The M&A Strategist Who Saw AI Coming Before ChatGPT Launched

In November of '22, was it, I think, that OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT. I knew it was a game changer from the day it launched. And so I just decided this is something I must know, I must master. This is the future. This is at least as big as the internet. And so it was a combination of curiosity and prior experience and an absolute knowledge and certainty that this was going to be a giant thing that caused me to want to really, really be all over it right from the beginning.

Roland Frasier is a legendary investor and M&A strategist who has completed over 1,000 acquisitions and exits across dozens of industries. He was programming computers at 12 years old, which positioned him to spot the AI revolution long before the rest of the market caught on. Today, he's integrating artificial intelligence into every layer of his business portfolio, using bots to generate campaigns, analyze financials, and write letters of intent in seconds. In this conversation, we explore how to cut through the noise of tech panic, deploy agentic AI to scale your operations, and precisely where the software ends and the irreplaceable power of human connection begins.

My name is Dr. Fleet Maull, your co-host for this session, and I'm really thrilled to be here today with friend and colleague and business mentor, Roland Frasier. Welcome, Roland.

Thanks, Fleet. Good to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.

Oh, it's great to have you. And to begin with, well, and I wonder if, you know, you could say just what was it about your entrepreneurial journey? I know from what I know of you, you're a recovering lawyer and later you got into what you're into now, the many things you're into now. But what was it about that led you to be, I think to say you're an early adopter in AI is really a gross understatement. You're an early advancer or something. But what led you to, you know, be prepared with the entrepreneurial mindset and experience that had you just jump right on that in such a powerful way?

I mean, I go way, way, way back. The first computer I had was, which really dates me, it's terrible, but I had, I think it was a TRS-80. Then I had a Commodore 64. I went from like 4K memory, 4K, not 4 megs, 4K, not 4 gigs for sure, to 40, to 64. Then I got a Lisa, then an Apple II, I think, E. And then a Mac. So I was there kind of as all of that was evolving. And so I learned BASIC when I was about 12 years old, programming BASIC, and then got into Pascal and COBOL and then HTML and, you know, all of those things. So I've got a pretty good background of being a not very good coder, but terribly curious about it. And so that, like, I think that helps a lot in that I, you know, I've built computers, I've programmed computers, and when in particularly in November of '22, was it, I think that, that OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT, I knew it was a game changer from the day it launched. And so I just decided this is something I must know, I must master. This is the future. This is at least as big as the internet. And so it was a combination of curiosity and prior experience and an absolute knowledge and certainty that this was going to be a giant thing that caused me to want to really, really be all over it right from the beginning. Wow.

I don't think I was that aware of the techie background you have. It's amazing. Besides being this lawyer, successful business strategist, M&A expert, a musician, an accomplished musician, that you also have this strong techie background. That's amazing. But that did really set you up to recognize what the opportunity was here or the inevitability and then jump on that. So for entrepreneurs, our audience, you know, the whole AI thing can be pretty daunting. It's moving so fast.

Yeah.

And there's so much noise and there's a million tools and SaaSes and this and that. And you know, and everybody's probably thinking if you're not like almost on this full-time, you're already behind the curve and your competition's ahead of you. And it can be pretty daunting and scary and confusing. And so how would you suggest entrepreneurs at least begin or get a foothold? I mean, obviously you can't ignore it. It's not going away. And in fact, it's a, it's an incredible revolution. So, but how do we get through the noise and beyond our own fear and kind of get started?

