10: Using AI for Optimizing Business Processes with Jeff MacPherson

Today we're diving into the fascinating world of AI with a very special guest, Jeff McPherson from X Agency and other exciting ventures. Jeff is at the forefront of integrating generative AI into businesses. So he's going to be offering a wealth of insights from working with a broad range of clients, from automating tedious tasks in their businesses to helping them enhance efficiencies across the board. Jeff's going to unpack how AI is not just a tool, but a game changer in today's business landscape. So stay tuned as we explore the cutting edge of AI with Jeff McPherson. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Welcome to today's episode of using AI at work. We've got Jeff McPherson from X Agency and other endeavors. Jeff's going to share with us how they're using AI in their business and he's got the unique perspective of working with numerous clients. So he's able to see how other early adopters are implementing generative AI into their business processes and workflows. So Jeff, why don't you tell everybody about what you're doing with AI?

We're doing a lot. We look at AI as a co pilot to your business right now. So X Agency, we're a form of an automation and AI agency working with businesses to help plan, strategize and actually implement AI into whatever their, their redundancies are, whatever they want to be more productive, where they want to be more efficient. So we really look at a businesses processes and systems and we look at also the fulfillment and the demand side of your business as well. If we can really help automate using different automations and AI, we can really help scale the demand side because that's where a lot of businesses kind of run into issues is you have too much, have too much demand for and not able to keep up with the fulfillment and that's where we really place ourselves in it. A lot of the conversations we have is nobody knows really where to start with AI and we try and remove that burden from people so they don't have to think about, okay, there's new technologies, there's a new AI tool out there. So we really remove that fear of AI from a business as well.

You know, I, I definitely want to talk about getting started with AI, but you mentioned automation and AI and what I found is a lot of people they just lump, a lot of times automation, they just oh, AI is doing it. So do you mind explaining how you guys see the difference between AI and automations?

AI is more driven on the data that your business has and the automation comes to connecting the dots between the data sources. So whether that would be customer service to content creation. So the customer service would be collecting data from having conversations with your customers and then the automations would help create content on the other side. Because if a customer is asking a question to your customer service department, well, it's like, well why don't we create a post for social media or for our ads using the automations in there?

Great idea. Yeah, that's a good distinction. A lot of times people just, they think AI but sometimes AI isn't the answer, sometimes it's just the automation. So thank you for that sharing that distinction. So you talked about when you're getting started with clients, how ready. I know that the intention and the desire is there for introducing AI or else they wouldn't be reaching out to your agency. But how ready are you finding clients to, to start?

Yeah, I would say right now from where we are, it's 5050 there, there's people who are just gung ho for it. We need to start yesterday which I mean they're nice to work with but there's processes that come with it. Some people who are, it's like I need to put a couple things in place or I just want to kind floor what's going on. We may not have, we may not be ready. So for us we've seen it's about 50, 50 where it is for us it's just having the conversations is great. We know that. And even yourself it's like it's a massive educational curve for people right now. So even, even the people who want to start like yesterday, like I was saying, there's still a process like you guys need to understand like this stuff doesn't happen overnight. So it's like just because you want it yesterday, AI just doesn't up, up, I mean come out of nowhere and just run your business for you. So I mean there's pros to have it working with both, both people which, which is great. And that's why it's like when we work with a company, we build out our 90 day implementation plan and we do everything in 90 day sprints for a couple reasons. One, it's just not trying to think too far ahead and overwhelm the clients that we're working with. And most importantly it's as much as we can estimate how much things may cost or how long things are going to take. There could be some, some sort of technology that's released tomorrow that none of us know about that we can implement into, into the business. And that's, that's kind of where we've positioned ourselves is like they don't have to worry about that. And that's why we build everything in 90 day sprints for, for their business specifically.

Do you mind walking everybody through 90 days for some people might be an aggressive timeline depending on how capable they are with using the tools already or thinking in process. Right. But for you guys when you come in, what would a client expect? What, what should anybody that's looking for a vendor kind of expect that, that first cycle to look like?

Yeah. So we build out the plan first and it's pretty in depth plan. Like we build out the technology so we don't build a lot of the actual tools itself. We partner with a lot of the tools and again we just connect through automations and APIs. We've got a whole bunch of our internal technologies that is our AI operating system that helps, I mean connect these things a lot quicker. But with it, it's like what people can expect is when we build out the plan originally for your business, we ask for your wish list. Like what, what would be a perfect scenario of your business? Like where do you want to be more productive? Like are you having issues again with customer service or sales or whatever it may be? And then we build out the plan specific to them. And in that plan it's like we believe we can accomplish all of this, what you gave us within 90 days and here's how we're going to do it. And we give them that basically that blueprint for, for doing it, which again removes that overwhelming aspect for, for somebody when they're visualizing. It's like you told me that you can do all this stuff, but it's like yeah, we told you we can do it because we got your wish list. We've broken down everything with different tools and the different connections that we need and then we just implement it for you. So again it's really removing that fear.

Yeah. Are you finding that the clients already have the pain or they just like we just want to put AI into our business?

