Episode Transcript
Aaron Crow (00:01.73)
Yo, what's up, man? Let's dig in and start talking about some fun AI stuff. How's it going?
Neal Conlon (00:07.548)
Yeah, let's do it, brother. Good to see you.
Aaron Crow (00:09.646)
You too man. All right. So Neil, obviously some people are going to know some people not. So why don't you start out with who is Neil Conlon? Um, what, what are we talking about today and why are we, um, authority, you know, authorized quote unquote to, talk about something like this? Like what is our background that gives us the, the right to have these types of conversations.
Neal Conlon (00:28.88)
Yeah, we decided to make this video after the conversations we've had over the past couple of weeks about like literally everywhere you go on the internet, you can't help but find AI this, self-driving cars, robots delivering coffee, robot dogs, jet skis that look like horses, that people are going to be riding soon and
And we just keep talking about all these AI things, but because of the background that you and I have, I go back to, and I just posted this yesterday, like in 2015, I got interviewed for a company called Creative Drive, and we were talking about a lot of the AI things that are now public knowledge were a lot of the projects that we were working on back then. Now they weren't as cool.
but basically doing the same things. Now we're just seeing the implementation from it. And even before that, I worked at an algorithm trading company and I was responsible for documenting the systems of the like, what they used to call the inner sanctum in a thing called supernaturals, which is actually kind of funny. But lots of algorithms and algorithmic things. And now we're just seeing this.
crazy evolution where like every single week the code is getting so good, it's super hard to keep up with it unless you're working through really focusing time, effort, resources. And that's what you and I have been doing for the past couple
Aaron Crow (02:09.493)
Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, I've been in technology for basically my entire career. I've had a couple of tangential things from real estate and other things that I've done along the way. But for the most part, I've been in technology since, you know, even before I graduated high school, I was, actually had my first job in tech, you know, implementing the library from, know, the old Dewey decimal, you know, card thing into having a barcode scanner and putting barcodes and all the fricking, books. And this was back in that, you know, the late nineties. So.
You know that that's how long I've been playing, you know, even professionally with this stuff. But you know, to your point, like the biggest thing that we're seeing is, is even in the tech space. So obviously we, we, you know, spend a lot of time and effort in the, in this tech space, but even in people that are super on the bleeding edge of technology are still struggling to figure out how to use AI. Like they see value in it. Everybody's talking about it. We just got back from multiple conferences where
You know, every product has an AI tagline. They're doing AI of some kind. They're adding value with AI or something. But even with that, it's still the big picture of the value, the value prop, the benefit over the risk, the benefit over the understanding implementation, you know, all that type of stuff is just, that's where people struggle. So, so, so many folks are like, I don't want to talk about AI right now. I don't know how to use it. I have so many risks and concerns.
And this is the same that we've seen across every, you know, renovation from, from, you know, cloud technology, know, when cloud started first coming out, nobody wanted their stuff in the cloud. I'd rather have my stuff on prem. You know, I'd rather have my own data center, you know, all this type of stuff. And then now, now we look at it, everything's in the cloud, right? other than, know, specifically OT and, and, know, critical infrastructure, things like that. But even that is not, eventually I can see it where it's going to go there. A lot of my haters, a lot of people are going to say that's awful. It'll never do that.
But I hate saying the word never, because I think it'll come around. So where you and I have been really focused on is how do we show value? How do we use, you know, I work in consulting and internally, you how do we benefit from these types of things and automate some of this stuff where I don't have to, five years ago, or even last year, Neil, you probably, if you had work you didn't want to do, you probably hired a VA, right?
Neal Conlon (04:28.742)
Totally, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Crow (04:30.345)
So with that, how can I, instead of having to hire a VA, which VA's are obviously cheaper than hiring a full-time employee, that kind of thing, but what if I could replace that VA's work with something I train a bot to do, right? And then I have an exponential amount of workers that I can train for a specific task. I've got one person that's looking at my emails, I've got one person that's looking at my calendars, person being bought. I've got one thing that's looking at,
you know, the response from clients, I've got something emailing clients, like there's all these different things that I can start training these bots super specific and starting out at simple tasks. And then all of those things can then grow into something, just like if I was going to hire a VA, the process is when you first hire that at VA, you train them to do something very specific. And then once they get good at that, maybe you start adding on more complex capabilities as they get good at that. Then you can expand their, their, their scope so they can do more and more for you. But you don't start out with just.
handing the keys to your business to a VA you just met and have no training on and they don't know what you're doing. Like you want them to be able to show up like you. Like for the customer, they should never know that the VA is responding. It should just look like it's coming from Neil. And that's what we can do with AI, right?
