Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of the Franchise Advisory Board,
where we're bringing experts from around the industry to talk
to you about topics that are most critical to help
you build a successful franchise brand. I've got with me
Brian Shankman today. He's the co founder and CEO of
Lead Truffle and you, guys, this is an AI enabled
sales automation lead follow up program. He and I preached
(00:21):
the same doctrine right like it was fun for getting
to know what you're like. He said the word speed
to lead twice. So if you know me, you know
I'm like, this is my people. So but Brian, Brian's
been got a cool background, guys. He's worked with lead
Truffle is it went through the tiny seed program, so
you know, got a lot of smart people helped him
get this thing rocking. And they've built some cool tech
(00:41):
that bolts on and supports this sales process. We're gonna
you won't be surprised what we talked about with him today. Guys,
played played football grown up, played college rugby, so he's
he's tough. And also he's worked at a couple of
really cool companies that helped give him some background and
experience that like like TikTok if you've ever heard of
(01:02):
them before, or framed up.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I heard it's a popular app.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Yeah, yeah, I've heard some people use that. So anyway, Bright,
I'm so glad you're here. And before we talk about
kind of AI enabled best in class like to modern
sales and lead follow up, like tell us about you,
tell us a little bit more about lead Truffle and
we'll jump right in.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, Dave, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I got a chance to look into client tether more
before coming on, and it looks like you guys are
building a very very specific, purpose built piece of technology
for the franchise industry, which is a world we're kind
of moving more into with lead Truffle. So it's really
cool to see you kind of already plant your flag
there and have have what looks like a great tool.
So appreciate you coming having me on. In terms of
(01:42):
my background, yeah, you kind of nailed it. I've spent
the better part of the past decade working at an
in various software startups. I was lucky to join a
unicorn called frame Io. I was one of the first
thirty employees there. If anyone listening or you do any
type of video editing, you may have used it before.
They eventually got bought by Adobe. But I really got
(02:02):
a front row So I was studied English in college,
so I just kind of learned how to write and communicate.
But I kind of, i say, got my MBA in
startups working at frame io, going from you employee number
thirty something to one hundred and fifty two hundred employees
from pre series B to the acquisition by Adobe. I
just learned so much having that front row seat. So
I've taken a lot of those learnings into starting my
(02:22):
own company, and very fortunate to go through tiny Seed,
which is, you know, a great reputable kind of bootstrap
VC model. And then yeah, personally, you know, husband, new father.
I have a one year old daughter who's just you know,
the joy of my life and kind of do everything
for her. So yeah, just working, grinding, you know, building
out AI tools for local business and uh yeah, taking
(02:45):
care of my family.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Good man. I love that. Love that. Well, we can
talk about family later. That's a whole mind everything we did,
so I'd love that you shared that. Thanks, So talk
to us a little bit about the state of lead
capture today, Like there are so many channels, and that's
one of the things that like, you know, fifteen years
(03:06):
ago is like you got website leads and maybe Google PPC,
like that was kind of it, but it's so much
more complicated. So lay it out, like what are you
observing since you're kind of on the front of this as.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Well, for sure, for sure, And let me turn off
my little slack notifications here. So yeah, I think when
it comes to local business and disclaimer, I've never ran
a local business, so I want to put that out there,
but I've spent a lot of time working on software
and digital marketing and things like that. So from our customers,
what we see is there's like a couple really core
buckets of where leads come from. I'll break them down
(03:38):
into like I'll say four buckets. One is going to
be kind of third party lead aggregators. To think about
Angie's List, home Advisor, places where you're paying for leads.
You could probably put Google in that bucket to a
certain degree, although they're not paid to play, it's a
little bit more meritocratic, but nonetheless they're a third party
that generates leads for you. So we'll put that in
(03:59):
one bucket. I'd say the second bucket would be out
of home marketing, so sponsoring your local Little League team,
wraps on a truck, billboards, things like that.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Three would be your website.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
So once someone comes from maybe one of those two
previous locations to learn more about your business, they're going
to be on your website. And there's a variety of
ways to capture leads their forms, chat, phone, call, things
like that. And then the last one is going to
be the phone. So the phone, from what we've seen
in the row eighty twenty of value for our customers
and where we see most of the leads eventually kind
(04:30):
of get in contact with the business are through the
website and phone, and those two previous buckets, third party
lead aggregators and out of home kind of drive towards those.
