Are Your Communications Costing You Money ~ And Can AI Fix It Without Killing Your Voice?

Business Credit Minute with S.E. Day, the podcast helping business owners build stronger business credit and real profit growth without the confusing finance speak. In minutes, you'll learn how lenders actually evaluate you and how to align the 3 pillars that decide approvals: business credit, cash flow, and compliance. I'll break down underwriting signals in plain English, show you what's hurting your fundability, and give you one clear action you can take immediately. If you want to become lender ready to receive business loans and business credit cards, stop wasting credit applications, and build bankable business strengths the right way, then this is your Credit Minute. Qualify first, apply second. Let's get you funded. Stay tuned, I'll be right back. In today's competitive world, your business deserves more than just hard work. It deserves the financial freedom to grow. Building business credit is the key to unlocking opportunities. With strong business credit, you can expand faster, invest smarter, and reduce your personal risk. Start building your business credit today because your dreams deserve the chance to grow, just like your business. Secure your spot at the next Small Business Credit Survival Bootcamp. Welcome back to the show. Today we are talking about a profit lever most small business owners underuse. It's communication, not just marketing, customer updates, follow-ups, internal SOPs, vendors, lending messages. We're talking everything, and we're going to connect it to AI so you can scale clarity without sounding like a robot. Today, Josh Altman of Beltway Media is here to help us understand the importance of communication for business owners and how to make AI work for you and not against you. Josh, welcome to the Small Business Credit Minute.

Thank you for having me. So like you mentioned, you know, we are communications, we're fractional chief communications officers. And like you said, that is a lot more than SOPs and vendor updates and, you know, customer communications. Our focus is on 2 big buckets. The first is shape perception. The second, build and maintain trust. And that trust is key. And that's why what we do and how we do it is we take this integrated big picture view of how messaging impacts reputation, growth, and stakeholder confidence and how all of those things are going to play together.

Thank you, Josh. And full disclaimer, folks, Josh is not just of Beltway Media. Josh and I are kindred spirits. We are both communication professionals, but you get tired of hearing me talk all the time. So I wanted another professional on here to tell you how important communication is and where we're going with AI. So Josh, when small business owners say they have a marketing problem or sales problem, how often is it actually a communication problem?

Nearly always. Now, where that problem falls could be in a lot of places in a process. It could be right at the very beginning where you just don't have enough education out there for people to find you. It could be right at the end where people get lost in, you know, if you have, you know, a SaaS, if you, you know, you're buying something online, they just get lost in the buying process because it's a weird or complicated User experience that you, of course, are familiar with, but they're trying to communicate with you through your website, you know, the buy process, and it, for lack of a better word, is clunky. You know it, it makes sense to you. They are new. If that buy isn't seamless, they might get lost and just give up.

You know, Josh, I did an episode on Um, why everyone should have a professional business website, right?

Yeah.

And what you are speaking is truth to power when it comes to that. You're building all of these tools to make your business flow and pop, but if you're not communicating it properly, you're going nowhere. So what are the most expensive communication mistakes you see businesses making today?

You just touched on one, and it's tools. It's really easy to build a big tech stack and have a lot of tools and a lot of process, and you can get lost in that very easily because we have a tool to manage our Twitter, we have a tool to manage our Instagram, we have an email list tool, we have a tool, you know, for internal communications, we have a ticket tool for, you know, customer feedback if they have, you know, a problem. That's a lot of tools. And not that you don't need all those tools, but tools don't solve your problem. Tools are tools. You need to use the tools. Having a hammer sitting in a toolbox doesn't do you any good. You need to use the hammer.

Absolutely. So that rolls us right into why does strong communication build trust faster than, say, discounts or flashy brands?

Well, discounts are great. We all love discounts. Flashy brands are flashy, and there has to be something behind it for it to work. Trust works better long-term because it's just that— it's long-term. Think of your relationships. You have relationships with people you trust. If you're dealing with a business, and I don't mean, you know, a one-off, you know, transaction that you're just buying, you know, that hammer from somewhere. This is a company, especially B2B, these are vendors. We have long-term, multi-year relationships. There has to be trust there. So, people aren't buying— yes, they're buying a product.

Right.

Yes, they're buying a company. They're buying from their salesperson. But, all of that is based on trust, that they are trusting the product, they're trusting that brand, and that honestly, they're trusting their salesperson. That, that rep is going to be there and is telling them the truth and isn't just selling them an empty link that goes to nothing that's going to help them. That those promises made in the sales process are true, because if they're not, now you've got a customer, great, but they're not going to stick around. And if they— for the period you have them, they're going to be unhappy and they're going to cause problems, and those could have been avoided.

