Adminify AI:

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the Training Impact Podcast. My guest today is Kevin Trost. Kevin is the co-founder and president of Adminify AI, the all-in-one AI communication platform built to make your business ridiculously easy to do business with. I’m looking forward to this conversation about how AI is changing those business processes,

 

technology layer for those business processes with the channel partners. And so welcome to the program, Kevin.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(00:26)

Thanks Jeff. Good to be on. This is the training impact podcast. It’s a big deal for me. The biggest deal of my week.

 

Jeff Walter (00:35)

I appreciate that. So one of the reasons, well, one reason I want to talk to you is when we look at channel enablement and most of that external training that our listeners do is all about channel enablement. And it means you got the right people and then you got the right process and you have the right technology layer. And with AI, what that technology layer is capable of doing is changing. And that’s one of the reasons I want to have

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(01:03)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (01:03)

you on the show is so our listeners can get a better understanding of what’s possible there. So that being said, why don’t you give everybody a quick back, let us understand how you got where you’re at and what Adminify is and what you guys are trying to do and how AI is changing.

 

Well, I’m packing a lot. Let’s just start with, how’d you end up as co-founder and president of Adminify and what does Adminify actually do?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(01:27)

Love it. Love it. So yeah, so yeah, my name is Kevin Trost. I’ve been in my background. I grew up in Seattle, Washington. I married I live in Salt Lake City, Utah now and have four four daughters. My oldest is 19. So I’m entering that stage and my youngest is 12. So it’s a

 

fun world to be in. My background has mainly been, I’m probably an entrepreneur is how most people would describe me, but I’ve mainly been in a customer acquisition most of my life and probably focused on scaling and implementing sales platforms and systems that companies could go then and scale quickly and things. so the way we…

 

know, Adminify has been around officially for about three years now, which in our world makes us one of the pioneers in a weird way, one of the dinosaurs. no, the way that we got into it, we had done some acquisition for companies like Amazon and Uber and DoorDash and things like that, which

 

You know, parts of those companies are definitely considered technology companies in my opinion, and so they would build this amazing technology and then we would go and help them acquire the customers to use that technology. Usually most people technology things if you build it, they will come and usually if you build it, a couple people might find you, but you still have to go acquire the customers and you know, get people to want to use your technology or your systems and your products and so.

 

So we were coming from that world. The way that I got into AI is probably like a lot of people, was just, I don’t know if worried is the word I would use, but just unsure about how that was gonna affect my world, my business, my future. And I wanted to make sure that I was not fighting against it, but learning how to fight with it, because I figured it would be.

 

It would be game changing and I just wanted to educate myself. Before it was our main focus, we actually started, of all things, an artificial turf company. We had never done anything in artificial turf, but there was a little bit of a government subsidy there and we wanted to pick something that had some complexity to it.

 

And within about six months, we were able to automate pretty much the entire customer journey from A to Z, other than the physical install of that turf, using AI, from getting referrals, capturing every lead, giving really good service to our current customer base while never missing an opportunity on the other side, all the way down to the…

 

review management piece of it at the end of the transaction with hopefully a happy customer. And so when we realized kind of like, oh wow, this can do so much more than answer, know, write an essay for my daughter in her English class or whatever, you know, we had a decision to make. With the teacher’s permission, I’m sure, at least that’s what I’m told as a father, right?

 

So I think we just had a decision to make of, do we want to create a platform that helps businesses learn how to implement this or do we go compete with businesses that are going to eventually figure out how to use AI, but we feel like we already are cracking the case on that. And so we decided to go the route of enabling businesses to utilize AI in their business. And that’s kind of where it started. And three years later,

 

But you know, it’s changing every day, it’s changing fast and it’s fun being a part of it.

 

Jeff Walter (05:00)

Yeah. so help me understand. So you started this turf business. You still have the turf business by any chance? No. You’re a bit.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(05:07)

Oh, no, we actually got rid of that. It

 

was a beautiful proof of concept, but even though one person could kind of run it from an office other than the physical installer, it still took a lot of bandwidth.

 

Jeff Walter (05:21)

I was just talking to somebody about that. Actually, on the prior episode I just recorded, we were talking about scaling your franchise network. Do you use a franchise consultant or a sales organization or area manager to do it organically? To your point, it was a…

 

Well, it’s a good question, but the one thing you gotta remember if you go do it organically is it takes time and energy and no matter who you are, no matter how much backing you’ve got, you can’t buy extra hours in a day, right? So, where do you wanna put your focus? So sounds like you guys went like, okay, it’s nice, it’s a nice piece of business, but we wanna focus our energies over here and we only have so many hours in a day. And that’s pretty cool. So you did that and you built the technology and you’re like, hey,

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(05:53)

Yeah. Okay.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (06:09)

rather than out a great turf company and continue to grow, we got this piece of technology that we think can really change the game for a lot of players. And so help me understand how that works. I understand the concept, but like…

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(06:16)

you

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (06:30)

How does it all start? Where does the prospect come in? Did they hit the website or are going out and cold calling them? It sounds good, but how does that AI, how do you find that needle in the haystack?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(06:43)

Yeah, no, I actually love that question. I love how you answered it because AI is really big and honestly even for me, it’s almost intimidating in a way because it is so big and you’re right. Like where do you even start and it’s

 

It’s hard to sometimes articulate exactly like, because it’s so big, it’s like, why don’t you just start with one little piece, you try to find a platform that can do everything. Do I build it in-house? Do I outsource it? Like, where all of us are fairly naive because it’s such a new thing and it’s moving so fast and then, you know, and all those things. So, yeah, maybe I’ll give kind of a little bit of like the first couple months of Adminify and that’ll probably answer a lot of those questions.