Bit of both. There's the, there's the pain of again the fulfillment side. It's like we're growing. We need to automate this stuff. We can't keep up with it fast enough or I don't want our business to be obsolete because AI is going to take over our business type, type thought process. So again it's a, it's about 50, 50. It's funny how people come in and where they're trying to position themselves using.

AI, either pain or pleasure avoiding getting by the competition or.

Exactly the service, I mean the services side, they're, they're really looking to increase their, their demand side because I mean you only can take on so many clients with the team that you may have. So if we can help on that side, that's where we're really seeing it. A lot of the, let's say the info products and people that are coming through, it's like they want to be the first to market in implementing AI through their whole systems because if they can stay ahead of their competitions, especially in the info product space, whether it's people who are in nutritions or fitness or whatever it may be, they really have a competitive advantage.

Do you guys work with a specific type of company size or industry?

Typically the businesses that we've seen it's anywhere from a million to 25 million per year. There's definitely people who don't make that much, which is completely fine with us. I mean for us it doesn't truly matter. The best, the, I mean the best clients that we can work with in a quickest period of time are ones with actual data points. So your business may not be making as much money or just like your profit may not be there. But the amount of data that you're collecting through again, emails, customer support, whether it's financial data, whatever that may be. We can train AI faster for your business to help it grow, to give you those profit margins as well. So it's more of like how much business data you have so we can train your systems faster.

So I don't know what your experience has been but when I've worked with companies, data, data hygiene and all that has not been a high priority for them. Typically it's been, it's, it's, it's in the CRM or it's in the. But there's no real intelligent action taking place and I would imagine that a lot of listeners that might describe their business as well. So do you have any suggestions for somebody who is getting started or wants to get started but they do want to address that, that data contribution but they're just not there now.

I mean it's, you've got to get into more of the technical side when you're training AI and your data continuously like you could go to ChatGPT and you can use like a, a sales call, like a recording that we were talking about before. So one thing that we did is like we take our, all of our sales calls and we record them. Then we take the transcription and the recording and we put it into AI and it builds a proposal for people. So technically that's using your, your, your data. But to continue to do that and automate it and continue for it to learn you've got to set up the connections through the automations so it can continue to learn. So I mean like people can go and they can do these things manually and that's where AI becomes a co pilot and we look at it, it's like the 70, 90, 120 rule. When you first start using it again like using a recording and putting it into AI to create a proposal you need a human to do that. Once we've, we've started training it we can get it to about 90% of a human capacity. And then once we've got all the automations and everything set up and the reinforcement it'll do 120% of the human capacity automated which is, which is where the scalability is. And that's how we try and break it down for clients as well. It's like demand fulfillment like I was saying. But then also when we start 70% as we continue to build we'll get it to a 90% and then once we get everything flushed out and really trained we can get it to 120% of your output. And that's when it's just a well oiled machine.

So I know that you've got all different sizes of clients and everybody listening to this has different size businesses but a process like that, I know you guys spend 90 days but you're addressing a larger wish list and you're doing maybe you don't know the company so you're required to do a level of immersion and like deep dive into their business to be able to advise them. But for somebody who it's their own business, maybe they're a solopreneur or a small team so they're intimately familiar with every aspect of it for them to identify an opportunity and to do, to automate plus AI. If I do the 70, 90, 120 on that, how much of a heavy lift is that for the typical new user?

So I mean and this is where we really want to come in in two aspects. So we're, we typically only have two calls a month with our clients because we just, because we set everything up and like we train, we train everything so you don't have to do it. So if somebody's a solopreneur and this. We do believe that there's going to be people, solopreneurs running $100 million businesses at some point with these AI and automations, which is super, which is super exciting. So it's like again, we try and really remove that burden because it's. We don't. We wanted. We knew like if we plugged ourselves into a business there was going to be, well, I don't have a team member there to be able to manage what you're trying to do. So we took all that as well and built our internal teams. It's like, hey, it's in the wish list. We've built out the whole spec. This is in your 90 day plan. You've agreed to this plan. We're just going to build this out and we're just going to keep you up to date with it and that. And that's where it is. So you again, you tell us what you want and then we'll build it out. Because what we're doing, and you and I have spoke about this before, is like we're building basically an AI in a box type SaaS platform. So you're not even going to need us to do this. We're going to have. And the biggest thing with the specs and stuff like that and what we're building, it's connecting to different CRM systems for an example. It's like once we have got the majority of them in the systems, it's like we can make it a lot easier for other people who have no technical background. Solopreneurs, all these different size businesses at a SaaS level, scalability.

We'll be back after a quick break.

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This is a good point. You know, one of the things I encourage people when they're getting involved in AI is who not how, right? Like it's more important for you as a, an applier of AI, the listener that's listening to this right now. It's more important that you, that you understand how to use it than it is that you figure out how to connect zapier to zapier to this or that or that. You become a prompt engineer and that sort of thing. Now one of the challenges in a who not how environment, which is where a lot of people find themselves is I can't find resources if I know of course you have an agency and we'll talk about that. But for, for somebody that may be, I don't know. And you've probably had to do this with some of your clients. They're not a fit. Where do you send them? Where are people finding talent to help them?