I think it's a really great question and it depends on how well you do with a fear of breaking things. It's like there isn't really anything that you can do on the major AI platforms that will break your computer or break the AI. So if you're open to exploring, that has a lot to do with it. If you're curious enough to research, I think that's more, if you need to take a basic course, that's fine. I will say that like right out of the box, Google Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, X's Grok, and OpenAI's ChatGPT are all really friendly, easy to interact with versions of, you know, of AI. They're basically, you know, chat platforms for AI that will just act as an advisor and friend. And even if you aren't an expert prompt engineer, somebody that creates the information that you put in to get back the best results that it can deliver, You still can just in plain English have a conversation with the AI and it will be tremendously valuable for you. As you get more into it, you can decide, do I want to be a casual user, a power user, or a programmer? And then in the programming level, there are a couple of different levels as well. You can build miniature apps, which we've built quite a few of. Within different platforms. Like there are GPTs within ChatGPT that are little mini apps that you can build and program that really act like apps or software. And then you can get into more complicated where you actually have to use code within it. So I think it's, it's like, where do I want to be? And I would just say start as a casual user and don't put the pressure on yourself to say I'm so far behind or anything like that. Every journey begins with a single step, right? So take that first step. And just have a conversation with the AI about anything that interests you and get comfortable with that interface and that conversation. And then after you get comfortable there, I'd say think about what you might use it for. If we're speaking business-wise, what you might use it for in your business. And, um, like we know a lot of people in the hospitality space. And so one of the early demos I did for one of the chefs that's a good friend of mine, was to take the ingredients that the chef had and basically say, create a creative Michelin star, heavily spiced and flavored meal in a particular theme. I forget what it was. I think it was across, I think it was like Mexican-Asian fusion. And it designed a full multi-course meal using all these spices and these combinations. And I said in the prompt, you know, use unusual but complimentary combinations of spices. And the chef looked at it and was like, oh my God, that, that's amazing. I would've never thought to combine this with this. And so that was very simple and that was way before I know all the things that I know now. But like, that's a good example, I think, of how to use it in your business. And I have, our pickleball pro here at where I live said the other day, I didn't know what to text this difficult member that I was having a hard time with. And I just put in a ChatGPT, I have a difficult member at the club where I'm the pickleball pro, we're having a problem with X, write me a text that I can send them. And it did, and she was able to send it. And like, those are very basic but very helpful applications. And so I'd say that's the place to start. Where you can go from there is limited, as with most things, by your own, you know, desire, knowledge, and creativity.

Yeah, it really helps a lot. And you pointed to the user-friendly quality of these interfaces. They're amazingly user-friendly. And even that question I posed to you, which you gave a a great answer to, you could ask that question to ChatGPT or any of these platforms and you would probably get some interesting answers. You could do a follow-up question and, you know, and you can, in terms of you learning to do prompts, you can have one of these platforms teach you how to improve your prompt writing, right?

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah. So I know one of the areas, I mean, you've really gotten into applying this, I think, in every level of your businesses, but I know one area that I'm familiar with is content creation. All the way from, you know, creating email copy to creating blogs to creating avatars to deliver that for video content, even the possibility of a full-blown podcast that was all generated by AI. So I wonder if you could talk about your experience and, 'cause content marketing is really, really important in our world today where so much marketing happens online and we gotta build audience and build brands. So content marketing is really incredibly important and boy has AI made it easier and more efficient. So could you talk about that?

