How AI Reveals Million-Dollar Profit Leaks

4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 1. Welcome to the AI Profit Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Weiser, here with Krios Muddings from Deep Blue Risk in San Antonio, Texas. We are in Texas. Tell me a little bit about your business. Want to tell them what's up?

So I'm going to talk about the co-founder of LinkedIn. His name is Reid Hoffman.

Met him a couple of times. Yeah, he's a pretty good dude.

Okay. So he talks about an entrepreneur is somebody who jumps off a cliff and builds the plane on the way down. All right. And that was where it all started. You know, it's the moral of my life. I know you do it very well. Yeah, we've seen that, you know, and the coaching comes along with that. But what we've been doing is providing IT services, support, project work for, you know, some decades now. We work with a bunch of break-fix customers. And what we're seeing is a change. From the break-fix mentality to managed services. And as of late, more AI advisory services.

So when you talk about break-fix, that is when something breaks, you go fix it, right? That's right.

It's typically wait until something breaks, a customer reports it, a ticket is open, and we react.

So a business owner would, you know, something breaks, they call you on demand.

Correct.

Versus managed services is more of a like a proactive monthly type service where you do as much as you can to help manage that stuff, right? I don't want to say stuff as the IT infrastructure, obviously, but then your name is Deep Blue Risk, which means that it's kind of moved from reaction to a little bit of— I'd say, I don't, I don't really like the word prevention because there's not a lot of prevent you can do anymore, but maybe a little bit of prevention in there to now where managing risk, and then to kind of AI. Is that— would you agree with that?

Yes, definitely. When the effort is being put into proactive services maintenance, you know, then there's a fixed cost. You know, companies can budget for that spend, and there's actually reduced incidents, which increases the continuity of business, right?

And profitability and all those things. That's one thing that I will say, and I was a former— the reason we know each is I was a former IT company owner, for those of you that are watching this that don't know me. So I know Krios's world really, really well. One of the challenges that I think we've watched happen from, you know, break-fix, it was actually pretty easy to make people happy because something breaks, you go fix it. But then as we started to transition, it was, okay, let's go manage your network, let's budget for things. But the more— what's interesting about it is the more you manage it, the less things go wrong. And then, then the end user is kind of like, well, why am I paying you? Because nothing's breaking. What's the deal? But, but now we've kind of moved past, like, that's still there, but then we're kind of moving over now into this whole cyber. And we've moved actually in reality last, I'd say since COVID like 2020 to now, end of 2015 or 2025, 2015, 2025, we've kind of moved into this world where Cybersecurity is a major play. Everyone's going to get hacked. Everyone's like— I mean, it's kind of funny. I look at my credit report pretty consistently and it's like you're in another breach, you're in another breach, you're in another. And it's like everyone's in a breach. So everyone, every business is going to get hacked. And if you don't believe this, watching this, by the way, everyone's going to get hacked. Agree or disagree?

That's why. Yep, that's it.

That's accurate. Everyone's going to have some type of data leak, some, some type of risk. So you've kind of moved from break and fix to management, proactive prevention mode to, okay, now I'm helping you manage some of your risk. Those three things are all IT related, but then we're kind of, you know, the whole reason we're here, AI Profit Leaders podcast. Now we're kind of watching AI come into the mix.

Absolutely. And it's a big deal. It's a game changer.

Yeah.

There's still the risk involved because absolutely. AI does, it's about data. It's about your information being out there. And a lot of people would agree, a lot of business owners, leaders would agree that putting your information out there in any kind of LLM or any kind of AI network, there is an increased chance. So deployment and properly implementing AI in any business is a strategy.

So strategy is really important.

Yes.

And it's very interesting. So you mentioned like any type of LLM, that means large language model, basically ChatGPT, GPT is an LLM, Gemini or Claude, or like any of these big names that you see. If you're watching this and don't know what LLM means, that's what effectively— but it's any type of AI software or model that's considered that. So not now, not only is every— and here's the thing, a couple things I'll say because I know this world pretty well, and I want to get your, your take on this. I'd say 90% of businesses are using some type of AI every day. But I'd also say similar numbers don't realize their staff are using it. And it's kind of like— and they don't really know what— there's no strategy. Agree or disagree on that?

I agree. Again, we're from Texas, so we know the stories of the Wild Wild West.

Yes, right. Yes, sir.

It's a lot similar to that these days. Yes. And you said it right. Everybody's shooting in their own direction.

