#246: How AI is Making Toy Innovation and Pitching Easier Than Ever Before
Are you skeptical about integrating AI into your toy business?
In this episode of Making It In The Toy Industry, host Azhelle Wade, also known as The Toy Coach, shares her AI expertise from this year's People of Play Innovation Conference and ChiTAG - Toy and Game Fair in Chicago, where she presented her talk on 'How AI is Making Toy Innovation and Pitching Easier Than Ever Before.' You’ll see firsthand how AI can significantly 10x your toy development process with a custom GPT solution.
Azhelle talked about identifying bottlenecks, researching AI tools, and planning, testing, and training your team to implement AI effectively. Take advantage of learning the five-step process to integrate AI seamlessly while preventing the pitfalls. Watch the full episode to understand how to employ AI from idea generation to creating compelling visuals and pitches that can streamline and potentially level up your toy business.
Listen For These Important Moments
Overview of AI-Enhanced Workflows – [00:03:13]
Integrating AI Without Overload – [00:06:53]
Using AI to Refine Business Bottlenecks – [00:08:57]
Custom GPT for Idea Refinement – [00:12:37]
MakeItToyetic Custom GPT Demo – [00:13:52]
Testing AI’s Effectiveness – [00:16:20]
Enhanced Workflow with Cast Magic – [00:21:21]
Addressing AI Concerns and Limitations – [00:25:41]
Generating Toy Ideas Using ChatGPT – [00:29:34]
Implementing AI in Teams and Processes – [00:33:29]
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Catch the full breakdown on how AI is shaping the future of toy innovation right here! www.thetoycoach.com/learnai
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[00:00:00] You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, episode number 246. . Hey there, toy people, Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It In The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. I just got back from a toy trip to Chicago. Yup. This past week from November 6th to the 10th was the People of Play Innovation Conference and Chi Tag Toy and Game Fair, and that's an event that I try my very hardest to attend every year.
[00:00:48] Azhelle Wade: This conference is a great place to pitch your toy or game ideas. It's a great place to network. And this year I was invited back to give my talk on AI in the toy industry. The topic of my talk this year was How AI is Making Toy Innovation And Pitching Easier Than Ever Before.
[00:01:05] And not only that, I was also the emcee of the show. That means I got to introduce some great speakers from Dougal Grimes, Leah Zielinski, Rachel Harmuth, to myself, and later I got to introduce Rachel Griffin and Amy Friedland for their PR and marketing talk, as well as the infamous legal panel. There was a two hour legal panel discussion, which was not just a talk, but also a massive Q and A. , Now we did take great notes at this show to give you a summary of some of the lessons learned.
[00:01:37] From the panel discussions to these individual talks, and you can check out thetoycoach.com forward slash blog for the recap of what was taken away from the show.
[00:01:47] For this podcast episode, I'm going to share the recording of a talk that was the talk of the show, if you will. And this is my AI talk on 'How AI Is Making Toy Innovation and Pitching Easier Than Ever Before'. In this talk, you are going to learn how to 10x your toy development process with a custom GPT that I created.
[00:02:12] So as you're listening, you will hear me pointing out things on screen. You might hear gasps and reactions from the audience members. If you're getting super antsy listening, wanting to see what's going on, just head over to thetoycoach.com/learnai and a video is waiting for you there. You can watch the video, which will help you really take in all of the lessons that are being told in this talk. Now, please bear with me in the audio here because it was recorded at a conference, so you may hear a bit of an echo, but I thought this talk was too important to not also share on this podcast.
[00:02:54] If you've been hearing a lot about AI and how you should be integrating it into your workflow and you're feeling like, ah, AI just makes things harder. It's not helping my workflow. This is the talk that you need to listen to. Whether you're an inventor, an entrepreneur, or a corporate toy person, there is a lot for you to take away from this talk.
[00:03:13] One of the key things I talk about is how to create an AI enhanced workflow over an AI bottlenecked workflow. One of the key things that I talk about in this speech is how integrating AI into your workflow can either create a larger bottleneck or it can actually enhance your workflow. Not only do I explain.