Neal Conlon (05:42.322)
I think, you know, I'll give you like there's three examples that come up for me that are pretty relevant for just about anybody. The first one is, like to your point around somebody who's like, I don't think AI is going to take over or do the things or whatever. Right. You heard me say this story last week. But, you know, a month ago I was in San Francisco, downtown San Francisco and
You know, I pulled up, you know, in an Uber to the red light and a self-driving car like pulls up next to the Uber driver and the Uber driver looks over at the Waymo and then like literally in that moment, he's looking at his future. Right. And now it's interesting to internalize that for a minute because
If you're the Uber driver and you literally see what's coming, how much longer can you actually afford to drive an Uber before Uber replaces you with nobody because it's cheaper, better, more efficient, whatever the value proposition is. And then the Uber driver blames the economy, the robot, whatever the thing is, where there is this kind of natural evolution going on.
that people need to be aware of that every business, every blue collar business, every technical business, every consulting business, every business is going to be edited with this kind of AI evolution because it just makes sense. And here's the example of that, right? Years ago, again, going back a bunch of years ago, I worked on the program that turned into the chat bot being implemented into Chubb Insurance.
And for anybody who remembers, there used to be a point where if you wanted to update your insurance in any way, shape or form, you had to talk to a human. But then little by little, they launched like, if all you need to do is hit the renewal button, or all you need to do is update your date of birth or update your spouse's information or you added a kid, all those things are actually processes.
Neal Conlon (08:04.678)
that don't require a human to like talk to you for 15 minutes on how to do it. Right. So so we literally implemented little by little to be like which pieces of these things are just boring mundane tasks that we shouldn't be paying someone to do anyway. And now that's evolved over time into auto paying for bills and all kinds of stuff which in some way shape or form are using a machine learning mechanism to kind of do the thing. Right. And then the third one
which is really funny, but is about the adoption of it is I have a coaching client who I was teaching, you know, basic AI practices for, you know, and this is where like people really struggle with this is basically he was spending about 10 or 12 hours of his week doing proposals for his clients. And he got so backlogged on doing these proposals that the only reason why he wasn't making the level of
for the company level of revenue for the company that he wanted to make it was because he was getting sandbagged on the proposals because they're very intricate long proposals to do. And so I taught him over a series of weeks how to use chat GBT and a couple other tools to streamline that process. And a couple of weeks later, he comes back to me goes, Neil, this is amazing. I was able to get eight hours back in my week doing the proposals.
It only took me two hours to do the proposals. Amazing. And so I said to him, said, but what did you do with the other eight hours that you got back? And he couldn't tell me what that was. And so there's this big shift that has to go on in like real, like ROI of AI in that once you make the customer service bot do the thing, once you're bet the onboarding system gets better.
Once the lead generation is generating leads, once the customer's converting, whatever the system and process is, you're going to naturally get time back in your day. And then it's about filling that time with more value added tasks, which I think is really challenging for some people because it requires your mindset to shift a little bit differently.
Aaron Crow (10:23.779)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and, and, you know, I can already hear the people from the peanut gallery screaming, dude, I've got more work than I can do in the time in the hours of the day that I have. And I'm running from the time that I wake up until the time I'm going to bed and I still can't get them all done. Right. So this helps with that too. Right. you know, the, startup founder that's bootstrapping and they're, they're the, the, technologists and they're the, you know, they're, they're managing sales or managing marketing. They're managing.
you know, customer outreach, they're managing the sales process, they're doing all of those things. The problem is, is they're doing all those things poorly because they're not able to actually be excellent in any of those things because they can't focus on it. So what I hear you saying there is that what happens if I, if I took some of those, those disks or those balls that you have in the air off your plate.