 

AI makes sense. I still haven’t talked to a business owner where at least a piece of AI wouldn’t make their business more efficient or make their customer journey more enjoyable or scalable or those things. so to figure out who your target, your ICP or your target customer is when you’re going to be an AI company providing a, helping to automate the customer journey.

 

it’s really easy to get distracted by, oh, this is where it makes sense in this industry, because I could probably sit down and tell you the hundred ways each industry that I can think of where it would make sense in that industry, right? And so, but one place where it made a lot of sense was in a home service company. So let’s take a HVAC company, for instance, right? And so one thing that all HVAC companies probably would agree on is when…

 

Jeff Walter (08:08)

Uh-huh.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(08:15)

They have some customers that are probably repeating and things, but there’s probably a large portion of their business, is somebody has a problem with their, you know, it’s 22 degrees outside and their furnace just went out and they need to get warm. And so what most people do is they go and they call the first person that, you know, pops up and if they answer it, that company is probably getting the business because it’s somewhat of an emergency or it’s not a top priority and they just need to get something done. And so

 

Jeff Walter (08:30)

Yep.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(08:44)

If you don’t engage with that client, they’re probably calling the next person on the list until somebody finally engages with them. so I call that speed to lead. Who can get there the fastest? The other side of that is companies will pay for leads from like an Angie’s List. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of companies that provide those things, but usually you’re getting that lead while other companies are also getting that lead. You’re getting a shot to earn that business.

 

But it’s staggered. It’s it’s pretty the percentage of clients that go with whoever reached out first is ridiculously high, you know, and so speed the lead in my opinion was like a very obvious place for AI to make a lot of sense for a business, you know, never miss an opportunity engage with any customer within 30 seconds. And so we got sucked into the home service world pretty and not just HVAC. mean,

 

any home service company has a similar experience probably with some of those pain points. And so the first, I would say for us, the first place that we focus on is just making sure you’re never missing an opportunity. And that’s not just with a new potential customer, but that’s with your existing clients and your existing clientele. A certain percentage of every call every business gets.

 

definitely requires some human interaction and human touch. I think I would usually argue that human interaction is always the best. When somebody’s calling your company, they would love to talk to you. ⁓ But the next best thing is them being engaged within 30 seconds, especially if they have a quick question or something. And so that’s kind of where I like to start with every company.

 

Jeff Walter (10:19)

All right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(10:31)

that I talked to is we’ll kind of look at the whole customer journey from A to Z dealing with the customer and just find the places in their specific business where, it makes sense to automate this part. And this is a place where we’re definitely going to need to have human interaction. So let’s get it to a place. Let’s give it to that human as efficiently as possible with a summary of where they need to pick up where the AI left off.

 

Let’s get it on their schedule, whatever it is. So that person is using their time most effectively. There’s a lot of employees even at my company that I need them to be on 20 conversations for the one time in that 20 conversations I really need them to be on that conversation. But if I can whittle that down to where they’re only in that call where they need to be on that conversation, I just became a lot more efficient with that employee’s time.

 

Yeah, so we just kind of go through and map out. We really try to understand your customer. We really try to understand the journey that they go through. And then there are certain places where AI makes a lot of sense. And then there’s certain places where you would be crazy to try to use AI right now to fix that problem or to deal with that issue or things. And so we just identify those things. And then most companies use some type of a CRM.

 

Jeff Walter (11:45)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(11:46)

or a property management system or, you know, depending on the industry, there might be a different term that you use, but a place where you house your customers, you probably handle some, you know, type of billing and things out of there and things like that. And so usually what we do is we implement in, we integrate in with whoever that provider is, and then what AI can do for your business is usually…

 

It really opens the door to what it can do for your business. In fact, we have some businesses that really do have AI handling all of their customer interaction at this point. Again, I don’t think that’s our goal and that’s not what I would suggest, but I think it can do it if you’re integrated in where you need to be. And if it can handle all the tasks that it normally does, you can get it in a place where it’s good enough to handle the majority of your interactions with your…

 

Current customers and potential ones if that’s what you wanted to do with it.

 

Jeff Walter (12:42)

So if I hear you, I think most of us out there understand the generative AI stuff, You’ve all at this point gotten out to chat or one of those other platforms out there and said, hey, like you said, write me an essay on or tell me about this or tell me about that. ⁓ And so I think a lot of people, it’s…

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(13:01)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (13:06)

They kind of understand how I used to Google and then try and find something that already exists. And now when I have a question, I just ask and I get this generative thing, right? And

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(13:07)

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (13:18)

I think most folks understand that. And think a lot of folks have also encountered chatbots out there, intelligent chatbots that like, hey, I asked you the question and it gives me an answer.

 

And we probably at this point of most of us have kind of interacted with AI not knowing that we were. But on the journey side, help me understand how

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(13:34)

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (13:42)

does the AI take you through a journey? Like I get the chat bot and I get the generative, the, know, go using that example of, you’re an HVAC company. You know, let’s say I’m a franchise or for, you know, I’ve got the HVAC, you know, I’ve got HVAC.

 

franchisees and you know and they’re coming into you

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(14:01)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (14:03)

know my website and I and then saying hey I need help and you know I’m in Des Moines and so okay that’s you know we’ve got a we got a got a location there what had it how does it has it work its way through the process

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(14:19)

How does

 

it navigate through? Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s a big question, right? So what I would say, like,

 

Jeff Walter (14:25)

Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(14:27)

What I would say is there’s a version of AI that is almost, it’s more of, I wouldn’t consider it AI almost, but it’s still being considered AI where there’s kind of, it feels like robotic answers to robot. So we’ve probably all dealt with, you know, even a chat bot, for instance, where it feels very robotic. And then we’ve dealt with ones that seem like human-like, and you’re like, man, this is probably AI, this is actually pretty good.

