Liberate Your Time: Real AI Wins For Real Businesses (ft. James Slade)
Between Milestones: S1 E2
Robert Christian (00:09)
Hey, welcome to our podcast. Happy to have James Slade with us today and ⁓ just quick intro. What I know of James, he’s, he’s been a, a great friend that we’ve been able to gain very quickly. ⁓ We just met, was it little over a month ago, James, right?
James Slade (00:34)
Yep.
Robert Christian (00:35)
And within that last month, I feel like I have a new best friend. It’s, been a great journey together and mostly our relationship has been meeting together with other businesses and we’ll get into that. But, ⁓ James has been a phenomenal asset for our company and many others. And, we’re grateful that you take the time to meet with us today and, and teach us a little bit about how businesses can best apply AI to their situations. So with that, James, ⁓ can you tell us a little bit about how you got into AI, maybe what your background previous was, and just tell us your story.
James Slade (01:18)
Sure, yeah, and thanks for having me. I this time. It’s kind of cool to share thoughts and ideas of AI, especially because it’s an exciting world. I enjoy it. But a little bit of background is I started out with building homes ⁓ and quickly realized that…
Robert Christian (1:42)
wait, time out. Building homes and AI agents are very different industries. Okay, yeah, let’s hear the story.
James Slade (01:50)
I know, right?
Yeah. I heard the same recently, actually, with you. You’re like, I’m not fat. I’m well-rounded. So this is my background story to help kind of give some context to that. So I started out building homes, that for a decade, developed land, big, know, multi-million dollar custom homes that I built.
Robert Christian (02:01)
Hahaha
James Slade (02:15)
And I found out that we were like extremely limited on getting the word out. You know, you could put a sign in and you could listen on the MLS. And that was about it. And that was frustrating to me. I was like, how, how can you get the word out for this? There’s got to be another way. Right. And that was just my limited knowledge. didn’t know much about that. ⁓
Robert Christian (02:34)
So these multi-million dollar homes, these weren’t ⁓ designed by individuals. These were spec homes you were building?
James Slade (02:43)
So it was a full blown subdivision, so we had models, right? And they would come through and see all the options and we’d have a realtor that would sit in there and sell them on those options. And then once they would close the deal, then we would go and build them in this subdivision, right?
Robert Christian (02:58)
So you went full developer on it. You weren’t just building homes. You were developer, contractor, you were everything. Okay.
James Slade (03:06)
All in yeah, we don’t go halfway So yeah
Robert Christian (03:10)
That is one thing I’ve learned about James is James does go all in, which I love.
James Slade (03:16)
So, yeah, we, you know, I did that for a decade or so and then it was, there was a lot of considerations with like, I made a change, I pivoted into marketing at that point. And there was a couple of reasons, one was.
Robert Christian (03:30)
So you went into marketing, you were just frustrated that you couldn’t MLS and ⁓ just putting a sign out, that was it.
James Slade (03:37)
Yeah. Yep. And the sell cycle was long and it was like, you know, $2 million transactions. So there’s a lot of like anxiety and pressure and, you know, high emotions. And I was like, you know, is there another way? There’s got to be another way. Right. So then I got into marketing.
And I was doing e-commerce and just like, I was like 20 bucks if somebody, you know, is dissatisfied or whatever, you’re like, here you go. Here’s your money back. You know, it’s like not a big deal. So, and then I realized that in order to be successful in e-commerce, you really needed to know marketing. came back to that, right? So over the years, I’ve kind of like learned a lot of the skills with marketing and, ⁓ you know, did that for about a decade.
Robert Christian (04:06)
Yeah, yeah.
James Slade (04:24)
And then what I found with marketing was I would serve clients and like help them with this process. And there were so many things that you need to do once the lead comes in that it was still not solving the issues for my clients. I’m like, they thought, ⁓ I just need more leads. I need more leads, right? And then that would happen, and those issues are still there. And so that’s what really got me into AI was, well, how do we automate that? You got to go find somebody. You got to train them.
You got to manage when they’re out for maternity leave and you know, they’re sick days and they have emotionally good days and emotionally bad days. like, how do you like streamline and help this and elevate these people? And so, you know, I started exploring AI and you know, like most people, I started with chat GPT and I’m like, this is amazing. It’s writing ads for them, you know, blog articles and all this stuff. And then, you know, I,
Robert Christian (05:13)
Yeah, yeah.
I think most of us have gone down that road, right? But then we stop. We’re like, okay, this is it. Like, chat GPT is my whole world. I live here and I don’t need to go anywhere else.
James Slade (05:31)
And he’s like, this is incredible.
Yeah.
Yeah, my brother, he was writing something down. I’m like, what are you doing? You just don’t write anything anymore. You put a prompt into AI. I even like speak it. Yeah, totally. So anyway, that got me into AI agents. And then there’s a rabbit hole and it’s an exciting one, right? Because I’m like, oh, you can solve this issue. then
Robert Christian (05:46)
Yeah, yeah, that’s what a waste of time.
