What Founders Get Wrong About AI (And How to Actually Use It) with Jeff Kuei

0:28Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. teams everywhere. And right now we'll talk about the right way to implement AI into our business. We'll also talk about the number one mistake that entrepreneurs make when it comes to AI, legend mode, and oh so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jeff and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, HighLevel, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

1:08Over 43 ,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one AI cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning today at netsuite.com slash fire. Jeff, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, Fire Nation. This is Jeff Quay, co-founder and CEO of Kixi. I think a lot of people think that a lot of CEOs and entrepreneurs are greedy and looking for money. And I believe the complete opposite.

1:52it. And Fire Nation, that's why today we're talking about what founders get wrong about AI and how to actually use it with a co-founder, with a CEO, with Jeff of Kixi. Now, Jeff, you see firsthand how most people use AI. I mean, you are in the mix. They try to bolt AI onto processes that are already broken. What's the right way to implement AI into our businesses? Yeah, that's a great question. So the way I like to think of AI, it's not a magical fix. It's really a force multiplier. I'm a big fan of military terms, and it can be both good and bad. It can accelerate the good and also amplify the broken.

2:38So bolting AI onto a broken process is going to get you a more broken process. There's actually a stat that I love from McKinsey that 60 % of AI projects fail due to poor process alignment. So really, again, just to recap, it's not a magic bullet. It's the turbocharger for well-oiled machine is what I believe. Now, I like to talk about mistakes because we can learn from other people's mistakes as we're moving forward in our business. So what are you seeing, Jeff, as the number one mistake that both small and medium-sized businesses are making in their outbound process specifically? And how does AI fix that mistake?

3:21A lot of people think of AI as helping with volume. But in my opinion, it's velocity. And what I mean by that is this. I think a lot of people think, I'll bring AI in, and it's going to be spray and pray 2.0. I can, instead of reaching out to 1 ,000, I can reach out to 10 ,000 or 100 ,000 leads. and a lot of founders and CEOs are chasing volume instead of context or timing. So I'll use the military term again. So would you rather have one person with a massive 1 ,000 bullet shotgun or 1 ,000 precise sniper rifles? So going back to what that means for Outbound is you think of AI as being able to personalize and reach out to more people with personalized messages, quality.

4:06It's not about reaching out to massive volumes of people, but reaching out to those people with a better message, more personalized, more context, more intent. Now, I want to talk about Kixi, which is, of course, your company. Walk us through how a team using Kixi today could actually 10x their speed to lead. Another great stat I love is lead contacts drop roughly about 10 times after they show five minutes after showing interest. So let's say a lead visits your website or a pricing page or emails you and 10 minutes tick by, the chances of you connecting with that lead drops by roughly 10x. So with Kixi, we are all about using signals to be able to connect with leads.

4:55So instead of waiting, we can automatically trigger a text, automatically trigger events such as a call to connect the lead with the customer real time. Our belief is that people hate getting calls, you know, a cold call when you're eating dinner with your family at 5 p.m. But when you are in the right moment, you have buying intent, that is how you're able to 10x, you know, that's all about speed to the, how about you're able to 10x your conversion rates? Now, I love getting actual case studies, specific examples. I think it's really helpful. So can you give an example of maybe one of your clients or maybe even you yourself, how you've used these strategies to improve your speed to lead?

5:36So I'm going to use an example of a roofing company. As you can imagine, they may not have the newest tech, but they get leads in. People call in or email in or go on the contact form and say, we want to get a quote on fixing our leaky roof. In the past, this one roofing company took about six hours is what we saw to respond to leads. So we put in our speed to lead feature. It increased their connect rate from 4 % to 34 % deal velocity from 2 % to 18%, just compressing that response rate down. I mean, Fire Nation, these are the type of things that can really change the game for your business because it just compounds on top of itself when you're doing the right things in these areas.

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8:47The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash fire. Netsuite.com slash fire. All right, Jeff, we're back. And listen, losing deals is bad, but not knowing how you are losing deals, that's much, much worse. What's the fastest way for a founder to know if their team is losing deals because of slow outreach or bad tooling? Stats are most important. I'm a stat guy. So what's measured needs to get fixed? Most founders I've observed are not measuring the right friction points. You can't fix what you can't measure. So if you're not tracking response time, you're totally flying blind.