And you were able to focus on as the founder, you were able to focus on the tech and you didn't have to worry. Not that you don't have to worry about it, but you're not having to do all of the outreach for your email. You don't have to have, you don't have to schedule every call. Somebody's looking a bot, something is looking for. And traditionally the way you've done that is you build up and you start hiring staff and you hire a.
you know, an assistant, you hire a salesperson, you hire a marketing person, you hire a, you know, a CTO, like you're hiring all these people and you're going more, all companies, nobody's saying that we're going to be able to just replace your marketing person, your CTO. That's all we're saying. What we're saying is you can potentially maybe spread that, like push that can down the road and get some of the smaller tasks to free up enough of your time where you can be better at the tech. And also your sales will continue to increase because
The bot is spending more time on those things. So all things are better. Eventually, you're still gonna have to hire a salesperson. You're gonna have to hire a CRO. You're gonna have to hire a CMO. All those things are true. But that doesn't negate or disvalue the ability for AI to make things more efficient. And that's what we're really talking about. We've been doing automation for decades, for multiple decades, right?
Aaron Crow (12:28.155)
All the way back to Henry Ford and automating the assembly line, right? And having that process. And since then we've gone into, you know, robotics and all this different type of stuff. This is not new. We're just translating that to simpler tasks, using things that are super effective. Like most of that stuff is super expensive and complex to make work and automate. Now it's getting to be because AI can learn like a person. I can teach it very simple tasks, like a kindergartner or a, you know, an entry level person.
and I can give them these tasks and they can actually do it and repeat it, especially if it's a simple, repetitive, I'm doing the same thing all the time. I'm asking the same 10 questions and whatever the questions are, it's an if then. If they answer this, then do this. If they answer this, then do that. There's no reason you can't train a bot to do those simple tasks and then hand it off to a person to do the final steps.
Neal Conlon (13:19.378)
Well, that's why it requires a different mindset shift, right? That's the biggest thing. And one of things I love about whenever you and I talk about these different topics, because of your tech heavy background and my sales heavy background, what's interesting about all this tech coming out now is there used to be a separation of church and state between use cases and business cases. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges is
There's lots of people playing around with ChatGBT and Grok and all that other thing. But if you turn around and you go, know, hey, ChatGBT, create for me 30 days of social media content. You know, give me the captions, give me the pictures. Somebody's probably, about half the people I think that do that will actually post to social media for 30 days. And then at the end of it, they're gonna be like, meh, it didn't work the way that I thought it was gonna work.
Right? And that's because they're now, you start to really execute on things, you are kind of forced to like learn, like maybe your brand isn't as strong as you thought it was. You know, maybe the pillars that you've built your brand, like it's foundational, right? Really, that's what it's really cool about it. If you have the mindset for it is it really does shine a bright light on the foundation of.
Maybe the market that you thought was so big isn't as big as you thought it was for this. Maybe the sales cycle's a lot longer than you thought it was. And oftentimes when I'm taking people through an audit, right, is if we really, this is why I always say to people, before you have an emotional problem, you have a math problem, if we break down,
you know, your ideal customer profile by the length of the the sale cycle, by the cost of acquisition of a customer, by the number of impressions and a couple other variables in that. And we see that it's going to take you much longer to close clients than you thought. And you don't have that cash in the bank. That's the challenge. think a lot of people go through. And the other thing I'll add here is, you know, if you want to build a cash business,
Neal Conlon (15:42.674)
and that cash business is built to sustain your lifestyle. I'm all for that. But what I find over and over again is many, many businesses, like 85 % of businesses that I've ever worked with, startup, even the enterprise, all forms, they just don't have the exit game clear to them. Like they don't know that they want to sell the business.
They don't know that they want to have it acquired. They don't know that they want to have it bought by an enterprise company. And then when you get up and start having to value the company's EBITDA, you realize that you built a company that is probably doing very well, probably very profitable, doing great things, but suddenly your EBITDA is way below what you thought it was. And that becomes a prime example of like, if you could add several
Aaron Crow (16:17.136)
All right.