[00:03:35] How those two things happen, but also how to implement AI and integrate it. So you get the positive attributes of AI without all the negatives. All right. Without any further ado, I'm so happy to share my recording of 'How AI is Making Toy Innovation and Pitching Easier Than Ever Before', a speech I first shared at the pop innovation conference.
[00:04:00] Let's talk about How AI is Making Toy Innovation and Pitching Easier Than Ever Before. My name is Azhelle Wade. I'm known in the industry as The Toy Coach. I have to have a disclaimer now. Everything I tell you to do here today is my personal opinion.
[00:04:13] Please do not do this for your company you might work for. If it doesn't align with their, laws and regulations of the company. Okay, so my name is Azhelle Wade, AKA The Toy Coach. I work with emerging inventors. I find and work with these inventors to either double their own toy brands, get them into stores, or get their ideas licensed to product acquisition reps.
[00:04:37] So I am a coach, The Toy Coach. These are just some of my students. We've been on boats together selling their product. We've had our own events at trade shows. So I've met them in Mexico City, seen their products on shelves. I've had over 220 students so far. I have been in the toy industry for 14 years.
[00:04:54] So it started in 2010. I have three patents in the industry, and 20 15, 18, I was working at Toys R Us. From there I went on to be the VP of brand products at a company called Creative Kids in 2018 and I started a podcast might be how a lot of you here know me today.
[00:05:11] I have a program, Toy Creators Academy. We have virtual pitch events. The pandemic inspired me to do this and we keep doing it to this day. I've had incredible clients throughout my time as a toy coach like Hasbro, working with them on the Women Innovators of Play Event last year.
[00:05:27] And I also launched my own kind of trade show showcase for my students. So we had a booth at the ASTRA Marketplace and Academy and I showcased some of their products and sold it to retailers. To the stores 2024, we launched something called toy courses.com. Think masterclass, but for the toy industry.
[00:05:45] Now, all this was great, all this growth from starting my business at Toy Coach from 2020 to now was fantastic. But it did come at a huge cost, I had all this opportunity, all the people wanting to work with me, but there was just me created this huge bottleneck. I couldn't quite do everything. So what did I do?
[00:06:03] I hired a team, so my team isn't full time, really great part timers and freelancers. Kazima, she started with us as an intern. She's an incredible copywriter. Hannah, she's also a copywriter. We've got Chad. We've got Nikka. We've got Eunice, who's an incredible graphic designer.
[00:06:20] But actually, one of these team members isn't real. And, it's Chad. Chad is what my sister and I call Chat GPT. Literally saying, oh, he's the best, Chad. Chad supports the entire team. You can see how Chad opens up that bottleneck.
[00:06:35] But there was a time when Chad only created more work. So let's talk about how to integrate AI into your workflow without creating more work for your assessment. If you work for a big toy company, you might have the typical team structure. There's someone at the top telling everybody this is our strategy and our plan.
[00:06:53] Some people at the middle saying, this is how we're going to do that. And people at the bottom who are executing that. Your old workflow might have ideas coming from the top going to the middle. Ideas coming from the bottom going to the middle. Little people showing things to people at the top.
[00:07:06] People in the middle working together to figure things out. People at the bottom working together to figure things out. But it is a little daunting. We're all feeling little overwhelmed. Our old workflow is stressful.
[00:07:17] So now we want to try to integrate AI. And what happens when you integrate AI, represented by this pink arrow, since this is your exisitng workflow. All you do is give people a tool to generate more ideas and more work, right? So then you have people at the top generating more ideas, throwing it down to people at the bottom. You have people in the middle generating more ideas, throwing it down again.
[00:07:36] You have people at the bottom, at the very bottom being like, I'm trying to generate something to help me finish this work faster, but nothing I have produces is something that I can actually go to market with. So everybody's just generating what almost seems like junk, and we're wasting more time than we're saving.