 

And then there, but then there’s some that like really understand the goals of the company and the, what they would love to do with any potential customer and how they get their, like, for instance, if I’m an HVAC company, would say, Hey, anyone who’s not a customer, my goal is to get them on a, you know, get them on a schedule and, get a down payment or whatever that is. Right. And so, if, if you have like a really good AI assistant.

 

or system that really understands your business, then how it gets to that endpoint might be different. The first 10 customers you look like, the process of how they got there might be different on all 10, but it knew its goal was to get that customer on a schedule. I’m going to give you, I’ll give you an example that will, the examples are kind of fun. This one isn’t about anyone falling in love with our AI. This is a customer that had a, it was for a mattress company. And so, ⁓

 

Jeff Walter (15:37)

Thank you.

 

Okay.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(15:47)

So we got a call from the owner on a Monday morning. He’s like, hey, have you guys seen what’s going on on this thread? So what had happened is he had a warehouse that holds all the mattresses, right? And then he had an ad that would go out and he was getting like hundreds of inquiries a day and he was selling only a couple of mattresses a day. So it was just taking all of his bandwidth to weed through.

 

the 99 things that didn’t happen to find that one customer. He knew he was missing customers. so we built it out for him. And so on a Monday morning, he called us and he goes, hey, he goes, let’s go look at this conversation. So Friday night at like 11 at night or one in the morning or whatever it was, someone reached out about the ad and it engaged with that customer, sold the mattress, identified what they were looking for.

 

was able to see that it was in the inventory in that warehouse and said, hey, at one o’clock on Monday, you can come and pick that up. I’ll meet you at the warehouse, right? So Monday morning came and everything was good. It actually even collected payment for the mattress. So it was like a done deal. They just needed to come pick up the mattress. Monday morning at about nine o’clock, this customer called and she’s like, hey, I’m actually a single woman. I just realized, I don’t know if I feel comfortable meeting you at the warehouse.

 

Jeff Walter (16:54)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(17:09)

being a single woman, so I’m going to have to cancel my appointment. And the AI actually empathetically was like, hey, I totally understand. We’re in a business park that has other businesses there, so it’s definitely not secluded. Now, again, we didn’t train it to answer this specific way, but it gets crazy. Wait till you hear the end of this. So it was like, we’re in a business park with these other businesses who have customers coming in and out, so definitely you won’t feel alone.

 

Jeff Walter (17:29)

Wow. Wow.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(17:39)

Would that be okay? She didn’t respond, right? And so 15 minutes later, it respects that, hey, I’m actually also married. I’d be happy to bring my wife so you’re not the only female there if that would make you feel more comfortable. The AI said this. And again, no response. So then 15 minutes later it said, and again, we didn’t even train it necessarily. None of this was specifically, hey, if this happens, then do this. It just knew.

 

Jeff Walter (17:53)

The AI said this?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(18:08)

Its goal was to get that customer to come at one o’clock to pick up the mattress. So 15 minutes later, reached back out and it said, hey, I just noticed here are our 13 friends that we have in common on Facebook. You might want to just reach out to one of them just to make sure that I am a credible person and that it’s a safe environment to pick up the mattress. Maybe that would help. And like five minutes later, she responded back. She’s like, hey, that…

 

Thank you so much for looking into that for me. actually did reach out to that person. I’ll be either at one. I feel comfortable now. And he was like…

 

Jeff Walter (18:42)

How,

 

The AI does not have a wife to bring.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(18:51)

No, the AI was speaking on behalf of the owner who was married. Yeah, and the owner. Yeah. So she thought she was speaking to the to whoever she is picking up and so yeah, yes, I probably should have specified that that that would have sounded even even crazier but

 

Jeff Walter (18:54)

Ow! ⁓ okay, okay.

 

Okay.

 

Okay, all right, all right. Okay, so

 

in this scenario, the AI is acting on the…

 

almost like a system.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(19:12)

Yeah, yeah, more of an assistant and this guy he ran, I mean, he was the only employee, you know, and so he had it representing like him or whatever. Or it may be.

 

Jeff Walter (19:21)

Yeah, right. But you can have it represent

 

the salesperson or anybody else. then because of that, I’m just, know, what I know about AI. So it’s saying you’re representing Jeff. Jeff, you and in configuring it, it’s like, here’s my social accounts, here’s my, you know, here’s my Facebook, my Instagram, my…

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(19:26)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (19:48)

Yeah, because I want you to I want it to know me, right? Here’s my LinkedIn. And we’re obviously the where the warehouse is at this address, blah, blah, blah. And can easily identify, you know, and then, huh. And then you didn’t train it on any of that.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(20:02)

So yeah, so.

 

Yeah, so so the way that we look at AI is is.

 

Jeff Walter (20:06)

Interesting.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(20:09)

AI is such a big thing that a lot of companies, and I’m not faulting them for this at all, and this might be the way that we should have done it too, but most AI companies do, hey, we’re a great voice AI solution, and we’ll answer your missed calls, or we do, you know, we’re a chat bot, and it’s great. So the way that we look at it is,

 

You know, most business owners, especially small business owners, they’re usually pretty good about interacting with their customers one or two ways. It might be, I’m really good at picking up my phone, but I only check my social media once every two days. Or, hey, I’m great on social media, I’m really good at my, when somebody fills out a form, Phil, but I’m just busy, I’m on jobs and I can’t answer my phone, so it might be four hours till I get back. So what we do is we take any way that a customer could reach out to a business, whether it’s through the website, email,

 

you know, social media, Google, you know, there’s probably 10 or 15 ways that a customer could interact with your business. And again, unless you’ve told it to be the first line of defense, if you’re not interacting with that customer within 30 seconds, then the AI usually picks it up and at least identifies, you know, what is it that you’re reaching out about? Is this a quick fix? Can I help you? Or do I need to connect you with the person who you need to?