Neal Conlon (16:40.37)
copilots, agentic AIs, systems into place, you could really significantly increase the value of your business simply by architecting in a way that it's reorganized so that you're using AI systems instead of paper pushing, maybe even people, or just antiquated systems.
Aaron Crow (17:03.652)
Yeah. And, and the, the, the, the stuff of this that is really exciting for me, right? I don't see, I don't think AI is at a place yet, that I'm willing to just turn everything of my business, you know, my, my client's businesses, anything like that over to it. Right. But the cool thing for me is, is where does it fit?
Again, going back to what we saw, you know, RSA, black cats coming up pretty soon. You know, we've gone to all these places and then there's all these products and all these products. Again, like I said, they all have AI, but they're all their own thing. So you've got the, you know, the sales thing and you've got the technology thing. One thing's doing patching, one thing's doing, you know, whatever the thing it is that it's doing. Right. The cool thing with this is how do I tie all that stuff together? Cause most companies are at this place where they've got a.
tech stack of tools that do different use cases. But finding the big picture, what, and pulling all of that stuff together is a problem that most of these companies have. Like some things they have API integrations and they can tie product A into product B and really be able to understand it. But when you're looking at AI and these automations, how can I use AI? Because right now I have to have a person look at it and say, if...
product a has this thing that it sees. I want it. Then I want to send that as an input into product B and when product B gets it, then I want to do X, Y, Z. Then I want to send, if it sees this, then I want to go to product C all that kind of stuff. Right? Those are, that's the excite. One of the entry level use cases that I love about AI and this automation stuff is you can do that today with existing products, with existing tech stack. So you're not having to go into places and just rip and replace. If you have a CRM, great.
Like, well, how can you enhance it and make it work better for you? We're not talking about replacing rip and replacing everything. Cause that's the biggest thing is, is there may be a better CRM than the one you have, but the best CRM is the one you use. And it's better to use the one you have than rip out a new one because it has five extra features when you're not even fully utilizing the one that you currently are using and the features that it has. So it doesn't matter that the new one has better features.
Aaron Crow (19:19.118)
You're not even using the existing one to its full capability. And how can AI and this automation help you get the most benefit out of the one you have? Then you can decide down the road if I should go to a different one, but that's, that's like 10 steps down the road when I just want to get the most out of the products and the capabilities that I currently have with the staff I have, with the tools that I have, with the resources I have, with the niche that I have, like all that kind of stuff. And that's where I'm super excited about AI being able to step in and level up almost any company from an HVAC company.
to a Fortune 50 company, to a startup, to a company that's got D-level funding. It doesn't matter. In everything in between, there is value to find the gaps where you're struggling and allow AI and automation to come in and help make these things more efficient to clear up and improve your EBITDA, improve your ROI on this. And that's where it really gets exciting.
Neal Conlon (20:13.17)
It's funny because I think there's something to the human condition of like you give us a tool, like it takes a whole lot of more effort, right? To master the tool than it does to like think about what's possible. Like I've been through it myself. It's like, you I write, you know, you and I have done this together. We write these now very, what I would call complex prompts that make
many, many things happen, you know, and you and I have become very good at like wanting to master the prompts. And so we're putting the prompts in spreadsheets and we're auditing, you know, and coming up with scenarios and even like, I mean, on my social media, you know, my, my virtual assistant, one of my virtual assistants is, you know, all they do is really the posting of the content, a little bit of design work.
But like we're posting, you know, 25 pieces of content a day because we've mastered how to post 25 pieces of content a day across multiple, you know, channels where that used to take hours. Now it takes, you know, 30 minutes a day. And, you know, it's those things that people don't recognize that, you know, if you, if
If you wanted somebody to create 40 90 second videos for you, there's people that charge thousands of dollars a month for that. And there's an AI that can create 40 videos in 40 minutes for you. If you're willing to sit there and go through it, if you're willing to have a script, if you're willing to have a plan, if...
And people don't realize that I think what's really powerful about AI tools is the things that AI has become really good at is never going to be really the thing that humans are really good at. It's just a matter of we're used to being compensated for our time for being able to do a thing that is not innate to us. Like even somebody writing a book.
