EP 78: Why Your Business is Leaking Leads and How AI Can Stop It
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I'm your host, Jenny Wright. And we live in a very interesting space right now. At the time that we're recording this, it's August of 2024. And if you are listening to this in the future, it's still relevant. But for those of you who are with us right at the moment, AI is everywhere and it is changing everything. And if anybody thought this was going to be a flash in the pan and it was never going to stick around,

Don't you feel silly now? Just kidding. Okay, so we're going to get into today's interview. I'm really excited to talk to a really good friend of mine, Susan Diaz. Susan, thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you for inviting me, Jenny. I can't wait to chat. Absolutely. I'm so excited because we've met a couple times here in Toronto. We live in the same city. We've been at some events with each other. We still have to do that lunch that's happening. And I'm really excited because you are

You're just like the magnet of AI. You're like the CEO of Peaceful AI Marketing. You are doing this before everybody else. You were talking about AI before everybody else was doing it. I'm sure people were like, gosh, why is she on her soapbox talking about AI 24-7? It's just the beginning stages, but now this is normal. And I just want to ask you, in the past...

I don't know, six months or longer, what have you seen change with people's either acceptance of AI, the changes with AI? What have you seen happen that's just like blown your mind?

I think just how ubiquitous it's become, Jenny. Initially, if you think about it, maybe even in the spring of 2023, let's say roughly over a year ago, people were talking about how it felt like AI was cheating, like somehow you were doing something wrong. It's like this kind of thing took you hours and hours and hours to do before, and then now suddenly you're just watching a machine type it up as if it's magic. And so I think that there was a big mindset shift

that existed, which has come a long way since then. Right now, pretty much everyone I know has either used in some way or is regularly using tools like ChatGPT, Cloud, whichever version of it that you decide to use, right?

The lacking piece, even until now, I would say, is the fact that how far is that operationalized in your business? Is it still just like a step here and a step there? Or is it like truly showing you gains in terms of efficiency? Like, how are you establishing? What are your metrics? Is it time saved? Is it like, you know, tasks automated, like those kind of

things I think that will be the next phase of it but this huge change in like a year I think it's massive like to feel like something which felt illegal is now legal and

Yeah, it has changed a lot. And what I find is, you know, with everything, like think about the Bitcoin and the, what do they call them, the NFTs and everything, right? So that was huge. Everybody thought that was going to take over the world. So every time this new technology... We're all going to live in the metaverse, right? I know, I know, right? Get all our goggles on.

So there's always this huge swing when we are adapting or adopting a new technology, right? And I always find that I always relate it to like a pendulum. And the pendulum always swings super far towards the new thing. And everybody goes crazy about it. And everybody tries to be the expert on it or whatnot. And then we have the thing of like the fallout. Oh my gosh, AI is going to get rid of so many jobs. We don't need copywriters anymore. We don't need this anymore. We don't need that anymore, right?

But now, and I knew this was coming and I talked about it on this podcast. Now we're seeing the pendulum swing back, which is we still need copywriters. We still need people to help us with our things. AI is integrated, but we still need the human touch, which you and I were talking about off camera beforehand. And so with what you do and with what you and I have talked ad nauseum about how we can support people with this technology,

Where do you think the sweet spot lies with integrating AI, integrating automation? What are people not getting right now? Because you said they're kind of using it here and there, but they're not fully integrating it. What are they getting wrong? Yeah.

One word systems like there's no existing systems and processes potentially right or not no existing not sophisticated systems and processes in place. So, you know, I'll often say like, how are you getting there today? Like, are you riding a bicycle? Are you taking a car? Are you are you like, you know, going on the transit with two stops, you know, like figure out what the journey looks like today.

And then when you've laid it out in some way, and the most primitive, most effective even way of doing it is just draw it out on paper, right? Like the old school flow chart on a whiteboard, on a paper or whatever, like list out the steps to anything that needs to happen. And then there's two ways to approach it. One is you fix things that are broken or fix things that are not efficient. And then the other is you strengthen things that are working and make them

better. And so that's the part I think the off-camera piece is not being handled. And then once you do that, then it really becomes about fixing a tool or two here and there. And then it's going to sing for you. But if you try to do it with not fully clear about how many steps you're doing today or you're trying to give too broad of a brief to the machine, that's the piece I think

that is proving challenging right now. I totally agree. And it makes me think about tech stacks. And this is something that you and I both geek out on all day long. Yeah. Who says the software is just for the bros, yo? Exactly. Stupid bro software. And on the bro conversation, I'm literally, I'm pulling the trigger on moving away from a very well-known bro software.