Yeah, so just all the things that you mentioned are things that we've done, you know, run experiments trying everything from writing newsletters to, and, and leaning heavily on AI to sales letters, to complete courses, to interactive podcasts with multiple interviewers and responders, and then AI-generated voices where they're asking each other questions that were generated by the AI and then publish that to iTunes on our Business Lunch podcast. So, it's very capable of doing that. The challenge is the content is pretty generic unless you are skilled at pulling out deeper things. So like just asking AI to, you know, if you go into ChatGPT and say, write me a sales letter to help me sell Evian water, then that's gonna be very vague. As you get more and more familiar with AI, your content is going to improve and you are going to find that the best content is through you interacting with the AI chatbots to help you create better content. So it's like I look at it as it's a spare brain that, that remembers everything that you can draw on. But the more applicable the questions that you're asking, to help it generate the content, the better. And typically, you know, the framework is generally you want to give it a role so that you can say you are like, in this case, if I was writing a sales letter, I'd say you are a senior copywriter at a major advertising agency. And then I would say specializing in whatever the product was. In this case, I would say consumer packaged goods and in particular water. And you've got, 20 years experience, and then give it as much information as you can. And then basically what are the actions that you want it to take? You know, I position the client, your client is a company that retails water that is drawn from pools of water in France and your market is, and then like the more information that you give it, the better. What I played with also is asking it to ask me the questions that it would need to know. To perform the task. So basically I'll assign it the role and then I'll give it the goal. My goal is to write a sales letter, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I'll give it actions, which would be ask me questions to give you all of the information that you would need to create a sales, a highly converting sales letter to the target audience of, and then it would be the target audience that I would specify. So like that detail in the prompting, my prompts are typically, hundreds of words long because that's going to get me the best response. And I want to interact with the AI instead of just talking at the AI. So rather than just giving it that long prompt and then saying, now write me my sales letter, I'll basically say, ask me all of the questions that you need to ask to know better. I'll also give it frameworks and expected format for the content that I want. So I'll typically, in this case, it's a sales letter. I would say draw upon the framework that Gary Halbert wrote and the framework that Eugene Schwartz uses in his book and Claude Hopkins uses in his book and the Robert Collier Letter Book and David Ogilvy and take the best of plus best practices that you've learned in your experience and create a sales letter that is similar to the following. And then I'll paste in the format of the sales letter I want. And then that's gonna get me a really good response, but then I'm gonna get the sales letter and there are gonna be a lot of parts of it that aren't fantastic. And so maybe it starts with the headline. And so then I'll start basically saying, okay, the headline's okay, but I don't think it's the strongest it could be. And then I'll have a whole nother prompt that is about the headline and then have it generate multiple headlines. And so it'll take, maybe 4 hours still for me to create a sales letter, but the sales letter's gonna be pretty daggone good compared to how long it would've taken me had I done it myself. And I'll even use, like, I'll have it search its dataset and say, okay, you know, this product is a pair of reading glasses. Okay, so go on Amazon or search your dataset that includes Amazon reviews for 5-star reviews of the best-selling eyeglass Reading Glasses products and the worst and take the, the points that were referenced as the most important to the 5-star reviewers and include those bullets in your sales copy and then look at the things that created 1-star reviews that were the biggest complaints and address the biggest complaints as objections to overcome purchasing our product. That's the way to use it to me is it's a collaboration. There's all the tools we can talk about too, but like when you're just straight up using the, you know, the big major AI chatbot providers, it's gonna, you know, like you're gonna get out of it what you put into it. And so if you use it as a collaborator and you are really coaching it along for what you want and being creative in, you know, what data would it have access to given that it's got, pretty much all of the internet inside it, and now that it's capable of searching, or at least some of them are, that's going to get you the best result.

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So a couple things you brought up. One, early on with ChatGPT, I know I was, and on my team and myself, we're creating some bots or GPTs with specific knowledge bases. And so we were dumping a lot of stuff into them, and one was for marketing. So we're putting in some of the stuff you referenced in there. But today I get the sense you don't even need to do that so much, that it's really up to date accessing all this knowledge without you having to create a specific separate out with a separate knowledge base. Is that the case or?

Yeah, it's really just directing it. What I'll do is typically ask it, like, let's say I'm doing my podcast. I'll say, are you familiar with the podcast Business Launch featuring Roland Frasier and Ryan Dice? And it'll say yes. And then it'll tell me something about it. Like, okay, well now it's kind of top of memory. I do want to kind of confirm that it's got that. And same thing if I'm using a framework, like I'll say, are you familiar with the Six Sigma framework? And then it'll say yes, and then I'll start asking it questions about that or say using that framework, you know, or if I was referring to my podcast, I'd say, okay, I'm trying to research topical ideas for the podcast. Look at the news for the last 2 weeks and I'll turn on the search feature. Learn, look at the news over the last 2 weeks for topics that would be similar to the titles of the last 100 episodes from the Business Launch Podcast and give me 10 topics that I could talk about for my podcast today. And it'll actually come up with pretty good— like I did it yesterday, I think, and it gave me out of the 10, there were 3 that were really, really good that I then deep dove into. And, you know, and we did— we already did one podcast on one of the topics.

Oh, that's great. So yeah, and I like, you know, the collaborative nature that you're pointing to. And I think one of the companies— I don't know, is it Microsoft— talks about your copilot, your wingman or something. I mean, you can really have it there. And of course, people are starting to use it just for their personal lives as well, right? You have it on your phone. Especially Gemini and things like that, you can use in that way. So with content marketing, one thing that I, I found fascinating, I know you created, the last time I was aware of this, you actually had to download this on your computer, but you had set up some kind of framework for writing a book where you had multiple editors going back and forth collaborating on editing a book in some way. You can probably describe it better than that, but I was, it was pretty phenomenal when I remember you were developing that.

