2211 - Chatbots and Beyond The Future of Website Development in an AI World with Commexis' Len Ward

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1:05With us right now, Len Ward. Len, you are the founder and CEO of Comexis. Your website is comexis.com. To our friend that's listening in the podcast app, do me a favor, open up the app, click on the cover art or the show notes or the information icon, and you're going to find a direct link to comexis.com. But Len, it's great to have you. Thanks for having me, Josh. Appreciate it. Yeah, before we start talking about the work you do, and guess what? We're going to be talking about AI. you know what are you doing currently what are you doing for fun what like what are your hobbies I don't know if you're watching any great shows or movies lately what are you geeking out on I guess is my question right and believe it or not it's actually travel and you know where I could potentially buy another property which kind of mentioned you earlier so really actively looking in the Florida market Key West market where with golf fishing things like that so as of late I I found myself really just doing a ton of research on real estate investing and so forth.

2:06And this topsy-turvy time, I think now's the time to start kind of at least peeking around and identifying when the entry point is. Yeah, that's right, right, right. And you and I were talking about Key West. I'm in Orlando. We've gone down to Key West a number of times, taking the kids down there, have gotten ourselves solo. It is a great vibe. How would you describe Key West to someone who's never actually been there? Maybe they've just seen some social media stuff about it. Like, what's the vibe there? it's it's extremely laid back somebody said something great to me one time it's like you're in america but you don't feel like you're in america you feel like you're on an island and there's a guy named michael mcleod he used to sing at schooner's wharf all the time and he said he said the greatest thing about key west we actually saw him one of his last performances a few years ago and he's like the great thing about key west and key west time is there's nowhere else to go if you were to go past key west you're in the middle of the ocean he's realized this is it this is as far as you can go uh he's like at that point time drops and all that But if you've never been to Key West and you're really looking at something laid back, you're in the writing, authors, you're in the music, great food, and just kind of just really sitting around doing nothing and really feel like that nothing is like turned into something, that's Key West.

3:12I love it. It's, you know, I was sharing with you, you know, when you're there, it's like, it just, it seems ridiculous to worry about the outside world. It seems ridiculous, you know, all the chaos that might be going, you know, things that we have no control over. It's easy to start not caring about it when you're there because the vibe is just, it's chill. A little bit of Jimmy Buffett, a little bit of, you know, a lot of other kind of slow, you know, kind of chill vibes there. And then even the things that you do have control over, it's easier to take those in stride and just, you know, kind of a, you know, kind of more of a hang loose kind of vibe.

3:53Len, let's talk about Comexis and the work you do. So obviously you're doing a lot of work with AI solutions. And I think it's brilliant timing. And there's some things that I think nearly any business can be doing to implement some of these new AI-enabled platforms and tools or implementations that can be real game changers today. I agree. And that's one of the things we're doing right now is we're starting to transition people from traditional digital marketing into really building your AI stack. And your AI stack is something like ChatGPT. It could be Claude. It could be chatbots, data room, Snowflake, and so forth.

4:34But we are on the prefaces of a major, major change in marketing. It's happening right now. And I don't think people realize the speed and velocity of which this thing is picking up. And that's why we're here to help clients, you know, guide them through them, trying to help them build that out and get ready for it. And so what would be some implementations? Because you've worked with a number of great companies, University of Pennsylvania, you know, Vortex, I'm looking at all of your logos here. But what are your clients, like, what AI implementations are they asking for right now? Or what are you advising them?

5:10Yeah, you should build this. Like I know for us, an easy one is a chatbot. And what I mean, well, I'll let you kind of describe why a lot of folks might consider start using a chatbot on their website. So there's two reasons, and that is a great entry point. I do tell people they're very inquisitive. We do get a lot of calls from people who are inquisitive about AI. But the easiest entry point is, number one, organize all your data in a data room. A data room is a fancy term for Google Drive, Dropbox. If you want to go higher level, you can go to something like Snowflake and kind of build out a lake per se.