So I mean, I'm going to give them a plug. So. Map Farmer AI Map Farmer is my business partner. But if you look at map Farmer AI on social media, TikTok predominantly is where his largest following is. He reviews a new tool in technology every single day. So it's like, it's, it's a good place to learn because everything that he promotes on his page, we also battle test internally and like once we find good partnerships and good relationships, that's when we plug them into the clients as well. So because that's again, that was, that's a big thing. It's like, okay, well AI is not for me right now or it's just don't have the budget or whatever it may be. It's like there's aspects that you can learn these tools and learn which ones. And that also gives us our competitive advantage because we're staying ahead as much as possible with these technical technologies and tools that get released. So I mean that's where we send people. It's like, I mean he loves it because I mean he's got five kids and he really sticks to it. He, I mean I always praise him is like the, the fact that he keeps up with it every single day is amazing. But what keeps him going is his, like his five kids think he's a celebrity because he's got so many followers on, on TikTok, which is funny, but what he's doing is, is fantastic for people. The, the, the comments that he gets, the feedback that we get as a business, the connections that we make and the partnership to these tools that we, we allow our clients to essentially have access to without having to worry about it.

So for those who are going to go check it out, Matt. Matt is looking at These tools through the lens of what role?

Business owner, entrepreneur, he's looking at as a consumer, mostly. So there's two sides. One is like a tool where I'm going to. I'm going to use a tool to generate an image. So he'll go through and he'll show like an updates of how these technologies have changed and how it compares to other tools that are out there. So he does that comparison aspect from tool to tool. There's some technologies that he talks about, which is super high technical stuff, and some things that I don't even understand what he's talking about sometimes. So there's two aspects but. But a lot of is I'm going through from the lens of a consumer. And here's the comparison to other tools that are out there.

Very cool. So through that process, how many tools has he evaluated since he started doing this?

Oh, geez, hundreds. He's done it. He's done it every single day for over the last year. Like, it's just. And sometimes it's two a day. I want to say. And I mean, I don't want to be quoted on it, but I think over 500 tools he's reviewed from that process.

I mean, that's a. It's a killing two birds with one stone. He's creating content, but he's also educating himself. But he's also saying, hey, guys on the team, check this tool out. What are some of the. Can you name some. A few. Maybe some tools that, because of that process, you guys are like, damn, we're going to use this.

One that we, we actually use. And we part. We've partnered with, we're helping on their development side. And behind the scenes is Charlie Charlie AI. Their platform, it's speed to lead. So when people come through like they've got, they're. They're just releasing the voice side of the business. When a lead comes through, it goes. And I'll call them and it'll make sure that they're following through your funnel, which is. I mean, in our business, that's. That's the most important thing. It started as like the text platform and stuff like that, which is great. There's a whole bunch of other features in there, but that's definitely the one that's making a huge difference. There's other ones that we've looked at. I mean, Voice. Voice call centers, they're the ones that are taking off. So everybody's probably heard of Air AI. So we work closely with Air AI. They've done an amazing job. People have their pros and cons of it. There's other tools out there that do similar things but I mean they're definitely one of the first to the market. Customer service stuff. There's a ton of tools out there. We've developed one internally where it's like a customer service bot on your website. We've also taught it to sell as well. So when we work with a client it's like what's the objective you want these customer service agents to push to whether it's book a call or I mean sell a product and stuff like that. And those are the additional nuances you can use with these automations and AI because typically a customer service agent for a business is only going to do the customer service but we can do both with AI.

Now that's an interesting use case. So for those who may not be familiar with what's possible with some of these chatbots, give me kind of like what that experience is like and what's occurring in that interaction with a client.

I mean the easiest one. So typically how we set up the ladder it's like you go to a website and there's a widget that pops up in the bottom corner. They, I mean they've been around for a long period of time. It's like you communicate back and forth with them and I'm asking you questions on your business. Like that's, that's usually the cool thing with it. It's real time language change. So it's like if somebody comes in and they speak any sort of European or any sort of like let's say Chinese or Japanese, wherever it may be, it can real time change which is massive opportunity for businesses to now expose themselves to different markets that they may not. And that comes on the demand side that we focus on. If for some reason the customer service chat couldn't deal with a question, it gets pushed up and then can push them to a voice AI and then if the voice AI can't solve it, it'll push it to an actual human. And these are the connections through the automations and then once the human, once the human answers it, once it gets pushed into your data center which then it pushes it back down to the, it learns it. And that's where the 70, 90, 120 comes in.

Yes. And that's a pretty standard thing that you guys are doing with those chatbots.

Yeah, I mean like everybody needs, I mean for me at least I think everybody's customer service can be better. Like that's some of the biggest feedback that Most businesses get for myself, like I'm a big Apple user. It's like I think they have some of the best customer support that's out there. I mean they've built that brand for a reason and that's just kind of how we look at it. And if we can take that small burden off a business and then give them that feedback from their consumers like, well, your customer support was amazing. I'm going to continue to come back and buy it because that word of mouth marketing is more powerful than just that cold paid, paid traffic. So again, it comes back to the fulfillment in the demand side.

So with these bots, and I know that you guys do something a lot more sophisticated with your clients, but are there tools out there that somebody can just go and load up a bot in 30 minutes and throw in some customer service transcripts and have first pass?