Neal Conlon (22:33.266)
Right? There are tons and millions of really, really great stories out there, but the ability for, you know, every year this is going on now where like a new kind of writing a book comes out, you know, like a new personal development hero's journey comes out. Next thing you know, Tony Robbins has his, Mel Robbins has hers, Brendan Bouchard has her, and suddenly there's 150 books written in a way that they've Netflixed it.
and know that if they write a book in this pattern, which is again, is an AI mechanism that it will sell well. And so it's an interesting thing because there's an adoption that has to go on to be like, even the first time I got into a Waymo, I was like, whoa, like there's nobody in here, but there's no smelly driver. There's no conversation that I didn't ask for. There's the seats are clean.
It's a luxury car. It drives really well. It doesn't hit the brakes hard in a stoplight. so like, do we really need to be driving cars to get from point A to point B? Some people are gonna like it and some people wanna be in that control. But if I could be guaranteed to be in back of the car on phone calls, working, talking to people, doing what I love to do.
and I don't need to worry about when and where I get there. I don't know, I'm in.
Aaron Crow (24:03.876)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna make a, you know, a bold prediction, which I really honestly don't even think is that bold. I think a lot of people don't want to hear it, but in every industry, and again, I don't care if you're, you know, the jujitsu gym down the street, or you're the HVAC company that has nothing to do with technology, that, you know, or you're the nail salon, the companies that adopt AI and figure out how to integrate it into their business processes.
are going to overtake their competitors. Bar none, they'll leave them in the dust.
Neal Conlon (24:38.738)
100 % like like I heard a podcast the other day. I forget who's saying it but they articulated that really really well. It's like I like your example HVAC or plumbing company. Let's just say they're writing one blog a week Right and they pay somebody 60 70 thousand dollars a year to be their marketing coordinator and they write one one or two blogs a week. They set it up
They post a couple of social media things, or maybe they just put together the company flyer, you know, like, and that person's, you know, making 60, $70,000 a So the company's paying $100,000 a year, including benefits and everything else.
You train a chat GBT on your company, you train them on your ideal customer profile, you train them on the pain points of your customer, and then you say in 30 minutes, write me out a content strategy for the entire year. Create for me the first 12 blogs, create for me the 12 social media posts a month, and create for me six other things.
For $32 in hourly rate, you just could do that. Now, if you go, and this is something that we're starting to recognize, if you go through every step of the business, the sales operation, the marketing operation, the operations operation, the facilities, the technical side of the team, and you literally go and go, where do we have
Systems and processes that we don't require a human heavy lifting here and it's something they probably don't like to do anyway Like that to me is the 10x of the business for sure and Then you get things to talk to each other forget about
Aaron Crow (26:41.676)
Yeah, and
Aaron Crow (26:46.639)
Well, and that's the thing is, is that, you one of the, the pain points that we see is, you know, following up on leads, like cybersecurity companies, like, you know, consulting or, or, you know, your product company, you go to these conferences. Again, we just got back from one and you come home with this, this handful of leads, names, contacts of people that I talked to at these conferences. Right. And we get them all the time. We get these emails that are just, Hey, you came by my booth.
And then it goes into the ether. I don't respond to it, anything like that. Right. And those are people sending emails or they have a product. Maybe they're using AI on those things, but those are the things like how many leads are you losing out on because you're dependent upon some intern or some entry level person that isn't falling through. They're not good at their job. They're not, they're not consistent. You have no way to track what they're doing. Like all this type of stuff, that entry level job, how many, how many of those can I hire as bots instead of as a person?