 

And at least they’re engaged with. But all of that comes into a unified inbox where, and then they communicate back how it came out. so most of our customers are, you we have a lot of customers that are watching 10 different conversations going on from their laptop. You know, and two might be on social media. One might be, two might be on the website at the same time. And there might be three calls that, you know, their first line of defense didn’t pick up.

 

that it picked up, whether it’s through SMS or through voice. But no matter what, all of those customers are looking for some type of interaction if they’re reaching out. And so it all comes to one place and then it goes back the way that it came in. But it’s a really easy way to see all of the customer interactions that are going on in your company at any given time. And then, of course, it stores that and you have access to that data. And that’s a whole other part of the conversation probably.

 

That’s the first thing is just making sure that any way somebody tries to reach out to your business, that you’re engaging with them in, you know, I always say 30 seconds, but it can be whatever, whatever people want it to be. And then as far as one thing I would touch on, and you didn’t ask, but I know this is an interesting question is my suggestion to everyone is don’t try to trick customers. Don’t try to, there’s no reason you have to. In fact, when I realized I’m talking to, you know,

 

Jeff Walter (22:43)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(22:50)

a bot or an assistant or AI or anything. If they didn’t disclose it, it actually frustrates me as a customer. It really does. I don’t like that experience either. My advice to almost every company we work with is, especially with voice, where I feel like it’s still pretty obvious at some point in a conversation that you’re talking to AI. I like just being upfront with customers. If you approach it that way, I think they’re a lot more open to dealing with AI than

 

Jeff Walter (22:59)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(23:18)

getting through it halfway, realizing it, saying, and then feeling like they got tricked or whatever. so especially with voice and as voice gets better, I think it’s even more important to be upfront with your customers that, hey, this is the voice, this is assistant. But I also think there’s creative ways to do that. We work with one company that they have like kind of a pirate theme for their, I don’t want to use any specific names, but this company has kind of a pirate theme. so

 

Jeff Walter (23:39)

That’s a good.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(23:43)

And when we kind of get that suggestion, they were like, well, that kind of feels tacky. We don’t think our customers would like it. We’re like, well, let’s try this. And so when you call this company, the AI, they have the AI actually is the first line of defense because the customers love it so much. And they say, our matey, this is, know, this is whatever the name is. I’m the AI assistant and the first mate and I can help you with all your questions. But they gave it like a theme and a personality, but it made people love to engage with it.

 

Jeff Walter (23:58)

Hahaha

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(24:10)

rather than trying to trick them or feeling like it’s robotic or whatever. And so there’s just some creative ways people are using it. But I do think being transparent that it is AI is best practice for sure.

 

Jeff Walter (24:13)

Right.

 

Yeah, so then going back to the example you were running, was like, OK, I’m an assistant and our owner has, his wife can be there, he knows he had 12 common links on Facebook. And then the other customer’s like, OK, let me contact Mary or Joe. And they’re like, oh, yeah, Jeff’s a good guy. He’ll be good.

 

You know, I go to church with his wife and like well whatever the connection is, right? That’s six degrees of separation of Kevin Bateman.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(24:54)

Yeah, whatever it was, it made her feel comfortable. I think the point of that story that I… Yeah. And it’s not like the owner of that mattress company was like, hey, please feel free to use our…

 

Jeff Walter (25:06)

All right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(25:07)

you know, shared contacts or whatever. But what he did say is the assistant knew him and his business well enough and he had enough faith in it that he gave it enough flexibility to say, hey, the goal is to get that customer to pick up the mattress at one o’clock. I want you to get me there. And if you need to re-engage with that customer, mean, he obviously, it was specifically 15 minutes later, 15 minutes later. So he had set it up in a way that

 

Jeff Walter (25:33)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(25:37)

He didn’t want to be too aggressive, but he definitely didn’t want to just hope the customer shows up. He wanted to stay persistent. I call it pleasantly persistent, instead of pushy. It definitely didn’t feel pushy, but it was definitely going to just keep troubleshooting ways for this customer to feel comfortable enough to come. Maybe if it ran out of ideas. The fact that it got there blew my mind.

 

If it ran out of ideas, maybe it have been like, well, hey, would it be okay if we gave you a call to find a time or find a situation that would work? And at that point, maybe it would have texted the owner of the company and said, hey, here’s the summary of the conversation. Here’s what’s going on. You need to reach out to this customer, right? The fact that it can get to that point, it’s just really cool. And that to me is a great version. It’s a great example of like,

 

Jeff Walter (26:21)

Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(26:25)

It knew where was trying to go and it found a way to get there. It’ll probably never do it that exact same way again because that was a unique situation with that unique customer. But when you when you use AI as more than just like answer tree or whatever, like it can do some pretty amazing things if you can trust it. If you’ve built it in a way that that you feel comfortable with it and so it’s kind of like any employee. The more time you put into it, the more.

 

probably freedom you’re going to give it to do the things that will help your business and you can get it to a point where you can really trust it.

 

Jeff Walter (26:57)

Yeah, there’s a couple of things that you said that are really wild and it’s really interesting because we’ve added an AI assistant into our product. So it’s a learning management system. So clients can sit there and go, here’s a body of knowledge. And then their learners can ask questions about it. It’s a chat bot, I think. But we also added it to our support site. But I like what you’re about your pirate thing.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(27:13)

Yeah.

 

you

 

Jeff Walter (27:24)

One of our staff brings his dog in, Norm. He’s a little corky. And we made the assistant Norm. And we got Norm’s face there and put a little personality on it and same thing. it’s just, and I agree with you. It’s that whole, you want to be authentic. And people don’t mind, and people like Norm. He’s a cute little corky.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(27:24)

Okay. Okay.

 

You gave their experience a personality where when I feel like I’m talking to AI, feel like that’s what’s missing is the personality, the heart, the connection, right? it’s a way to, I think it’s almost necessary. It’s a way to still give that interaction that they’re probably looking for that might be memorable, that it’s different than what they’ve had without.