A lot of it. And it's funny, I have this meme on my phone that I share at times and it says, in fact, I should see if I can pull it out here. But I have this meme on my phone that I share and it's related to— here it is actually. Who are we CEOs? What do we want? And they're like yelling. So if you can see that on the camera, who are we CEOs? What do we want? AI. AI to do what? We don't know. When do we want it? Right now. Because that's, that's like the story of it, right? Like everyone knows AI is like a buzz thing. It's super sexy, it's super hot, everyone wants it, but they have no clue how to use it. And I think, you know, we've also seen the staff is worried about getting replaced. Do you agree with that?

Right. Absolutely.

The owners and the founders and the CEOs and the boards of like the decision makers, they're like, we got to put this in. They're itching to put something in, but they really don't have a strategy and they really don't have a plan. So they put all the stuff in without that. And I think there's some numbers out there that like 90% or 85% of AI projects either fail or don't get completed.

Right. So let me give you an example that matches what you're saying. The light bulb, it's one of the best inventions ever. Every room, every house has one. And what does it do? It lights up the area, right?

Yeah.

But how effective is a light bulb when nobody's home, when nobody's in the office? All right. AI is the same thing. It's a very effective tool, process, strategy to put in place. Yes. Whatever you want to call it. But it's only effective if it is implemented right. It is suited for your business. And that's why an assessment is needed so that we learn, so that we as your advisor can teach you can help you identify where your employees are using it, how are they using it, what outcomes do you expect from using AI. It's not just a shiny tool you just throw in and you say, hey, I want this to work.

Yeah, I want AI, you know, just like that meme said, right? Like, I want AI, put it in right away.

It needs proper implementation so it can work for specific outcomes, so it can address specific issues, problems, so it can identify profit gaps, identify whether there are any leaks in the business, efficiency leaks, or anything that can you know, that needs to be tightened up.

Yeah. So ultimately, the biggest tip you'd give today is no matter what size of business you are, you should be absolutely putting AI in. But if you're going to put AI in, you need to have some type of strategy with an assessment on the front side. We need to know what we need to know how to solve that problem.

Absolutely. It's outcome-based.

Yeah. And I think that's a huge factor. Now, that's a— you think about— let's go back to the, to the break-fix IT and the managed IT. And even the risk-based IT, that's a totally different approach because IT companies kind of couldn't talk about outcome-based business efficiency improvement stuff ever. We really couldn't get into that, right? Correct. So how are you like— what's, what's some mindset around like, how can we as business owners and leaders, how can you look at AI and not get— not fall into the trap. I mean, it's because it's really easy to do, because I think one of the challenges are the, the staff and the employees and the decision makers. They're like, we want AI, so they just start randomly putting things in as fast as they can because they're afraid of— and I think the staff puts it in because— and they're using it. Trust me, by the way, if you're watching this, your staff's using AI whether you think they are or not, because there's— most business owners are like, oh no, my staff's not using it. And then they— this is where the assessment comes into play, because they start to survey the staff and look at what's around and what's all putting in place, and all the staff is using it, but they're on their personal phones.

Correct. Right.

So what are a couple strategy mindset pieces that we could put out there that people can actually implement on their own? So on their own, well, or at least to say, okay, I can see maybe even a self-check to— okay, actually, I'll give you a good one. That's maybe let's figure out who in your team is using AI on their own And then maybe call you and say, okay, I need to really look at this because if you have anybody on your staff using it without supervision, without strategy, it's more dangerous than not using it all, in my opinion.

Correct. Correct. So a good starting place is AI adoption. And we practice that in our business. And so what that led to was a lot less founder dependency. Me as the founder, they used to always come to me and ask for advice and strategy and how do we deal with this or deal with situations that would pop up from time to time. But with AI adoption, everybody is then put on the same playing field to learn to use AI, use it as a team, and to report the wins, celebrate the wins, actually. We set up Teams or communications channels in Teams where everyone would share once a week how they're using AI, how it's affecting, how it's making improvements in what they do every single day, how it's affecting interaction with customers, how it's affecting processes. And what we found was that processes became self-healing. So again, instead of going to the founder, coming to the fund, coming to me or coming to a founder, what they would do is they would have the communication with AI in a secure environment, secure enough, and So any situation, any processes, any improvement that is needed is passed through AI, which again, I supervise at a certain level.

But that's from a strategic level, correct? Right.

Correct.

Yeah. And then obviously there, you know, you mentioned the term self-healing. So they're basically not having to deal with you at all. They're going to AI and solving these problems below you, whereas before they came directly to you to solve the problem. Yeah. That's a massive shift. Now, We were talking a little bit in the green room ahead of this. You've been working with AI since '24.

Correct.

Right. So that's a long time in this cycle. How did you decide, like, you're going to get in? What kind of led to that?