[00:07:50] So let's look at an enhanced AI workflow. What does that look like? From my experience, what an enhanced AI workflow looks like is when only a few key team members use AI for a few very specific activities. So it could be someone who leads the people in the middle who's using AI to maybe figure out refine a strategy or just brainstorm a ton of ideas.
[00:08:11] It could be people at the bottom who are using AI to generate a bunch of ideas to bring back. So we're going to dive into that some more. Before you use AI and integrate it into your workflow, you have to know what AI is actually good for. So AI can provide support for your team. AI cannot create a sense of community.
[00:08:33] AI can provide convenience to your customers, because it can be there when you can't. AI cannot execute on its many ideas.
[00:08:42] It's going to throw up all these ideas, and somebody's got to do the work, and it's not going to be AI. You need your team for that. Let's look at what I have used as my five step process to build an AI enhanced workflow. And we will go through these one by one, but we'll do a quick overview to start.
[00:08:57] First thing we need to do is identify the bottleneck or problem in your business that you want to solve for. After you identify this bottleneck, you've got to research various tools or integrations that can help you solve that bottleneck. Then you've got to plan. You can't just say, okay, we have a bottleneck, this AI tool says it can fix it.
[00:09:16] Throw it to your team and say, just use it. That's not going to work, that's going to create chaos, and it's not going to help your workflow at all. So you want to plan a new workflow, a new SOP, or Standard Operating Procedure, that includes AI into it, step by step. Then you want to run test trials with AI in place to measure the improvements.
[00:09:37] So if that task took your team, I don't know, among the tasks, when you integrate AI, does it actually take 20 days, or does it take 45 days? Then, the final step of five is to either train your team on this new workflow or throw it out. If it was 45 days, we're not going to force AI. We're not going to say it's AI, it has to work, let it go.
[00:09:56] If it makes it longer, it doesn't work, it wants the right implementations, you got to throw it away. If it does work, the thing that, the huge mistake I made in trying to integrate AI into my business is thinking I can just tell someone yeah, you just use AI for this step of the process, and that's how it works, and we're done, right?
[00:10:14] They get totally overwhelmed. It's still a new concept to so many people. So you actually have to retrain your staff as if it's their first day. I've had meetings with my new people for every step of the process to say, okay, this is phase one of the Tremaine Launchable Podcast episode, and this is where you're going to use AI.
[00:10:32] I want to meet with you when you're done. And we met for four weeks to go through the entire process to make sure that they knew how to use it and the way that I was planning to have them use it was actually saving time. Okay, let's go into more detail. Here's an example the problem we're going to identify in this example is I do a lot of one on one calls. And in my one on one calls, I have a variety of people that come to me, but a lot of people usually come to my free calls when they have no idea if their idea is good enough, and they're not sure if they should invest more time or money into it.
[00:11:06] So we ended up wasting a lot of time to end this call because instead of getting I don't know, contacts that they could get from me, they were going to be telling them like, your idea is not ready. So I identified I was wasting a lot of time there. AI tools can help me save time in that call, like that customer discovery process, right?
[00:11:24] I wanted to go into the research part. One thing you need to know about AI tools, there's different AI tools you can use. There are generative AI chat bots, like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude. These are tools where you're typing in text or putting in a prompt and it gives you a, usually text or an image.
[00:11:41] But then there's AI integration in programs. Programs that you probably already use, like LinkedIn. Have you ever started a post that said, would you like AI to rewrite that? that's AI integrated into programs. There's AI integrated into programs like SmarterQueue, which is a social media posting tool. There's another tool I'll teach you a little bit later called Cast Magic, which is built on the back of AI.
[00:12:03] So in step two, we need to figure out, what do we want to use? A generative AI chatbot, or AI integrated programs? For this example, we're going to focus on ChatGPT. So we've got our old workflow. New clients come on our website, they book an intro call with me.
[00:12:21] Now this is a free call, so you know in your business this is an important call, right? The call agenda. It's normally then to improve their idea, introduce key podcast episodes that I have, and help them get ready to work with me, because they're usually not ready on that first call.