 

Jeff Walter (28:07)

Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(28:17)

without them getting frustrated, you know, so.

 

Jeff Walter (28:19)

Yeah, we

 

gave Norm his own page and he walks around the office and that’s how he’s picking up all this knowledge. And it’s so far been so good. But the other thing that I think is really interesting, and we had some internal discussions like, should we give it this personality or should we use a humanoid or should we make it be one of our support staff?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(28:26)

I love that actually.

 

Jeff Walter (28:48)

Right. And it’s like, but then it’s, but then it’s your point. like, well, I don’t want it to, I just didn’t want it to, I didn’t want people to think they were talking to one of our, our support specialists or product specialists if they weren’t actually talking to one of our product specialists. Right. You know, cause you know, the last thing you want to do is, know, hat, you know, and the, you know, saying, Hey, Jill, remember when you said blah, blah, blah. And Jill’s like, I never said that. Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(28:48)

Yeah.

 

Yeah,

 

1. Yeah, I think yeah, you almost feel if you’re trying to. Yeah, I just feel like it’s going to come back and bite you the way it But but I also think just like having it be a boring version of AI.

 

Jeff Walter (29:23)

Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(29:28)

don’t think that’s a good customer experience either. I just encourage all the listeners, like, creative with how you’re implementing your AI. I think it’s important. I think it’s worth being creative and it can, it’s going to help you be more efficient. You may as well use it to your advantage that gives you an advantage as, man, that company, that company, their AI, he talks like a, he talks like, or be a complete robot.

 

Jeff Walter (29:30)

I agree.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(29:54)

You know what I mean? Like you can even lean more than that. There’s a million ways you could do it. I think giving it a person, being creative around your AI is I think is the next thing that will set every, we’re also at the kind of, I wouldn’t call it the bleeding edge anymore, but probably the cutting edge of companies figuring out how they’re gonna implement AI. But I do think the next step of AI, one of the things will be how do you get yourself to set yourself apart when everyone else is answering within 30 seconds and.

 

Jeff Walter (29:55)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(30:22)

following up and being able to reschedule and take payments and that. know, once everyone can do all those things, now you get to figure out how do you set yourself apart again using AI? And I think that’s where the creativity, I love the dog idea. Like I love that. in fact, I might use that and I will give you, I promise I’ll give you the credit for it, but I think that’s a great idea. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (30:41)

Thank you. Okay,

 

you cannot use Norm without his owner’s permission. No, but the other fascinating thing, and just for the listeners out there, there’s a couple things you said that one could be little disturbing, but I think you got to understand how you train these things.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(30:49)

No, no, no, I’m going to call him born. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (31:07)

You know, the reason that the AI was able to do what you said in terms of the Facebook and my wife and the wife was because you trained it on that individual and you said, here’s their social accounts. You know, you can use those to do whatever you need to do. And then, so, you know, people might be like, that’s

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(31:24)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (31:29)

creepy that’s going out and getting all this information about me. Well, no, you tell it to do that. You tell it, use this, leverage all this information about me in that case, the information about that individual to try and make a connection to overcome

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(31:35)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (31:46)

any objections. And then the fascinating thing is how, and this is I just find fascinating about the AI is it understood the objection of the

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(31:46)

Okay. Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (31:57)

or the concern, I should say, of the customer, right? And that it was a safety thing. The AI was able to understand that, and then it devised a series of strategies to try and

 

allay those concerns, which is just fascinating. Like, hey, we’re in this place, it’s well-lit, lots of businesses, not dark alley.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(32:11)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (32:19)

And then, oh, our president, bring his wife and you have another woman there. Oh, we’ve got 12, it kept kind of came up with a bunch of different strategies, which is just amazing. It blows my mind.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(32:33)

I know, honestly,

 

the social media one, was like, I wish I told it to do that. I think that’s a great idea. just, I wouldn’t have thought of that probably, right? But it was kind of its third attempt of making that customer feel comfortable or, yeah, I call it just overcoming objections, right? There was an objection, there was something there holding it back. And also, there’s a lot of AI that I’ve played with that I can’t.

 

Jeff Walter (32:41)

Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(32:59)

it’s not gonna be able to do that. I think the word AI is, not all AI is created equal at all. But I think a lot of it is what you go back to is like, that owner had taken the time to where it understood its job and it understood the company and it understood that owner in a way where it felt like it could go there, right? I would say, let’s just take chat GBT.

 

Every one of us have chat GBT. Everyone listening to this has chat GBT on our phone. But every one of us knows someone who does everything with their chat GBT and it knows everything about their life and it is making all of their advertising materials and it’s doing all the time. You’re like, how are you using your so different than mine that you’re getting that much more value out of it than I am? And the crazy thing is most of us,

 

I come back to an employee. when most of us hire an employee, know, we’ll be willing to train that employee for up to a month sometimes to get that employee to a place where they can really do the job that we’re asking them to do, interact with the customers in the way we’ll continue to coach them, we’ll continue to fine tune them before they’re just so good that we don’t have to take time with that employee anymore. Like most of us have training departments or training platforms or things like that, and we develop them.

 

The funny thing in AI that I noticed is if it’s not doing what you wanted it to do in like eight minutes, then you’re ready to abandon it. know, it’s so what that story also tells me is that owner has taken the time to really like let it be a part of his business. Let it be interact with the customers. You know, again, he was he was letting it not only check inventory, identify the need, check inventory.

 

make suggestions, close the sale and collect payment and set it on a calendar, right? So he’s already comfortable doing that. He also was comfortable with letting it overcome objections to a point where he got that person to pick up their mattress too. He probably spent a lot of time with his assistant and he probably really did spend a week or two really fine tuning it. And when it answered a certain way, he didn’t just get frustrated and turn it off and never use AI again. He just said,

 

I can see why you said that because I told you to do this in this scenario, but now let me add this caveat because that’s probably gonna come up again. And all of a sudden, 99 % of the time, it’s doing what he wants it to do because he just spent some time with it. And so I do think that, I don’t think there’s any company in the world that is just gonna out of the box or any employee that you hire is just gonna show up the first day and you’re never gonna have to spend time with it and get it to.