Yeah, that is where AI is headed and that is why AI is eating software as a service. So software as a service, I think, which I believe is a $1.3 trillion industry, will very likely at least significantly be replaced by AI agents. And so what you're talking about is where we get several different iterations of AI that have different forms of expertise that collaborate with each other without us being involved to create the desired end result. So for book writing, I'm probably going to have a researcher, a subject matter expert, an expert writer, an editor, you know, maybe a reviewer, maybe, you know, a formatter. And I'm gonna have all of those individual, like little mini people, but they are effectively, think of them as individual applications or individual bots. And then those agents will actually do their tasks and collaborate with one another. So the researcher gonna go out and research the stuff that's gonna be researched and then give it, give that information back to the writer that's gonna write out the initial text for then the editor to look at and the fact checker to check. And they're all collaborating without you ever having to do any of that. Whereas you used to have to put in separate prompts for all of that. And it's still too complicated for the average person to do that right now, but that is going to end within the next year or two for sure. And that's where it's headed. And if you are like a programmer that has, you know, almost any kind of software as a service, you've got to be worried because you don't have to program anymore. You just create little agents and the agents do the job. And there's gonna be probably agent stores where you can buy agents that you can then basically have on your team to do the things that you want. Or maybe, you know, they'll charge for them, but it's pretty cool what you can do. So like having an actual, book that is decent, not probably gonna write a bestseller, but decent is very doable now. So if I was, you know, if I was a ghostwriter or an editor, I might be a little bit nervous at this point.

So you're referencing, you know, for those of us who are still trying to catch up, you know, we've maybe we've heard of generative AI and that has a lot to do with this content creation, but now you're referencing what I think is called agentic AI. Correct. You know, creating these agents. So these, These agents are actually separate, like if it was on OpenAI, it would be a separate GPT that was created.

Yeah, like I think of them as mini apps, right? Little mini apps.

And they have their own knowledge base, which you add to. So one of the most immediate uses of this that I think for a lot of businesses is in customer service, right? At least the initial level of customer service. And we've all seen that, we've all seen it on websites we've visited where there's a chat function and sometimes it's not very helpful, but it is getting to the point where you could have a GPT customer service agent that's gonna be pretty darn helpful.

Yeah. And so then we're currently, I don't think the, like the chatbots themselves aren't ready yet to do that. My guess is that they will ultimately kind of be able to do everything, but right now we use extra software to do that. So there are applications like VAPI, V-A-P-I, or Delphi. That will allow us to engage with our customers. So Delphi allows you to upload millions of words of content in the form of books and PDFs and podcasts and videos. And so like I've got a Delphi of me that is able to answer all of the questions that people have about acquiring businesses or consulting for equity or, exiting because all of my books on those subjects, all of my podcasts, all of my videos, all of my speeches and presentations, all my PowerPoints, all my notes have been uploaded. And so there's millions of words that I have created that have all been sucked into this Delphi, which is basically an image of me. I mean, it's like this video and you can have a video conversation with me. It's still a little clunky in the, in the video. Like it'll be kind of like that, like you're, you know, because it's only recording a few minutes of you and then creating an AI version. But now my customers can talk to the video version of me via video chat. They can do it by text, they can do it by audio, they can do it by phone call, audio online or a phone call. So now they can call and say, hey Roland, you know, Roland AI Roland. Hey, AI Roland, I'm interested in buying a business and the seller wants too much for it. What are some strategies that I could use to negotiate to get them down to be reasonable? And then way better than I could do it, my Delphi is looking at all of the data at one time that I've given it, and it's going to give a pretty daggone good answer. So that's like for customer service, we're using that in our tax practice. So we have a company called Prime Corporate Services, and Prime has a company called Insight that does tax returns for people. And we do tens of thousands of tax returns for people a year, which creates this huge amount, especially at tax time, of customer service traffic that we would have to have hundreds and hundreds of people to be able to answer. And we don't have hundreds and hundreds of people, but people want answers right now today. So using this customer service-based AI with Delphi and some other RPA, Robotic Process Automation, that we have, we're able to actually handle an unlimited amount of inbound calls and give answers immediately and even personalized answers that can draw on people's accounts if they have passwords to get to them. So like, that's kind of amazing and really changes the game to get people the information that they want from your company. And interact with them. And then we also use it for outbound customer service with VAPI, where we're creating outreaches to follow up with people and see how they're doing, but not just an email autoresponder follow-up, an interactive follow-up that asks questions, receives data, and provides answers or action steps based on the context of what people say. So like, that's definitely been a game changer. So for email, telephone, and video or online support, it's definitely been a big deal for us.