[00:12:37] So then what happens? Now a second intro call. So now I'm spending a ton of time prepping someone who may or may not work with me, and while that's fantastic for them, it's not good if I were to stay in business, right? Then what happens, that second call agenda becomes, how can TCA, my program, Toy Creators Academy, help them with their idea, and then they might be ready to join TCA.
[00:12:58] Yes, okay, we're doing good. But now with an AI enhancement, how can we improve that workload? So what I've discussed is I can create a custom AI chatbot with ChatGPT so that when new clients book an intro call, they can book that call, but they'll also get a tool that will help them refine and improve their idea before they talk to me.
[00:13:20] So when they talk to me, they come to me with this improved idea, and I can go right into, okay, I actually like this one or that one, and here's how my program can help, and then we're jumping to ready to join TCA. So that alone has a measurable piece where I can say I'm saving 30 minutes a week or per client because we don't have to do this secondary call and they're getting inspired by a chatbot that's going to give them so many ideas in such a short time and they can come to me with this renewed faith in their idea.
[00:13:52] How does it work? So the MakeItToyetic chatbot that I made allows you to input your idea. It can be as simple as Night Light Race Cars. It will then enhance the concept. In this example, this chatbot says, Okay, great idea, Jill. Night Light Race Cars. And he calls it Glow Racers in Midnight Circuit. And it says, Glow Racers is a line of light up character driven race cars that come to light after the dark.
[00:14:20] Racing across bedrooms in an enchanted Midnight Circuit. not bad for a ChatGPT. So then, what's special about my MakeItToyetic GPT is I apply this thing called the Four Toyetic Principles that I developed when I first started my podcast. When I first started my podcast, I developed the Four Toyetic Principles the same character personalities as 1, 2 is scalability by theme, 3 is character specific accessories, and 4 is surprise conflict.
[00:14:47] The idea of this Four Toyetic Principles is that this is the key principles behind some of the top brands you know from your childhood life. Power Rangers, Jameson, the Ninja Turtles, they all have these elements and that's what's made a powerful brand. This ChatGPT will apply those four creative principles to the idea that you enter into it.
[00:15:07] And we'll let the table tell you how can you build on the character personalities you already made, the scalability of the theme, and what character specific accessories can you create. After that it says, it will give you three different design styles. It will explain. We can do these midnight car racers in a neon text style.
[00:15:26] We can do it in a street racer style. It will number those styles and it will say, Which style do you want to move forward with? You will say 1, 2, or 3. In this case I said 3. And then, it does something that I have to do. It will break out your product into tiered prices. So we'll have an opening price point, 10.
[00:15:44] It'll bring you to a mid range item price point and a high ticket item price point. And then I say, generate the visuals. So then it's gonna generate some visuals. Now, I know people freak out when I ever talk to them about generating visuals, but it's just a starting point, alright? It's just inspiration.
[00:16:00] But, how much easier is it to sell the idea to people? or to the venture relationship you're interested in, you can generate powerful visuals of what your idea can be, and then you can basically build a product, prototype, or tech that goes behind it, right? Now, my Make It Toyetic GPT is designed for the toy industry and will go further than this.
[00:16:20] It will actually render your idea in a store display. With all of the boxes and the POP display in a store display. The next step, remember, is step four, to test this all out, see how it works. We want to have measurable improvements in saving our time. We want to check this data weekly.
[00:16:37] I actually set up a Google reminder on my calendar to check my data every week for all my workflows. And then we want to survey the users of the tool, if it's your employees, or if it's your future clients, how do they like working with it? And the next step is after that to train or toss.
[00:16:54] So, If you want to try it, you can scan this QR code right now, and I would really like it. Scan this QR code right now, and let's see what happens when you use the MakeItToyetic GPT. I would love to, have a volunteer to talk us through while they're using it.
[00:17:11] Did anyone use it? Yeah. And what happened? Pretty good. It checks out. It checks out. Thank you. Can you say what you do in the industry and then just give me a concern about how AI is used in this way. I'm Nelson, with Skycastle. We use AI a lot in our business.