At the top of my head I could, I can't name one because we, I mean we've been focused on ours. We've developed some other tech stuff. Yeah we've developed our own stuff in that aspect. So we've also got some additional technologies where we can go and we can scrape basically every, all the information on your website and upload it into a customer service bot almost instantly and put the widget on your website. So we've got that aspect and that's kind of just an additional bonus that we give to our clients. It's like we're gonna one improve your customer support. We've got all the information here because it, it comes back to we don't have anybody in our team to be able to give you the information or be able to provide that. So it's like we've created the tools so they don't have to worry about finding that person to get us what we need.

Cool. So I want to talk about this wish list idea because I think that's a great for any business out there. Where do your pain points? What do you want to fix? Right. That's a great place to start. So typically as you guys are working on these, working through this wish list for your clients in those 90 days, what types of contribution is it making as far as like time saved or percent you know, cost less this, much less to execute that product.

The, the estimate that we've estimated and again it's an approximate approximate. So each copilot, again, so each automation and AI that we set up for a business, again just using the customer service aspect of we believe we can save upwards about $50,000 per year per copilot for a business. So quite a, quite a bit of money because once we get all these departments set up, you don't need to add more people to your business, which is the real, the real cost constraint to it. So it's like once we get them set up, sure there's some heavy lifting in the beginning where the cost to get these things set up between, but after that then it just runs, which is, which is great. So you've just got like maintenance fees on your servers or something goes down, you need to bring in a developer to do. But we've got all that stuff internal, so again, you don't have to worry about it. So it's like the heavy lifting in the beginning and then after that it's super smooth. And then you see the growth of your business while also saving money on, on the back end. So that's, that's typically what we've estimated about $50,000 per year per copilot that we set up.

And customer service in particular is one of those areas high churn critical because it's customer facing now and onboarding. All those things in customer service end up being a reason why AI is certainly a place to get started with that. So with this bot in place or this, this type of tech in place, I don't have to worry about churn nearly as much. Unless one of my seniors, you know, dips out, I don't have to worry about oh, that huge promotion just, it was a hit. We're getting overwhelmed in customer service. Beautiful. So as far as other processes where the, the bots might not be included, is there a general pattern or trend that you're seeing in a company's production cycles increasing like, like are there any type of numbers or stats that you might feel comfortable that a small business person could say is putting this effort worth blank percent increase?

Yeah, I mean those numbers are tough because it really, it's really subjective to the business and that's why we try and use like, okay, well this is what we believe we can save what that percentage is for your business. But there's little things in behind the scenes that it's, it's again, it's hard to justify what that is. So we've got something that will actually grade your leads in your CRM system so it can revive some leads and stack them properly that you can sell them more products. Some may be dead, some may not be. So it's actually, we've created a lead grader. So it's like we want to help on the demand Side you, you're getting all these leads, let's structure them and grade them properly. Using AI, which technically businesses don't really do that, if they do it at all, that could increase a huge amount of profit and time into your business because you don't necessarily need to call somebody who's just not going to be there or who's fake or maybe just a bot or something like that. So there's a time savings and it's just, yeah, it's a very hard, subjective number to put a percent right now. But I mean, there's just little things like that that make a huge difference.

So for somebody that was going to diy, right, and kind of, kind of replicate the, the process that you've just explained here, beyond the wish list, what's, what would be the next step that you'd recommend for them?

I mean, working with us, I mean, it's, it's up, it's up to them. It's like that's the biggest somebody.

If it was somebody who, I mean, you guys, for what you do, you deservedly charge a premium. And there's going to be individuals out there who are like, they got the FOMO right, they want to start using AI, but they're not at a mature enough point in that education cycle to be able to engage with somebody like you. So let's say your neighbor was like, hey, you know, what should I do in my business? I think the wish list is a fantastic idea. But beyond that, what would you tell your neighbor to do if he was interested in putting AI in this business?

Doing the, the plug for my business partner going like, truthfully, go and watch Matt Farmer AI and then even the people, yeah, tool awareness is, is the big thing. A handful of the people that he's following as well is some of that. Some of the top other influencers in the space as well. For us, it's just like if you're not willing, if you're not at the point, to work with somebody like us or another business, service business that's out there, just starting and using something is most important. One of the best things that we did in the early days is if you're doing sales calls or even your internal training or internal meetings. Fathom Video is the name of the tool and it records your team calls. There's other tools out there, but using those and then taking the transcriptions and putting it into AI, whether it's like, let's just call it ChatGPT and creating a proposal, creating an internal SOP training and something like that it's getting your feedback, your hands wet into the, into the industry with great, basically little to no cost.

Yeah. And it's something you're going to be doing anyway. It's not like you have to think up a use case for.

Yeah, because like if you need to train more people, like you don't want to completely automate your business over time, fine. But if you're using these recordings with your team, you can take this information and train people faster based on previous calls that you had and I can help break that down for you.

So I want to shift gears a little bit because this is about using AI at work. And there's no question that you use AI at work. Define your, your role and title with your company. Let's start there.