So it's a funny thing. OpenAI has been around for 3 years now. You know, it just became— it became usable in late 2023 for most of us. And so right as we jumped in in 2024 is when I recognized, you know what, this is a real game changer. This has the power of when the internet first came in. You know, it's powerful, it's sophisticated enough to help with any process, any mindset, anything, make it a lot easier, faster, smarter decisions so that, you know, again, business can scale, business can grow. And what I discovered along the way was instead of working on projects, you know, there was a vision that became quite clear. And I'll go to a scenario of the movie The Matrix. In one of the scenes, Neo was standing in front of Agent Smith, I think his name was.

Yeah, that was the head agent.

Yeah, yeah. And he reached a point where he could actually see the code in green letters running down the screen and running down in front of him.

That's like he got shot in the hallway, right?

Yeah, exactly.

He got up and then all of a sudden he could Yeah, you know, I remember that scene.

You can stop the bullets and all that.

I remember that scene.

Yeah, well, that was a shift. That was a complete mindset shift because interacting with customers, you know, seeing what's happening behind the scenes, seeing them leave profits, seeing them leave money on the table, seeing them having not taking advantage of customer interactions, all that I could see. And this is like a 5 AM moment. I could just jump up and I can see so clearly. And it created an opportunity to interact with these customers, talk with these customers, and talk about strategic AI advisory services that can help them.

So you kind of had like this dawning of, you know, we put this into our business, we made it more efficient, and now you're kind of realizing, you know, like Neo seeing the Matrix and seeing the code dropping everywhere you go. Are you seeing changes and evolutions?

Absolutely. You know, everywhere I go, it's this like, it's just like falling in place. It's like the images are there, you know.

So I think moral, moral of that story is every single business that you're seeing can see an AI improvement, can see an evolution, can see a change. You just have to be willing to say that. And so maybe another nugget from you that I, you know, I kind of put together here for you is every single business owner has an opportunity to evolve with AI., but it's really critical that they review their processes, look at it strategically.

So here's the thing. Yes, the answer, the short answer is yes. But the 4 buckets that basically every business cares about: sales, marketing, operations, customer experience. Now put those 4 together, AI can definitely compress the time that it takes to fulfill the requirements, meet the KPIs of every single one of those buckets, and also identify where there are opportunities that are not being taken advantage of. In every single one of those buckets as well.

Yeah. So I think, you know, what's— man, that's so key. I like, I like the 4 buckets a lot. That sounds like every single business. Now, what's interesting about that, you start to think about the IT world where we kind of both came from. You're still in, obviously. You couldn't really go into a business before and say, hey, I'm going to help you improve sales and customer service and operations and in your different pieces. It was more about, hey, we'll, we'll try and help you solve, especially break-fix or even preventative IT. Now, we're in a place where you can go in and truly help a business run better, more efficient, and be more profitable. Absolutely.

And you know what opened up those doors was the coaching that we get from Seven Figure. We're talking about meeting all the members at events, live events where, you know, we share ideas with each other, you know, sitting in the green room talking about what each person is doing, you know, and then that begins to open new doors, new thought processes.

Well, I think that's like changing the synapses in your brain and like getting you down a different path and all of a sudden you're Neo, you know, Krios is Neo now. That's, that's the deal. I like it, man. So, so, you know, a couple, you know, maybe kind of putting a bow on this whole thing here, where is your thoughts around business owners and AI? Let's start, let's start with that. What is your thoughts on business owners with AI? Like, how should they approach it? If you're speaking to, let's say, a decision maker at a, at an SMB, small-medium-sized business, how should they approach this?

Well, the best approach is to get an assessment done, see where are we using AI in our company. And we have— we've been provided, you know, forms for that, that small business owners can identify where they are right now, who's there, what's everybody doing with it. After that, we sit at the 36,000-foot level and we develop a roadmap to see, okay, you know, what are the problem areas that could be improved or what can be identified that can be done a lot better, faster, smarter. And then from then, we implement tools, processes, strategies in place.

And after that, then it's an ongoing roadmap that leads to success with a strategic focus, right?

Absolutely.

So really what you're wanting to do is you saw the code. Now we want to go to business owners and say, hey, I want to show you enough stuff so you see the code too, because you can't— even with strategy, you can't be in their trenches every single day, right? We're going to be in a place where You're teaching them and showing those members, those clients that you work with, here's the place that we need to be in every single day. Here's how we evolve. Here's where we grow. I need you to be Neo. Would you, would you agree with that?

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

That's a pretty cool place. Yeah. Now, you told me a little story, story earlier. I want you to kind of go through this because I, this is, I think, what's going to help everyone else watching this with you to see Neo a little bit more. You talked about the, the oil change thing. Tell that story to me a little bit.