Got it. So that gives me, you know, one of the things that I like to do here is give people actionable things that they can do, right? Not just a lot of talk, but like almost an assignment. So if you would, could you give us a simple framework that small business owners can use, like immediately start using today? Something like 3 rules for better communication.

Yeah, so we have a 4-part framework. It's our Story Story, narrative, brand, and that goes into our 4 ways that people really communicate, and that's read, see, hear, and experience. Look at those 7 things. What's your story, your narrative, your brand? Story is stuff. It's the stuff that happens.

Mm-hmm.

Your narrative answers questions, and then your brand is the way is the swag, and that's the stuff people interact with. So yes, it's the mugs and the pens, but it's also your website. It's the things that people get. Your emails are part of your brand, and that's every email from, hi, how are you, to customer acquisition, to the receipt. If your receipt doesn't help, people can't find it again and don't know who you were if they want to buy again. So it's every little thing has to be, you know, useful. And then look at the, you know, read, see, hear, and experience. So go through with your business, what are people reading? And that's probably of the 4 ways the easiest. People understand that. What are they reading? And we read a lot. Despite the myth that people don't read anymore, we read probably more than ever.

Right.

It's just what we're reading and how we're reading it. You know, what they see, and each one of these plays off each other. So what they see plays off of what they read. How are they seeing it? Where are they reading it?

Mm-hmm.

Is it something, you know, on their desktop? Is it a flyer? Are they in your physical store and they're reading a sign that has your list of prices on it? Depending on what you are, this is going to be very different, what they read and how they see it. Next is here. Podcasts are probably the easiest example of that, but what they hear from your salespeople, what they hear about you from third parties, recommendations, always important. And the last one is experience. And people think experience as those experiential events, the pop-ups, the, you know, you know, vans, everything like that that they drive around with, billboards. Experience plays into everything. Are you experiencing on desktop mobile. That's something that we all do all the time and probably the simplest example of that. So does your website render on mobile? Do you— if you're doing videos, are they optimized? Are they short? Are they long? Does your blog post— is that— how does that render on mobile? Just because your homepage is good doesn't mean your internal pages are good, because I've seen that a lot where someone set up a website and their template used a different, you know, page style for internal, and it's just not reading over well for the exact content they're doing. They just need to make a little change and it works great then. So, and experience, you know, I always say with podcasts, we all experience them a little differently. We're recording video here. I am not someone who watches podcasts. I listen to them.

Right.

I listen when I drive. I listen when I walk the dog. I am someone who really listens to them. If I were to watch during those activities, it would be dangerous. So I'm not watching podcasts while driving, while walking the dog. But I would—

Right.

If someone's watching us, that's very different from someone listening to us while they're cooking dinner.

Absolutely.

While they're getting their kids ready in the morning, while they're driving. All different experiences. So experience is really important and it plays into what we read, see, and hear. Far more than people think.

You know, Josh, before I go into the next question, uh, what you just said is very, very powerful. And I, I had an audit of my show, right? And the audit came back and it was saying, stop calling out your, your website. And it made me think, I'm like, well, I want people to know the website of where they can go. And the audit said most people are listening to podcasts. Which means they're doing something else. Now they have to stop and go try to find a pen and write down your website when you can list it in the show notes. Well, that's part of— that, that is part of communications. But it was one of those things, as a communication professional, I didn't even think about it, right? I didn't think about it.

We're always biased when we look at ourselves.

Absolutely.

We need to look at external pers— and I For myself, for my business, we have just like you external help because I cannot do it right.

Right.

You know, because we are too biased at looking at it. And exactly anyone who's listening to this and you know doing this for their own business, I'm like, okay, yeah, you're right. I am very close to it.

Yeah, yeah. I I liken it to your face is too close to the screen. screen, you can't see your peripherals. So you gotta pull back. You gotta pull back. So Josh, AI, this is kind of what this showpiece is about. AI is everywhere. It is, it is taking the world over by storm. But where does, you know, a lot of people like you and I as communicators, one of the things that we heard is AI is gonna take our job. AI is gonna remove us. But how can a business owner improve their communications with AI and where can it backfire?