But I do know there's a lot of businesses that
don't even have a website. They just simply are on
top of Yelp twenty four to seven, They're on top
of Angie's List twenty four to seven, and they're able
to get leads that way. So those are the big
(04:51):
buckets that we see kind of for most local businesses.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, some of them are changing, right, Like they're you know, Google,
digl atsay. And it feels like that that that's going
to continue to be a bit more dynamic, yeah for folks.
And I mean what's the impact though, So let's talk
about franchise brands, right, So franchise brands that they're a
lot especially because a lot of them are ten fifteen
years old, they aren't maybe capitalizing on some of the
(05:15):
newer channels they should. Where were some of these maybe
brands that aren't as up to speed on the channel changes.
Where should they be paying attention more today than they
have been?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, I think there's a lot of alpha right now
in Reddit, believe it or not, for two reasons. One
that if you've noticed, Reddit really eats up a lot
of the front page of Google, and I think it's
for good reason, Like it is typically user generated content.
If you're like, oh my Samsung Frame TV remote broke
(05:45):
a lot of times, you're going to find someone who
posted on Reddit who had the same problem and maybe
found a solution. So Reddit, I think is actually like
a pretty good source of information. And from a business perspective,
you have a lot of local queries happening on Reddit.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Hey guys, they just moved to Austin.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I'm looking for a new barber who's great in our
slash Reddit of've reddit slash Austin or reddit slash, you know,
barbers or whatever. So I think a Reddit is kind
of slept on. And then Reddit also does feed into
the LM so Chat Gypt, Google, Gemini. A lot of
the training data for these AI tools come from Reddit.
So I think for local businesses, if you can get
(06:21):
on Reddit, you can get in those local queries and
get into those threads. That's really helpful in and of itself.
But then that is a lot of the data that
feeds the Chat Gypt and more and more. I think
we're just in super early days of this, but more
and more people are gonna be like talking to chat
to Oh my sink broke. You know, it's not where
I go. You know, I'm so frustrated. Is there a
good plumber near me that can help me? And chat
gybt will be providing that result to consumers, and for
(06:45):
a business to be the one that's recommended would be
pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, it's funny you bring that up. I've been in
a recent marketing meeting here where we were talking about
different channels and reddits one that tends to be under
undervalued across multiple industries, including franchising. But it was I
remember when TikTok first came out. You worked at TikTok.
Now I first came out, as had been out for
a couple of years, and I was at a conference
specifically for roofing, and this guy was talking all about
(07:11):
TikTok and after he did his presentation in the hallways
like but let's be honest, like how many how do
you monetize this? And he looked at me kind of
funny and he's like, dude, like, let me tell you
a story. Sighting company. The guy posts a time lapse
video on TikTok that people love watching stuff like that,
or people doing the actual service, like the painting on
the wall, standing of the floors, right lane of lane
(07:33):
of like tile whatever. He's like, he got twelve leads
from that video that cost him zero dollars. All he
did was setup the camera and then post the video. Afterwards,
he got twelve local leads. He's like, TikTok's more powerful
on the back end than you think.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah, and TikTok's starting to be. Yeah, TikTok's starting to
be more local by nature. If you notice a lot
of videos have like a location tag on them, and
he can click that location tag and see who's posting
in and around your area, I would say, yeah, Historically,
I wouldn't necessarily love TikTok for local business because it
is so national and international by nature. But I do
think TikTok is like very purposely trying to drive towards
(08:10):
a more local experience so that you can, you know,
post a video and yeah it's I've experienced. I don't
know how much you use TikTok day, but if you
go to a new city and you open up TikTok,
you're like getting content about the local sports team or
the local college. So TikTok definitely does localize itself to
a certain degree.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah. I'm not not a big TikTok guy, but I
have I've tried to follow the trends even if I'm
not consuming it right. Yeah, for sure, more channel one
more channel for me. Cool talk to me about consumer
behavior changes, because especially as your AI is rolling out
and some of these it seems like they're getting into
our mind shure through different ways. Now these corporations are
(08:49):
How is consumer behavior reacting to some of those things?
