[00:22] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Thanks for tuning in to this special best-of episode, where we’ll take a look back at some of our favorite moments from previous conversations. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their dream 200 relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways. Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability, and full execution and production number two. We are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners, and prospects. Simple, seamless, and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff, from a culture perspective. All you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up with and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there, from gift selection to the card to your branding on the box.
We call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it as stress-free as possible for companies, so they can build relationships and run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I am always looking at how to give to my best relationships. And I’ve found no better way over the past decade than having them on my podcast, featuring what they are working on and sharing it with the world, and also sending delicious treats in the mail every few months for years. If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at support@rise25.com or go to Rise25.com to learn more. Now let’s look back at some of our favorite moments from past conversations. I’m excited. This is part of our Top Resources series, and we’re going to geek out. Today I have Ghazenfer Mansoor of Technology Rivers. I’m going to formally introduce you because I’m here in a second. But when we talk about technology, we’re going to talk about tools, software, apps, possibly books, and some of his favorites of all time. Before we get into that, I just want to introduce Ghazenfer Mansoor, who is the CEO of Technology Rivers and Technology Rivers is a software development firm specializing in AI-powered solutions. So think SaaS, product development, healthcare technology, and they help startups and service-based businesses streamline operations, automate processes, and scale through smart, efficient software. Okay. And he’s also the author of Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps That People Love, Use, and Share Every Day. And he shares insights on innovation, growth strategy, building technology because. Ghazenfer, thanks for joining me.
[03:12] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me, Jeremy.
[03:14] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Before we get into the app, software tools, I know you have a lot. Let’s just just share with people what Technology Rivers does. And I’ll pull up the website.
[03:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks. So you pretty much explained most of it. So I’ll dig in a little bit more in a healthcare part, because that’s where majority of our focus is for healthcare software development company helping health tech companies, physician entrepreneurs, people in the health tech space, building HIPAA compliant software products, workflow automation, healthcare space is very important and creating AI agents for the healthcare space.
[03:51] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So why healthcare? How did you get into healthcare?
[03:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So I started this business in 2015. Our second customer was the health tech company of Baltimore, and that’s how we got into healthcare. So, you know, like from one project to another one, you get a referral. So along the way, we started one project with a startup, which was Hopkins Funded, and that’s where we learned HIPAA. And then we started building HIPAA compliant software. So now more and more referrals come for HIPAA. So now we have done more than 50 different applications web and mobile, and about half of them are HIPAA compliant. And that’s one of the main things people look for. And it’s a big deal in healthcare.
[04:38] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: You need that security of people’s data.
[04:42] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Oh, absolutely. And that’s a very important point that you raise the security of data a lot for personal health information and a lot of sensitive data that people are not willing to share with AI. And the worry is that if you upload it, obviously LLMs can use that for training. So there are strategies that you could use. And that’s where we specialize in working on private sensitive data. And how do you use those strategies like RAG architectures and retrieval augmented generation, where you store all of your internal data into a vector database, tokenize it and use that to filter. And then AI is just helping to summarize that. So those are the strategies that we use. And along with obviously having the LLM sidebar so that they commit from zero data retention and not using the data for training. So you have to know those strategies in order to build the application for healthcare. Otherwise if you build it and you’re liable for a huge compliance risk.
[05:51] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. And we’re going to get into your tech stack recommendations since we are on the apps and software topic. I’m going to go to your work page. This is one, you know, we had a couple that stuck out, which was a therapy app. There’s a lot more. But I’m just curious generally because I mentioned your book. Right. What are some mistakes people make because you said apps that people love and use. What are some mistakes companies make that hinder using it and loving it? Some of the things that you build into your applications.
[06:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So loving with the technology and thinking from what you want versus what the customers want. So I could build something amazing that I think is great, but are my customers going to use it? I think both of us probably remember what Craigslist was—the Craigslist. Do you remember that?
[07:02] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Oh of course. Yeah.
[07:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Okay. So what was the UI for that? Probably terrible. But what was the most.