9:29So what I've observed is with AI, it's all about logging type to contact automatically and surfacing bottlenecks. Like at that point, then you can see what is the actual friction point. but it's all about measuring first. You've got to measure first, Fire Nation. Now, what are you seeing when it comes to teams losing deals? Is it slow outreach? Is that usually the problem? Or is it bad tooling or maybe a combination of both? It's a combination of both. It really is. Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not 90-10, it may be 50-50, 60-40, but it's both. It just depends on vertical, the size of the company.

10:13Do they have 10 reps? Do they have one rep? So it all depends. But it's all about measuring where your drop-off point is. Now, I think a lot of people might be surprised by this next thing we're going to talk about. But you believe that real-time phone conversations have a huge competitive edge. Now, why do you believe that's true? And specifically, how does AI make it even better? I'm a big believer in synchronous communication. So I always like to say like there's synchronous and asynchronous communication. So synchronous communication means when I'm conversing with somebody, they have to be engaging with me.

10:51Asynchronous is like text message and email. I can choose to respond there. Then I can choose to respond a day later or a week later. And nowadays, there's really only two methods of proactive synchronous communication. What I mean by the proactive aspect is Zoom, I have to say, hey, John, let's hop on a Zoom at 2 p.m. And then you have to accept. But with a phone call, I can actually call you and get on a synchronous communication. There's only one other method, which is actually door-to-door sales. Those are the only two methods when you think deep about having to reach out to potential prospects' clients is the telephone and also door-to-door.

11:32And why I'm so passionate about the phone call, and I believe it's still going to be a major communication channel, you know, one, three, five, 10 years from now, even with the advent of AI, is I feel there's going to be less sales calls, less calls in general, but the ones that you have are going to be so much more impactful. Imagine if you are planning your wedding and you have a question. Do you want to email and back and forth with your event planner? Do you want to chat with the AI voice agent? You probably want to call, get that person on the phone and really hash out all the issues. Or let's say if you ever close the house and the deadline is 8 p.m.

12:11to actually get everything in order, you want to get the loan broker on the phone, hammer everything out, all the nuances, and get everything buttoned up. So I believe you know, fast forward 1, 3, 5, 10 years from now, fewer conversations, but the ones we have, that's what's more impactful and that's what's more important. So Jeff, talk to us about Legend Mode. What is it? a great question it's uh it's something that actually it's fascinating so i'm going to go back to earlier when you were asking about um ai and we were talking about how it can amplify uh or you know the good and bad uh i was using this was probably about six months ago nine months ago and i was using chat gpt and it kept equivocating and it wasn't and it was trying to play nice with with me for lack of better term and i just got frustrated i said hey treat me like my time is worth like Jeff Bezos, a million dollars an hour.

13:05Then all of a sudden it said, memory upgraded. From now on, I'll treat you this way. I was like, wow, light bulb moment. And I realized that any LLM, any GPT is basically like a mirror of yourself. It's going to amplify the good, but also be able to potentially amplify the weaknesses. So what does that mean is that you have to tell you have to give as much context as possible to the to the llm to you know chat gpt cloud whichever um model you'd use so legend mode was something i crafted up to be very specific for everyone at kicksy to be able to maximize to the top one percent so it basically it's like treat me like i'm a trying to be a top one percent in my domain whether i'm in sales cs operations and push me, challenge me, do not ever give me softballs.

13:58And so I created a prompt to help everyone at the company level up. Fire Nation, I think all of us could use a little legend mode in our life. Now we've talked about a lot. We've talked about how to use AI to help us with our speed to lead. We talked about how we can help us avoid losing deals, how to amplify real-time phone conversations. Take a step back, Jeff. Of all the things that we've chatted about when it comes to what you do best with Kixi, what would it be that you would want our listeners to really get? If there was one thing they would walk away with, what would that be? To me, it's really this.

14:33AI is not a fix. It's a force multiplier. It accelerates the good. It amplifies the broken. So if you are already in the top 10 percentile of users, you're going to be 10x. If you are the bottom tier, then unfortunately, you may be replaced. Jeff, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about what Kixie has going on, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Go visit Kixie.com. That's K-I-X-I-E.com. We offer free trial. There's demos. There's a lot of videos that just show about how you can level up your sales process, your sales teams, focus on voice and text.

15:13Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JK and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything that we've talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Jeff in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Jeff, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, brother, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you for having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jeff for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation.

15:43Are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for entrepreneurs on fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit eelfire.com slash guest. And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies, build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, HighLevel, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Over 43 ,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one AI cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform.

16:35Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning today at netsuite.com slash fire.