Where it backfires is when you overuse it, when you rely on it. We started this conversation talking about tools. AI is a tool. It is there to help you, just like Microsoft Word spell check was a— was a tool. It was there to help us. And I really need spell check. I think we all feel that way many other times that we need spell check. But if you're not getting a word close enough, it's going to give you no suggestion or wrong suggestions because you got to be somewhat in the ballpark. With AI, it is a tool. It will amplify people who are already doing good work. It will help you do better work if you put in Write me 25 Twitter posts for, you know, Acme Corp. It's gonna give you 25 generic, not particularly useful posts, and then you could just put them into your Twitter and it'll be there and it'll post. But you'll then have the illusion that you really did something great.

Yeah, yeah.

But you just had generic AI-written Stuff. I hate the phrase AI slop. We hear it so much, right? But it's stuff. It's there. It's noise. And I always tell people what you want to do is be the signal, not the noise. So don't rely on AI. Use it effectively and like any other tool, judiciously.

I agree. I had a gentleman, I was in a seminar the other day and he said, I look at AI like a very smart guy Who knows he's smart, but he cuts corners. He is not going to do— he's lazy. He's not gonna go out and do the hard work unless you tell him. So what you're saying is this is how you can rely on AI too much and then it backfires on you. It's no longer your voice.

You know, it's not even a voice. It's the AI generic voice.

Exactly. Exactly.

So with that, great to say, write 25 Twitter posts, and then you pick 5 of them and you've edited those 5. And it probably at that point doesn't even resemble what AI came out with anymore. It's great for outlines. It's great for a detailed outline. If you want to say, help me with the first draft, treat that as a detailed outline, but that's it.

Well, you just answered—

Final content.

You just answered the question I was going to say. How can businesses respond faster using AI? Without sounding automated or fake. And you, you are touching those points right now.

And one thing I recommend is, you know, you don't have to do it yourself. You know, I get this all the time. Couldn't we just hire an AI communications firm? You know, you, you know, you know, another agent will pay, you know, the agent fee of, you know, $100, $200 a month. Like, but you are still personally, if you're going to do it well, you're still going to spend 5, 10 hours a week prompting AI, cleaning up AI. Your goal was to not be doing this work yourself.

Right.

So, right, you might offsource, you know, 50% of that work to AI, and you take it from 10 to 20 hours a week for an operations manager doing this job that he or she doesn't want to do, and now they're doing it 5 to 10 hours a week. But this person doesn't want to do it 5 to 10 hours a week. They have an operations job. That's their actual job. So that's kind of where we come in is we help people, you know, who have said, look, we're offloading some of it, but we're still doing a lot of it.

Right. So if someone is listening who is not technical, right? What is the simplest, simplest AI communication workflow you'd recommend that they start this week in their business?

I recommend picking a model you like or picking something like Perplexity, or we use Abacus that lets you, you know, it will automatically pick the right model based on your needs. And that's gonna choose using, you know, type the prompt that you've put in, you know, complexity to, you know, maximize how economic it is for you.

Mm-hmm.

And you could put that in and say, give me 25 social media posts for each of these 3 channels. My business— and you have to tell it exactly, give it details. My business is Acme Corp. We do these 3 things. This is our customer. You could even put in your current accounts if you have something.

Mm-hmm.

And then do that, say, every Monday morning.

Okay. So with that, keep walking— Be aware—

Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm going to caveat that. Be aware, like just what I said before, you're asking for 25. It may not give you that. Just because you asked for it doesn't mean it's going to give you that many.

Right. Well, on that vein, keep walking us through the customer journey Like, what are the must-haves from, as a small business owner, my first contact with a possible customer to making them a repeat buyer? How can communication effectively help me do that?

So that's going to be human, not AI. You're going to have to do something. Now, can AI help you? Sure. Let's say someone comes in through an automated form. The first thing they get is a response. Thank you for submitting. Someone will be with you in, you know, within 2 business— whatever your timeline is. And every business, that's going to be different. If you're an emergency plumber, that's going to be a very different timeline than someone like us.

Right.

We're not dealing with houses that are flooded.

No.

So they're going to have a very different timeline. Then, you know, actually follow up with them. You could put in and have something listen to the calls, or, you know, you could have a transcription tool, whatever you're using. And there are plenty of tools out there that will help you do this. Have, you know, the tools listen and then figure out what the pain points are, because you want to be using the same concerns, the same words even, that your customers are. So again, a human can do this. If you, you know, it's a small business, if you have 3 to 5, you know, people who are kind of handling these calls, they could write it down. If you have hundreds, you're gonna need something automated.

Yeah.