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, well, I think a lot of I mean, the
biggest change I've seen in myself is just how much
I use chatchipt. You know, Honestly, I was always a
huge Google guy, and people would like, always, like throughout
my adult life, people would like, how do you know that?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Like how do you know?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Like I would know a random fact like know how
to do something, or a group of people wouldn't know
how to do something that I'd say, this is how
we do it, and they'd always be like, how do
you know that? And I would just be like, the Internet,
the information is just there, you just need to go
ask Google for it. But increasingly that the answer to
that question is becoming chatgypt. So I think personally, just AI,
(09:29):
it is overstated and overblown in certain areas, but I
think it's like totally underrated in others. Whether I'm cooking
for my family or my daughter has you know, an
issue we need to look up, or something's going on
with my dog, or I'm trying to work out and
get in shape. Like AI, I can just be such
a good, kind of thoughtful companion, have so much good information.
So I think probably the biggest change we've seen in
(09:50):
the past couple of years is a lot of that
consumer mind share moving off of the search engines, off
of you know, the Internet browser, into the lllms and
chat gipt in Gemini.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, I think. I mean, you mentioned part of this before,
but I had to. I was trying to check the
oil on my motorcycle, so I was searching all over like, oh,
how do I do this properly on this this particular
motorcycle and it and Reddit is where I got I
got the answer. It was like it wasn't coming through
YouTube anymore, which surprised me because I was I've got
(10:21):
a pixel some natively Google searching everything and Gemini and stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
But yeah, we we just had a good conversation today
with a potential customer for Lee Truffle who found us
through chat GBT. And the reason we're cited in chat
GBT is because there's Reddit comments talking about us. So
Reddit is like again that kind of underlying data for
a lot of the lllms.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, and that's that's the crazy part about this, right,
So they're they're interconnected. I'd say twenty five percent of
our web traffic is referred by AI nol wow, and
so it's it's it's a huge part of this ecosystem.
A lot of people, you know, they're all the the
the the people that are eccentric about AI, that are like, oh, hey,
(11:02):
I was taking over everything, like SEO is dead, total
bull crap, right, that's that's not even closer. True, it's
still the majority. But but do you envision a world
where everything's AI driven and no one's no one's getting
no one's really you know, working through Google anymore or
do you feel like that's that's kind of an impossibility
and they'll probably balance somewhere. Yeah, before what's your what's
(11:22):
your take on that right now?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, it's hard to say, man, It's so hard, you know,
to predict the future. But I feel relatively confident in
the idea that like my daughter, who's one, you know,
when she's my age, Like, I don't think she's going
to be using like a phone like this, Like I think,
I mean, screens are the screens are like actually such
good technology can get so much density of information onto
(11:46):
them and they're so dynamic. But I think more and more,
like computings are going to become a bit more spatial
and ambient in nature. And so if you saw Meta's
new ray band, the Meta ray Ban glasses coming up
for seven ninety nine, with like the screen in them
and the wrist gestures, it's so hard, like is Google
gonna decrease it? I just think we're probably going to
(12:07):
slowly move towards a world where it's less screens, less clicking,
less mouse, less touch, and just it's more ambient. It's
kind of always there. You have your piece, like Joaquin
Phoenix's movie Her, and then you just kind of talk
to it and it gives you what you need. So
I think we're probably moving towards that. But I think
a lot of this stuff happens. I was around for
the early mobile revolution and like the cloud revolution, and
(12:29):
I think this stuff like in the initial phase good
dot com bubble, like there's so much hype, it's so
much overblown, and then you hit that trough of disillusionment
and things kind of slow down and like people kind
of reset expectations, and then over the next like ten years,
it like slowly takes over. So I think we're probably
around that point now where like there's all this crazy
initial hypeover AI. It's going to like die down a
little bit, but then like ten years from now, it'll
(12:50):
be like, oh, we're in a totally different world.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah heye. If you look at the adoption curve cycle,
have you've seen those for all the different texts like
aircah yeah, airline flights and television, the spike is like vertical.
It's like a vertical line for AI. So I yeah,
so it's it's ubiquitous. It's going to be everywhere. It's that.
The challenge is people are trying to infuse it into
things where I'm like, what's your point here, Like yeah, yeah, yes,
you have a calculator with AI, good job, awesome, So yeah.