I've used it for too long. But I loved it when it came on board. We won't even go there. I'm not even going to name it. But if you know me well, you know what it is. And so let's talk about tech stacks, because with the advent and the integration of AI, and with the tech stacks from even a year ago, what I think we need to sort of delve into, and I'd like your thoughts, how do you think you can use tech stacks to help you?

Do we need to reevaluate our tech stacks? Do we need to look again and see what we're using? Because there's new stuff coming out. There's new features that are now being added, like ActiveCampaign just added an AI feature. You know, everybody's adding their little AI assistant. But what do you think people need to look at when it comes to their tech stack? Because I talk ad nauseum about tech stacks on this podcast.

I definitely think it's worth looking at your tech stack again, if you haven't done so after AI, right? Like even if you have looked at it after AI, there's a good chance that for the next little while, you're going to have to do it at least once a year, if not twice.

more frequently. Like if you're scaling, if you're taking some of the opportunities open to you right now, which is that you're going to see, like, I hate this word, but unprecedented growth opportunities in front of you on a few levels. And it's good practice to look at your tech stack and to look at your processes every so often. Obviously, the

the timeframe depends on the, on the business. But I would say a hundred percent, like if you, if you've been using the same CRM and the same email marketing tool and, and, and the same, you know, like social media scheduling thing and the same, whatever, like there's no harm going back out there and looking at what's, what's available. And another, this is the hack.

another good idea is to follow some of these your own tools that you're using on social media and to subscribe to their email list because often they'll do the evaluations themselves like my tool versus this tool obviously their tool wins but every time at least every time we're all the winners here Jenny

But it will give you some parameters on which to assess your tool, right? And this is where, and this is going to sound like a plug for us as specialists or whatever, but specialists in any field, right? This is why I think it's important

at some point, I'm not saying constantly, but it's important at some point to have someone who knows what they're doing come in and weigh in or be parts of communities where you're able to have this intellectual discussion on some level and be like, okay, what are you using and how is your process like my process and would we be well served to do that? Too often I find, and again, I'm not going to specifically name and shame, but the model is so common. It's almost like you buy into, you know, the,

the teachings of one quote unquote guru in a space. And then they tell you that this is the way you need to construct your funnel or whatever it is.

And then you've done that. And perhaps none of your goals from the business end are being served by that, but you're still with that same stack, right? And so this is not a problem that's only our problem. I think this is a problem that companies of all sizes have, right? If anything, we can change it, like smaller businesses of teams of less than like 2%.

2020 can change these problems so much more easily than if you had like a, you know, 2000 person team, and then you had to change your like, whatever, like your your CRM tool, because it means suddenly 200 people need to learn how to use the new tool, you need to like change it across every system, that kind of thing. We don't have that problem. It's that David and Goliath moment almost.

in history. And we all have different appetite for adventure and risk and that kind of thing. But still, like, I mean, if right now you're able to take a test with a calculator and you're still taking the test without the calculator, right?

What are you doing? What are you doing? Like, I want to like drag everyone by the hand and say, come to the light. Come with me. Exactly. Exactly. I remember the I remember doing an open book test in high school. And one of my one of my girlfriends was like, super, super smart. And she's like, I'm not doing open book. And I'm like, you're a fool. It's open book. I'm using the book.

What are we proving? I don't care how smart I am. I'm using the book. I don't need to prove anything. And that leads me into something that you and I have been kind of working on. And this hasn't even been discussed anywhere. And that is you and I have... First look. I know, right? Yeah.

And that's because you and I have a similar view when it comes to tech stacks, AI, creating integrations in business. And one of the things that you and I both see happening in medium-sized companies, you know, B2B, B2C, all that kind of stuff, is almost the stall of systems and processes that you either started with a couple of years ago, five years ago, I don't know,

And they're sort of holding you back on attaining that next level, right? So it's either affecting your lead gen process, your leads are leaking out of your ecosystem at some space or area. And it could be your processes, it could be your tech, it could be your understanding of that tech, or the lack of the tech talking to each other, right?

And with new AI and all the different ways that we can now integrate those bits and pieces, they can talk better to each other and do things that were once really manual. And I'll give you an example. And this just happened. I was talking to a client. They have HubSpot.

