telling you they're using it. Um and the term for it is called shadow AI. They're just uploading the stuff into their own personal Chat GPT and Gemini. And now just imagine the risk that you're at now when they're uploading proprietary information, customer information, pricing policies, pricing policy strategies, um, information that's covered under an NDA that you are now susceptible to lawsuit because it's being used in uh and most likely exposed because they don't know how to turn off some of the um, again, they don't know how to toggle off those sharing parameters and use policy is typically one of the first things we start putting in place. The second thing is, you know, really looking at what needs to have AI applied to it and how can it be applied. Uh, Tom, you've got so many people now because automation is the the big thing. So they want to automate like everything. Well, everything shouldn't be automated. And whatever you put AI on, audience, please understand this. Whatever you put AI on, it's gonna amplify it. What you put AI on will amplify it. So if you add AI to a bad process, it's going to become a worse process. If you add AI to a process that's going well, it becomes a better process. And that's counterintuitive because we're usually looking for patches for things that aren't going well. So again, I help walk organizations kind of through those thought processes and then do training for the for the teams on how they can use specifically generative AI in getting immediate, and I mean literally immediate uplift in terms of the return on investment with time, with money of their teams. And often that's where it needs to start before they go investing money in tools, you know, spending $10,000 on software. Get your team upskilled in how to use generative AI, one of these models, then start adding tools, if that makes sense, Tom.

Tom DuFore:

Yeah, that that's that's very helpful, Terry. Thank you. And while you were uh sharing that, we had a couple questions come in. So I'd love to for to get your input. So the first question that came in is uh that that asks um some someone was uh able to create uh their clone uh like a clone business and a personal one, and uh you know, how do you create kind of these clones or separate those out? And hopefully you understand what that means and can answer that.

Teri Moten:

Wait, in terms of clones, and that's a huge thing right now, and it's only gonna get bigger for um business owners, leaders, those in sales, you name it, uh, you can use different, there's different platforms that are out there. And for those of you who are like, what are you talking about? A clone. So a clone is where you basically use uh an AI software that can it, you literally you might record, you know, two minutes of you just talking, and you could be talking about the dog, it doesn't have to be about anything in particular, but you know, you're talking about something, and so now it's starting to get, you know, what you look like, what are your facial movements, what are your hand gestures. So it starts to number one, clone how you move and how you speak. Then you start adding, you can start adding a knowledge base to it. So if you have content that you've done, if you have had, and Tom, I'll use you an example. Again, you can get the clone down for your uh again, for your your face, your your body, how you move. You could upload uh various podcasts or content you've got, all of your podcasts and things like that. So it'll know your voice, how you talk, how you speak. Um, not in terms, not only in terms of just how you physically speak, but again, the get that knowledge base you have. Now, for a business owner or for a team, here's where it comes in handy is that clone can be used, number one, where it's on your website. So when people now come to your website and start asking questions, it's kind of part of the sales process. They start asking questions, then the clone um can start answering some of those things. And instead of just being a chat bot and just kind of going back and forth and getting where you where it's typed out the information to provide, say maybe to a prospect, it actually has that person, you know, say you Tom, is popping up on the website and saying, um, hey, I'm, you know, I'm and a lot of, and you do need to disclose it, of course. You know, you know, hey, I'm Tom's clone and uh, or not necessarily clone, but you know, I I I am Tom's uh counterpart. And, you know, here's the answer, one of the answers, you know, to your questions. And then you can, you know, follow back up with us, or we'll follow back up with you for more detailed information. It's just a way to help streamline processes uh and also be able to put out more content because you're gonna start to you're seeing more content creators use clones to get even more content out because you can also give it a script to use, and that clone, again, it'll go through that script. It looks like you, the mouth moves like you, and all of that type of thing. So, in terms of what do you use for it, uh one of the things you can use that I recommend is a platform called Hey Gien. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N. Hey Gien is probably one of the better ones that's out there to be able to develop a clone. Um, and if you want to do like a voice clone, um the voice that's uh uh that's out there, the voice platform that's used really, really well is called 11 Labs. 11 Labs. But that's how, again, high level, how you can make a clone and how it's used.

Tom DuFore:

That that is very helpful. Thank you so much. And uh next question that came in here is as uh it says, as far as using uh the this uh AI as a coach, do you need to go into settings or set up a certain mode for the coaching, or is there a master prompt to help create what you're seeking?