And so, and I wanted to talk to you about automation in service of scaling, and you're giving a great example there. Now what about, I'm just curious, you have a legal background. Now with just customer service, your customer service is either really good or mediocre or it's terrible. And yeah, you know, people can be happy or unhappy with that. But if you start giving people information that's of a legal nature or of an investment nature, How do you manage the quality control with the GenTech AI and avoid getting in trouble? Or do you have to put all kinds of disclaimers in there that this is, you know, not actual legal advice?

You do. Yeah. I think it would be unwise to let, because AI still hallucinates and makes things up. So I think it's, you know, you have to warn people that is something that AI does and that if they were taking any action, you know, that it can provide general guidance and information, But with respect to, you know, legal advice, medical advice, financial advice, or anything else like that, you should consult your actual practitioner, your licensed person, and have a direct conversation to verify the information. So it can be, you know, kind of like general informational guidelines as to what's going on in your situation, but you shouldn't rely on it.

Well, one of our speakers suggested it today. If he was— had the choice of hiring an in-house counsel, or hiring a young person really good with this AI stuff, he'd probably go that direction. Now, you'd probably want to pass stuff in front of an actual licensed attorney at some point, but all the grunt work of creating the contracts and creating the briefs and doing the case, doing the re— all that can be done by AI, I would assume, today. I mean, a lot of legal assistants out of business, probably.

Yeah, it can, but it's not yet— at least I haven't seen it yet— to the point where it understands the strategy or is able to receive the information or ask for the information that it needs to replace something like that. And it's interesting you choose that particular thing 'cause we're in the middle of hiring general counsel for one of our companies right now. And if I was choosing between those two things, I absolutely would not choose someone who didn't have a legal background. If you chose, you know, somebody who had at least, graduated from law school and passed the bar and they were using that to consult with, that could be helpful. But it's still not yet to the place where like, like I would put my contracts up against those contracts any time and I would be thrilled to get the opportunity to negotiate against somebody that doesn't know anything about the law and ChatGPT at this point. I might not, you know, a year or two from now, but right now I don't think it's there yet.

All right, great. Well, you heard that from Roland Frazier, and that's good advice because Roland's been involved in a lot of business deals and he is a lawyer in his his original background. So what are some other examples of how you're seeing AI can help entrepreneurs scale their businesses?

I mean, it, it's the biggest thing. You kind of alluded to it, that you don't necessarily have to be dependent on as many people as you did before. And so I feel like what we used to do is something called a super employee, where a person who is in a role gets assigned an inexpensive overseas worker who will be their assistant or kind of like their extra set of hands. And so if, you know, you were on the executive team, then you would have a worker or two that were basically executive assistants, but they're kind of multiplying your powers. And I don't know that you need those people as much anymore. And I think that the people that you have can be significantly more productive and effective. Because they have this built-in coach. And so I think educating the team that you've got on how to get the most out of AI and how to have it be a supplemental brain research assistant, executive assistant for them is a really smart thing to do. And so in scaling the business from a— what are the resources that are required to scale? They're significantly less now than they were. One copywriter can create, you know, the work of 3 to 5 now. And so we need significantly fewer employees, but employees that are skilled with AI to help us scale our businesses significantly faster. Other thing is the elimination of repetitive work using a form of AI called robotic process automation or RPA. And so I'll give you back to our tax practice. We get tens of thousands of documents, if not hundreds of thousands, that are uploaded by our clients as we're preparing their returns. And what we used to have to do was go into this portal and look at all the documents and then either have them scanned or have the people who are the data entry people take the information off of those documents and transfer it to the software that prepares the first version of the tax return. So now we've automated all that so that a bot, a robotic process automation bot, goes into the portal, logs in, gets the information the customer uploaded, connects with the software that does the tax return, extracts all of the needed information, puts it into the right form and form spaces, sums the things that need to be added, subtracts the things that need to be subtracted,, and then all of that data entry work now happens in seconds that used to take days. And it happens without an employee that calls in sick, that's having a bad day, that's only productive 2 or 3 hours a day anyway, that's asking for a raise or quitting. That's really, to me, the biggest thing that helps us scale. Certainly strategic advice and marketing and all of those things, but like really it's the consolidation of the number of people that you need to accomplish tasks at speed. That is really the big deal, I think.