James Slade (06:00)
what else can it do? And then started asking the question, what can it not do? Right. Because there’s so many. Yeah.
Robert Christian (06:05)
Okay, okay, so quick question. I’m gonna interject real quick. So you are talking about AI agents. pretend all I know is chat GPT and I’m in love with it, but I don’t know what an actual agent is, what is that?
James Slade (06:24)
Yeah, so here’s an example. You wanted to write a blog article for your website that was SEO. So you would first, you’re like, well, I need to research and find the keywords that we’re targeting so that it helps with SEO and solves problems, et cetera. So you would do that with a tool. then you’d be like, OK, now I know what the keyword is, and I kind of understand the topic. So you use AI to write the blog.
After that, you would copy whatever ChatGBT or whatever made the blog, and then you would go and put it on your site and post it on your site. Well, an agent does all of those steps. So you press the Play button, and it goes and does the keyword research for you. And then it writes the article. And then it posts it on your site. So that’s an example of what an agent does versus using ChatGBT.
Robert Christian (07:22)
So an agent is more of like the complete workflow, whereas chat GPT is just, you have inputs that you have to manually put in and then it’ll give you the output that directly correlates to your input. But the agent is, hey, I want this workflow, go.
James Slade (07:36)
Yep, yep, so somebody.
Yep, and you give it one simple prompt and it can extrapolate and connect to the tools and integration. So the tools are where work actually gets done, and that’s where it takes chat GPT to the next level. And it’s the agentic process, where you actually give it some ability and some tools to do that.
Robert Christian (08:06)
Okay, well thanks for that understanding. So what industries have you seen, you’ve been doing this for a while now, what industries have you seen that have received the largest benefit?
James Slade (08:20)
⁓ So any industry that… You know, that’s an interesting question because it started out with any industry that uses computers, but we’re getting into stuff where people are using like printed documents and handwritten notes and stuff that we can automate that process. ⁓ So a lot of industries usually have the same bottleneck.
if you will. you like you don’t have sales, you don’t have profit, or your organization is like a disaster, right? It’s like, what’s happening? I don’t even know, right? That’s our thing. Or it is happening, it’s just like consuming a lot of time and there’s a lot of like oversight that needs to happen, etc. And so in each one of these sales, profits, and order, right?
Robert Christian (08:53)
Yeah.
James Slade (09:07)
⁓ AI can step in and help to streamline that so that you can elevate your staff, right? So they can do more of the things that people are good at, you know, because nobody likes to pull data and manually enter it here. I mean, that’s brain damage. So, get AI to do that so that the person can then just review the data and go, ⁓ based on this, you know, here’s where we think we should move forward, right?
Robert Christian (09:24)
Yeah.
You and I have spoken about this ⁓ in other conversations about how AI will amplify the human capacity, right? And so it’s not here to replace humans, ⁓ but it’s here to amplify what we’re able to do for the world. Can you tell us a little bit more of your thoughts on that?
James Slade (09:58)
Yeah, so if any of you have ever dug a hole with a shovel, you’d be like, this is a lot of work. Like, I never want to do this again, ever. And so you picture like you start out with digging with your hands and like, that’s ridiculous. I’m going to use a shovel. And then you realize, you know what, I could use an excavator, which is a big heavy equipment piece of equipment. And it can do that a hundred times faster than me with a shovel. And all I have to do is move this joystick. And that’s what I picture AI doing. It’s like everybody is working with these shovels and they’re like killing themselves over digging this hole or, whatever work process they’re trying to do. And you’re like, well, why don’t we just get a better tool in there? And then they can do so much more with it.
Robert Christian (10:43)
haha
Yeah, yeah,that’s a great analogy. ⁓ So what are the most common use cases right now for the average business? What are we seeing?
James Slade (10:57)
So let’s just break it down, I guess. So for, let’s say, marketing and sales, because that’s what I started my journey on with AI. One, it can do cold outreach. And so it can write emails. It can research leads. It can scrape leads. And it does all of those in sequence. And then it can send that out very personalized emails that You know, it’s like finding everything that somebody has posted and comments that they’ve made and maybe jobs that they’re looking for, et cetera. And researches all of this information and can write a very personalized email. That’s totally different than a cold email outreach where you switch the name, right? So that’s a cold outreach. As far as like content generation for ⁓ like your…
LinkedIn or if you’re doing stuff for Instagram or YouTube, Facebook, whatever. Not only can it plan out the whole year, but it can also create the content and post it.