And then I can have a higher qualified person, one of them. So instead of hiring, you know, 10, you know, outward bound salespeople at an entry level, you know, 20 bucks an hour, 15 bucks an hour, whatever rate that's doing that initial outreach. I'd rather imagine if I could hire, if I built 10 or 15 of those bots that are doing that for me. And I had one, you know, really skilled person that I'm paying a hundred thousand dollars a year for something like that.
and then he's just managing all those other things and how much more effective can, can that one person be because they're not focusing on the small things. They're not focusing on the simple, repeatable, mundane, monotonous things that are having to happen, sending the email, getting the initial responses, getting the negative responses, like all that kind of stuff. You're already trained it on if they say, well, I'm not interested or I got to check with my wife. You already have the response. You know, you do this in sales training, but maybe
The intern that you just hired isn't very good at that. Like the bot is going to tell you what you tell it to. So being able to implement these systems and again, I'm super excited because I see obviously the cybersecurity companies, the tech bros, all those folks, they're going to be bleeding edge on this stuff 100%. The EUIs of the world, like all that kind of stuff, they're investing billions of dollars into this to make sure they're benefiting it. The excitement for me is like you said, the HVAC company, the, you know, the,
Aaron Crow (29:08.645)
the dry cleaners, the, the, the CPAs, the attorney, the law offices, the things that technology is not necessarily in their wheelhouse, but man, that is the hugest place that they can benefit and grow by using this and adopting it early. They will, they will just overtake everything else because they're doing things that is not in their wheelhouse. There's no way they're going to adopt it by themselves. They're going to need some help, but this is going to help them to exponentially grow their, in their, their
their revenue, their business, their brand, like it just can tick so many buttons. And the people that are capable to see that and invest their time and focus on that, it's gonna be huge. In five years, we're gonna see the ones that lived and the ones that didn't. The ones that are still, you know, the whole car and, you know, horse drawn carriage conversation. The people that are still trying to ride the horse, cause that's the way they've always done business,
will not be around not very many of them will be around in five years everybody is going to have to adopt a i
Neal Conlon (30:11.11)
Well, and I think what's interesting about one of the many things you just said that I think was interesting is like what people don't realize is people who are implementing AI, right, are realizing that the traditional models just don't work the way they used to. Right. Like, I think I think there's there's an evolution to this of like, you know, years and years ago,
Aaron Crow (30:33.712)
What do mean?
Neal Conlon (30:39.986)
You you and I are about the same age, but it was like, we grew up and everybody kind of got their information from school, church, and the encyclopedia Britannica, right? And, um, and whether or not that was right or wrong, it just made it palpable that when you went to college, if you went to college or you went to another route, people were basically being conditioned from a quality perspective. So if you became a lawyer,
You went to the law school and then you kind of, you know, were cranked out as like this level of standard, right? Now what people are learning over time is that because we've become so differentiated in how we get our information that it's not that easy to scale people anymore. And even like, you know, there used to be, you know, five or 10 kinds of cars. Now there's 50 or 60 kinds of cars.
And now they've, you you look at the cost of car insurance because of the cost of the accidents, because of the number of accidents that happen. And someone goes, that just doesn't make sense anymore because of the stage of evolution that we're at. So the idea, if you told me that I don't have to own a car and every time that I fetch one, one's going to show up at my door or I can own one.
and that when I'm not home, I can send my car out to make money for me when I'm not doing anything. That just, both of those scenarios just make so much more sense, you know, the other version of it. And to your point around sales, it's like, I'm just getting the emails now from that conference we went to last year. And they're like, you stopped by the booth last year, you know, like it's almost SOC 30. And, you know, like,
The fact that even if they're automating that email campaign to go out, the fact that someone's got to cobble together this list and hit this list again, like not one person, zero out of 10,000 emails is somebody going, I remember the socks from last year, can't wait to see you guys, let's schedule a meeting. Not one person is doing that, but yet somebody has it down that that is what they're gonna do.
Neal Conlon (33:07.454)
And they're going to use like versus, you know, using some kind of AI system in place that when a person, you know, demonstrates some kind of behavior that they kind of earn, you know, the conversation with somebody. Right. That's a much more valuable conversation.