[00:17:34] From anything from marketing to just product innovation. A product like this, typically you have to start from scratch with ChatGPT. A lot of training, a lot of back and forth. Even building your own GPT is very technical. So this is a really good execution, I think in what you did.
[00:17:53] Thank you. The idea that I just plugged in here was two mooses playing badminton. The image that it created for the actual in store Can you AirDrop it to me? Yeah, it's incredible.
[00:18:08] Wow, that's not bad.
[00:18:10] This part is so hard, with ChatGPT. Getting it to actually create something that you wanted. Yeah. For, realistic image. It's pretty good. Honestly, what I think with, when you look at Midnight Racers say you have a buyer who's sensitive to AI I'm not gonna show them this.
[00:18:28] But, imagine showing this to your team, your design team, and saying, redesign this whole line. You come up with a new name, but this is the general concept. And then they can just overlay their new packaging, their new logo, on something that's already built. It just, it'll make it so much faster.
[00:18:45] Rachel? I'm with a startup right now, and just watching the last ten minutes is amazing to me because one of the challenges I have a really brilliant group of very knowledgeable who have phenomenal engineering skills, but trying to explain commercialization to them in a way that is not just me talking monotone, right?
[00:19:09] What you just showed right now and the ability to use what you've created to explain commercialization exactly what you're saying. It's not that this is the answer, right? It's to show okay, here's the questions, and then here's that sort of like visual piece of, you think who do you hire?
[00:19:24] It's a way to have them actively participate in that learning of how to commercialize the concepts that are in their head. This is really interesting. Other ideas for custom GPTs for inventors and product acquisition reps. Imagine if you have a custom GPT for inventors that that's tailored to your brand. Just, again, only, I bet, which our company allows. But, if you had common questions from inventors that work with you, new inventors, that you then encounter, imagine if you could package elements of your wish list into a chatbot.
[00:19:58] So an inventor could just say is this what you're looking for? And then the chatbot could say, absolutely not. They could save time in what they develop. Imagine a custom GPT to perfect your pitch as an inventor. I know it's not the name but imagine you have a certain pitch style and you come up with so many ideas, but actually tailoring the pitch to fit your style and every single time or even fit style of the company you're pitching to, you could use a custom GPT to do that.
[00:20:25] So let's look at one more AI enhanced workflow. We're gonna go through the same process. Step one, identify for our AI enhance workflow, we wanna first identify that how the language problem, so this is someone. Someone edited a sizzle video. I know it's not, but, yeah, that's why no one came. Step two research.
[00:20:44] Remember, we want to look at generative AI chatbots versus AI integrated programs. So for this example, I would recommend going with an AI integrated program, Cast Magic. And I'm going to get into what that is. The old workflow. You invent a toy or game. The old workflow. You invent a toy or game.
[00:20:58] You create a pitch deck, you create a simple video, you edit it, you pitch, and then you pick, you fix all your pitch materials because they were wrong or they needed more. So with an AI enhanced workflow, imagine you invent a toy or game, and you record the simple video, and then you upload it to a tool like Cast Magic, and you get back a variety of pitches.
[00:21:21] It can be used for a variety of companies with different hooks different angles, and then you just pitch. That's all. So let's talk a little bit about Cast Magic and how it works. So Cast Magic is a tool that essentially allows you to preset a bunch of prompts to run on one, so you upload one video, one audio, and it will run a preset amount of prompts.
[00:21:48] This is what it looks like, a web based app. You log in, and you actually set up what you want your prompts to be. So the examples you're going to see are ones that I've used in the past. They're sales focused prompts. But imagine that you're using this in the perspective of pitching your product.
[00:22:04] So your prompts would be something like, a pitch to a toy company that focuses on family games. A pitch to a toy company that focuses on rural products. A pitch to a toy company that focuses on adult running games. Those would be your prompts, and then you would fill out those prompts with a little bit more detail, obviously not giving away any IP of those companies.