But when you're smaller, you can have, you know, you don't need to invest in an automated recording system. The people on these calls are gonna know, we hear these 3 to 5 words the most. These are the biggest concerns. And they can write it down with a pen and paper and you will get the same results.

Right, right.

You know, Josh, you had to need a different solution.

Yeah, yeah. You know, most people, and you and I can attest to this, most people think communications is external, right? And we overlook something that's very important, and that's internal communications.

Yes.

Um, what about internal communications, uh, From your, say, teams, your actual team, your contractors, vendors. Why is internal communication so important to them, for you to them?

Well, let's say you have a physical store, a physical presence. Someone comes in and says, we got this email with a deal for 50% off anything in store. If your employees don't know about that, you're going to have a lot of people who are walking in and are now very confused. When they show their phone with this discount.

Right.

So they're very confused. And now your employees are there looking at you and looking at these customers like, we've never heard about this. Did someone send out a scam with our name on it to make us look bad? But it's real. I mean, this is something you're doing. So you want to make sure they're aligned so that when they are talking on the company's behalf, That they are actually knowledgeable about it and not taken by surprise. You know, we say we come in in this fractional role because we're there, we're sitting at tables with, you know, IT, with HR, with product, with finance, because you need your comms aligned with your product roadmap. Where are you in a year, 2 years, 5 years? We need to be talking about that early.

Yeah.

Not marketing a specific update 5 years in advance, But we need to incorporate, you know, the big themes.

Yep.

So people are ready, so people are primed for it and excited about it.

So, Josh, here on the, on the Small Business Credit Minute, we focus on getting people qualified first and approved second, right, when it comes to building business credit, getting funding. So let's bring this back to the money, right? Um, how can— how does communications affect approvals when you are applying for something, when you're talking with vendors, when you're talking with possible investors? How important is communication and how can it affect those things?

It's key, especially with something like investors. If you are in that, you know, if you're looking to do letter rounds or other types of funding, they are investing in you. Yes, you have an idea and a business plan and they're looking at all that, but you are who they're buying, you are who they are investing in. So if you're not clear, if you are muddling through your presentation and you don't even know your own product, Mm-hmm. or it's confusing you, how are other people, external buyers of the end product, not the company, not investors, the buyers who buy your product, how are they going to understand it if you cannot clearly explain it?

Yeah.

To these potential investors. And, you know, people think, well, I have my pitch deck, they'll look at the product. One thing people look at is, is this easy to explain? Can a buyer understand it? And that's gonna mean very different things. If you have a, you know, a new— if you're, you know, a company that sells Bluetooth devices, That's going to be very different from a company in the quantum computing space, how that gets to be explained, because you are explaining consumer electronics versus quantum computing, and those are 2 very different audiences.

Yes.

And the buyers of that end product are 2 very different audiences. And there are lots of ways you can help with that. That's, you know, advertising comes in, you know, graphics come in, videos are great to help explain it. But you still need that underlying story, which is why we talk story, narrative, and brand.

That is very—

Everything.

That is very important because when I did an episode once about do you have a personal relationship with your banker, because the underwriter doesn't know you as the individual, they talk with the banker. But if you don't have a relationship And that goes into being clear. If you don't have the clarity to explain what you do where it makes the underwriter feel comfortable, you can forget about that loan. Point blank, plain and simple. So Josh, what guide rails would you recommend for small business owners to use so AI creation doesn't, doesn't create compliance or reputation problems? Because You know, AI doesn't write the checks for your business.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So what would, what, what guardrails should small business owners be aware of?

Human. Have a human read everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's like the, that's like the running theme. I did a show with, are you AI integrated? And that's the running theme. AI is a smart tool, but you must have human interaction. Otherwise, you're going to get yourself in trouble.

And we've seen that. You know, one example that hits the news hasn't in a while that I've seen. But, you know, the lawyers who use ChatGPT to write briefs they submit to courts with made-up citations in it. Yeah, not just wrong.

Right. Made up.

Fictional.

Yes.

And they are representing themselves, their client, their firm, and they're submitting this as if it's real. And that would— had a person checked that, a person would have seen this case doesn't exist. So much as a quick Google search of every citation would have turned up no results for, you know, Smith v. Jones that, you know, that's in their brief.

Right.

A lot of things can be avoided With a human checking the work, because that's where it comes back to. AI is just a tool. It is a great first line of support. It is not going to do that final copy.