[07:09] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I mean. It’s just simple. Right?
[07:12] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But that was the most usable software at that time when it was so many times it’s not about what we want. It’s like there were a lot of people who built good looking tools that didn’t solve the problem. So solving what the customer wanted, building something that customers want to use.
[07:31] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Let’s pull it up. We all like now, right? Yeah. So it’s just so super simple.
[07:37] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s still the same. Yeah.
[07:38] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.
[07:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So we have so many apps downloaded on our phone. How many do we use every day? So there are a few that you keep coming back to every single day because those are necessarily your email, your text messaging, your WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, all of those. But then there are a few that you may use occasionally for a work reason, but then you forget those. Like there are so many apps that I can’t even count how many apps I have downloaded at one time, for one reason or another. And then I never went back. So you want to build something that people use, so you have to follow those retention strategies.
[08:21] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I’m curious, you know, to build something that customers will use and like, are you when you come out with a technology or before, what’s your process look like? Are you having actual users test it? You know, before? Are you getting feedback from them? What’s the process look like to ensure that it’s customer or client friendly?
[08:45] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So there are a combination of things. So in the book I shared about 32 different strategies that could be used. And each has its own weightage. Every application is different. Every type of customer is different. If you’re building something for senior citizens versus kids versus women only versus working professionals, they all have different habits of using these different gadgets. So you have to look at all those considerations. Who are you building for? And that’s where that discovery part comes in first. Who are you building for and what are you building for? Another big mistake people make is building a lot of features. So you make applications so complicated. Oh, there’s another app you want to do better than that with a lower cost. That’s a common theme I hear from that. And those apps rarely get traction because people are not looking for another app with 50 different features. Many times you can pick one feature, one use case that solves the problem, and that’s the only one that would get you the traction. You can always add up more later on, but you want to start with one core use case that is a unique need that those customers need. You acquire them based on that and then start getting the feedback. So there are ways of getting the feedback before you build the app, and there are ways of getting the feedback once you build the app. Because once you have then there are chapters on tracking, like how do you really track and measure? And then based on that, do the learning and improve your app based on that.
[10:31] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So what are ways people should get feedback before. How would they get feedback before? What are your recommendations?
[10:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, a lot of those—I would say a lot of those.
[10:43] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: By the way, I’m going to pull this up as you’re talking because here’s the book. So you can check it out right at https://www.google.com/search?q=beyondthetechnology.com. And then, you know, here’s the URL. But Beyond the Download here. So yeah.
[10:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So and it’s also on my personal website. It’s also on my personal website https://www.google.com/search?q=Ghazenfer.com you can also get that on there. Yeah, yeah. So yeah.
[11:08] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.
[11:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, just a lot of those strategies were there for some time. It says, “Are you building those?” Are you implementing some of those? And they were all over. The difference in the mobile versus the web is you could embed a lot of those strategies afterwards. So, you know, let’s say this is the website. And today you want to add some feedback widget. You just drop JavaScript on your website. You don’t have to rebuild on mobile. A lot of times you have to build inside the app so that you have—it’s part of the experience. It’s not that you are just dropping, it’s not another web. You can build those apps as well, but they may not have a better experience. So there are certain things you can do. You can send a push notification later on, but there are certain things you still need to embed inside that. So that’s a key part, key differentiator in the mobile apps that whatever your strategies are, if they are inherent in the app, they’ll give you a better experience again. And that experience is the one that keeps users on the app.
[12:12] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, this is great. If you’re looking at the page, we’re here on your website and we can see, you know, we could go, we could talk for hours probably on each one of these. Right. I mean, if we’re looking at retention hacks, partnership power, leveraging influencers, app store optimization. So if you’re interested in this stuff you can go to the website and download the book. Right. Is there an audio version?
[12:36] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Because it will be okay.
[12:39] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Good. Because I listen to Audible. So I want to make sure that there is so I can actually buy it and listen to it. Selfishly. This is great. People can check this out. Now talk about some of your tech stack that you use as a company, and maybe some of your favorite apps and software?