Aaron Crow (33:26.161)
You had me up until the car thing. I understand your perspective, but me being a car guy, I never see a place where I don't want to own a car or drive it myself. I can see having a car that I get in and I have an option where I don't want to drive, but that's where I just enjoy driving. So, you know, that I want that, you know, the, the feel of that and that kind of thing. But yeah, that's, that's, that's just a preference thing, but I absolutely see the value in, you know, our friend, our mutual friend Gunny just traded in his truck.
and, got, got a Tesla and part of that is because he, know, he has some medical things that, makes it, you know, not enjoyable to drive. So he really doesn't enjoy driving. So that it's a perfect thing. Like he's able to get in that car and drive with no hands and just obviously has to focus on the road or the thing will shut down. But you know, he, he's able to get in and have the best experience and he doesn't have to drive. He doesn't have to fill it up with gas. Like all that kind of stuff. It, really works. He doesn't drive that much anyway. So it's a perfect.
perfect environment for him and he's really enjoying it. I can see that being more. And the other piece to that, like you said before, is like the, as we've seen in Elon and Tesla, their vision is, that you'll, when you're not driving your car, if you're out of town, you can put it into the cab mode and it goes and makes you money. Like it goes and becomes a cab for you. Like, dude, that's, that's epic. So you could technically have a Tesla even as a secondary or tertiary vehicle in your fleet.
that when you're not using it and you don't need it, you let it go on the money for you. Or how many people are going to be buying these things and buying five or 10 of them, parking them in a parking lot. And they're just there. That's just a revenue base for them. Like they buy them and they're just, you know, taxis or Ubers or whatever process or system uses that. And they're just using them as a, as revenue stream. Right? So it's diversification. It's, just, it's exciting for all this to say. So I guess I,
to kind of wrap this up. Like I really see this, whoever is listening to this, no matter where you're at again, whether you're the, you're, you're a welder, you're a plumber, you're an HVAC guy, you own a gym, you own a, you know, CPA firm, a law firm, no matter where you are, does, a, you don't have to be technical. You don't have to necessarily even understand what AI is, to see the value. dive in, like do more than I think most people are just scratching the surface cause they don't know what it is.
Aaron Crow (35:51.397)
Maybe they're doing some prompts or making some funny things. see the stuff on Instagram with like Yeti making, you know, videos on reels on, on Instagram or whatever, right? The tick tock videos, et cetera. But there's so much more that you can use. Like it is, you can play around that you can have some fun with it, but there's also huge benefits to your business. If you know what to do with it and how to implement, how to get the value out of it. And that's where finding the advisors that have an understanding of the business process.
that can tie to what is the need, what is the value and implement simple automation systems. We're not talking about super complex. We're not talking about, you know, replacing your brain or becoming something that runs your business for you, at least not yet, but start out small. Find those simple things that can level up your business, allow you to focus on things that are more important, give you time back in your day. And to your point earlier, maybe it's time that you, right now you don't have as much time with your family that you want. Like if you could have an extra
five hours a week that you could spend at home instead of, you know, working on the business. That's awesome. It doesn't have to be that I want to grow this to your point. Like I want a lifestyle business. Awesome. Or if you got five more hours back of time that you could spend with your family, going, going camping or going, you know, just hanging out with your kids and throwing the baseball, that's a win because that's your goal. If you're the other side of the company, the business that you want to rocket ship and grow it and, get it to a place where, you know,
private equity or venture capital firm buys you and 10x is your revenue, awesome. You can find AI to help you there and kind of everything in between. So no matter where you are, what business, what industry, technology, and this AI thing can absolutely help.
Neal Conlon (37:29.618)
100 % and I don't think we have options. Like I think that's the thing is like to your point around like it is moving so quickly that you're going to need to really start to look at like how do we adopt this or you're not going to able to compete against your competitors.
Aaron Crow (37:48.391)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I guess finally, just to wrap up, I think that to your point there, everybody sees AI, everybody's talking about it. Every conversation you sit at a coffee shop, you'll probably overhear somebody talking about AI, whether it's some funny video they saw or whatever. The other side of this is people are getting overwhelmed, especially people that don't understand it. It's really easy to get overwhelmed with it and think up and just give up. Like throw my hands in there. I don't know what any of this means. I don't know what to do with any of this. I'm just going to turn off.
my noise so I don't hear any, when you talk about AI, shut down, right? Maybe I play with it and we have some fun with it, but I'm not thinking about bridging that. How can I use it for my benefit in my business? And when we say business, it doesn't even mean you have to be a business owner. You can be a W2 employee and do part of your job and help you with the processes that you're doing, right? Help you write a report, help you do an assessment, help you think about the email that you're gonna send out, help you do, I have used it,
to have a conversation with my wife. We had a disagreement and I was trying to explain my perspective or the situation and I knew when I would, it would come off and it would upset her. But I gave it to chat GPT, told it the scenario, said what I was trying to say, said what she was trying to say and it put it into a way that she was able to understand. And obviously I told her it was from chat GPT. It's not like I pretended it was for me.