5:45But what you're doing right now is trying to get into a chat room or I'm sorry, a chat bot on your website that harvests all your content on your website, all the content you put in a data room and answers questions with prospective buyers on your website. The other way you can use a chatbot is internally. And that is organizing all of your internal documents, internal processes, and having your team use that. So you can kind of answer questions faster for customer service, find solutions to problems, a lot easier. And that's really speeding up the decision process. And we're telling clients that's the best entry point because of this.

6:17As AI ramps up and more and more people download ChatGPT, 700 million users a week now, they're going to be expecting instant answers. So when they call in or they email or they're on a live chat, it's no longer, hey, read this article. It's going to be like, no, I'm here to, you're going to solve my problem right now. And that's what it is. Well, and talk about the minds of consumers. Like why, I mean, consumers are just expecting it now. This isn't a, listen, this is, yes, it's a wonderful, you know, feature that you can offer. And it will improve a customer journey, customer retention, you know, that sort of thing.

6:54But consumers are getting to the point now where I think, and it would probably take some a little bit more time, but when it's an option now, I love it because I don't have to talk to a human. Let me just talk to virtual. You know, in my case, people talk to virtual Josh. And so we've got an internally now with all of our clients. So we've dumped all of my intelligence into it. And now they don't have to wait for a 30 minute call with me. They could just talk to virtual Josh. It's already loaded up. And quite frankly, it's probably better than me in many ways because it just has access to things I've probably long since forgotten.

7:32I know what you're talking about. And I'll be honest, I actually do think that is the future of consulting is building out those. There's quite a few platforms you can use for that. But what you're saying is 100 % right. That is, I actually interact with that a couple of times. I was on a podcast probably about a year ago and the guy was telling me he did that, sent me the link. I looked at it and I didn't see that before. I was like, wow, this is really, really impressive. and I do believe that you are right. That is, you could go in, it is smarter than what you think because you're not gonna remember everything you said, but if you can upload every document, every blog, every article, every interview you've ever done and have this thing interact with you and it looks, it is you and me, it is on video, and it's just, your mouth looks a little different and they're gonna perfect it.

8:11It is an amazing, amazing tool. Where we're headed is a crazy new world. Agreed. So Stu, for a friend that's listening right now, what would be a couple of things that you have seen, whether it's design, kind of user experience type stuff? Obviously, we've been talking about chatbots. But what are maybe a couple of other things that you would say, yeah, listen, if this is still going on in your website, you're probably going to want to revisit that. Or if you are missing this, yeah, you're probably going to want to revisit this. Or if you're still saying this, yeah, you're probably going to want to revisit that.

8:50Anything come to mind? One thing I think that comes to mind, I'll pivot over to marketing, because that is, you know, our agency, we did, we were a full service agency for the longest time, still are, but we are clearly morphing into the AI world, more so than full service agency. But if you are a company that was 100 % predicated on lead generation to get your leads in the front door, pay-per-click SEO and so forth, you have to understand the traffic that's coming to your website. So to answer your question, it is your website, but it's the backend traffic. Google is now kind of getting you insular to where they're going to answer your questions via AI.

9:23More people are going to chat GPT, which is not necessarily linking to your website. So you have to start understanding that it might not be your agency that's doing a bad job on SEO or pay-per-click. You're starting to see a dissolving of traffic. And I hate to use this term because I've written about it in blogs and talked about it, but it is the beginning of the collapse of the search world. It is happening. We're moving away from search and retrieve, you know, I'm searching for something, I'm going to read your 40 blue links to, again, solve my problem. And they want it instantly. And you have to start preparing for this.

9:53You have to start thinking of alternative marketing methods where it's not 100 % focused on lead generation. I'm not saying give up lead generation because you still have to do it and people are absolutely still using Google, but things are changing. And when I do come in contact with people who that's the only thing they want to do and they don't want to think anything about S or anything about AI whatsoever. I come back and say this, those people, they're trained because the internet took 25 years to fully grow out. The AI world is going to take roughly 18 months to build out or to fall out.