Okay. And their leads are all going into HubSpot. They wanted to actually start sending DMs to all of their leads. And so they're logging into their so-and-so's LinkedIn account and sending it manually and then having to go back into HubSpot and manually update HubSpot with every connection. Seriously? Like there was a hundred, that client had 150 people to reach out to in like two or three days. Yeah.

And they were doing it manually. Like by the time you go to, you know, LinkedIn, send the message, come back to HubSpot, update HubSpot, blah, blah, blah. That's like four or five minutes, like all told, right? So the process that you could do, and this is something that, again, this is what you and I are looking at supporting businesses with, is we could make that an automation, right?

you know, seamlessly, right? And then you could do that within something like Go High Level, you could have that actually integrated. But you and I are looking at some really cool systems and processes to kind of like make that happen. What do you think the opportunity is, if people kind of take advantage of specialists like you and I coming in and finding all the little nooks and crannies and fixing all the issues? Where do you think that's going to lead people? Lots more money, I think. There's so many

That's the first thing. Let's be honest. As we're doing this, we're still in the middle of a post-pandemic recession. Small businesses are pretty much keeping the economy afloat. I think we have a newfound understanding that you don't have to go to only large establishments, barring the fact that everyone's ordering from Amazon all the time. Yeah.

You know, you've understood that there's small businesses are like a really big part of this. And yet those same small businesses are struggling to like...

make their goals. And when I speak to people, I'll hear most often that I call it the three B's. One is I have no bandwidth, like no time, no time is often the excuse for not doing like major things like life altering, business changing, infrastructure, building things, revenue building activities, those kinds of things like bandwidth is the first B. The second B I talk about often is budget. It's like, like if you look at the

proposals that we send out that are declined, I'd say like almost like 90% of the no's are for budget reasons, right? And so that's always the thing. It's like, I really, really want to do this, but I really, really know that this project is worth this money, but I can't actually find the money for it. And then the third part, it's much more of like a headspace sort of problem. It's like the burnout problem, right? I mean, as long as you're just on the hamster wheel 24-7 trying to build something while you're running,

What are the chances you're going to build it well? And so I think that that's the trifecta of problems that you can solve if you start to think about how to put AI into it. It's almost like, okay, previously you had an engine and you were pushing it and you were pushing it and you're pushing it. And then now suddenly you've got this turbocharged thing. It's like, how can I just step

away from the thing for a minute too often people will tell me i don't have the time to learn ai because i'm just gonna keep running on my hamster wheel over there and it's hard not to shake them i'll tell you right yeah it's super hard to get them off the hamster wheel but if you can if somebody takes the trust and says you know what i'm gonna invest in the fact that this is no longer serving me my business my clients and you get them to take that pullback and allow the systems and processes to kind of get changed and updated and work better and all that kind of stuff

Basically, like you said, like it's a super injector into the into the engine, then it goes from why the heck was I doing the hamstring wheels for so long? Like, why was I doing this? Why was I making myself work 12 hours a day or whatever insert, you know, big thing here?

and come out on the other end working more efficiently and having better success. I'm literally, 2024 has been my year of expansion, right? And we're in the last quarter, heading into the last quarter of 2024. And I have, and you and I talked about this off camera, I have a whole bunch of services that I'm currently using. And one of them is expiring or coming up for renewal in October. And I'm like,

I think it's time to make a switch. And that's my own personal tech stack, right? So like, I now need to look at the processes and stuff and find the right thing. And I know I'm not the only one. Like, I know that's not- No, you're really not. We talked about this as well. It's like, you know, I often find myself saying, I'm not changing because we're so used to what we're using right now. And I don't want to upset the Apple cart and those kinds of things. And we're like tech bros. And if we're saying that, I can imagine what everyone else is saying, right? So I fully get it.

That said, I don't think the message here is to run around and change something all the time. It's just to be really clear about what's working and what's not working and what is like, like how they talk. I talk about it in the words AI literacy all the time because it's the same to me as financial literacy.

literacy or, you know, any literacy on the health front or anything else, you need to know what is possible. You need to know what is the minimum viable amount of something like this to apply into your businesses, because eventually that's how it's going to go. It's going to be like the internet, which runs in the background of all of our machines. And then we're all going to be slightly like, you know, free if it's offline for a few hours. Exactly. And it

But it seems like I just want to save time as I continue to go, you know, a little bit older, as we all do. And I want my free time to look different than it has as the years kind of go on. I do not want to spend as much time behind this desk. And I want things to run for me in the background. Yeah.