[00:22:25] Then you would upload your audio of your sizzle or your sizzle. I believe you can also upload a copy. I haven't done that though. And then that tool will take all that information and run all alongside. Some of those prompts could be to have it write a script for your sizzle video according to the digital company that you're pitching to.
[00:22:48] Some of those prompts could be to build out a pitch deck, like a side by side explanation of what your pitch deck should look like. So this, again, I told you, I've used this in the past for sales calls. What's really cool with sales calls is you can literally analyze how bad you are at selling, which I did.
[00:23:07] And so you can do the same thing with your pitches. You, you could upload your pitch, and you could do it, and it will tell you, this pitch doesn't, say anything about the market you're selling to, if you set up the prompt correctly. But what's great about this is you set up all your prompts one time, and then you can just continually feed new information without having to reset up those prompts.
[00:23:26] You can even link it to Vimeo and YouTube, so if you're someone that uploads your, your pitch videos there. You could have it linked so that you don't even have to input it manually. But it's a really great tool. And you can even actually, I'll back up one more. You can even have it draft an initial email to present this item.
[00:23:44] Say, you are going to pitch a new doll, and you have, you upload the sizzle video. It has to have an output, a script for your presentation to predominantly Arts and Crafts is the company of that doll, and it could create a script for a presentation to a predominantly doll for this company of that doll.
[00:24:00] And then it can output an email to introduce an idea without getting in the way, because that's not what we do anymore. And invite the companies to a meeting. And it can do a specific one for every company. And you can preset all of it. It's so great. And you can actually also link this with another tool called Zapier.
[00:24:19] And, this would be a really technical link. I have linked it to Zapier so that the output content will automatically go into an email draft. Other useful tools that have AI integrations imagine a tool that can give you customized pitch feedback. Like I was saying earlier, you can set this tool up to do exactly that and tell you what you're really bad at.
[00:24:41] Imagine generating custom pitches for every company with one click, as I just, I explained. And I know you can't record your pitch meetings, but you could record your self practice pitching, and you could upload it there. We have a question.
[00:24:54] Hello, thank you very much, and I love a lot of good information. I'm really happy to hear this because my wife and I have been developing board gaming. We've been playing with AI, and she's so terrified that people are going to find out about it, and so she feels guilty that we use it. And I go I'm going to use this.
[00:25:17] So it's encouraging to hear everyone else is using it too. Now, my question is we don't pay anything for it. These programs, Sean, are they free? Or do you, I want to answer the first part of your question. Listen, I don't know if someone's gonna pull the information you put on AI is online. We do have settings in ChatGPT that says don't use my information to train your model.
[00:25:41] And of course, I've turned on that setting. If you haven't, go in there and set it to free. But we don't actually know if it's listening. There have been, I have seen reports of ChatGPT literally not listening to instructions given by people within the same conversation. So there's, I'm going to be real, there's a chance your information could be out there.
[00:25:59] In the same way that our information is out there online through social media because of the things we post and share. Everything we email is online in some form or another. I just want to be transparent about that. Second question, payment. I pay for ChatGPT happily. I just give them a whole year. You have whatever you want.
[00:26:17] It's so worth it. TaskMagic, you have to pay for. AI integrations into tools you're already using, you don't have to pay for, obviously. LinkedIn, when they have AI integration. Oh, actually, Google has come out with AI integrations in Gmail. That they're trying to upsell people on, but it looks like people aren't buying, right?
[00:26:36] They're giving trials and stuff. But, honestly, I feel like AI is one of those things that we can't really get away from. At one point I did think, okay, you don't have to use it, but when I logged into my Gmail and I saw Gmail was summarizing, without my consent, emails that I was getting in my personal email, I was like, I'm sorry these are like my doctor's emails, and it's just I, unfortunately I feel like this isn't something we need to learn as much as we can about it so that we can learn how to protect what we can protect.
[00:27:06] But thank you for your question. Any other questions? I don't really have a question. But yeah, a comment. I entered that photo, and said, Could you turn it into a plush? Oh, interesting. And it did. Okay. And then I said, Can you turn it into a one minute pitch? And it did. What's the pitch? What's the pitch? Pretend like you're pitching to a major toy company. But, I just said it out of the blue. That was good.