Wow, that kind of process automation, that's amazing. I mean, just you described that process, it's enough to leave one's head kind of spinning on your shoulders. Just—

and it's only getting better.

Yeah, it's amazing. Back to content marketing, a lot of our entrepreneurs, Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs, and maybe, maybe they're moving from solopreneurs and are building a team, or they're they got a 6-figure, they're trying to move to 7 figures or beyond. And you know, they hear a lot about, you know, creating your brand, creating your audience, you gotta create content and so forth. And marketing is complicated and marketing directors are expensive and all this. So, you know, in my understanding, even the extent to how we're using it, you know, if you have someone in your company, you are, or you have someone at least who's a savvy marketer, you know, you can take all the processes by which you would develop a really good marketing plan and then lay out a whole annual calendar of content development and then basically generate all the posts, all the blogs, the podcast episode topics, the everything you're gonna do as part of your content marketing plan. That can all be designed, built, and then delivered by AI. Now somebody's gotta be looking over it to make sure it's good and gets to the highest level. And that requires somebody with marketing sensibilities. But again, you're talking about, doing the work of months in a week and with a team, small team compared to an agency.

Yeah, 100%. Absolutely right.

Yeah.

We have multiple newsletters and social media and email calendars that are driven entirely by AI to the point of generating the content. And then the content is reviewed by a content expert that then authorizes edits if needed, and then authorizes the posting, which is all automated as well. So it's pretty crazy to build out a year of, you know, of content in a few minutes. But what you do ultimately find is that a lot of the best content is going to be timely. So even though you could create a year's worth, you're probably better off creating about a week or two at a time, which can still also be automated. But that's definitely where it's at. And the cool thing about that though, Fleet, is that Anybody can do that now. So to be truly exceptional, you're going to have to stand out with your own original thought or your own ability to manipulate the AI resources in a unique way that is different from everybody else. So I think it's going to— it's like it's not that we'll all basically get to just not have to do that anymore. It's going to be to stand out, to truly stand out in an ever-increasing sea of easily generated AI content, the people that do stand out and succeed are gonna be the ones that personalize the connection between themselves and the reader. And that's something AI has yet to be able to accomplish. Not saying it won't be able to, but not yet.

And in that process there, you mentioned a content expert reviewing. Was that a human or was that an AI bot?

Nah, it's a human. Yeah. It's just you have to have somebody review anyway, cuz there are mistakes. You wouldn't want the AI to put out some terrible thing. It's like, it's not foolproof, but it's, you know, we do have editing and all that built into the system, but sometimes crazy stuff slips through. So it's good to have the person there.

Well, let's explore some of your other areas of expertise, in particular the mergers and acquisitions area, just deal-making altogether. So, you know, I know you've developed some AI tools for outbound phone calls and stuff, and things like that. But maybe just talk about AI's role in dealmaking and in finding deals and doing deals where you're buying and selling companies.