So I deal with a lot of the partnerships, the sales, the project management. Matt's more on the integration and the plan building side because he's in the technologies. And then we've got another guy who works with the development team on the implementation. But that's kind of our core team kind of works through the, our own funnel. But no, I deal with most of that front end partnership, the legal, all that, all that sort of aspect.

Okay. I think a lot of those hats are being worn by entrepreneurs who are listening to this or. Yeah, people that are in a role in a company.

The funny thing as well is like Matt's very technical and so we joke around on calls. It's like I also become his translator because I can take it and I can take his brain and come up with some sort of analogy or breakdowns. Like, okay, person now understands it.

So for somebody in your role who's dealing with partnerships and the, the marketing and the sales and that sort of thing, what are some ways that you're finding yourselves regularly using AI, generative AI at least in getting more out of, less effort.

Well, the one is building proposals for, for businesses taking recordings.

Great idea.

Helping build out our plans and stuff like that. So we record the calls because you can forget what's on a call. So we back, we can look at it and then we can put it into AI. It's like we've also created like our own directory of tools. So it's like we go through, it's like, okay, this, this company needs this, this and this AI goes into our directory, finds the relative information and then helps plan it based on their business. And then we give it to the development team to spec out the technologies. It's like, so there's that aspect in the internal in behind the Scenes I'm taking it from sales to implementation as quick as possible. Like we were saying, speed to lead. Yeah, that's probably the biggest one. We're like, we, we're marketers first which I mean what we're doing. So what we're actually in the process of doing. And this one's really exciting. So Matt was one of the best media buyers that I've ever met my entire life. So over the next year we're going to be training his brain to be able to become a media buyer for your business. So you, so you don't necessarily need to hire the high ticket agency. And the thing is with these AI media buyers it runs 24 7, 365 and it will understand trends, nuances and stuff like that that a human may not ever understand. So we're going to take his brain. Yeah, and those are just tools in behind the Scenes that we're just continuing to train so we can give them to our into that AI in a box platform that we're building.

You know, you've mentioned a couple of times the proposal example and for anybody who's generating proposals, I mean I know that there's software out there, not necessarily AI powered software, but there's tools to help you do it the old way. So in a granular level, kind of walk me through what the new way looks like. Ring, ring. Hi Jeff, I'm interested in your services. You have the call, then what happens?

Take the recording, I mean you download the recording and then you put it into AI. It's like okay, here we've just sent you the proposal. This is what you don't even bother.

With, with the transcript. You just take the audio file into.

The it, put it into AI. No, so the, the fathom.video transcribed the whole video. But it would be like Matt spoke at this point, Chris spoke at this point, Jeff spoke at this point. So again it can pick those things up in the transcription and then from there it's like it's now you gotta prompt the AI properly. So just a very quick example is take this recording and break down the wish list of the clients to the tools that we have and then close it out essentially it'll spit out the whole thing, you review it, maybe make some edits and then you send it off to the client. So you can do that within 15 minutes if even if that after a call because now they're excited and confused or the fear, whatever it may be at that point to kind of get them across, get them across the line because we, because we have the development team as well. It's like sending stripe invoices or QuickBooks or whatever tool you may use to collect payments. We also just created a website with a customized link, so depending on the business the prices could vary. So it's like we just go back in. In our own CRM system, we type in the user's name, we put in their proposal, it has a price point to it and then it's a, basically a custom link for them that they can check out on and then it puts them into our whole system, it puts us into their CRMs, it puts us into the project management and then it starts building their customer profile. So we can now continue to build this using AI.

So you started with call and by the time the AI and automation process is done, you've now started to build a profile in the CRM, the proposal. So, and I know that you're doing these regularly. So does that mean that you have a specific prompt that you've calibrated for taking that transcript and giving you the output the way you want it?

I mean we're always, we're always testing it. It's like it's good for the copy and paste prompt. It's getting to the point where we don't even need the prompt like to create those proposals anymore because the, the conversations that we're having are just like more direct to the business. It's like them. Because we were doing that in the beginning. It's like now it's like if people come to our website, they fill out a form so it's qualifying them then. Now what we're doing is we're taking that form and pre building a qualification profile in the CRM and then learning about them using AI before we get on the sales call. So then we can close quicker and then we can set up that link to close them just right on the call.

So Jeff, I would imagine, and you've been sending proposals for years probably, right?

Yeah.

What, what was the turnaround time prior to you getting adept with the tools for a proposal?

I mean a lot of the time, at least what we were doing it continuously. It's like, I'll get it to you by end of day. So I mean that, that's typically where we were. Some people could take longer. Some people have like their own process. Like, well, we'll send it to in three days if you'll. So it looks like our, our pipeline's really full and we're busy. Like whatever the tactic, whatever the tactic may be, but call it end of day and now it's just like get it off your plate as quick as possible before that next call, then you don't have to worry about it and you can do it within that 5, 5, 10 minutes really once, once it becomes fluid.

Oh my gosh. How much more business do you think, I mean you can obviously handle more input now. How much more business do you think that that's going to yield you guys? Because you've, you're able to process more, turn around more. Because look, I've created proposals before, they're not my favorite activity. It wasn't a 15 minute endeavor. Right. It was like it was going to take till the end of the day because that's how long it was going to take me to put everything together. So obviously this is saving you hours for each proposal now.