[00:27:38] Just amazed that it just actually came up with something. Oh, she's like scrolling deep. It's like she's been nodding to it for a while. I've been to the wild savannas of Africa as a young lion cub. Okay! It's giving something! There you go! It's giving a little bit. And, so the thing with AI too, and I said this earlier, it cannot produce final work.
[00:28:03] You have to refine it. Step into the savanna. It's very intriguing from a consumer standpoint, but if I were a traditional black guy, I'd be like, Why do we want to send this to Savannah? Why do we want to send it in dollars? Like, how do we, so there's some tweaking being done. That's a good start.
[00:28:19] Yeah. Hey. I have been told that one of the best places to practice using AI is where you are expert.
[00:28:27] Because you can judge whether the, what you're getting back is quality or not. Yeah. But the challenge is, the place where I want to use it sometimes, is where I don't know what the answer is, or I don't know what to do. And as you're thinking about using it in the toy space and like for pitches and things like that, do you have any advice or guidance about where we can trust or not trust that the feedback we're getting is the right feedback?
[00:28:57] I know what you're saying, like I only want to use it where I'm an expert. I would then look to my team and say, hey, I want to integrate AI because I want to get out more products this year or I want to get out more episodes. So this week, and I would say, I think you can use it here. Can you try it and tell me what happens?
[00:29:14] There is a store of custom GPTs if you trust the person who made 'em.
[00:29:19] And you mentioned earlier ChatGPT is a great, and it is, and I don't know if I think this will work here, but I use a voice mode of ChatGPT.
[00:29:28] Hello? Can you give me a new idea for a toy?
[00:29:34] Sure. A toy called Juniper's Garden Adventure. It's an interactive playset where kids help Juniper, a friendly forest fairy, cultivate a magical garden. So I literally use this all the time, but two things. First I remember you gave your AI talk last year, and it was very different perception this year than it was last year, and people were talking as you said, but I remember thinking that in five years, people are going to use ChatGPT as much as they use Google search engines, and it's only been one year, people are using ChatGPT even more when they're using Google search engines.
[00:30:07] That was teams that were, the other two months ago were using Wikipedia or something. Are you going to just ask ChatGPT for it? Second thing, I think your talk is bringing together everything we learned this morning between Data and Google's pop up to being different tools for that.
[00:30:23] I think AI compliments that very well. But even this morning, you were keen on speakers talking about it. And I imagine you pitched an idea about, once you start collaborating with the toy company, with the IRT, with the designers, it evolves into something that's seemingly completely different than what was originally pitched.
[00:30:40] And I think AI is the same thing there. Someone's comment earlier, AI can come up with an idea who owns that idea? I don't think it really matters because by the time we came in touch and involved, by the time the toy company, the designers, and the IR teams are involved, it's already evolved into something completely different from what was originally presented to you by a ChatGPT or any of the other AI tools.
[00:31:03] Very true, yes. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Clearly, you've got some great expertise. Yeah! Where do we go from here?
[00:31:12] Yeah, I would recommend trying to play around with building your own GPT. Step one, pay for a pro. It's worth it.
[00:31:19] Build yourself a custom GPT to help you respond to difficult events. And then, when you get a Google email, go to that GPT and give it the email, and say, help me respond to this email. If you build the GPT the right way, you tell it, I want a professional tone in my email responses, I want you to consider my business strategy, it will output something you can use.
[00:31:44] So I would start there.
[00:31:45] we have a question.
[00:31:46] Hi, thanks for the presentation. When you're using Chat GPT or something like mid journey, and you're asking questions, or you're trying to generate a picture, and the picture is just not coming out how you want, and you're trying to enable all the different settings of wording, or you're asking a question, and it's not getting you answers that are adequate, how do you deal with trying to get it on the right track, or dealing with that frustration?