Sure. So for us, it starts with acquisition criteria. We have, you know, I created a GPT that asks you several questions and then creates acquisition criteria for you and then suggests categories of companies to buy all the way down to specific companies. So it will actually help you determine what is it that I want to buy in the first place? Because most people are like, I'm going to buy a business. And it's like, okay, what business do you want to buy? I don't know. Maybe a laundromat, maybe a writing school, maybe, you know, a digital marketing agency, maybe a website. Okay, well, those are very different things. How can we help you narrow that down to the thing you actually might want to have? And that's what this AI software helps you do. And so it asks you several questions and then it hones down to several categories of businesses that you might want to buy. And then once you get down to the categories, it does subcategories and the subcategories. You can go as deep as you want until you decide to say, can you give me a list of, you know, 30 companies that I might talk to? And that might suggest those for you. Or you can use that to go to a business database like ZoomInfo or Axle or somebody like that and put in that acquisition criteria and say, give me 5,000 businesses that meet this criteria. That's kind of step one. Then you can say create an outreach campaign. And so we have automated AI-assisted creation of campaigns that then automate email and telephone, ringless voicemail and text messages that it sends out to all of the prospects. They reply, the AI has conversations with the people and then basically sets calls with them to have Conversations with a human for the people that qualify. Now you have the conversation, but before you have the conversation, you say, what am I going to say? Now I've got my phone set so that the action button on my iPhone pulls up ChatGPT and my ChatGPT is armed with my Seller Conversation Consultant. So basically I can hit that and then I can have actual conversations, audio conversations with ChatGPT that are simulating where ChatGPT is either simulating a seller or it's simulating a buyer. And I can be the seller and raise objections that I'm afraid the seller is going to have. And I'm pre-trained myself on the conversation I'm going to have. Now I'm going to use my script that got generated by AI with my trained, you know, conversation to actually have a conversation with the seller. During that conversation, I'm going to ask for certain documents. They're going to send me, say, financial statements and things like that. I'm going to upload those financial statements into another GPT that I've built that's going to analyze them and say, hey, based on everything that I've looked at here, this company is really good at this. It's below industry at these things. Here are big opportunities for improvements. Here's the projections for going forward. Then I'll take that, move it into another GPT, and all this will be agentized eventually, but it's just not quite there yet. It'll take that information and use the financial statements to create me an, an offer, and then I'll tweak the offer. And then the offer I'll need to put into a letter of intent, which I'll then ask another GPT to create for me. The letter of intent will get created. I'll take the letter of intent and email it to all of the people that I've been talking to, but I won't have to email it one at a time. It'll just do all of them. And then it will process the interaction until we get to a meeting or another conversation to negotiate. And I even have a negotiation assistant that helps me as I'm having conversations with you live about the deal that's analyzing the payments and all of that stuff to come up with the best counters to the first offer that I made you. Like, that's really— and then when we get into diligence, the commercial, legal, and financial due diligence is all conducted now by automated AI systems as well. So It really is making my life as an, you know, as an acquisition entrepreneur significantly easier.

Wow. I'm sure our audience's heads are just again spinning on their shoulders right now.

The cool thing too, Fleet, is like I wrote all that stuff. I like, those are all software. I didn't have to hire somebody like I used to and spend $200,000 or $300,000 to get one of those things done. It's just You know, it's all so much easier now.

And you mentioned the outbound calls, the AI outbound calls. That's actually a voice AI having a conversation with people. I've listened to some of those. Yeah. Person on the other end may or may not recognize it as AI or, or a real person because it's pretty real. It doesn't identify itself as an AI call, right? Or—

Yeah, it depends. I think it's actually better to identify it as an AI call. And keep in mind that there are rules about getting permission to do what they call robocalls. So different states have different rules. So you need to comply with all that stuff. But typically you're not doing those voice outreaches to a cold list. You've already done something to get them to raise their hand and say, I'm interested in having a conversation about this. And then in your terms of service, they're consenting to receive those kinds of calls. So you got to be careful about that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's so effective and, you know, very often you would not know.

So I'm curious about, I guess it depends on what kind of acquisitions someone is doing, but if you're, you know, I know the model that, that you teach and coach people in, you're looking for motivated sellers. Maybe they're ready to retire or there's a divorce or various reasons and you're trying to find a win-win deal that's good for you as a purchaser, good for them. And, but very often, you know, it can be very personal and very emotional for them and there's a quality of having to sort of handhold them through the process of getting realistic about what their business is really worth and being willing to let go and move on and realize, you know, so how does all that part get handled within the, I mean, I suppose AI taking care of most of it gives you more time or people working for you to handle the personal side of it. But is there still a personal side to it that's gotta get handled?

100%. Yeah. It is all about you're going to get the best deals done where people know, like, and trust you. And that does require human interaction still. So we're using AI to really do the heavy lifting to significantly speed up the process of analysis and outreach and the rote things. And the things that require human connection, those are still important, like having a conversation where you ask the person, you know, what's your 'Entrepreneurial journey been? Tell me the story of the business,' where you have the ability while listening to them to find common touchpoints that connect you to them. You know, 'Oh, I grew up in, you know, the Mississippi Delta too.' 'Oh, I went to, you know, school to be, uh, you know, a lawn care expert too.' 'Oh, I've always been interested in finding out more about the area that you live in.' It doesn't have to be like direct, it can even be indirect. It's just Hey, I'm like you and I understand you, or I want you to understand that I get kind of where you're coming from, or let's collaborate. 'Cause I always say it's not a negotiation to buy a business. It's ideally a collaboration where we're working together towards getting the seller what the seller wants, which is to no longer own the business and have some amount of capital that they receive in exchange for that. Helps them do whatever it is they want to do. And thinking about it from that high level allows you to realize that it's not just about money and it's not just about, well, hi, I'm AI and I realize I've analyzed your financial statements from the answers that you've given the automated system, and I'm telling you that the business is worth $1.4 million and my offer is $1.4 million. Do you accept? Yes or no? You know, that's not going to ever get the deal done the way that a conversation you know, listen, you know, you were telling me about your kids and that, you know, you really want to be sure they're set up. And I think that you were like you needed this much for the business to make that happen. I think we can do that. But what I need to do is I'm going to have to have some seller financing to make that happen. That's okay, because your kids aren't actually going to need that money for college for 10 more years. So we structure it like this. We can actually accomplish the goal. Now, I'm not saying that AI won't get there because it ought to, but it's not there yet. And so that level of I care and I connect is very important still.