Yeah, I mean the proposals is one thing, but it's, it's pushing it right through our systems building profiles to get right to the development team on the implementation side. So there's a whole bunch of little things in behind the scenes because we're building this to replace ourselves because if we do that, we're no longer a service and we have a scalable business. And like a lot of businesses, or let's just say agencies, they're good at running traffic for other businesses but they can't grow their own. Or it's like you don't have enough time to build your own because you're spending it on the clients. So it's like we kind of reversed it where it's like it's going to be extremely hard for us in the beginning setting up all these processes, building all these technologies, connecting all these automations. But like once we get it set, we're not even going to be really needed to run the highest quality automations and AI for your business. And I was like, because if we can do that for ourselves, the scalability of reselling that is, I mean, I mean there's really no limits to it.

Infinite. So outside of the proposals, what are some other areas that you're commonly finding yourselves? Compressing time, using the tools, building out.

The plans is another one. It's, it's a lot of content stuff right now because we're so close to and we want to stay super close to our clients as much as possible. Building out the technologies, just making things work properly. It's a lot of content distribution aspect of it, some of the stuff. So we also like X Agency is the mother company but we own X Creative, X Development and then once we continue to build out down the line we also own X Marketing. So the creative side, so creating, taking long form content, say something like this, this, this recording here is using. There's a, a tools called Opus Opus Clip I believe where it will create shorts with it. So it's like you can use AI to create the shorts but then you should send it to a developer or not a developer, an editor just to kind of like make sure everything's correct. Like did that quality assurance side. So that's another aspect that we're using and then the video translation. So one thing that we're doing with a lot of businesses is doing multi language video translations for their content. Which is, which is just massive.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's an obvious low hanging fruit. Right. Especially with the tools because they can knock it out. I mean in the snap of a finger you've got a Spanish version, a Chinese French. For your clients that are doing that. Have you gotten any data points as far as like has that how much that has increased their business or opened up new markets for them?

Open up new markets? Yes. The. For how long? We've done it for to give a relevant number for it because they're learning. It's like okay, we want to be in the Chinese market. It's like okay now you've gotta, we've got to also set up the rest of the business and behind the scenes to be able to support, support the Chinese market. So yes it can, it can support other languages but people just got to be careful. It's like you've also got to set up the fulfillment in those other languages as well. But it's just that the opportunity for people to know that it's there is where the excitement working with clients is like we've, we've just capped the North American market. We believe it's like okay, well let's, let's, let's go overseas.

Yeah, yeah, let's try Spanish.

Exactly.

See what happens. So that's one of the things that we're, we're working on with. Not working on. But we've certainly, it's on the list of things to do for our course and I was curious if, because it's such a simple thing. I mean this makes the, the solopreneur or whatever. Like all of a sudden they've now got international distribution as a possibility that they could handle. You know, on Saturday afternoon.

Exactly.

Acceleration.

Because we go to like, we look for experts in their field. Again whether it's sal, like customer Support or like content creation. And we take them and we look at them as the prompt engineers. So we figure out relationships with these people, connect them to the tools. Because a lot of the time these tools out there as well, they may not be experts in the field. They're engineers, they like, they, they've seen a product market fit, but they haven't trained their own technology to deliver the best output from experts in their, in their industries. And that's why prompt engineers are getting paid so much money. So we try and connect those dots in the scenes so when a customer or client comes through, they're getting the smartest minds on delivering content creation with the best technologies without having to speak to either.

You know, you mentioned a word that might be intimidating to people. Anytime engineer is involved in a title, people like me are thinking, you know, no, I'm not a math guy or whatever, so. But you also, you know, we're stating earlier that with those proposals you don't need some masterful prompt. Are the models able to take that kind of like conversational input and give you close to the output you're looking for?

Yeah, I mean this is where trying like going and buying prompts from these gurus. I mean like it's, we believe it's complete waste of time because it just doesn't necessarily work specific for your business. So using the proposal aspect, it's like you take the transcription and just ask it a simple question. Take this transcription and yeah, it's very simple. And if it's not right to your, your perfection, just ask it another question or ask it something slightly different and just continue that process until what it gives you is what you want. And it can be very, very simple.

Yeah, it's an important point because new users, we don't encounter as many as we used to because adoption is high. But new users would be like, well, I tried it and when you, when you kind of dig in, you'd say, well, tell me about you tried it. They tried to use it like Google, right? Like they would ask it, ask it a question or something, but they weren't giving it a command.

Correct.

And what you're doing is you're taking that input of the transcript, but you're giving it commands. And that's, it's, it's good to know that you don't need to be an engineer to command the models to get you close enough.

No, you don't need to get into the engineering stuff until you really start training your data specifically. But taking information from past content or like recordings and taking. Because they've given you that information and putting it into something like ChatGPT. I mean, you don't, you don't need to have an engineering background to be able to start benefiting yourself using AI.

Great point. No excuses, folks.

No excuses.

A lot of times, just for personal interests, I like to, I like to ask a question, and that is, where do you find out about news or things that are happening in the marketplace? But in your case, with a business partner who's cycling through 500 tests of tools per year, that's kind of an unfair advantage. Are you guys finding. So we, we have some basic software that, that we include with our training. And what we've, what we're seeing is that as we're out there in the marketplace, like we have this vision of what our product is.