10:23So you're not going to have the time you had back in the nineties and two thousands to build out your digital footprint. It's going to happen instantaneously. That's what I caution people. Like when you're doing marketing, when you're looking at your website, start paying attention to the metrics behind it. And the last thing I'll tell you is websites in the next year, in my opinion, are going to be chatbots. I don't think you're going to be looking at websites with the navigation and clicking and, again, searching and looking for something. I think you're going to be on chatbots and videos and so forth.

10:50They're all going to be coming in there, and there'll be single page or app type things you're looking at. I believe that's – we're close to that now. I have toyed with that idea of – and this may be the natural evolution. We'll see how it goes. But, you know, if, you know, I've thought about, well, what would happen if I just like, you know, I know most people would just put little, you know, kind of chat bot icon down in the right hand corner. It's kind of a standard thing. But I'm thinking, well, what would happen if someone came to my website and, you know, some header and stuff like that, but immediately, like, just like, you know, there's a prompt and it's like, hey, it's virtual Josh, you know, let's talk about your business and see if I can help you in any way.

11:33Is that kind of what you're thinking? No, that's exactly what I'm thinking. And you know what's funny is chatbot has got a really, really bad reputation because we're thinking the chatbots like you would use for like Xfinity or a major corporation. And they don't even answer a question or the question always turns into it's just wrong where they make you read all the documentation. These are different. It's taking all the content you have on your website or wherever your repository is for that information. and you're asking a question and it's looking through your content and it's formulating an answer.

12:03It's not just copy and pasting and getting content back to you. It's formulating all of the information you have and giving the person the right response where it's almost like a human interaction and they're doing the work for you and say, okay, here, your problem's solved and here's the information on that. But yes, to answer your question, I do believe that's what websites are going to look like. And I think in the next couple of years, if you have a normal website or if you're getting a website built right now, you want to start thinking about that future of websites. Yeah. Talk about Comex as how you may be unique compared to other folks that do development.

12:39The thing I think that separates us the most is that we are morphing away from an agency where we're charging you on the hourly basis, like here's the work we do for an hour and we're charging for outcomes. We're coming in and being crystal clear with companies. We're building your AI marketing team. we're teaching one or two of your people to co-pilot these stacks. And the stack, again, it's very simple. We're not reinventing the wheel. It's ChatGPT. It's whatever LLM we think works for you, which typically is always going to be ChatGPT or Gemini of Google. And we're helping you process or put all your marketing information and all the past stuff, trying to build out your audiences.

13:15And we're trying to teach you. We have something actually called Marketing Brain GPT. It's a custom GPT that's built on 20-something years of Comexuses, all of our campaigns, all of our, you know, failures, our successes, all of that. And it's trained itself that we train it up on your business and we train it up on your audience. And it almost, you know, acts automatically as to how to fix your campaign. So we're getting you away from sitting around a room and trying to make decisions on marketing, taking your hands off the wheel and saying, look, let this thing, it knows more than you, knows more than everybody at the company.

13:46It knows your competitors, it knows your customers, let it start making decisions for you and then you screen those decisions. So building virtual marketing teams is what we're doing right now for companies. But the caveat is you need somebody to pilot it. So who is it going to be internally? And that's what separates us from a regular agency. We're not going to come in and start running SEO and pay-per-click campaigns for you. We can, and we will do that, but we run everything right now through Dave. Love it. Len, for our friend that's listening, next steps, like where do they go from here? Maybe they've stumbled upon this episode because they were searching for you and now they've gotten to hear you a little bit more.

14:21What would you recommend next steps be? I mean, if they would just want to, it's easy to contact us at Comexis.com, fill out a form. I handle any sales inquiry. So if you have a question about AI, you're thinking about the next steps, I'm always more than happy to jump on it. Excellent. Again, it's Comexis.com. Len Ward, your founder, CEO. Len, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.

14:48Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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