And so the human in the loop at this point, instead of like this 90 % being brain damage of like stuff that they would like, like, I’m doing the same thing over and over again. They’re just reviewing it and going like, yes, that looks good. No, we need to revise that. It’s not in alignment. And so they’re making these rapid fire decisions and then they hit the go button again and it’ll do that. So that’s, that’s kind of like on the marketing side.
on sales, setting appointments, emails, generating emails, generating proposals, ⁓ summarizing meetings, and putting that into a task list, et cetera. So booking meetings, et cetera, like live chat agents, phone agents. Anyway, that kind of gives you an idea of different things.
Robert Christian (12:43)
So.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is helpful. ⁓ One of my favorite things has been I don’t take notes during meetings anymore. I just, I don’t need to, right? ⁓ We have AI recording and transcribing the entire meeting and then it addresses whose ⁓ action items belong where and at the end we have a full…
James Slade (12:57)
Yeah.
Robert Christian (13:15)
review that sent out to everybody that was in the meeting with those action items. But ⁓ you mentioned one thing that I think is important for a lot of people that like me, perhaps, where they’re just feel like meetings are maybe getting out of hand and they’d like to remember, wait, I did promise that I would get that done. And I didn’t even remember that I had said that, but I do now. ⁓
now that it’s too late. ⁓
How can we automate that? So yeah, it’s listening to the meeting, it’s transcribing, it’s telling everybody what they’ve said they’re gonna do. So how do you put it into action?
James Slade (13:56)
So my brother, who I deeply respect, coined this as the commitment agent. What promises am I making? And keeping track of. And so you can automate this whole process by, once you have the script, right, of the conversation, ⁓ large language model LLMs.
can extract that and categorize it and create tasks. And so it’s good at that. So it’s like you’re feeding the script into the prompt of ChatGPT. You just directly put it in there. And ChatGPT summarizes and go, here’s all the tasks. And here’s when they’re due, and here’s who needs to do them. But taking that one step further is you can connect it with some agentic workflows to.
project management software, monday.com, Notion, know, any CRM or any project management software that has an API connection, you can then feed all of these tasks into there, right? So it’s already filling out that project management. What takes it a step further, which is really exciting, is your personal assistant agent, where it can give you reports in the morning, say, here’s the things that, you know, you could work on today.
⁓ you know, what would you like to prioritize?
and you just talk to it back and forth, and it’s your personal assistant. It will book calls and it will set reminders and be like, hey, can you write an email to so-and-so and let them know that we need this, right? ⁓ And it will do it, right? So I love that aspect of the whole flow because it’s like every time I build an agent, it highlights the next agent that needs to be built. It’s like, well, I don’t want to do that either. So let’s just build an agent to fix that problem.
Robert Christian (15:44)
So that the idea of a personal assistant that can read all my emails and keep me in line, like that’s a dream, right? But you’re saying that it’s a reality. ⁓ What does it take to build out something like that? Because there’s going to be a lot of business owners that are saying, that obviously is a dream, but I haven’t seen it happen yet. What do you say to them?
James Slade (16:14)
Yeah,
so, you know, it takes a little bit of work and effort and pulling information from people’s minds. So there’s workflows and always there’s always a workflow. It’s just a lot of times it’s in somebody’s mind.
And so extracting that is the process that it takes in order to get it down on paper. So you’re familiar with SOPs, right? And people are like, yeah, let’s create SOPs for everything, which is a good first step. But just creating an SOP to me is like, that’s work. ⁓
Robert Christian (16:50)
It’s, and it’s just creating more tasks. Yeah.
James Slade (16:52)
Somebody has to do it, right? And I’m like,that’s the problem. Let’s create an SOP so I don’t have to do it, but still it’s there and somebody has to do it. So then you build an agent, an AI agent around that SOP that does it. And that just kind of solves that issue of we need this task done, what are the steps? And the SOP, think, is step one, building the agent is step two.
Robert Christian (17:18)
Okay, so how long would that take for a business owner if they’re saying, okay, I’m in. What does that look like?
James Slade (17:28)
So. You know, it takes like a month. If you’ve got a process and you’re like, I would like to just automate this, then, you know, it takes a week or so to kind of extract that information. It takes a week to build it, a week to test it, and then the deployment, right? Fine tuning, right? So if you, what you can do all of the processes at once, but what I recommend is you go through
Mike Michalowicz process of fix this next and focus on the thing that’s going to have the deepest impact on your company and fix that because what’s going to happen is you’ve got an agent that just solved the bottleneck that is preventing the work from your whole force from progressing. You fix that one bottleneck and it helps everyone. And so it’s like have the deepest impact. Yep.
Robert Christian (18:15)
elevates the whole company. Yeah.
James Slade (18:18)
And so you’re like, okay, normally this would take three months to hire somebody and train them and get them doing this, but you do it with an AI agent, you know, and it takes a month. And then you’re like, well, now I got two extra months. What’s the next, what else can we solve with this thing? Right. And then, you know, I’ve had several conversations with people that are like, ⁓ can I do this? And you’re like, yes, it can. So it like gets the gear rolling or like what.