(13:16):
I just sometimes it's like when when cameras first came out,
like everything had a camera on it. Here's a pen
with a camera.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
On it, right, right, yeah, and then you kind of
land on the use cases that are actually helpful and
useful makes sense.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Correct, And let's let's transition to that, like what's what
what actually works? We're talking about automation here, like how
do you follow up effectively with leads? Were talked about channels, right,
and you talked about phones. We want to come back
to phone a little bit, because I know you guys
have some really cool solutions there. Where are you seeing
automation work well? And where are you seeing automation in
engaging with potential prospects and leads, et cetera. That it's
(13:49):
that doesn't work as well as it used to.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Maybe yeah, well, you know, I think where AI goes
wrong is that, like there's this really strong pulse to
want to talk to another human being.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I think a lot of it's emotional.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
If you have like a crazy pest situation at your house,
you kind of just want to talk to a thoughtful,
competent human being who's dealt with and solved the problem
that you're facing. Same with like a doctor, a therapist,
whatever it may be.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And so like, I just think.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
There's this emotionality to it where it's like I want
to talk to someone who can reassure me that this
problem I'm facing can be solved. And so, where AI
goes wrong, I think people over index on using AI
to interact with their customers. When you know, if you're
serious about your business and you really want to make
it work, like you should definitely have a very clear
(14:40):
path to get to talk to a real human being
in a pretty expedited fashion. We've all had the experience
of using the call tree Impress one for the plus
and you're on that thing for twenty five minutes trying
to get on contact with Visa, MasterCard or a flack
or some huge mega corporation. That's just very frustrating. So
I think that's like definitely where people maybe you're going wrong.
(15:01):
Is that, Like I think AI is here to stay,
but like being able to talk to a very thoughtful, competent,
friendly human being is like also here to stay as well.
Where I do think AI is like incredibly useful. I
think internally there's so many use cases for it, just
automating a lot of the road routine tasks that can
take up a ton of your time, letting AI handle those,
and then also you know, for some of the lower
(15:22):
end you know, initial queries, like if you have a
lot of tire kickers calling your business, if you have
a lot of spam calling your business, if you want
to just let the AI do some of the initial
intake and qualification and then eventually let a human take
over or even in our case, let the AI maybe
book the estimate or book the initial whatever that meeting
(15:43):
is for you that appointment, and then have a human
show up to that appointment. I think that's like a
really healthy way to balance it. It's like, yes, do
you need a human being every time a new customer
calls fifty times a day asking if you do XYZ
service to sit there and answer the same questions over
and over and over and over again. Like, probably not.
You can use AI for that in my opinion, But yeah, eventually,
I think it's good to have a human in the loop.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, And I think you're leading down this path as well.
There's kind of a front end. I think of it
in terms of, like, because we've been automating stuff for years, right,
and infusing AI into it now. There are certain buckets,
categories of engagement I'll call them, where automation makes total sense, right.
Initial lead engagement leads come in usually people want to
(16:28):
talk to somebody quickly. If I'm filling out a lead
form on your website, I don't want to talk to
you in an hour and a half or two hours.
I want to talk to you right now, because that's
why I gave you my personal info. So there's an
immediacy of it. There's also the task is to have
a brief prequel discussion and make sure that this is
a good idea and get an appointment set with a
human right where there's a very clearly defined task with
(16:50):
a very clear endpoint. I think automation slash AI is
a home run as a home run, But usually once
you get beyond that initial engagement and there's a meeting
in some home, or there's a complex discovery process or
you know, some would argue, oh AI can do that,
and I would say, yeah, it can, but my dog
can push a lawnmower. That doesn't mean you should mow
(17:11):
my yard, right, It's not the right solution there. So
when it's a complex personal interaction, I think we still
need humans to be in the loop. But then and
maybe even drive that. But there's still parts where we
can have AI and automation in the follow up sequence afterward,
how do you advise people around that so complex human
interaction and then where does AI continue to fit or
automation play a role after the fact.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, I mean I think you hit it.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
I think you hit the nail on the head like
using AI for that, you know, if your options are
for to just create a simple binary like Elite comes
in from your website and you want a real human
to call them, but that real human's busy doing other things,
so it takes three hours to call them.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
If that's one option, and then.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
The other option is like okay, AI immediately calls them,
or AI immediately texts them, understands what they need. Maybe
turns out it's not a good fit, them on their
way to another provider, or it turns out it is
a good fit, and schedule an appointment. Like I'd much
rather go with option two, where it's like speed and
immediacy are so crucial.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
In that process.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Now, let's say if you can have a real human
call every lead that you get within ten seconds of
the person submitting, like great. I don't think that's realistic
for most businesses, but if you can do that, then
go for it. And then yeah, in terms of like
follow up, I think a really like you know, AI
is really good at just like analyzing big swaths of data.