 

you know, just from a culture standpoint of your company or the way that you interact with your customers or things or the way you hold a hard line or things like that. Yeah, just take the time to like actually train it like you would an employee. The nice thing is with AI, once you train it, that thing will work for you the rest of your life and it’s going to be working 24 seven. you know, and so the time you put into an employee who might leave you tomorrow.

 

Jeff Walter (35:56)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(36:03)

If you can justify that, justify putting in time and training your AI in a way where you’re really comfortable with it.

 

Jeff Walter (36:09)

Well, it’s interesting that how you phrase that, because I think you’re spot on from our use of AI within our company, is I think that we all from the past, you would get a piece of technology or piece of information technology, right? know, website or a system. And it’s very deterministic, right? It’s…

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(36:20)

Okay. Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (36:32)

I configure it to operate. I know RLMS, same thing, right? It’s like you configure it a certain way and if you push this button, this thing happens. If push that button, this other thing happens. Every time. And if it’s not right the first time,

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(36:47)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (36:48)

it’s wrong, right? And so we have this mindset of when I launch it, it’s right. And if it’s not right, it’s a bug.

 

And that’s from decades and decades of building these deterministic systems. And I like the way you said it’s,

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(37:04)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (37:06)

well, this is more like having an assistant. And they’re not going to get it right out of the box. So get it. If you’re lucky, you’ll spend a little time kind of giving the goal directions and saying, well, here’s our process and here’s our goals. And the beautiful thing is you can do that in natural language.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(37:21)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (37:23)

You don’t have to go into all these tables and configure all this stuff. You’re able to say, well, the goal is to do this, and here are the five steps, and every 15 minutes do this. But then, like a manager

 

with a new hire, you gotta look over shoulder and make sure it’s doing it right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(37:40)

Yeah, let’s

 

listen to a couple calls. Make sure it’s interactive. Make sure that new hires speaking to and you might say, hey, you. Hey, you sound uninterested like you just sound uninterested. You gotta be a little more engaged. Are you distracted when you’re on these calls? What’s going like? We’re willing to do that with the new employee. You know, just I would just say have a little patience and fight through it a little bit and the route.

 

you know, the return on your investment of time with your AI is probably, you know, I don’t know. It’s a lot. Yeah, I mean, once you get it there, then it’s there. You don’t have to keep rehiring. It’s not going to leave you for a competitor tomorrow. You know, don’t ever have to worry about that once you get it there. yeah, no, that’s, I like where that went because I haven’t talked about that much, but I think that that is exactly how I feel about it.

 

Jeff Walter (38:11)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Well, and

 

I think that example was spot on in terms of going back to scale, your channel partners and scaling. And one of the things that, and focusing on say, franchise awards, is you’re trying to scale up your channel, right? You’re trying to add franchisees or maybe you’re a software company like us and you’re trying to scale up your bar network or you’re trying to scale up your reseller network.

 

And you want to provide those processes. How do you help those franchisees scale up? And your example is like this mattress. A perfect example, if I was a mattress company and had franchises all over the place and I’m trying to add to them, it changes what

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(38:57)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (39:11)

you can do. You’ve got a process.

 

case it’s the conversion process, sales process. How do I take that lead and then turn them into a paid customer? Right? And the power of what you just did or what you can do there is you can train those assistants. And now it’s not just a person at a mattress store. It’s that same assistant can provide that same type of assistance.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(39:15)

Okay. Okay.

 

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (39:40)

for every single one of your locations. And you can sit there and go, I just brought on a new location. Add this owner’s profile to that AI assistant. Let them know that now Jeff just got the Ann Arbor location. And here’s Jeff’s. And

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(39:46)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (39:57)

Jeff, it’d be best if you give us your LinkedIn, your this, your that, and the other thing. ⁓

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(39:59)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (40:02)

So the assistant can get a sense of who you are and how you can help and do these things. And then you maintain that brand consistency. And it allows you to scale without having

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(40:04)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (40:15)

that handful of people back at headquarters that have all that stuff in here. It gets it out there in a scalable manner. It’s really, which is very different than having a, here’s the CRM we’re all using to track things, right? And here’s the process you should.

 

And it’s been configured this way to help you as a salesperson close leads, which is still a lead, right? But it becomes a layer that it gives all of your

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(40:39)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (40:46)

channel partners these digital assistants that can really drive business forward. It’s a really different way of looking at things. Really different way.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(40:54)

Yeah,

 

and I would also say, let’s go down this rabbit hole for a second of just scaling franchises. I think it’s a beautiful place. when we started in this, we got sucked into one of the biggest franchise. One of our first clients was like the one of the biggest franchise groups in the US. And so

 

they actually, we had to kind of rebuild our platform in a way that was met for multi-level, multi-location organizations or franchises is a great point, right? And the whole thing is they wanted to be able to, from corporate or from headquarters, make changes that would be 300 brand wide, location wide.

 

They want to be able to gather data from those. They also want to cross sell to each other. They wanted to be able to refer business. And they also have these four other lanes of different industries, but they wanted to be able to cross reference them and things. so we built it in a way that is built for franchises. think that’s probably what sets us apart. One of the things that sets us apart the most. But if I’m a franchise, probably one of my main goals is to grow, to scale, right?

 

And so there’s a couple different sides of that. The first thing is most franchise groups have a tech stack. Like that’s not a new term in franchising, right? And so, but I like to put myself in the position of a potential franchise owner, right? And I’m weighing out my options. And if I come to you and I’m looking at what you’re offering as a franchise group and deciding if I want that compared to, you know, these other four opportunities that I’m looking at.