Right.

But as we're out there in the marketplace, we're like, they're not an exact copy or they're not an exact copy, but. Ooh, I like that piece of functionality. Ooh, I like that piece of functionality. Has that broad spectrum of visibility you've had on tools, has that informed the software development on your side of the functionality development?

It, it has. Because like Matt reviewing the tools, it's like he, Because, I mean, he does promos for them, so people do pay him for some of these promos for sure, but there's a lot of tools that he reviews just because he likes the tools. But we've created like, partnerships with them. So it's like now we work with these people, it's like, okay, so content creation, this is the tool that we use. So it's like it's in our ecosystem now, which again, gives us that competitive advantage even for our clients. And we don't see anybody who's doing it as in depth as us. Like, there's other automation agencies out there, but yeah, we're Mark. We've been marketers. I developed the first Chatbot on Instagram five years ago. Nice. Which, I mean, put me into this conversational marketing industry. I mean, a long time ago, we built out a development team over the years. So it's like we're marketers. We built out the development team. And then Matt having that competitive advantage, reviewing tools, it's like some people may have one or two, but we've got all three. So we can help businesses again on the fulfillment and the demand side with complete knowledge in every industry.

You know, this is a, a great tip for any business out there. Look, certainly go to MATS and do the shortcut. You Know who, not how. You don't have to go through 500 tools, but somebody on your team should be regularly, even if it's like five minutes, ten minutes on a coffee break should go and start testing these tools. And with the filter of how do I use this in my business, how do I use this in my role, how does somebody else on my team use this in their function? So I'd never considered the strategic advantage of massive tool evaluation.

I mean it is. And like even for him, like he can't keep up, it moves, it moves so fast. But yeah, with, with it it's like not necessarily just test tools out. It's like if you're in a specific department, find a tool that can help you in your specific role because then you're, you're more obligated to stick with it. So it's like again, I'm in customer support, it's like work or I'm in sales, it's like find some tools, like I was just saying that help you with that and then start expanding it through the actual team itself and have your other team members do similar things. It just find tools specifically for your role that help you in that aspect and then give it to everybody else once you've figured it out.

You know, in my personal experience I look at a lot of tools as well. I find that the learning curve for getting extracting value from those tools is almost instant. So none of these have major like software has changed. Let's put it that way. It's not nearly as challenging.

It really, it's not as challenging. It does not cost as much anymore because with, with AI and automations like you can build out some really powerful infrastructures for your business specifically. And we do it, we do it all the time for clients. I mean like we've, we've had the experience, we can do things a little bit quicker. But also, and what I really like, it's the collaboration aspect of a lot of these tools and technologies is massive. Like, because like a tool may be building voice AI, but there's a whole bunch of technologies that we may be building that we can leverage each other's technologies to grow together with. Like back in the day, it's like if I'm a marketer, I'm selling this to, I'm selling this business. You try and keep everything hush hush.

Yeah.

Because I mean somebody's just going to come in and steal it from you. So the collaboration, what we've seen right now with AI has been, has been amazing and it's Just it's really nice to work with a lot of different teams that just have the same interest in mind.

You know, one of the things that comes up a lot going back to your clients, there's the whole AI is going to take my job. Yeah. I don't know if the sentiment is as strong as it was earlier in the year or it may be stronger. I don't have data on that. But it is for somebody who meet me and you, we're in it, right. Like it's not, it's not scary anymore. But for a business owner that maybe they're not like an online marketing agency that's, that's familiar with using new tech and all that kind of stuff, are you finding that when you go to talk to your clients that, that there are people within the organizations who are fearful of what's happening with your coming on board and doing your 90 day plan.

So we always tell people AI is not fully autonomous, not right now. It's a co pilot. So we can help your business just get connected to AI. We still need those humans there to do the quality assurance behind it. So it's like we're not here to replace you, we're here to enhance your specific role using AI. So it's like instantly it's like, and that's what we're trying to do because AI is not here to do that yet. It's just not going to happen. So I mean we've got, with, it's just, I mean, removing that fear from people and just being honest about it. I think that's the, the biggest thing with it. It, it's like people are trying to do the, the Fear of God selling. It's like if you don't, if you don't use AI, you're going to be replaced. It's like it's, I mean it's a load of crap I think right now, but I mean I get the selling tactic for some, but it's a stigma that's in, in the industry for sure.

So a business owner shouldn't necessarily be concerned about the, the change management responsible, especially if they got a small team, if they can come in there and position the narrative that hey, this is going to start doing the stuff you don't like doing anyway.

That's, that's exactly it. And what, what AI can do is if like Chris, you're in, you're in sales and like it can tell us, well, Chris, you suck at sales, but you, you, you could be really good at content creation. So it's going to start having those, it's going to start having those, those conversations for not only yourself but for the executives or the management on the team. It's just like, because it's emotionless. It's just like, Chris, you suck. You need to be on content creation. Meanwhile you're here. Yeah. It's like, but you know, in the back of your head, content creation is where you want to be. But you're, you've always been worried about telling your executive team. So I'm just going to do that for you. And I just moved. It'll just move team members around within their organism. I think the only people who are going to get replaced are the people who don't adopt.