So you know, having AI in your CRM, you look
for opportunities for follow ups or schedule thoughtful follow ups
(18:33):
that are you instead of having a templated message like hey,
just checking out on this quote, you could use AI
to generate a more tailored personal message in that follow
up step. A lot of ways you could use it
there later in the process.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah, how about post engagement. Let's say we win the deal,
we close the job, whatever the case may be. How
have you seen people use AI to create automation or
even just automation in general post sale to continue engagement,
cross sell up, sal get referrals, get reviews, all that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's not it's not something we
focus on as much like that part of the life
cycle with our software. But I see tons of great
use cases around.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Again, identifying folks to follow up with who maybe you
did a big job with, but it's been six months
and you know now might be a good time to
follow up, or asking for reviews and then you know,
asking for reviews and depending on how they initially felt,
sent them onto Google or maybe you know, oh you
had a problem, Okay, let's ping the owner so they
can call you and figure out why it wasn't a
five star review.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, A lot of ways you can inject that.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, totally agree, totally agree, And that that's kind of
where we see, like the three big buckets front end.
Front end is critical, right, if you're spending money to
get leads in, you better be converted as many as
you can. But then every time you have a service
you can do a quote un estimate. There's usually a
drop off, drop off point because of human nature to
move on to the next shiny thing. Yeah, that's a
huge a huge window. And then post post delivery of service,
(19:53):
most brands don't think about it, and they're not getting referrals.
Referrals are free. Some people take referrals and like it's crazy,
but they're tedious these processes. So anytime there's a tedious
process that humans tend to not want to do, automate
that you need to create automation around that all the time.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Cool, are you guys doing a lot of AI with
client tether and like kind of post sale follow ups
and things like that.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
No, And this is where like these are mostly kind
of pre built automations right omni channel, but they're pre
built and cues for the humans to hey, when you call,
here's your reminder and call about this, so queuing and things.
I think AI could do some of that actually pretty well.
But like a post service delivery phone call hundred percent.
I think AI can easily be trained to do that,
(20:37):
but again, it's like narrowscope specific task. If you do that,
AI's home run and it takes it out of the
humans to do list. Those are areas where I think
is we're continuing to evaluate AI. Those are places I
want to start plugging it in more, even in the
post service delivery, because how nice would it be. It's better,
I think the emotional aspect of that. It's more powerful
(20:59):
of the owner makes that call or the person who
talked to them initially, of a human makes that call,
Like it's an opportunity to develop a human emotional connection
and strengthen it. So I wouldn't want to cheapen it.
But if you're not doing it at all because you
don't have bandwidth, then having an AI call and say, hey,
you know, I'm Steve, I'm the AI assistant here at
the office. I know we just delivered service. Want to
find out how it was, What was your feedback about
(21:21):
the team, how did the project go? Like like that
sort of thing, and then you can have a sentiment
analysis and a transcript summary sent off to the team
as a follow up step if there's anything negative or
anything very positive and then guide them over to the
Google review for Hey, I'll send you a tax with
the link ahead and give us some feedback. That's a
great use of AI. But a lot of these small
businesses are chucks in a truck, even at the franchise
(21:42):
system level. It's like, I've got myself and my wife
running this you know, eight hundred thousand dollars year business,
and I stub all the workouts, so don't have staff
like they are. They're lean. Man. Do you find the
same thing still, like as you're working with people in
the industry that they just don't have enough people to
do a great c X job.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I think a lot of the businesses we work with
are you know, smaller one to two people shops, and
that's where AI can be pretty helpful. And then for
the bigger companies too as well. But yeah, we we
work with a wide swath of businesses from you know,
literally one person to you know, tens of employees in
an office. But yeah, that is definitely a promise of
AI that I think Israel is like, do more with less.
