2026 AI Roadmap: How to Scale Your Business with evyAI

With Evie AI, if I got a million customers tomorrow, it'd be fine. I can handle it. And so like, I've always dreamt of having a software company, but Evie AI is really where we can scale and make a difference to a lot of people. So. I started Ajax Union back in 2008. And the business didn't really take off till 2010, '11, '12. We were on the Inc. 500 as one of the number 178, one of the fastest growing companies in America. And I learned a lot of things about myself. One of the things is I don't want to hoard employees. I had 75 full-time people in our office and it was very difficult. And, um, and then I went through a whole journey and I grew the business. And then at the end of COVID we lost 75% of our recurring revenue. We still maintained our million-dollar mark, like to— we whatever, to keep the business there. But it's, it's not very profitable. It's not a very profitable business, the agency business, um, compared to a software business. Not very profitable. So it's also not very scalable. I can't just take on 1,000 new customers. Finally, when I met Tammy and when ChatGPT came out and all that, it made it easier for me to do it. And that's why I kind of like, finally we, we have some traction now, but it takes a while to build a business and to build a community and all this other jazz. So I'm just very grateful that you guys are here and that you guys are customers. And yes, it's a separate company with separate staff, with separate everything. Um, but Ajax Union is still very much running and it's, it's, it's running because we have good team members and good clients that are kind of like, you know, just clients that have been with us for since forever and that it's working. I'm very excited about the impact that we've made in the past year to you guys, and I'm looking forward to taking things to a whole new level. In 2026, we're gonna be adding many, many more features cuz we're almost finished our refactor. We spent the past 6 months. redoing the backend of Evie AI. Um, and that was a lot of work. That was a tremendous amount of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money. But you'll see when we come out with the new one in 20— early 2026, you'll be able to see how much faster Evie AI is and how many more features we are able to add and the speed of adding features. We're adding features slowly now over the past year. We still added a tremendous amount of features, but we're gonna be able to add 200 new features over the course of the next 2 years. And you're gonna be like, Holy crap, I can't believe it does this. And so that's really, I'm very excited about that. So glad that you guys are all here with me. I met with Zach Madrigal yesterday in Manhattan. He came to Manhattan and every time he comes to Manhattan, he's like, Joe, I wanna meet you, let's do a selfie. And then I realized, you know what? I need to do a selfie with all of our clients. I gotta travel around, meet every one of our clients and do a selfie with all of our clients. So I'm gonna be meeting with like at least 40 clients on the ship. I'm going on January 17th on the cruise. Maybe next year in 2028, we could all plan to go on the cruise from Miami together. And there's going to be 450 other people there, but it would be nice for all of us to get together for 8 days and to network and to build relationships and maybe bring your family and go on vacation. But that's the idea is like you're together for 8 days. Like, wow, how amazing is that? So it'll be nice if you guys want to plan for 2028 because it's all sold out. for 2026. But if you guys want to plan something for 2028, it's probably going to happen around January 15th or something. That'd be epic if we got a group together. There's going to be about 40, 40 of us already on the ship that are EvAI clients, including Rhonda Scherer. You guys know Rhonda? She's one of our biggest affiliates. So she's going to be on the ship with me for 8 days, but I'm going to talk to her about coming again in 2028, which I'm sure she'll want to. But it's a great time. And again, you don't have to pay for the actual cruise. You don't have to pay for the event. You just pay for your room and board on the cruise, which starts at like $1,500 for the week or whatever. It's not a ridiculous amount of money because you're getting unlimited food, you're getting unlimited whatever. And then— and it's whatever.

Rick, what will you be doing for the holidays?

How do you celebrate?

You know, are there traditional foods that your family enjoys?

Well, my— yeah, thank you. Good to see everybody. So my wife just left to go to Kentucky to get her mom, bring her back here. And Jenny and I, we're a second marriage, so we're like the Brady Bunch. We have 4 girls, 2 boys combined, and 2 granddaughters. And we just found out we have a new grandbaby on the way from my youngest son.

Congratulations.

So soon to be a third. Hopefully that'll be a boy and another Clody. But my wife's maiden name was Rouse, so that's kind of German. I'm a Clody, which is Swiss. But my dad's family were all French from New Orleans. So we, you know, listen, I'm gonna do a gumbo. I've already got a cheesecake I made in the Instant Pot. I'm getting ready to make a French vanilla pound cake for my grandmother. Our big tradition is in New Orleans, we do a king cake and it's like a round cake with a little baby in it. And what we do during— it's really, we have a big party on King Day, which is 10 days after Christmas. You know, the 12 days, you know, the 12 Days of Christmas.

Okay.

Supposedly, traditionally, the 12th day is when the wise men showed up at the crib, whatever. and to see the baby Jesus. And so we celebrate King Day, but in the cake, the round cake, it's like purple, green, and gold icing. And some people do cream cheese filling. I don't like that. I like the cinnamon with the icing on top.