[12:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, it’s a big list of things and the majority of them are used by my team. Obviously I use Zoom, Slack, ChatGPT, and Claude. I’m a heavy user of these, so I use a much deeper ChatGPT than the GPT. So yeah, those are the main ones. But then we use Canva in our business, we use Adobe tools, we have WordPress for our website, and a lot of tools for creating different voices and images. We use Descript. I think there’s a big list of tools that we’re using on the development side. We use Jira, we use GitHub, we use Cursor, which is.
[13:51] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I’ve heard a lot of things about Cursor.
[13:52] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The Cursor is really good. My team loves it. Because it’s embedded inside the IDE and the instructions, it’s aware of the context. So the instructions given to Cursor have a much better response than if you’re using other tools.
[14:09] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What about on your phone? Like are there any personal apps or maybe I’m sure all these have, you know, you’re using on your phone. Some people use ChatGPT on the phone, but any personal productivity or health apps that you like to use.
[14:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I use Apple Health every single day. Because the first thing in the morning, after I wake up and look at how much sleep I had. I’m tracking my.
[14:33] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What’s your goal of how much sleep do you want tonight?
[14:36] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I want eight hours, but I’m not getting that as much.
[14:41] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Sometimes it’s a tough one.
[14:44] | Ghazenfer Mansoor: That’s true. And then. No. Yeah. Sorry. You were asking about the absolute notion. Another one on my phone, even though I use a desktop as well. But it’s handy. I’m at any conference everywhere that helped me get those quick, quick notes. Obviously Spotify for my music while walking. And another one I mean, we can talk later on as well as the Blinkist for my book reading because it gives you a summary of books.
[15:15] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What is it called?
[15:16] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Blinkist.
[15:19] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I’ve heard good things. I’ve never used it.
[15:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It gives.
[15:23] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Is it audio and reading or is it just one or the other?
[15:26] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Both audio and reading. So it moves the cursor along the way. So you could do both, but some people prefer.
[15:34] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So is that a competitor Audible or just a different function?
[15:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Audible is probably a full book.
[15:44] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Blinkist they’re all summaries?
[15:45] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Summaries only. Only summaries. And you only pay the app subscription. You don’t pay per book an audible you pay, I mean, based on your plan.
[15:56] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Well, you sold me. I’m going to get it. Thank you. Yeah, I’m a big audible person. What about, like, I know you mentioned you use ChatGPT and Claude. Are there any interesting use cases of how you’re using each of those personally or business-wise?
[16:14]| Ghazenfer Mansoor: So the main use case is using the projects. So this is where we load different assets. And each of those projects. Now the chats inside those projects already know. So, for example, in Claude, I have an instruction set. And I just gave, for example, just a company name. I said Rise25. I’ll go to my email, look at all the last whatever the number I’ve told, like 5–10 emails, it will go to Google Drive, and look at all the files that were shared, and it will generate a proposal based on a different template. So with one word, it can generate a proposal.
Obviously, we’re expanding it to generate more deeply. So that you could have even a specific type of proposal created. We still have to. But if it gives you 80%, that’s still a big achievement. And then we use for example, even WordPress, we use MCP just like you have a blog that’s in a Google doc. Now you use AI to convert that into text because it messes up the formatting. And then with MCP, you just push us into, oh, sorry, I’ve just went into that. It’s called MCP, which is a model context protocol. It’s by Anthropic. It is a new standard. So it’s like an API for AI. So anything in the past, like you build a software, you have an.
[17:47] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: It connects, then? MCP, you said it connects WordPress to what?
[17:51] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So okay. So, MCP would expose any software that is charitable by AI like Claude and MC. Now open ChatGPT also exposes that. So let- stay with Claude for now. So I have a WordPress MCP. So in Claude I can on my desktop. Once I connect with the WordPress MCP, I can give instructions. I say, well, give me a list of blogs that are in edited shape or change this thing. I can just give instructions. It can change metadata, everything. Right from there I can connect my, for example, QuickBooks, and I just query how much subscription software I have paid for this year. I don’t need to open those software. So it’s about querying all the different software from my cloud desktop.