Robert Christian (18:33)
Yeah.
It just snowballs into what else can be automated here. Okay. So what are some of the misconceptions that people have about building out these AI agents?
James Slade (18:55)
⁓ A lot of people think that it has to be more manual than it actually does. They’re like, ⁓ if it can do this one tiny thing, then I can manually do steps three through seven. And I’m like, well, let’s just skip three through seven and just have it do all of those. That seems to be the biggest misconception that I run across is they think, it can solve this one thing out of this whole process. So.
Robert Christian (19:19)
So it’s one part of the workflow that they’re focused on, but the reality is it can do the entire workflow.
James Slade (19:27)
Yeah, and so a lot of times I have to find out what the end result is instead of like this one issue. And then we’re like, well, let’s just build it out to get that end result so that, you you don’t have to do all of these things. So that’s probably the thing that comes up the most.
Robert Christian (19:41)
Okay. So, ⁓ for the skeptic out there, right? Saying, I don’t think AI should be used ⁓ as much as these people are pushing for it to be. So what’s your opinion of the areas where AI should not be?
James Slade (20:00)
You know, that’s a good question. So AI is good at a lot of things, but there’s some things where you need a human touch. And usually reviewing content generation is a critical piece that you need a human in the loop for. And ⁓ like with employees, they’ll go and they’ll be doing whatever their task is that they’re doing. And as like an employer, you probably don’t even think about it anymore. Like they’re doing it until there’s like an emergency and they’re like, we need to step in and figure this out. And so I feel with AI agents, it’s somewhat similar. It’s a lot easier to manage ⁓ because it gives you the reports. Right, right. Well, and you are aware of what’s going on a lot faster.
Robert Christian (20:50)
No sick days.
James Slade (20:57)
And so the human loop needs to be that person where it’s like, they check once a week and like, yes, everything’s performing well, continue, right? And the AI can give the report and be like, this is what’s happening. And so that’s where I think a human loop is very needed still, ⁓ just to make sure it’s running, know, make sure the machine is operating the way it should. And what’s interesting to me is like over the…
the timeframe that I’ve been doing this, like, ⁓ if it’s not working, just wait a couple of weeks and you know, the improvements in the AI industry are going so fast. That’s like, that’s going to solve that issue and it will never come up again. So it’s like, I like it because there’s like, you have one issue and you’re like, well, let’s fix it. And you fix it one time and it’s done. ⁓ you don’t have to fix that again. It’s like, now don’t even have to worry about that. And you move on to the next. And it just kind of accelerates that improvement.
Robert Christian (21:48)
Yeah.
James Slade (21:54)
So human in a loop for those situations. ⁓ There are, like if you have a client facing AI agent that’s doing phone calls or emails or live chat, right? ⁓
You want a human in the loop for escalations. The thing is, is you don’t get as many escalations with AI because what happens, so like if you’ve ever been on hold or like talking to customer support and you’re like, Hey, I need help with this. They’re like, well, I need to escalate it because I don’t have the authority to do that. Well, with AI you can skip. Right? So, so it can escalate.
Robert Christian (22:29)
⁓ I hope UPS is listening to this.
James Slade (22:38)
through like three or four levels of what humans are normally used to doing, but there’s going to be at some point where it’s like, you know, it just isn’t working out. We need to get a human in the loop, right? And so it does elevate what it can do, but it can’t do everything. So there’s got to be a human element to handle those, you know, one-off use cases or the edge cases.
Robert Christian (23:01)
Sure, ⁓
James Slade (23:04)
I can’t stand
being on hold. like, why? Why am I on hold? The technology is here. I should never be on hold again in my entire life.
Robert Christian (23:11)
And phone, so talk to us a little bit about phone trees. and, I know you briefly mentioned it, but I have seen this to be one of the greatest benefits to those with a large number of in inbound calls. ⁓ tell us how this is better than a phone tree.
James Slade (23:32)
So phone trees are amazing technology. It’s incredible that you can listen, press a number, be routed to these things. yeah, it’s an amazing technology. But I feel like they’re outdated. ⁓ It’s going to a library to read a book instead of going on the internet. It’s a little bit outdated. With AI agents, the voice is so
Robert Christian (23:42)
That’s one perspective. ⁓
James Slade (24:01)
natural and flowing that you can carry on a conversation with it. know, have you ever experienced where you’re like, asks you, you know, what do you want to help with? And you say a word, a keyword, and it’s like, did you say this word? And you’re like, no, not even close to what I said, you know, and it’s like, sorry, I didn’t understand that. Is this the word you said? And you’re like, no, like, this is like, frustrating experience. Well, with the LLM, I’m sorry, with the AI that helps with that.
Robert Christian (24:21)
Yeah, yeah.