Yeah.

People are looking at this point. Time is a big, big thing that people are looking for, like, you know, some way to find time. But then I think maybe the smarter ones are starting to ask the question for what?

find time to do what, right? Like, so let's say if, you know, in the past, you took, I don't know, 10 hours to do your outreaches in a week. And instead, it's now going to take you two hours of outreaches. So in theory, that means eight hours of outreach time has been saved. Now, this doesn't mean necessarily that you have to run out and do, you know, four times as much outreach.

Maybe it means you need to take a look at your ICP and start thinking about what's next. Maybe it's product diversification time. Maybe it's time to niche down. Maybe it's time to make a better offer. I don't know. That depends on the company, right? But really starting to think about what the ultimate goal is almost, rather than just the tactical goal of the moment. It's like, I did this faster. I did this cheaper. These are tactical goals.

The other ones are like, how is this serving my business? Like I'm a firm believer in the idea of that, the three-year plan and the three-month plan. I find a year to be a little bit limiting and restrictive. Yeah. And so Cameron Herald, shout out to him and his book, like Double Double. And he talks about vivid vision a lot, like a three-year vision. And I use his frameworks. Like look at your three-year vision and then like literally like think

scrunch it up and throw it away because what's possible in three years right now, since AI has come about is it's massive. It is. It's, it's huge.

Even the other one, this is the part that, sorry to cut you off there. This is the part I think a lot of people like to argue about. Is AI going to take jobs? And I say, absolutely, AI is going to take jobs. And just the fact that we are talking about it in the future tense, like as if it's not already taking jobs, is surprising to me. Like even completely to be transparent and take you behind with me, three years ago on my team, there were way more people

I was paying way more salaries. I had so many fractured, it's called fractional, but I was calling it fractured because how poorly I was handling my fractional. I had so many fractured resources. I was bleeding money and it was not profitable in my business. And right now, if you look a few years later,

My business hasn't gone down because I've taken a bunch of people out of it. No, it's changed form. There's a lot more automation. There's a lot more intelligence in the way I'm using my time. I'm not running like a crazy person executing everything. So I think people have to take a step and say, whoever you are, whatever size of your business, this is just a moment now.

in history where you have to audit. It sounds unsexy, but we love that word. Don't quit, Jenny. I know. It is sexy. Auditing is sexy. Auditing is sexy, baby. Oh, yeah. Let's peel back the layers. Let's get under the covers with the audit, right? I know I totally put on that voice. I want you to make a clip of this. I want it. I want it now. Okay.

We're totally posting that part on social army. Let's do it. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I was using, I was using my, my deep phone voice. What was I going to say? Oh my God. I totally lost track. Actually what I was, what I was going to, what I was going to talk about that other than the fact that audits are damn sexy and fun is like,

that you were talking about the jobs, right? So historically, all through history of humankind, when a new invention is brought to light, it does replace jobs, but it allows people to retrain in other areas. In other areas, yeah. Exactly. So the printing press, you know, all the monks no longer were writing all the manuscripts. The printing press was doing it for us. What did the monks do? They did something else. Like they retrained in doing something else. And so on and so forth. They did make beer and good stuff too.

And if you move through history, multiple examples. We used to mine by hand. I used to work in the mining industry. We used to mine by hand with pickaxes, and that got replaced by mechanical. And what did we do? The miners then switched into and retrained to either run the machinery or to do other jobs. Yes, some people choose to leave the industry at some point because they're not on board that train, and that's completely fine.

totally understandable. But the new way of doing things, the retooling, because it is a retooling of your business is essential for growth and to stay relevant with the changes and the tides that are constantly moving. What we get to do as the techno geeks that we are, tech geeks, do you like techno? Because it's still techno. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do like techno. So maybe it's a twofer, girl. It's a twofer. Yeah.

We get the unprecedented opportunity to go in and see where the leaks are leaving people's businesses, or I call them ecosystems, and be able to plug those leaks with the tools that are available to us now. And then in the future, those can kind of change later. Where

Where do you see things going? Because we're going to wrap up in a minute. Where are things going, do you think? Is it still the crazy ride? Are we still in the wild west of AI? Or are we now getting into our more industrial revolution of AI? I think we're still in the wild west. Yeah? I think there's factions who are moving faster than others. But in the end, we're still in that space. If you look around, you'll find more people are building buildings

new tools. And that's always a sign that is still in the, in the gold rush, you know, the, the wild thing because everyone thinks they can do one tool to do it all.