(22:24):
I think you know, me and my start, my co
founder and I run a company right now is just
the two of us, and I think five ten years ago,
for sure, we would have had to have, you know,
at least two to three engineers, a couple sales and
customer success people. But thanks to the efficiency gains of AI,
we can we can really do a lot with just
the two of us.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, and I find that amazing. It was. It hasn't
always been that way, as you well know. So cool. Well,
let's talk about what's next, right, So, local businesses franchising
these brands that we both care an awful lot about
and service, how do people future proof their customer acquisition
without making this complicated? Right Cause I remember a conversation
(23:01):
I had years ago with someone where she was like, well,
I do this, and I have all this automation. That's like, well,
show me what you got, And she had like six
or seven pieces of technology wrapped around each other with
zappiers going all over and it was a total Franken
stack dude. So, but I think people are nervous about
that when new tech comes out. So how do people
future proof the business without making things super complicated? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I would say, just like, keep it simple and focus
on what really matters, which I think there's a couple
core things. One is when someone gets in contact with
your business, put systems in place that you respond to
them quickly. Like there's a million ways to do that,
Like it doesn't need to be AI. You could just
have a web form and connect it through za period
of Gmail. Make sure an email goes out when a
(23:45):
new web form comes in, Like you don't need to
do crazy setups and automations to achieve that goal. When
someone calls your business, pick up the phone, you know,
like it's it's and now yeah, you may say, well
I'm a one part some business and I can't pick
up the phone and am outulfilling the work. Well it's
like okay, well now there's this new thing called AI.
(24:05):
They can pick up the phone for you to maybe
try that. So I would say, like, just responsiveness, I
think is such an easy win. I'm a new business
owner myself. There's our company is about a year old,
Like I'm a new entrepreneur' an early stage entrepreneur, Like
responsiveness is one of my biggest levers. Like I get
an email if I'm not doing something out like I'm
immediately replying. So I think just being responsive is important
(24:27):
doing good work. I do more of a you know,
digital online business, but just try and be very thoughtful
with you know, going the extra mile hop and doing
a customer's account, setting something up for them, sending them
a loom video showing them how they can do it themselves,
sending screenshots with annotations, just like really going the extra mile.
And I think that's true for any business, if you're
(24:47):
pressure washing, if your dog daycare, whatever, like just really
have that personal touch. And I think doing that good
business then eventually leads to referrals and more business. And
then yeah, just you know the basics, right like do
you have a Google business profile? Do you have a
website that's like kind of clear and explains what you do?
Are you getting reviews on Google business profile? I think
some of those things are just like relatively easy, not easy.
(25:08):
People are like approachable and they have like a lot
of a high return.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah, and then you said at once, we can say
it again and then look for those opportunities where you
can create scale. Where there's bottlenecks, where there's minutia, where
tedium is preventing you from doing the right thing. That's
that's exactly where, especially if it's a narrowly defined task.
It's got a clear, different defined outcome. Man. That's it's
a home run like recipe to insert AI. Find AI,
(25:35):
work with a partner who can who can develop these
things for you? Brian. I think that you and I
could probably talk for another hour about this if somebody
wanted to get in touch with you and said, hey,
I like, remember I was saying about this, right, I
need better help with that. What's the best way for
them to find you?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, just go to lead Truffle t r U f
f l E lead truffle dot com. Or you can
shoot an email Brian at lead truffle dot com. Or
I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn. Pretty pretty active there, Brian Shankman.
So any of those avenues, I'll uh to my point
about responsiveness. If you get in touch with me on
any of those for places, I'll be sure to get
(26:14):
back to you very quickly.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Nice with AI or is it actually yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, no, we definitely dog food is a tech term
for like using your own software.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Lead truffle a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
So if you go to the lead Truffle dot com
you'll see our texting widget in the lower right end corner.
And every day we're getting leads there and the AI
qualifies them and talks to them, answers their question, and
then I use human takeover. We call it to pause
the AI and say, hey, this is Brian, co founder
of lead Truffle, live here in Austin, and we close
customers through that. So yeah, we're using we're taking our
(26:44):
own medicine every day and using AI to build our
own business.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I love it, man, I say it all the time.
The old saying is we eat our own dog food
around here, So yeah, yeah, you're one hundred percent right, Brent.
This is great. Thanks for making time and great insights.
I think this was punchy and I might have to
get together again and have another conversation today.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Thank thank you for having me on and I hope
you have a great weekends you too, man,