The Conversation Every Business Owner Needs to Have Right Now
Artificial intelligence isn't coming for your business — it's already here. And the business owners who figure out how to use it first aren't just working faster. They're doing things their competitors simply cannot do yet.
In Episode 87 of UnHacked, hosts Justin Shelley (Phoenix IT Advisors), Mario Zaki (Mazteck IT), and Bryan Lachapelle (B4 Networks) are joined by special guest Joshua Holloway, CEO of 70i Technologies, to launch a brand-new 12-episode series on how business owners — regardless of technical background — can use AI to transform the way they work.
This isn't hype. This is a roadmap. And it starts right now.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
🔐 How to Use AI Without Putting Your Business at Risk
Most people don't realize that when you type something into ChatGPT or Claude on the free plan, that information can be used to train the AI model — meaning your client data, your internal processes, your passwords, and your proprietary business information could potentially become part of a public AI's knowledge base. The hosts break down exactly what you need to do to protect yourself:
- Use the paid version of your AI platform ($20/month for ChatGPT or Claude) — the paid tier gives you access to the data privacy controls you need
- Find the "don't train on my data" checkbox in your settings — and check it regularly, because software updates have been known to silently reset it
- Consider a contained AI platform like Hatz AI (hatz.ai) — Justin's platform of choice for sensitive work — which keeps your data inside a secured environment and never sends it to the broader LLM ecosystem
- Never share API keys, passwords, or client credentials in an unsecured AI chat — Justin learned this the hard way when AI immediately flagged his own shared token as compromised
⚡ Real Business Results: What 10x–50x Productivity Actually Looks Like
The hosts don't just talk theory. They share concrete, measurable examples of how AI is transforming their own businesses:
- Mario's sales team cut proposal creation time from 3 hours to 5 minutes — a documented 36x productivity gain — using an AI-powered proposal platform. The result isn't just speed; it's consistency. Every proposal goes out at the same quality level, no matter who writes it.
- Bryan's quarterly planning process used to take 20–30 hours of back-and-forth human effort to build out a rock (a major 90-day business initiative). He built a custom 7-step ChatGPT bot that produces a fully formatted, SMART-goal-aligned project plan in under one hour.
- Joshua's marketing team used to spend 8–10 hours producing blog content tailored to multiple industries. By building GPT personas for both their target customers and their internal writers, they reduced that to 1 hour for 5 industry-specific posts — simultaneously.
- Joshua's sales process was transformed by feeding meeting transcripts into a custom GPT that extracts every commitment made, identifies missed opportunities, and generates a comprehensive follow-up email — catching things the human ear misses every single time.
- Justin's podcast production went from a days-long manual process to a near-instant workflow: episode titles, website summaries, and multi-platform social media posts are generated within minutes of recording — all through a custom automation built on the Hatz AI platform.
🚀 The 12-Week AI Journey: What's Coming
This episode is just the beginning. The hosts have structured the next 12 episodes as a crawl → walk → run curriculum designed specifically for business owners:
- Weeks 1–4 (Crawl): Setting up your AI platform securely, learning how to get the best outputs, and completing your first real business task with AI
- Weeks 5–8 (Walk): Integrations — giving AI safe, controlled access to your business data (and how to do it without exposing yourself)
- Weeks 9–12 (Run): Building your first AI-powered app — no coding experience required (Mario is living proof this is possible)
💡 Your Homework This Week
The hosts assign one clear task to every listener:
- Choose your platform — ChatGPT or Claude (or Hatz AI if you want maximum security)
- Sign up for the paid plan — $20/month is not optional if you're using this for business
- Find and enable the data privacy setting — don't let your business data train someone else's AI
- Identify one business problem you want to solve with AI — and come back next week ready to work on it
Why This Matters for Your Business
The hosts are blunt about one thing: the fear that AI will take jobs is real but misframed. The actual threat isn't AI itself — it's the competitor down the street who learns to use it before you do.
As Joshua Holloway put it in this episode: "We're not going to lose our jobs to AI. We're going to lose our jobs to people who can use AI."
The good news? You're listening to this right now. That means you're already ahead of the curve — as long as you take action.
🔒 Is Your Business Actually Protected?
Here's the uncomfortable truth this episode makes clear: most businesses are using AI tools today without any of the security guardrails discussed in this episode. Free plans. No data privacy settings. Sensitive information typed directly into public AI models.
And AI security is just one layer of a much larger picture. Hackers, government fines, compliance failures, and data breaches can financially devastate a business — often overnight.
The team at Phoenix IT Advisors offers a free, no-obligation security assessment to help business owners understand exactly where their vulnerabilities are — before someone else finds them first.
👉 Schedule Your Free Security Assessment Today
Don't wait until something goes wrong. One conversation could be the difference between thriving and being financially devastated.
UnHacked is hosted by Justin Shelley of Phoenix IT Advisors, Mario Zaki of Mazteck IT, and Bryan Lachapelle of B4 Networks. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
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