And that's never going to happen, which is why too often I find myself saying to people, I am not interested in building another tool. I am interested in building a fortune for people using the tools that are there right now. And so that's why it comes back to like, yes, you're using ChatGPT. Ask a couple of key questions. How often? That's my first question when they're like, yeah, yeah, of

course I've been using it from day one how often is it every day is it a few hours a day is it you know that kind of thing when you get if you're doing that automatically that practice is going to unlock information for you right and then the the the

The next thing to think about is how to take humans out of the process of doing and put humans into the process of thinking. So right now, if someone's formatting an email or uploading files, or I'm just giving you these mundane examples because this is,

shit that takes time. Like when I was doing my podcast in 2023, I would sit my butt down and wait for 15 minutes because that particular place took a while for the file to upload. These are just facts of life. It's just the way it goes, right? And so imagine if you could bring in intelligent automation engineers

supported by like AI to take all of those things, even if not the others. Like, I think we're doing it the wrong way by coming in and saying, hey, AI, write for me. Hey, AI, you know, like, replace my copywriter. Yeah, totally. No. Wrong. It's such a wrong approach. And my copywriter friends were freaking out last year when this was all happening. And I'm like, don't worry, it'll come back.

Because the outputs that we're still getting are really poopy. I will say that they're getting a lot better. I use a tool. I use a lot of AI tools. One of them being CapShow, which does really great for this podcast. And the outputs are amazing. I love that. I still use a lot of other AIs to support the podcast and also support the business, you know, to make pictures and all that kind of wonderful stuff. Before we wrap up, okay, I want to know your favorite darling AI tool right this second today.

um if i had to like pick absolutely just one it would be perplexity oh yeah okay tell me why because of its ability like it's it replaces search for me so the previously all thinking began by going off to google and trying to find a bunch of materials or a lack of materials whatever you found from your searches right and so in today's world i think

the way that my thinking starts in some of those ways is to go into perplexity and check the state of whatever it is, right? And then look up, especially because in our portfolio, I think there's a lot of ghostwriting and strategy creation for businesses that are not at all like in our industry. It's not like we do work for other agencies and marketers. It's like you're doing work for like, I don't know, like,

oil and gas and HVAC and whatever. So there's a there's a fair amount of subject matter expertise, and fact checked information that that needs to be a part of my days. And I think perplexity has just like revolutionized, I no longer will be met with a shitty list of search. Instead, I'll get like a diagnosis and references, right. And so that's

That's switched for me forever, like forever. Of course, because perplexity sites their sources, right? Yeah. I think it's a really good search engine to take a look at things. Like I use it to find podcasts and conferences that I want to either participate or talk in. Like that's just one of the ways I use it. Anyways, great. I love that tool. We will talk about all of these tools in the show notes for the podcast.

Susan, you're amazing. I'm so glad we finally got to do this together. You're incredible. Where can people find you and just kind of see you in action?

Love it. I hang out on LinkedIn like an unhealthy amount. So definitely hit me up there. Connect with me. You do. I get all these messages. I'm not one of those cool people who have seven people managing my account. It's me. So you'll actually get me there. Don't email me. I suck at email. Hate it. So yeah, pass by our website, Peaceful AI Marketing. Our blog section has like...

so many articles. So you'll probably find anything you're looking for on there. Absolutely. I'm so glad. And I can't wait for us to do our lunch in Toronto now that the heat wave is over. So we'll have to do that really, really soon. And then we'll have to have you back on the podcast and then talk about our fabulous lunch and then see what we can go from there. So thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me, Jenny. Awesome. Absolutely. And as always, the Acquire podcast is found on the Oddphonic Podcast Network. Check out our podcast wherever that you listen. Make sure you subscribe, like, follow, do all the things. Let me know what you think and be sure to share different ideas that you might want to hear on the podcast. We actually put them into play. And

Check out our upcoming episodes. If I told you how many episodes are already in the can and ready to go for the rest of the year, you would freak out. So just wait for those to come out. They're coming out every Tuesday. And thank you so much for listening. Take care. We'll talk to you all soon. Bye.