James Slade (24:28)
It’s just like having a conversation with a person where they understand what you’re saying and it immediately instead of like waiting for all the options of one through nine, you just talk to it like a normal person and it will route you like a normal person would.
The thing is, it’s not a person. You know, it can answer 20 calls at once and handle all of them at the same time and route it, you know, with the logic that it needs to route it to. And one thing I’ve noticed is like, if somebody is ⁓ unhappy, we’ll put it that way.
Robert Christian (24:47)
Yeah.
James Slade (25:01)
and they’re calling into a company, the AI is always polite. It doesn’t get offended. doesn’t get like, doesn’t talk back. doesn’t, yeah, it’s just, it’s just polite and it deescalates its situations because it’s AI. And like, oh, I’m sorry. You know, you experienced that. Like it has the empathy that needs like, if anybody’s used chat GPT, they know that like, oh, I’m sorry. You’re right. You know, I, know, like whatever it says, like you’re foolish for, you know, giving me the wrong prompt. It doesn’t really react that way. Right. So.
Robert Christian (25:08)
emotionally charged.
Hahaha
James Slade (25:30)
The phone agents do the same thing, which is nice. ⁓
Robert Christian (25:34)
So, ⁓ I guess just a quick confession. ⁓ With chat GPT, I used to get pretty frustrated with, how dumb are you? Like, come on. And then I realized that the output is a direct correlation of the input and it’s like, ⁓ it’s me. ⁓ But I have a friend and I was telling him how I would tell chat GPT,
I can’t believe you got this wrong. This is so easy. You’re, know, pick it up. You’re, you’re, you’re stupid, right? And, ⁓ he’s like, ⁓ no, dude, you gotta be nice to the bots. What he’s like, cause dude, they’ll remember how you treated them.
James Slade (26:07)
You slacker. Yeah.something else that I’ve noticed with these phone agents, people don’t get upset with AI because there’s no point. Sometimes I yell at machines, that’s true, but it doesn’t have any impact. It’s just I need to defend, right? It’s better to defend to a machine than defend to real person because they’re real people. You want to care for them and take care of them. I think it’s better to have an AI in that position anyway, just to foster
Robert Christian (26:29)
Right. You’re not gonna gain anything.
James Slade (26:51)
a good atmosphere for the rest of your team.
Robert Christian (26:54)
Yeah,
it’s true. It’s All right. So as you and I have had conversations with businesses, a lot of the time at the end, we’ll create these processes, we’ll create these agents, and it will definitely help improve things, right? And we’re saving a lot of labor hours and things are going great.
And then the question of, how much does it cost? Right. That, always comes up. ⁓ how, if I want to invest in an AI agent custom for my business, what’s the best, ⁓ just rough method I can use to calculate what I need to save for that task.
James Slade (27:44)
That’s a good question. So typically it costs about half as much as what it would cost to hire and train an employee to do that or a staff member, right? And so, you know, that’s why I think AI is exploding as much as it is. That’s why it’s such a big buzzword because business owners or managers are like, wait, We can get these tasks done at half the cost.
And, you know, it caused a lot of this fear of like, we’re going to replace, you know, my job’s going to be replaced or I’m replacing this employee who actually I really like. But I don’t feel like that’s the case at all. I feel like your throughput increases. You’re out, you know, whatever you produce increases when you use these tools. Just like that analogy with digging the hole with an excavator. It’s like you still got somebody there and making the decisions. They’re just making 10 times as many and producing 10 times as much because of this tool that you brought on that cost you half, right? And so those tend to multiply. I think that’s why AI is such a huge craze right now because people are like, wow, this is getting us a good ROI.
Robert Christian (29:03)
Sure. Okay. So that’s helpful as we’re trying to figure out, know, do I need a save or can I reallocate this individual to a different department or, you know, do they have a skillset that would best serve somewhere else? And then now I’m getting that additional ⁓ revenue stream from their skillset in another area. And I’ve…
You’re saying that I can save roughly 50 % of the cost right out the gate.
James Slade (29:36)
Yeah, yep. And the spin up is a lot faster than getting an employee there. consistency. So try and picture that analogy. Let’s say you’ve got somebody.
Robert Christian (29:49)
Sure.
James Slade (29:54)
You dig trenches. That’s what you do. Your business, you’re really good at digging trenches. Like I’m the best in the industry. And you’re like, well, I’m just going to get 10 more people and give them all a shovel and we’ll just knock it out. Right. Like, or the one that I have right now.
I could just get them an excavator and we could do so much more. The difference is an excavator costs way more than a shovel, whereas AI cost half of what an employee costs, right? That’s right. So you can kind of see how businesses can scale with that because they’re like, well, I can just give them this tool. They’ll do so much more.