[00:32:10] Two things. I might certainly chat one, because maybe there's like old information in the existing chat that's confusing it two, because I have a design background, I would probably take the image and pull it into Photoshop. And now Photoshop even has integrated AI. So you can, so say you try to derender the bag into mooses, right?
[00:32:29] And I was like, I told you to make the moose purple, and it won't make the purple moose purple. So I would pull it into Photoshop, and then in Photoshop you can select the mooses, Or you can do the old school way and use like the slider and do that. That's what I was doing.
[00:32:44] If you ask if an invention you have that you're thinking about is something that exists, if it doesn't find it, then there's a good chance that no one's come up with it yet. I wouldn't say that. Honestly, there are so many other I would trust a question like that a little bit more to Google Gemini because Google is connected to Google Patents.
[00:33:05] Google Patents Yeah, that's fine. Either one, just using multiple languages. It's, so AI there is a chance it could hallucinate. And I wouldn't be investing $10,000 into an idea before doing my own research and maybe hiring a lawyer to do some patent research for me.
[00:33:19] I've had students pitch me things where I'm like, I saw that, At Holiday Play, which isn't online yet, but I know it's out. So it won't be that up to date. Okay, thank you.
[00:33:29] Okay, so remember when integrating AI processes is key, here's a process again that I explained earlier. Identify the bottleneck in your business.
[00:33:37] Research the type of AI tools you want to use. Is it a chatbot or is it AI integration? Okay. Three is plan. Plan for how you're going to integrate it. Build a little simple flowchart of where you think AI can integrate and when it can replace. Test. Test that concept. Test it three to five times over and over again to make sure it actually works.
[00:33:55] Maybe it's not for idea exploration. Maybe use it for pitch writing, right? Pitch yeah, pitch writing. Fifth step, train your thoughts. Don't be afraid to throw it out the window. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We're not forcing anything. You will lose time doing that. I did. If you want to help create more AI workflow, please feel free to contact me, it's azhelle@thetoycoach.com And thank you guys so much, I'll see you.
[00:34:20] Well, there you have it, toy people. I hope you enjoyed that talk. Again, if you want to learn more about how you can utilize AI in the way that I explained in this talk, head over to thetoycoach. com forward slash learn AI. Or you can go to the toy coach. com slash AI, and it will bring you right to the correct page.
[00:34:44] We also do have a number of other podcast episodes on this topic. So if you want to learn more about AI from me, all you need to do is go to thetoycoach.com/podcast, look for the search bar, and in that search bar, type in AI. That will show you all of the podcast episodes that we've had come out about this topic. Now, AI has changed a lot over the years, so keep in mind that when you search these old episodes, they were created when AI was kind of new, so it won't have all of the latest updates and ways to use the programs. Now, if you were one of the many people I met at ChiTag and who came up to me and said they love this podcast, hello, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast.
[00:35:31] before we close out today's episode, I'd like to read a review from a fellow listener. This review comes from Trace Callie Boy, "I don't know why it took me so long to discover this podcast, but had I been listening to this earlier, I probably could have avoided a lot of mistakes and made more headway more quickly.
[00:35:49] Azhelle's, insights, wit, humor, and charisma exudes throughout each episode. Her guests are Titans in the toy industry. And whether you're new to the industry or a seasoned veteran, there is a lot of information here that's super helpful. It's a very friendly community and Azhelle does a great job of showcasing that with her interviews and insights.
[00:36:09] Don't let her easy demeanor and inquisitive questions fool you. This girl is smart as a whip and the depth of her knowledge about this industry runs extremely deep, much more than she often humbly shows. If you only have time for one podcast each week, this should be the one. It's superb." Oh, thank you so much for that incredible review.
[00:36:29] Now, if you also love this podcast and you haven't already left a review, What are you waiting for? Your reviews are what keeps me motivated to keep coming back a week after week, sharing my industry insights and inviting my friends and people I don't know on this podcast to share their insights with you as well.
[00:36:50] As always, thank you so much for spending your time with me today. I know there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one. Until next week, I'll see you later, toy people.
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