[18:38] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Got it.
[18:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s an API for AI. That’s how you expose your API.
[18:42] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So is it true? You said Anthropic or is that what it is connected through?
[18:47] Ghazenfer Mansoor: It’s a protocol, but Anthropic is the one that came up with.
[18:51] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I mean, Anthropic. Are you? I’m just trying to visualize. Are you? Are you on Anthropic? And then you’re connecting QuickBooks to Anthropic and then giving commands?
[19:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yes. If you are, if you’re on, if you’re on Claude when you chat. There’s an icon there you click. If you go to Claude Desktop. If you like, click on Try Claude.
[19:23] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Oh God yeah yeah yeah. You just walk me through it just so you could go through Claude here through Anthropic.
[19:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Do you have Claude Desktop on your computer?
[19:35] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So that’s why I don’t want to.
[19:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Okay.
[19:39] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Take the time. But I get what you’re saying. You have to, like, basically like.
[19:44] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Or if you go to ChatGPT, I can show you.
[19:47] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. No. Go ahead. You can just. I just want to get an overall sense so people know, okay, you go to Anthropic and then you click on whatever you’re using. And then you can actually talk through it to connect it and pull in data from wherever you’ve connected it to. Is that the general sense?
[20:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So when you plot desktop where you’re adding where you say add files, you know how to upload in the ChatGPT just at the same place it’s called it and connectors. And then you can connect with your Google Drive notion email whichever way you want to search. And then whenever you are searching or you’re giving a prompt, the source is not the public web. It’s actually your data.
[20:30] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So that’s cool.
[20:31] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You can connect Google Drive and it’ll give you all the answers from your Google Drive because it’s now querying your data.
[20:39] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: That’s cool. I mean, I don’t think it’s quite like Zapier for AI tools, but it is a connector. And it.
[20:49] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Like a Zapier because when you connect it, you configure which one you want to expose? What data? So yes. So Zapier is for, I would say just the regular software. This is for AI. So nowadays it’s becoming more of a new standard. Any new software that you build, you build an MCP server as well. You expose it as MCP so that anybody can query those things. For example, in JIRA, we use it for project management. I can just let’s say Claude, I can let’s say I generate some mockups in Claude. I just give a path to push to JIRA like it will add it to my JIRA, or it will add to a specific ticket, and I can get a list of tickets and I can update the status of those directly. Just like how you do in Slack, you have a Slack connector. You could do different instructions. You could do the same thing in Claude, but a lot more broader, because now it’s giving you more free hand. It’s more like you’re doing it like a prompt.
[21:50] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I see it makes it easier to brainstorm and then actually execute, because if you’re just brainstorming in one. And for people who don’t know JIRA, I mean people use Monday, they use Clickup, they use Asana. There’s a million project management software out there, but like I could see, it allows you to brainstorm and then then it just can die on the vine there. Okay, this is great. But then pushing it to a project management tool, assigning to someone actually getting it done is another story. And that’s what you’re using it for. Yeah, yeah, this is a great Ghazenfer. See what’s normal to you. And natural is not normal to me or someone else. So I love digging into this a little bit.
[22:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. And so talk about books for a second. Right. I don’t know if there’s any other AI tools you want to mention before we get to books, because, I mean, it seems like obviously you’re using Claude and you’re using ChatGPT and Anthropic to connect things. Or any other, you know, tools that you’re using in Cursor. Obviously, any other AI tools that people should check out?
[22:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: No, I think those are the main ones. On top of that, like we’re using two so many, it’ll just be maybe.
[23:02] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Exactly.
[23:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Stuff people may already know.
[23:06] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What are some books? It could be through Blinkist or whatever with some of your favorite books, business books, nonfiction, leadership books?