No, it's not. It's not. So, Josh, as we get close to wrapping up, what would be a, a challenge, say a 7-day challenge, communication upgrade that small business owners can actually employ today over the next 7 days to improve their communication step without calling you. I know you, you are the go-to. I was going to say that was the first thing that they should do. I'm going to have your information in the show notes as well, but give us, give us a 7-day short or a quick communication plan that small business owners can do to improve where they're standing?

We talked about this a little earlier. The first thing to do is go through all of your materials right now. Look at what do people read, see, hear, and experience. That's day one. Figure that out. Then also, then the next step, what is your story, your narrative, your brand? Then after that, Are those 2 connected? Are those 3 things, your story, narrative, brand, connected to what people are reading, seeing, hearing, and experiencing? Because if you have a disconnect there, you are going to fall into some pitfalls pretty fast.

Yeah.

Then it's going to be either double down if it is connecting perfectly, which almost never is the case because we are all human and all going to see that there's a mismatch because that's just the nature of it. Part of that is we see, you know, some content does really well, so we double down on it. We might stray a little bit from, you know, our core story because this is doing really well. Well, how— the next step is how do we integrate some of these things? How do we realign? Because if something's doing well, don't abandon it.

Right.

Exactly. Start using some AI tools. You know, what are some new channels? You know, what are some content ideas? Look at if you know your competitors, you know, especially if you are more local, you know, have a physical presence, or even, you know, if you're like Austin, you're, you know, a service business, you can serve anywhere. You kind of have a sense of who your competitors are. Put those into an AI tool, have it come up with some ideas. Have it scan their websites. What are they doing? A lot— check that with what you're doing. Now, the trap that's easy to fall into, well, my competitor down the street is running, you know, a 50% off every Wednesday. We need to do 55% off every Wednesday to beat them. That's not what you should necessarily be looking for.

Okay.

Look at their ideas. What kind of content are they putting out? What's their cadence that keeps it from being too spammy but also having a good amount of stuff?

Right.

Are they doing a lot of informational, educational, thought leadership? Is it just news blasts? What are they really doing and are we doing it too? Most importantly, is it working? Is our style the same as theirs? Because it might not be. And then Just mimicking them isn't going to help you because that's not your story, that's not your narrative, that's not your brand. That doesn't mean don't be aware of what other people are doing.

Right.

And then you could again use AI to help you. What can we put into this AI? And this is going to really depend on the results that you've seen.

Right.

To generate some new ideas or enhance existing things that we're doing. So, If you can say, I need to write 6 blog posts, our goal is 1 a week or 2 a week. What are some blog post ideas that we can do that really enhance customer education?

Mm-hmm.

If that's what your goal is, and then use those as ideas and as launching points. Don't rely on it to give you the answer because it might say, again, I'm going to go back to 24 Hour Plumber type company. It might say educate people on home plumbing repairs. Well, that might not be the best thing for you because if something's already flooding, the best thing to do might be call the professional or, you know, turn off the water. You can have a list of, you know, where, where could your shutoff valve be.

Right.

Depending on your home style. Well, that's important for education for your customers because the first thing you might tell them on the phone, you need to get this Josh, that is perfect. Use the ideas it gives you.

That is perfect. As we, as we go into the close, tell people where to find you and what you help businesses fix first. Now, I'm going to have all of your information in the show notes where people can look at it and be able to reach out to you. But if you don't mind, where can we find you?

The best way to reach me is by email. Jay Altman at Beltway Media, no dot com. You can find us online at Beltway Media, again, no dot com, and on LinkedIn. So that's LinkedIn.com/in/JoshuaIAltman. And what we do is we are fractional chief communications officers. We help businesses shape perception and build and maintain trust. We work with companies at all sizes, all stages. Some people want you know five hours a month. Some people need 20 hours a week, and we're here to grow with you and solve your communication challenges, whatever those are.

Perfect. Remember, communications is not soft people. Communications is revenue. Clarity closes, consistency keeps. AI helps you scale it if you stay in control. Qualify first, apply second. And if you want to If you want a simple roadmap to start building business credit the right way, grab my free Business Credit Starter Kit at our website. It'll be listed in the show notes along with Josh's information, and that, that document will walk you through the first steps of getting your business lender ready today. Remember, your business credit score isn't just a score, it's your company's future. Always qualify first, apply second. Thank you for tuning in to the Small Business Credit Minute. I hope you enjoyed today's episode on are your communications costing you money and can AI fix it without killing your voice? If you got value from this Credit Minute, please subscribe and download and share it with a fellow business owner and leave a review so more business owners can grow smarter and faster. Until the next episode, your dreams deserve a chance to grow, just like your business.