But I told her from Chappie GPT, but it allowed us to have a conversation that we couldn't have in person because we were talking past each other.
Neal Conlon (39:19.952)
Yep, yep, I love that. I've done the same. Totally get it.
Aaron Crow (39:24.816)
And it's not cheating. is again. It's not like I'm pretending that it's my information or that I said it or I created it. I told her upfront, I put this in a chat GPT and this is the outcome that cab because I was struggling to find the words that would help portray what my feelings were and understand what you were saying. Right? So there's all sorts of these use cases that that's not necessarily a use case for a business. Although somebody could make an agent or an app or something that does that for,
for marriages and relationships. If you do, you know, give me the idea or give us a stipend on that. Cause you heard it here first. Um, but yeah, mean, there's, there's a lot of benefit and value for, for these tools beyond just playing around and tinkering that I think 95 % of the, of the world is probably just tinkering and playing with if they're touching it at all.
Neal Conlon (40:02.426)
No one 100%.
Neal Conlon (40:09.562)
Right. Well, that's the big piece of it. think it's we're at the Delta is coming of where you have to start to really like become a practitioner. Or if you don't be a practitioner, right, like I don't want to be a practitioner of taking out the garbage in my house. So guess what? Someone comes in and takes my garbage out every week. I've outsourced it. Right. And so
If there are things that you want to be great at, then be great at them. And if not, then this is a perfect opportunity for you to streamline something that you really don't want to bear the cost of anyway.
Aaron Crow (40:51.578)
or you're not good at it. That's the other piece. We've got all of these founders. I can tell you so many tech stories of guys that are great engineers and they're great with product and they suck at sales. They are just awful at it, but they try to do it because they don't have the revenue. They don't have the this or that to hire a good salesperson. So then they just flounder and all of these great ideas and great products and great capabilities that are in the world or could exist, but don't because
We try to do things that we're not good at instead of saying, I'm not good at this. I don't want to do this. You and I talk about this all the time. I hate accounting. I'm very good with numbers. I'm very good with math, but I despise bookkeeping and accounting where I'm not going to do it. I'm going to outsource. I'm going to hire an account. It's not cheap.
But it's worth it because I don't have to worry about it anymore. I'm able to take that energy, that anxiety that worries me about that. Cause I don't want to deal with an audit and I don't want to, you know, categorize something incorrectly because I don't know exactly what I'm doing or I'm not focusing around it on time. I just have to know that I'm not good at this and I don't want to do it. So stop doing it.
Neal Conlon (42:03.666)
100%. 100%.
Aaron Crow (42:06.246)
All right. Closing notes. Anything that you want to close up with?
Neal Conlon (42:09.266)
No, just that I think for anyone watching this, think it's food for thought that there are really powerful ways to not only increase the revenue of your business, but also to get more traction and scale it. And you're just going to see more and more of this stuff. So if there's an opportunity for us to complete an audit for somebody, I'd love the opportunity to walk people through some of the cool widgetry that we've come up with you in our own evolution.
And dude, always great to do stuff like this with you.
Aaron Crow (42:42.994)
Yeah, man, I don't care who you are, whoever's listening, like again, I know we've kind of polished this or beat this into the ground, but I don't care what business you're in, you can benefit from this and you don't have to be an expert. So think about reaching out, finding somebody like us that can help you and help you automate, help you be more efficient in your business so that you can do more of the stuff that you want to do and not focus on the things that you don't want to do or that you're not good at.
and it's not working, right? Awesome. Until next time, my friend.
Neal Conlon (43:16.946)
Talk soon.
Aaron Crow (43:19.441)
Later.