So a couple weeks ago, I, I I took my truck to get an oil change, all right, one of those, one of the service centers that are around the city. And I, I sat there, you know, during the time and did some work in the meantime. And, you know, the typical thing when you get an oil change done, they look at everything— all your filters, your brakes, your tires, everything. And at the end of the service, the sales guy came back to me and says, you know what, we have a problem. And he showed me some some things that needed fixing, obviously. And it was a $3,000 repair job, all right? And he did his sales pitch. He talked about, you know, why I need to do it and what it would take and what should be done, blah blah blah. And that was fine, you know. I told him, okay, I wasn't prepared to do that right away. I didn't want to commit at that time. But maybe— but yeah, absolutely. And he made good points. It needed to be done, right? It's not— it's not— but on that day, I needed to make a schedule. I needed to communicate with with my son who uses the truck all the time, you know. So I told him, all right, um, we're going to get back— I get going to get back to him about it. It's been 2 weeks, and even though they have my telephone number, email address, all the contact information, they did not get in touch with me. And I woke up one morning at 4:57 AM, and it dawned on me that they're leaving money on the table, you know. And it's not the first time I've been to two other service facilities who did the exact same thing, just no follow-up. No, exactly.

How much money is being left on the table? Because yours was $3,000. I mean, just imagine they're doing that 10 times a day.

So I did again the 5 AM moment. I did the math and I looked at, you know, they have 8 bays, they're open 10 hours a day. You know, even if they were to fill their schedule, which is one thing, you know, again, we're talking about marketing. Fill the bays for every hour for every day. That's just one part of it. But even if you were to find problems with only a small percentage of those customers and 10% of those that we found— that they found any problems with were to buy, they were leaving $1.2 million on the table. It was such an easy number to see based on just sitting there for an hour with them. And not only that, seeing the interaction with the customers, the customer experiences, That needed serious improvement. And then the communications between the employees and the boss, you know, I heard them make some complaints that I said, you know what, that's operational stuff that even strategically thinking using AI would be able to bring forth.

Make all those things more efficient, make them better, put systems and automations in place to change their entire business. Absolutely. They just have to be willing to open their eyes and look at it, right? You know, see that, see the code.

So just one more piece. So again, during that time, I made a proof of concept where I contacted my son and he made a voice AI agent. We named her Elaine, and it took no time at all. But there was a proof of concept that Elaine would contact the customer, contact me, Krios, and say, hey, thank you for your visit, blah, blah, blah, and kind of coax the customer, me, into making an appointment so we can get the work done the and was prepared to handle all the objections strategically without being pushy and everything, almost like a real person would. And even if something like that were to be put in place, again, with the human element in place, of course, it would lead to better outcomes, not only for me as a client being safer on the road, getting the recommended changes that were offered, but also for the service center. It's, it's definitely more income if they can, you know, reach out to the customers and close the gap. One thing.

Exactly.

One voice. Yeah, it's just one thing out of maybe 50 pieces that can be put together. Yeah. Again, to identify profit leaks.

It's so crazy how the IT industry has this evolution piece at your fingertips, man. Absolutely. You're uniquely positioned to go out there and crush this. I'm really excited for you, for sure. Thanks, Chris. Okay, any parting words for our viewers today?

Well, it goes back to AI is not just a shiny tool. It's not even a tool. It's something that can be used to strategically grow any business. And I encourage anybody that's watching or listening to this podcast to partner with a professional. Deep Blue Risk is here to help any client, any customer, any business that is looking to adopt AI or looking for an opportunity to identify any leaks or increase your profits or scale the business, seek a professional that knows, that can see beyond just the regular daily operations.

Not just like tools.

Absolutely not. What's the strategy? The strategy. Let's talk about where their problem area is, and it's— we can figure it out. We can sit at the board level and look at the structure of the company and what it would take, and it's the way to go. Yeah, without it, there's the risk of being left behind and the competitors are going to be doing it.

So it's not just being left behind, though. A lot of money being left on the table. Oh, yeah. Just because of inefficient processes.

I mean, absolutely.

You literally walked in, Mr. Neo, all by himself here, walked in to that oil change center and saw $1 million plus of lost revenue.

$1.2 million.

Absolutely. Sitting on the table. It's just the tip of the iceberg. So great job, man. It's really great to have you on the show and looking forward to working with you.

Thank you, Chris.

Appreciate it. Congratulations. Looking forward to it. That's Krios Munings, founder, CEO of Deep Blue Risk in San Antonio. Can work with anybody anywhere though with AI, right?

Absolutely. It's not just San Antonio. It's not just Texas. You know, this can be done anywhere at all.

I love it. All right. Thanks for joining us today on the AI Profit Leaders Podcast. For Krios Munings, my name is Chris Weiser. We'll see you guys later.