Joe Amaral Of Anthem Software: How We Leveraged AI To Take Our Company To The Next Level

In the ever-evolving and never-ending landscape of business, staying ahead of the curve is a prerequisite for success. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gone from being a futuristic concept to a daily business tool that executives can’t ignore. In this interview series, we would like to talk with business leaders who’ve successfully integrated A.I. into their operations, transforming their companies in the process. I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Amaral.

Joe Amaral, a successful entrepreneur, has founded and led three software and marketing companies. His first two ventures were acquired by private equity firms, seamlessly becoming integral parts of larger organizations. With a proven track record in business development and strategic leadership, Joe continues to make a significant impact in the entrepreneurial landscape.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! To set the stage, tell us briefly about your childhood and background.

I was born and raised in Rhode Island, I have two brothers one older and the other younger. My parents are Portuguese immigrants, so initially Portuguese was my first language. Most of my friends and a good part of the community that I grew up in was Portuguese. The culture, traditions and food were almost all Portuguese. I was a smart student, but not a good one. I learn and retain information quickly so while I scored good grades I didn’t do much of the work. I learned to game the system based on grading criteria. Which usually meant that as long as I did well on quizzes and tests, I didn’t need too much of anything else. At 18 I joined the Navy, that was a huge change from what I was used to. But we can save that for another time.

What were the early challenges you faced in your career, and how did they shape your approach to leadership?

There were many, but learning new things can be a challenge. I love to learn, just not in a modern school room kind of way. But all along the way in life, whether you change disciplines or stay in one for a long time. You have to always be learning, sometimes it’s a new technology that comes along, or other times it is learning to do what you know better or more efficiently. Patience is another. We often think more of ourselves than we really are, and overweight what we know and how we perform to others. This can happen with superiors, you often don’t know or have the same depth of understanding or experience, so it is good to be patient, collect skills and knowledge and wait for your opportunity. Sometimes within your company and sometimes that needs to be elsewhere.

We often learn the most from our mistakes. Can you share one mistake that turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned?

I think making too many assumptions. Often as a manager I would make assumptions that I conveyed expectations well or just assumed people knew what I meant. That often isn’t true, and I have become better at communicating with people. And beyond that not over communicating to the point of micromanaging people. You have to give clear broad expectations of what would count as success and failure, then allow people to use their skills to find solutions.

A.I. is a big leap for many businesses. When and what first sparked your interest in incorporating it into your operations?

In many ways it is tailor made for software and marketing companies. Not only are its uses pretty well aligned but we are the right type of audience to adopt it. When it first arrived we almost immediately were looking for ways to use it. In fact one of my lead programmers and I had been thinking up ways we wanted to incorporate it into what we were doing in 2019. We had a number of other more pressing things that we needed to do, then the pandemic happened. Then during that we had a very generous offer for the company that we couldn’t refuse. With our new company though, we first used it to code check. That was the first simplest use case for AI.

AI can be a game-changer for individuals and their responsibilities. Can you share how you personally use AI and what are your go-to resources or tools?

While I am involved in the development of our software and marketing, I don’t do much of it. However I think my most common use for it is in coming up with various types of content or to do research. I’ll evaluate our SEO or SEM campaigns a look for keywords with low competition in a space or use it to craft a specific sounding paragraph.

On the flip side, what challenges or setbacks have you encountered while implementing A.I. into your company?

It’s a tool like many tools. It’s new it’s flashy, everyone is talking about it and thinking of ways to use it. My caution would be not to rely on it too much. It can be wrong, it also can give you the false sense of having accomplished something on it’s own, when the real benefit is to use it to block and tackle a problem, but then with human experience and knowledge apply it.

Let’s dig into this further. Can you share the top 5 A.I. tools or different ways you’re integrating AI into your business? What specific functions do they serve and what kind of result have you seen so far?

1 . Sonar — It’s a code checking tool. Write cleaner simpler code with less errors. Deployments are faster, less QA, and fewer bugs.

2 . Google Bard — Research, content creation, content rewriting. Often you write something and wished it would. I know people love Chatgpt but we use so many Google products on the marketing side so why not use Bard too. This is generally a good keyword tool, but sometimes it doesn’t want to provide the data to you.

3 . Copymatic — We use this to create social media post content, and various of the short sales content you might use in emails or on various spots on a website.

4 . Surfer SEO — This comes with an AI writer in it, which for long content helps in coming up with the various heading to use in the article. In conjunction with this we may use Bard to find high volume low competition keywords or questions to also use. Then our writers will write the body of the text around those headings.

5. POE — It is a program that is free where you can set up your own bot for specific functions, and when Bard doesn’t want to give you the keywords you want, POE will. We set up a bot for precisely this purpose using Claude.

There’s concern about A.I. taking over jobs. How do you balance A.I. tools with your human workforce and have you already replaced any positions using technology?

No we haven’t replaced anyone because of AI, and I don’t think many companies will in the near term. I think what will happen is workforces will become more efficient and you will need to hire less people over time. In the long run, many services or products that AI interacts with will become cheaper, and therefore the audience size will increase. That will have a counterbalancing effect of requiring more people. There will be some level of equilibrium that will take place, but I think there will be more software programmers 15 years from now not less, just to give a specific position example.

Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon in the world of AI that people should know about? What do you see happening in the next 3–5 years? I would love to hear your best prediction.

The one I just gave I think is a good one. Many industries that are ripe for AI integration will have more employees in 15 years not less, but the product will be cheaper and there will be more users and use cases.

If you had to pick just one AI tool that you feel is essential, one that you haven’t mentioned yet, which would it be and why?

Anything that can better code writing has a huge ROI.

For the uninitiated, what advice would you give someone looking to integrate AI into their business and doesn’t know where to start?

The broadest use for it would be in writing or research. Think of anything you do that has to do with those two things, and just start playing around with whatever product makes sense for your organization. The exercise of asking it questions will spur on more ideas and ways it can help.

Where can our readers follow you to learn more about leveraging A.I. in the business world?

LinkedIn, I don’t always share on that platform but I plan on sharing what I think are simple ways we have integrated into our business and some of the results in efficiency, better performance, and error reduction it has produced.

This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!

About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator, and launched and leads an online leadership development community which can be downloaded for free for iOS and Android.