Teri Moten:

Great, great question. Um, you don't have to go into settings to uh get it set up to kind of go into that coaching mode. You simply tell it, you know, ways to do it. Number one, you say, I'd like you to now, you know, act as a coach to help me do again, what if it get if it's you know, really understand the you know financial statements, or I'd like you to act as a coach, and I'm gonna tell you where a great one is, especially today, is act as a coach to help me understand how to be found in AI platforms as the preferred business for my industry. Because from a marketing standpoint, yes, we we've been used to 20 years of doing SEO, but now you need to be found on the large language model platforms because that people are starting to go there and ask ChatGPT, ask Gemini or co-pilot, who should I go to for um, you know, roof repair in my area? And there are certain strategies that you use to do that, to be found that's different from SEO strategies, but that's a great way to be coached into what it needs to do. So you simply prompt it, you know, I'd like you to be and tell it to be the best coach in the world. Because you don't want mediocrity. So I literally tell it that to be the best coach in the world, and let's say the roofing example, you know, to for my roofing franchise to be found, you know, all the time in uh in these AI platforms in you know the Augusta, Georgia area. The other thing you can do is, and I'll give you the example for uh for Chat GPT, and I know Gemini has it as well. In ChatGPT, when you are in that prompt window, there's a plus symbol on there. If you click on that plus symbol, and what I'm gonna do, um, and I know just for sake of time, I'm gonna be really, really, really, really quick. I'm gonna just share so you can see it. Here in Chat GPT, you can go to this plus window, you click on that, and you can come down. You end up for this, you end up hitting more. You see the study and learn mode. I know that Gemini also has a study and learn mode. You what I call octavate it, you turn study and learn mode on. Most people think, oh yeah, that's great for the students and for my, you know, my seventh grader. No, it is great for you too, as a business leader. And now you tell it what you're wanting it to like coach you on, or what you're wanting to learn. And it will literally kind of develop um as it's coaching, it'll put together a lesson plan for you so it can coach you. And as part of the prompting, you end up giving it as well. And again, you say, I want you to be the best in the world coach to help me uh in my roofing franchise in Augusta, Georgia, to be always to always be found and recommended in Terry.

Tom DuFore:

I think we lost you there for a second. Can you hear me? Well, at least we know it's live, folks. Uh hang tight here for a quick second here. Let's see if Terry's gonna pop back. Um, maybe just an internet glitch. Her screen is still up, so Terry, if you can hear us, we cannot hear you um on this here. Uh-oh. Oh, there you are. Hey, Terry, we lost you for a minute.

Teri Moten:

No problem. I just wanted to make sure that the audience knew they could use study and learn mode, either in Chat GPT or Gemini, again, to learn the things they need, and it can act as a coach through that study and learn mode.

Tom DuFore:

Great. Well, well, Terry, as we bring this to a close, how can someone connect with you? Do you do you have a website or uh an email, or what's the best way for someone to get in touch if they say, Terry, this sounds really cool. I want to talk to you more about some of my needs.

Teri Moten:

Absolutely. And one of the things is for your audience, I put together a special resource guide that I would love for them to have. It's specific for the franchise industry. So, number one, they can get that resource guide by going to the following site. It is BIT dot ly forward slash franchise growth with AI. That's B I T forward slash franchise growth with AI. I've got some great, some again, some prompts, some information that's really gonna help them think about AI on that spectrum uh for them as a franchise leader or a a business leader. If they want to also reach out to me, I have a number of resources and that shows my trainings. I do a lot of virtual trainings, a number of them free. They can go to, it's also another uh bitly link, they can go to b I T dot L Y and it's Terry Moton, T-E-R-I-M-O-T E N. B-I-T dot l y forward slash t-i m o t e n. They can again pick up some free resources there, follow where I'm doing training, a lot of them virtual. Um, and they can also connect and and and we can just have a complimentary discussion, kind of an AI insights discussion on what AI can do for their organization.

Tom DuFore:

Well, this has been fantastic, Terry. You've shared some great resources. While you were sharing that, I just typed it in and I downloaded that form myself. I'm I'm looking forward to reading it. So I'm already on your list now. Uh so uh I love it. If I wasn't already, hopefully I already was. But uh thank you so much uh for your content. As always, just another great, great piece of information. And for those of you as we're closing out here, just a reminder, please subscribe to our podcast, to the webinar, and we would greatly appreciate a review uh rating. Just it goes a long way. So please uh uh make sure you do that. And um, for those of you that are tuning in and we haven't had a chance to connect with, please uh feel free to connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com. Terry, this has been awesome. Thank you, everyone. Have a great, great weekend, and we'll have you back next week.

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Tom DuFore

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