 

What I’m really trying to do is how do I, you know, I’m minimizing my risk as many places I can to make sure that I make a decision that I’m not going to regret three years later. I wish I went with those guys, right? And so with in the past, the technology was like, well, this is the CRM we use and this is the review management platform we’re on. And this is the, these are the tools that we have for you that are kind of universal, but with AI, what I’m starting to see groups doing that, that is making

 

scaling just a game changing on a different level using AI is if you can come to me and instead of having a tech package, you’re like, here’s our tech platform and 80 % of the things that I thought I was going to have to do as a business owner or if I went with this other group, I would have to do those things as a business owner. you know, let’s say it’s 50 % of the things if 80 % of the things are.

 

already built out, already proven, and I don’t have to actually do them unless I want to, and I can customize that to my specific location. Well, now what I’ve done is I’ve given, I’ve kind of combined people with processes with technology because it’s actually performing the tasks. And there’s a lot of businesses where when you’re hiring, you’re like, okay, the only reason I can’t.

 

Jeff Walter (43:38)

Right.

 

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(43:47)

build 20 of these this month is because I would have to find 20 managers or 20 operators or whoever it is that can do these 15 different things. And I can find people that are good at the physical labor part of that or with the customer interaction part of that. But finding somebody who can do all those things, that’s usually a limiting factor for franchise groups. And then usually whether they’re profitable or not comes down to if that manager was able to run it efficiently or not anyway, right?

 

I’m knowing that that’s a limiting factor. If I’m a franchise group trying to grow, yeah, you could put more money into marketing all day long. And in my opinion, if you’re not using AI to help in the hiring and courting of potential franchise owners, pretty soon you’ll be left behind there too. But in my opinion, put time and effort into your tech stack. Make it so attractive to be a franchise owner for your company rather than the four other

 

things, know, franchise opportunities that they’re looking at because worst case scenario, you know, 60 % of the day to day and of what we’re doing, we already have that covered for you. And here are the, here’s the data. If you just have it run status quo, like you can get it to that place. And to me, if I’m a franchise owner trying to set myself apart and to grow and scale is number one, it’s going to give me visibility and more data. Number two,

 

It’s going to minimize their risk to a place where the only reason they would go with a competitor is maybe the competitor did a better job with the branding or something like that or things. if those things are all the same, but I know that there’s not just technology, but like systems and processes in place that are utilizing that technology where I don’t have to worry about my reputation management. I don’t have to worry about my Google reviews or my Yelp reviews. If I don’t have to worry,

 

Jeff Walter (45:21)

Yeah.

 

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(45:41)

about figuring out a call center. If I don’t have to worry about rescheduling my appointments, if I don’t have to worry, I mean, if all those things are taken care of for me, I’m probably gonna take it for granted that I never had to learn how to do a lot of that stuff. But I think that that’s the future of scaling and franchising while using AI. I think the tech stack, but the AI inside of that is what is actually going to be attractive to potential franchise owners and…

 

and those are the groups that are going to have massive growth is the ones who can figure out how do I take out, how do I minimize the risk down to, no, just follow, I mean, that’s what potential franchise owners want is the playbook of how to be successful. Otherwise, they go do it on their own, right? And so if you, not only do you have the brand and the processes and things, but now you have the technology.

 

Jeff Walter (46:24)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(46:33)

that does a lot of the work for them. They don’t have to actually go even get trained on those things. Maybe the break even point is 60 % faster because you cut out the learning curve of 80 % of what they used to have to do. I think that’s what’s gonna set franchise groups apart in the future as far as scaling goes.

 

Jeff Walter (46:51)

Yeah, you know, it’s really interesting what you just said, because it triggered a whole bunch of firework thoughts in my head. When you think of that people process technology, traditionally it’s like, well, these people are executing this process using this technology, right? And if we use the CRM, for example, right? It’s like it’s been configured in a certain way for certain workflows. And therefore, I as a salesperson, your lead comes in.

 

And there’s some automation, right? Like maybe six automated emails go out in this deterministic way. It’s been configured to do that. ⁓ There are automations. Some of the processes are automated. And based on that, changes the status from X to Y and blah, blah. And as a salesperson, this is what I do. I come in the morning, I do this, this, this. I check that, that, that. I’m interacting with folks and doing the part.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(47:23)

Drip campaign, whatever that is, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (47:42)

that’s not automated, right? And everybody is familiar with the term tech stack, right? It’s like, oh, I’m going with this franchise or they’re using this CRM, they’re using this reputation management software, they’re using this, you know, depending on POS system, they’re using this on the supply management side, you know, depending on the nature of who they are, right?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(47:43)

Okay. Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (48:10)

And as you were talking, was like, you

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(48:12)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (48:12)

know, it’s interesting because what you’re introducing and all of that is like, here’s the process. Here’s the pieces of the process that are automated. Here’s the pieces and it’s sitting on this technology. And it’s almost like within this tech stack, you’re introducing a new component, which is not the automations and the configuration and all that.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(48:31)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (48:36)

But almost going back to what we were talking about earlier, is that digital assistant. Because you and I can have two different, say, have a competing franchise. We’re competing franchisors, right? We’re in the marketplace, and maybe we’re doing that HVAC repair, right? And I’ve got one, and we’re both trying to

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(48:45)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (48:59)

land a new franchise. We’re both looking at the Chicagoland area, trying to…

 

Sign somebody up and there’s somebody they’re going. Hey, do I go with Kevin or Jeff? You know and and we might have the identical tech stack. We’re using the same CRM the same everything but you Configured a digital assistant or a set of digital assistants that You know can you know? Automate a bunch of processes and I’ve configured a bunch of digital assistants

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(49:06)

Okay. Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (49:34)

And now the question is, everything’s looking equal, but what do your digital assistants look like versus my digital assistants? And then you just go, oh, well, yours can take the thing, take the, process the order, schedule the time, and do the follow-ups. And mine is just the chat bot answering questions. And those are two different types of digital assistants. So one of the things I didn’t think about until we had this conversation is starting to evaluate the tech stack.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(49:37)

Okay. Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (50:03)

not just on the tools that happen to be in there, but also the AI assistance that you’re starting to build and how you train your digital assistants is going to be different than how I train mine. Just like how you configure your CRM is a little different than

 

how I configure mine, but it’s a much bigger thing because it’s a force multiplier.