Robert Christian (30:22)
Half of the shovel. ⁓
James Slade (30:36)
they’ll produce so much more, their return on investment for that employee goes way up just by having this tool that costs half of what an employee costs.
Robert Christian (30:43)
So what’s the greatest impact on a business that you’ve seen AI be able to produce?
James Slade (30:49)
⁓ That’s a good question.
It’s like what?
Robert Christian (30:53)
Just one
of the clients you’ve worked with, ⁓ give us a story of how that has…
James Slade (31:01)
You know, it’s, I’m thinking of one in particular that like, it’s very liberating. They’re like, I want to do these six things, but I only have the bandwidth to do one. So let’s do this one. And then when we were working with them, we were like, well, why don’t we just do all six? And it’s the same cost as doing the one. And that realization, that dawning,
Robert Christian (31:01)
improve their ROI and
James Slade (31:23)
is huge, right? So for example, we built out that they wanted to generate more leads. So we built out, you know, they’re like, we want to do some social posts, right, with the AI agent. So we did. They also wanted to do blog posts, they wanted to do follow up emails, they wanted to have ⁓you know, an onboarding sequence. And these were all steps in the process that they needed to build. And they’re like, but for now, let’s just write the blocks. And I’m like, well, let’s just build all of it. You know, let’s just get it all done. you know, kind of.
Robert Christian (32:04)
And you’re saying it was the same cost to do all of it as it would have been just the one piece.
James Slade (32:09)
they were thinking because they’re like we were going to hire somebody to do this you know to write blog articles but maybe we can do it with AI right and that was the question I’m like well not only can AI do it but why don’t we just do all of these other things that you’re planning to do for that you know the same cost as what they thought the employee was going to cost right
Robert Christian (32:27)
Okay, so the employee that was gonna be hired for task one in the sequence, ⁓ for the same price, they were able to do the entire sequence. Okay. And what has that done for that business?
James Slade (32:41)
So ⁓ they’re growing much faster than they initially were projecting, ⁓ which I think is the goal of a lot of business. Not all, right? But some, you they want to grow faster. Right? You know, they have different bottlenecks now, which we’re working on with them currently. Like, well, how do we filter these and how do we qualify them and how do we, you know, how do we get
Robert Christian (32:52)
That’s terrible. What a terrible, terrible problem to have.
James Slade (33:11)
more of the sales process done before we actually get it to a human so that our sales rupture, like their sales rupture overworked right now. So if that gives you an idea. Yeah. I know, right? So, so that’s, that’s kind of what I’ve seen has been like a huge impact is like, we thought this was our bottleneck and that went away really fast. And now the other bottleneck is like, well, that’s a good bottleneck to have. Like we like that.
Robert Christian (33:19)
those poor overworked sales reps. Uggghhh
So I’m not sure what would be worse, ⁓ the previous issues or extra whiny sales reps like that.
James Slade (33:47)
I don’t know, it’s give or take right there.
Robert Christian (33:48)
All right, so what’s the most fun, the coolest agent you’ve ever built? What does it do?
James Slade (33:57)
⁓ Okay.
So personal assistant is the coolest because I don’t like to write emails. I don’t like to go and look at emails. ⁓ I hardly look at emails ever now. So the personal assistant is the coolest because it has an impact on me and my flows. Right. So I like that about it. I love
Robert Christian (34:04)
Okay.You So the coolest agent you’ve ever built is your personal assistant.
James Slade (34:26)
That’s right. Well, it has the most impact on me. So it’s the most exciting, I guess, for me personally. I’m sure if I talk to clients, then, you know, it wouldn’t be that one because they’re like, that doesn’t impact them. But for me, I’m like, I love this. I love just chatting and saying, can you do this? Can you do that? And I don’t have to do it. Which is great.
Robert Christian (34:28)
I love that. Yeah,that’s pretty fantastic. All right. So if somebody said, OK, ⁓ I’ve listened. I think it’s great. But I don’t even know where to start. Who do I talk to? How do I get going? What platform should I look at if it was a DIY type person? ⁓ What would be helpful?
James Slade (35:15)
So, you know, we could chat. If you want to do DIY, there are a ton of tools out there. You can look on YouTube and find them. I’ll give you a couple. I would look at Lindy, Lindy.ai.
I was so excited when I found Lydie. I’m like, we can do all of these things. And it can. It has some limitations, but it’s a great starting point. I quickly found the ceiling because I like to build, you know, the Cadillac. It was like, well, how about let’s just do everything, right? And Lydie doesn’t do that, but it does single tasks really well. So if it…
Robert Christian (35:48)
But getting started as a DIYer, Lindy AI is a great place to start.
James Slade (35:53)
It’s great. It’ll blow your mind. It’ll be like, wow, I can’t believe you can do all of these things. So that would be a great starting point. ⁓ If you’re like, what happens is people are like, they use it and then they’re like, it’s amazing what it can do. And it opens their eyes and they’re like, what about this use case? And you’re like, and it can do it. It just struggles a little bit. And there’s other tools and other processes that actually help with those. But I would say Lindy’s a good starting point.