I've heard you talk before about expanding audience and reach by, by basically buying media, you know, buy a Facebook group or buy, you know, if the audience you need to market your products to, you can acquire that. So is there an application for AI here to build a kind of grow your company and scale your company, increase your audience by purchasing basically media assets?

Yeah, I mean, all the things that we just talked about in terms of acquisitions apply to acquiring media. So, you know, everything from what kind of media should I buy to help me find it, to help me have conversations, to help me do the outreach, you know, process the numbers, etc., etc. That, that's all applicable from what we talked about before. So absolutely.

And the last thing I wanted to ask you here, we're getting near the end of our time. Together, Roland. For someone in our audience who's thinking about an exit plan or thinking about maybe sometime in a year or even distant future selling their company, how can AI help them figure out how to get the best valuation and the best result, the best sale for their company?

Yeah, so everything from AI has generally got knowledge of most of the publications and trainings on exiting a company. So asking it to help you create an exit plan for your company to optimize valuation over the next whatever period of time between where you are now and when you would like to exit would be a great place to start. And then having a conversation with it about each of the things that it suggests and asking it for specific action steps, that would be very helpful. And I do exit consults for people where we come in and we have a company that does outreach and pre-exit planning and all of that stuff. And so a lot of that is still relationship-oriented based on, you know, who you know and, you know, the ways that, that we've increased things in the past. But, you know, having just that conversation with the chatbot initially, I think would be a great first step to understanding the kinds of things that you're gonna need to do to get your company ready to exit.

And along with getting it ready, accessing the market or potential buyers for your company. I know, I'm sure there are good brokers that could be the right fit for the right company to get sold. Brokers can really get in the way too, conventional brokers. And so there's a way that people can use AI to access the marketplace or the potential buyers for their company without having to get caught up in the world of business brokers.

Yeah, you're talking about going direct. The biggest challenge is that world is so relationship-oriented to get through the door. Then if you don't have a preexisting relationship, it's much, much harder from a cold outreach standpoint to get a response from people that are busy receiving a continual flow of unsolicited inquiries about Buy My Business. But at the same time, many businesses have set up either business development or business acquisition departments and even have processes and forms to submit your business to be looked at. But similar to applying for a job, Fleet, I know that like if 1,000 people apply for a job that's posted, the person whose cousin's sister knows somebody is the person that's going to get preference for the job. That's where we'll have its probably hardest time infiltrating is the connectivity of people like people they like and know. And they're going to deal with those people over people that they don't.

So yeah, and maybe finding, you know, a really quality broker that's using AI to become really efficient and really good, that has the right networks. But also, can AI be used as a tool if an entrepreneur is saying, you know, sometimes I've heard that expression, I don't know who coined it, your network is your net worth. Is there ways in which AI can help us expand our networks that will support our entrepreneurship journey at every level?

At the initial level, but ultimately people connect to people. It's human to human still over everything else. So you can use all of the AI to get you an opportunity to meet the human, but the connection is going to require actual human-to-human interaction at this point.

Yeah, at least being strategic about, you know, where do I put my effort, time into networking.

It can— that's super helpful with that.

Yeah, great. Well, this has been illuminating as always, Roland. Thank you so much. I know you have a free gift to offer our audience. I also want to know have our audience know where they can find out more about your work.

Okay, we'll shoot a link over and get it posted.

Great, it'll be right below this place. So your main website to go to for people that are interested, epicnetwork.com. Well, thank you so much, Roland. This has been fabulous.

Thank you. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you having me.

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