No question. Yeah. There's a quote from Diamandis. I think we might have talked about this, but in one of his interviews he said at the end of the decade there'll be two types of companies. Those that are AI enabled and those that are extinct. So internally with your organization, obviously not everybody is an engineer or a marketing expert or a sales expert. So as far as like your operational team and your administrative team, are they engaged using the model in their jobs?

Yeah, everything, everything that we do with our team is like we're implementing AI in again, operations, admin, sales, stuff like that. We're, we're plugging it in because we're truthfully trying to replace ourselves to an extent because the quicker we can do that for ourselves, the easier we can resell that system to other businesses and then give that time back to the businesses as well. Because there's a lot of, there's. Every business has like similar overlaps. Like there's, there's sales admin like operate like there, there's, there's the similar, there's a ton of similarities with. Okay, well this person uses this CRM system and this project board, whatever it may be. So like that's kind of where the, we're figuring it out right now. Just working closely with the clients.

For the non tech people in your company, did you mandate, hey, you guys got to start using this or did they see others getting wins and start to use it themselves? What was that adoption like?

A little bit of both. I mean I do believe we've got a very high technical team. It's like we, it's. I'm trying to even think like, yeah, I'm gonna say like we've got a pretty high technical team. So getting them integrated into some sort of AI, it's like we're also the team members. Like we don't want to micromanage. So but we need our team members. So even on the creative side, they would like on the X creative department, it's like we get that you guys are editors and you used to make all this money doing hourly work, but you need to use AI because we can bring you more clients. It's like then you just do smaller things. So it's more of you need to use AI because we need the cost to be around here so then we can sell it. So it's kind of like a forceful without micromanaging type aspect as well. And then they come back to us. It's like, okay, we've, we've done it, we figured it out.

Nice. So what's next for you guys? I know the software is in development and is there an eta? I know it's tough to depending on how close you are to launch, but is, is there an ETA where people would be able to get access to it? Because it sounds like it might be the who, not how for people to be able to get access to this there.

I mean the thing is like it could for, I'm exaggerating, but it can happen overnight with technologies being released. Because again, we're not developing a ton of additional proprietary like tools where it's just like the content creation. Like we're, we're building the in behind the scene, the stacking, stacking it. But the technologies we're building is going to make it so simple for businesses to fulfill and demand on, on the business. Like we're talking about getting that built out. I mean there's no approximate ETA because it's where we do our 90s 90 day sprints as well. Like we, we build our own plans, we go through the same cycle that we go with our clients. So we're hoping to have some sort of aspect of within the next 90 days, but it could come sooner. But it doesn't mean that people can't get access to it. It's just they're working a little bit closer with us at more of that enterprise service right now. So because all of our clients are using our AI operating system and for us to give that example, in my analogy, aspect is like if you've got an iPhone or you've got a Samsung, it runs on an operating system. It's like then you download the apps which are the additional tools, but everything runs seamlessly on your Apple operating system in that aspect. So when you come to our platform, you're going to run on X Agency's operating system. But we're going to make it super easy for you to use these tools and then it's going to run your data for you.

So the intention is that this becomes a self serve. Like I could go sign up at when it's ready, go to X Agency, download the tool and start my own configuration. But powered by your AIOs.

Correct.

Very cool. Well I can't wait till that comes out, man.

Yeah, I mean we're super excited for it.

Any teas could be any day you said.

Yeah, I mean like realistically within the next 90 days isn't realistic because like we do like working with our clients right now and we're really building that enterprise value and it's going to make like every tech company that we've built and I've built in the past. It's been bootstrapped based on the customer service aspect and creating that feedback loop because I do believe a lot of people start developing tools and technologies thinking they know what consumers want but they have no idea. They spend so much money in different, in different feature sets. It's like, well, don't do that, don't develop that. So it's, it, it's kind of taking your time but also not too much time because AI moves too quick.

Yeah, I'm, I'm guilty of. I know what they want. We talked about this on our first call.

Yeah.

So. Well cool man. I know that you're in veg, it's business and I know that you also have lots of things to do to run this busy company. So for the people that want to find out more about and just pay attention to what you guys are doing and the thought leadership that you're just displaying in the marketplace? We've talked about Matt's TikTok and Twitter channels. Is there any other place where people can find out about X Agency or what you guys are doing?

I mean the, the like lowest hanging fruit is just to the website. It's just Xagency AI. Pretty straightforward that aspect. We've got a whole bunch of information on there. It actually talks about Matt's education side. It kind of speaks about the plans and everything that we do. If, I mean, if people got questions, I mean you can reach out to me. Instagram's probably the best bot. Just Jeff McPherson and if you want to look at some content and really start getting your feet wet with the educational side. Matt Farmer AI. Just one word. No. No dots or anything in between across all socials.

I see. I subscribed to his Twitter feed after you told me that he was doing tool reviews. I love it. Matt's a great guy. Jeff, thanks so much for being on the podcast today, and I look forward to doing a lot of exciting things with you in the future.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Chris. Appreciate it.

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