Robert Christian (36:20)
Okay. ⁓
James Slade (36:21)
You don’t need to know coding, you you just like drag a few notes around.
Robert Christian (36:25)
That’s, yeah,that’s the other thing is like.
⁓ when chat GPT first came out, was all in. I loved it. You know, we’ve been playing around. I was teaching a, just a, a night course at the local university. And I started showing some of my students and they flipped out. They were not happy with it at all. And, I, there was one of my students and she had just written, ⁓ a dissertation on,
just female athletes, eating disorders and male coaches. I I’ve never even taken that into consideration. And so she told me about her dissertation and I said, well, let’s see what AI can produce. since, I mean, when AI, when Chet GPT was first starting, it had a whole lot less boundaries, right? And I gave it the exact.
input that she told me of, of, uh, you know, what her findings were. And then I needed it to site and, and it went. And as she’s watching it. So I had it up on the big screen for the whole class and it’s just going through and her eyes bugged and she was like, I hate it. I don’t like this. And I was like, what do you mean? This is amazing. Right? I was like, I had no idea that there was such a strong correlation in that specific area.
James Slade (37:45)
All that.
Robert Christian (37:54)
I was like, this is fascinating to learn all this. And I’m, you know, we’re reading as it’s going. And she’s like, I’ve been working on that for months and this is doing what all of my work that I’ve put in. This is doing it right away. She’s like, I don’t like it. And of course she doesn’t like it, right? She she’s worked so hard and now there’s a tool that just bam spits out. and it, it, what was interesting was.
James Slade (38:16)
Yeah.
Robert Christian (38:24)
It was using very similar sources and I didn’t tell it what sources to go get. It just found them and they were very similar to what she had been ⁓ studying about. And that causes fear, right? Like I’ve worked so hard and now, you know, months of hard work can be done in 30 seconds. And, and it was discouraging to her a bit. ⁓ but I, I really do view AI as.
tool to help you do the correct research, to find the right sources. And it’s still going to need an input, right? It can’t do everything. It still needs that human interaction for the creative process in some of those things. But what are we going to do with all of our free time if we can create all these workflows, right? And just a per-
James Slade (39:12)
Yeah, I like
the 80-20 rule, right? ⁓ Where you make AI do 80 % of it and you’re in charge of that other 20. You craft the right questions, you put them in, and then you review the results. You don’t have to do all the heavy lifting in the middle, which I don’t like to do. I don’t know. There are some people that just love that. They’re like, give me a task. I want to do these things.
Robert Christian (39:19)
Yeah.That’s a great rule.
James Slade (39:39)
Follow this process exactly. That is a personality type, which is great. It’s not me. We’re just like, ugh, I don’t know, I gotta do that? No way. But I will spend hours and hours building AI agents that do that for me. ⁓ So I like engine builders or anything that was like, how about let’s just create a system that does that on autopilot so that I don’t have to do the heavy lifting. However, I do like the inputs and the review.
I like making decisions, very fulfilling. like if you have… So my wife, she struggles with decisions. She doesn’t like them. What I found is she doesn’t like them because she usually doesn’t have all the information. And collecting that information is a lot of work, right? And so if you can get tools to help you bring all of the information, making a decision is actually pretty easy. It’s when you have limited information that makes decisions harder.
Robert Christian (40:15)
Yeah.That’s fair.
James Slade (40:35)
What I like about AI is it brings all of that to the surface. So you’re like, ⁓ this is a very clear decision. It’s just, let’s move forward with that.
Robert Christian (40:44)
Yeah, I like that. It’s bringing that information to the forefront. Yeah. Yeah, I’m excited to see where we go with AI. Obviously, ⁓ for the skeptics, there’s a lot of dark things that have already started with AI. ⁓ But for those that are trying to create and build and produce something that will benefit humanity, I think there’s just as much or more
James Slade (40:48)
Yep.
Robert Christian (41:12)
on that side of the scale. And I’m really excited to see what it can do for, ⁓ for not just the business owners, but ⁓ people in the thick of it within each of these businesses, how much of their jobs are going to be alleviated. And ⁓ I
James Slade (41:32)
Here’s an example.
Robert Christian (41:34)
Yeah.
James Slade (41:34)
my, my wife again does not like the question what’s for dinner.I might well.
Robert Christian (41:40)
like every other mother in the whole world, right?
James Slade (41:43)
What’s for dinner? Worst question ever. And I’m like, well, why don’t we fix that? So we built an AI agent. Let’s fix that system. I know. I hear you. I hear your pain. Yeah. That’s not my first go-to, but it should be. Let’s fix that. Build an AI. never, the kids are like, if they ask you what’s for dinner, say, don’t ask me.