Mm-hmm.

It looks like a Danish. And one of the pieces will have a, a little plastic baby. Whoever gets that baby has to throw the party the next week. And then whoever gets the baby at that party throws the party the next. So during king cake season, We have a party every week until Mardi Gras, which is Fat Tuesday. You know, foie gras is Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday before Strove Wednesday, which is Ash Wednesday. And anyway, so King Day is kind of— so, but we can get the cakes now.

I love your background photo, Ian. It looks like you're in a room with me and I'm celebrating something. Maybe, maybe I'm celebrating that I accomplished my goals for 2025 and I'm setting new goals for 2026. By the way, if anybody wants to join us, we still have a handful of spots left for next Monday. We're doing a 3-hour session. I know Jane's coming and Barbara's coming. Um, a couple of you are coming. So if you guys are interested in the Zoom chat, I put in a questionnaire you can fill out if you're interested in joining us for, for 3 hours. But I just wanted to say happy holidays and, uh, thank you guys for being amazing. Thank you for being part of this amazing community. And Deb, looking forward to doing the goal setting masterclass for you. Deb also upgraded to the Bundle Plus yesterday. So Deb, congrats on being part of the Bundle Plus with Barbara and everybody else that's part of it. So thank you. By the way, it's $244. 44 is my favorite number. But yes, if anybody— if anybody— thank you for that. I appreciate you guys. It's also your favorite number, Latha?

I'm going to— I'm signing up right now, Joe.

Okay. Congratulations. Congratulations. And we only have a few spots left and then we close the door. So if anybody wants it, it's, um, It's amazing. So thank you, Deb, for sharing that. And yeah, I always call the— I always call companies to try to get a discount, even if it's like $10 or whatever it is, because everything really adds up. Like you call your ISP or whatever, or your phone service. I recently lowered my phone bill because I was switching. I called Verizon, they told me to go to hell. So I said, okay, I'm gonna go to T-Mobile. And their customer service is so much better. And so I just moved to them and they gave me a crazy, crazy deal. I'm saving about $1,200 a year. Just from, from that. So I'm like, all right, goodbye. I was with you for a long time, but you guys are gonna treat me like this, I'm moving on. So yeah, I totally agree with that.

I just got rid of some channels and my husband didn't even notice we didn't have them until 5 months later. And when he complained to me, I said, you haven't watched them for 5 months, Ed. Like, you don't need them.

Yeah. Yeah. Canceling like Netflix or whatever and seeing if you even use it is an interesting thing. And then when you need it, you resubscribe. It's not the end of the world. You know what I mean?

Or multiple people have licenses. Like, I, I have cybersecurity clients who audit their clients, and they say they'll, they'll have, like, 1,500 user licenses, and they only got 800 people using it. Like, 700 people that used to work there still had— they were paying for the license.

Right.

You, you need to look at these things on a regular basis. They're counting on you falling asleep, basically.

Right.

And, and just, you know, yeah, there's a bill. I'm paying it. And some of them are fungible, meaning you can assign the license to somebody else, and some of them you can't, and you're locked in for another year on a person who's never going to use it. So, you know, set aside a little time for that, or just calendar it like I do, so you literally don't have to think about it.

I love it. Yeah, that's a great hack. I learned something in one of— in the big corp that I used to work in, that was, it's not the big revenue that's going to make you rich, it's the low cost. So keep track of your cost. I mean, revenue counts, but every dollar you don't spend is—

Invest in things that will give you an ROI. So for example, Evy AI will give you an ROI. I just signed up a guy named Zach. He's a new client of Evy AI. That's why I left here to kind of sign him up. And he signed up and he knows that because he's going to spend $3,600 a year on Evy AI, He's going to end up making $100,000 from that directly. So that's why he's making that investment. So if you know that you're paying money for Bitcoin, that's an investment. Money in software is an investment often. But if it's costing you and you're not making money from it, then don't spend it. That's the idea.

Well, y'all, it's been great. I've got to jump, and I just want you to know I'm so excited to be in this place that when my computer shut down and I was waiting for it to restart, I threw my shortbread in the oven, came back here, and suddenly realized I didn't turn the oven on.

Well, that's better than it burning.

Here's a cooking lesson: because they're made with olive oil, not butter, they went into a hot oven that was, you know, going down, and they did not lose shape. They're still in there perfectly good. So I'll let you know how they worked out. Bye, y'all.

Awesome.

Awesome.

I love it.

That's great.

Elaine, what time is your party tonight in case I can make it? Yeah, 7 o'clock tonight. Okay. Then have some jokes time. We're gonna have people telling some jokes. Adults only, please. And don't, don't invite Joe because he's, he's young at heart.

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