[23:16] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So one of my favorites is Who Not How by Dan Sullivan.
[23:23] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: That’s Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. Yeah, that’s a good one.
[23:26] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Another one. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. That’s another good one there. My all-time favorite is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence Others. That’s my graduation gift for anybody who graduates, I’d give them this book.
[23:44] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I agree. You know, I, I don’t know if this is bad or good, but I definitely bribed my daughters to read it because I thought it was so important. So, you know, if I’m like, if I had that book when I was ten, that’d be so impactful and obviously like rereading it. So I, I wholeheartedly agree with that one for sure.
[24:08] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And then another one that I use for, I mean, I give it to all the youngsters is Getting Things Done
[24:18] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: David Allen, yep. I have had him on the podcast. That was a good episode. People could check that out.
[24:25] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, I have a big list of. I mean, I have a whole library behind me. I have a difference.
[24:33] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Some more off. It’s always good resources, and could change someone’s life. Right.
[24:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And so I’m a big book reader. And then I actually listen to that. So I follow the tips. So for example, the books What’s The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome by Jack Stack. That’s one of the ones like one of my partnership agreements that was based on tips from that book. And let’s see The One Thing by I forgot who’s the author. The One Thing.
[25:08] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, I’ve had him on the podcast. Jay Papasan, he’s the co-author of The One Thing, and the other guy was the I think I was the was he the founder of Remax or something?
[25:24] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I’m horrible in people’s name. I remember that.
[25:28] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, I’m horrible in.
[25:30] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Garry Keller and Jay Papasan. Yeah. The One Thing that’s a great one.
[25:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: That helped me focus a lot more because from that point onward, I started thinking about that. Oh yeah. My. Another big favorite is this is a really good business for anybody on the sales and marketing side. They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. That’s one of the good books as well that gives you good tips on. I recently read books from Alex Hormozi, $100M Offers, $100M Leads. And there’s the third one, $100M Money Models. That’s the next version. A new version came.
[26:25] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: It’s on me to read that.
[26:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: During my.
[26:31] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Didn’t he have a webinar that was like six hours or something? I can’t remember, you know what I’m talking about.
[26:37] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Alex Hormozi I did not attend that. I know they have a workshop. That is a multi-day.
[26:44] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, but. It’s on my list. Like people were raving. I think he sold lots of books and things through that webinar. And so I’ve been meaning to check it out. So those.
[26:55] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I read that during Christmas break.
[26:58] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Okay. Nice.
[26:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And then another book that I read recently, I think she was one of the speakers at one of the EO events, Brand Chemistry by Laura, about her last name.
[27:13] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I’ll look it up as you’re talking about the next one.
[27:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. That’s another favorite one.
[27:26] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Here it is. Yep. Brand Chemistry. All right, I’ll check it out. So last question, because first of all, thank you. Everyone can check out his personal site. You can see it here https://www.google.com/search?q=Ghazenfer.com. You can check out TechnologyRivers.com. The last question is just some mentor, like a mentor of yours or colleague that’s given you a good piece of advice that sticks out to you.
[27:59] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Oh it’s the hard one. I think there are so many people in my circle. My friends. My. Yeah, there are so many mentors. It’s going to be hard to say the name. I think actually one of the latest tip, I’ve been listening to Dan Martell lately, so a lot of his advisors are actually his books. Buy Back Your Time is also one of my favorite ones.
[28:28] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah, he also I don’t know if he still runs it, but SaaS Academy, you know, which is right up your alley with software and people creating software and apps and things like that too.
[28:39] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah, I don’t know if he still runs that, but yes, you’re right.
[28:42] Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. That’s great. I mean, yeah, there’s so many mentors. I consider them distant mentors, like all the books you mentioned or personal mentors. And, you know, we’re both members of EO and that’s been a great group just to, you know, get different life lessons and, you know, experience shares through other entrepreneurs. So because I just want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and some of these great tools with all of us. And we’ll see everyone next time. Thanks so much.
[29:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thank you.
[29:18] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me.