Robert Christian (41:49)
Cause you’re a man and you want to fix things. That’s a different podcast James.
James Slade (42:10)
you know, go here and ask, you know, we have some inputs where they can ask and they have everything there, right?
Robert Christian (42:16)
So do you have like a digital board on the wall that they can go talk to about dinner?
James Slade (42:24)
⁓ It’s through their phone. We’re like, if you ask that question again, we’re taking your phone away. And then they have a consequence and they move forward. So anyway, it’s a great way to think, well, how can I make my life a little bit more pleasant? Like, ooh, that was painful. I don’t want to do that again. How can I A.O. help?
Robert Christian (42:27)
that’s even better. Don’t even come in the kitchen, just go.You So I’ve got another question for you. Does your wife enjoy that?
James Slade (42:51)
Yeah. to see enjoy which part.
Robert Christian (42:55)
the AI taking the what’s for dinner question.
James Slade (42:59)
Yeah, because she doesn’t like that question
Robert Christian (43:04)
All right, we’ll have to get
⁓ your wife to have a conversation with my wife. My wife actually hates technology altogether. She doesn’t, ⁓ she and technology don’t get along and. ⁓
James Slade (43:13)
all right. My wife’s a similar.
Robert Christian (43:24)
Which is why I’m so grateful that SimTech has a help desk and that she has the phone number to call in and get help. And you know what? ⁓ Our help desk is a whole lot more responsive than I am and she loves that.
James Slade (43:31)
It isn’t working. Yeah, I get those calls.Yes.
Robert Christian (43:45)
well, I’m excited about where AI is going. I believe that the 40 hour work week for everyone should be cut down. It can be cut down and it’ll give us more time to actually go live the lives we choose to live. And I am very excited about that.
James Slade (44:03)
Yeah. Yeah, when, you know, early 1800s, when you’re a farmer, you’d work 17 hours days. ⁓ Eight hour days would have been like, are kidding me? Like you can’t get everything done in eight hours. way. And but with advancements in technology, eight hours or nine or 10, you know, whatever you’re working.
Now we’re getting to that next stage where it’s going to be four, three. Do you have to even work this day? I know. And you still are producing the same results or even more than what you were doing before. I like that part of it. ⁓
Robert Christian (44:33)
Alright. Yeah. Well,any final thoughts and, ⁓
inspirations for people to go get started and dig into it.
James Slade (44:47)
Yeah, I like genuinely.
I care about people to the point where they’re frustrated with something and I’m like, well, do we even need that? We don’t need to be frustrated with that. How can we elevate that? Right? And so if like you’re experiencing that, think through that and like, well, do I need to be in this slog right now? Do I need to be frustrated with whatever, you know, I’m doing? And,maybe explore, because AI could be a solution, but there could be others. I feel like people struggle with lot of struggles that they don’t need to.
that they can be elevated. ⁓ that’s kind of a driving force for me. So I guess I would close with that. Like, if you’re struggling with something, you probably don’t need to. You just lift out of that. And you can do it with AI or other tools and resources that help with that. But that’s what I would end with.
Robert Christian (45:47)
You know, I’m very grateful that you’d take the time to jump on here with us and, ⁓ and give everyone out there, ⁓ that, that driving force to say, all right, I’m struggling with this and I don’t have to, and I’m not going to anymore. We’re, we’re done struggling and we’re gonna, yeah, we’re going to move forward and we’re going to grow and develop and, and work less.
while the robots work more. ⁓ Actually, one last thing before we end. You and I were on a call with a company and she gave us a resource that has been so fantastic and it’s been a huge time suck. Guilty pleasure at this point. ⁓
Robert Christian (46:41)
The website is, and I encourage everyone listening to this to just go play around. And I think the people that it may be the most helpful for are ⁓ students, kids trying to figure out what they want to do for work and a career. Willrobotstakemyjob.com, not a sponsor yet. ⁓
but will robots take my job.com and it’s got some incredible data and ⁓ just risk factors of what positions ⁓ will be automated shortly. And it also helps businesses to see ⁓ what are the common AI agents out there right now that I could ⁓ help certain departments.
⁓ accounting and, ⁓ bookkeeping, they have a huge benefit to integrate AI as far as, ⁓ efficiencies and. Accuracies in their books. So there’s a lot of great tools out there, but will robots take my job.com has been a good time suck and, ⁓ and, a, a great, ⁓ resource to see.
where our business is struggling that we can help with automation. But again, James, thank you and thanks all of you for tuning in to Between Milestones, hosted by SimTech, where we provide solutions that make work easier, businesses stronger, and lives better. So if you found anything valuable here, consider sharing it with fellow business owners. And for more insights and real conversations,
connect with us on LinkedIn or visit simtech.com. And until next time, keep building what matters most. Thanks, James.