 

It’s having this digital assistant go do a bunch of stuff for you, which is different than traditional.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(50:39)

Yeah, and a way to illustrate what you’re saying would be so if a potential, yeah, so if there’s potential, they’re looking at Jeff’s company and my company and everything’s been the same up to this point and then they say,

 

Jeff Walter (50:43)

That’s cool.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(50:53)

Well, hey, do you use AI and Jeff you would say yes. yes, we use AI and I would say yes, we use AI. The answer to that question that OK cool, we both use AI. Well, the next question would be like, cool, what do you use AI for? And if you answered it with well, I use AI for we have a chat widget and understands the ins and outs of our business. It’s gonna you know, here’s our slogan. It’s going to throw that in there every once in awhile and it’s it’s great and it’s going to.

 

Jeff Walter (51:20)

any questions I have.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(51:21)

Yeah, and you know what, like you could probably, yeah, let’s say that’s what it is. And then if I was like, yeah, we use the AI, you’re never gonna have to worry about any of your reputation management or getting reviews. We have that taken care of. We actually have all of your invoicing and billing, your past dues and your collection department taking care of for you. You will never miss an opportunity. And we actually have an integration with, you and you start going through what your AI is already set up with your

 

what your group of assistants is going to do. Well, you’re both using AI, but you’re both using it on a completely different level. There’s still the traditional tech stack probably behind what the AI conversation is. So I agree. think it’s like an additional conversation. But the other thing that I would say, and I think this maybe is the most important thing for anyone listening is eventually that is what that conversation will be. But right now, if you were offering anything like that,

 

Your competitors probably aren’t yet. And so that really is a place where if the goal is to be looking for competitive advantages and how do I scale faster? You know, if a company came and asked me to consult for them, want to, you know, I have this franchise model. We have 22, you know, different franchise owners. I want to get into 100 by the end of the next year. And I don’t know if it’s possible, but I wouldn’t talk about marketing at all. I would talk about

 

Jeff Walter (52:21)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(52:46)

well, let’s make this a no brainer for anyone wanting to run a franchise to where you can show them by using just by them using the AI that you’ve already built for them. It’s going to be hard for them not to be profitable. And then if they’re good at these other things, that’s where they can set themselves apart rather than having to do all of the things that that the AI does. Plus be good at those other things. A lot of times as business owners, especially new franchise owners, they never get to the things that they all know.

 

Every customer on their birthday. I’m going to personally go to their house and tell them that appreciate that being a cousin. I called them those. Those are the good intentions of business. Most businesses owners know like yeah, I used to have good intentions. Now I’m just trying to like not fall behind or you know or you know it’s usually pretty overwhelming and and I feel like there’s there are businesses that utilize AI enough to where they can still actually do some of their good intentions and I think if you get there, then you’re probably on the right track because.

 

Jeff Walter (53:33)

Thank

 

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(53:43)

your and again that’s right. My goal is never to replace an employee. I you know if that’s the goal of the people I’m talking to that’s that’s on them, but that’s not the goal of my company, but I want I want to automate the things that can be.

 

would like to automate the things that can be automated so these companies can focus on the things that really could set them apart. They’re a customer.

 

No, the other thing I was going to say is think about going into like a dentist office and how busy those, you know, the receptionist is usually so busy and half the time they’re pleasant half the time. They’re really not because they’re just overwhelmed trying to deal with the church is that what if you were able to automate all the things on the back end and that that that receptionist job is just to make well you you might wait the exact same amount of time to see the dentist, but if their job was to make sure.

 

Just focus on you and have a good conversation with you or answer questions you might have and just engage with the customers and giving you a good experience while you waited. What if that’s all that you did for your business? You would be the most popular dentist in your city. You just would be, you know, and so I just I think about that way of, know, don’t it doesn’t mean you need to replace everyone and people aren’t important. It’s just let people be important where they can make a difference in your business.

 

and let AI handle the things and probably give a better experience than a lot of times human can’t with the things that AI can do.

 

Jeff Walter (55:07)

Well, mean, and again, when I go back to franchising and scaling.

 

Those digital assistants, those AI assistants, it’s a force multiplier. And it allows for a, I mean, one of the biggest challenges in franchising, because it’s the brand on the door, right, is how do you bring on all these independent businesses and deliver consistent services to your customers?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(55:29)

you

 

Jeff Walter (55:35)

And that includes the sales process, right? exactly.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(55:37)

Yeah.

 

Or even just basic customer interaction.

 

There’s some franchises that are famous for the way they greet a customer, the way that they wish them a fantastic day as they’re leaving, different verbiage that they use that sets culture and expectation and things. There’s a lot of that, even in the little details that you could probably take advantage of there, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (55:59)

Yeah,

 

it just, it’s a, and that’s why I wanted to have this conversation, which is, it’s been a really insightful conversation. Thank you. To start thinking of it as, you know, as part of the tech stack, what are those assistants? They’re actually going to do a lot of the execute. It’s like having a built-in workforce, you know, and that’s what allows you to scale.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(56:22)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (56:25)

And it’s not just about, well, we automated the drip campaign that goes out, but actually in customer interactions and being able to do it in a very creative way. if you get back to your whole, the whole thing we talked about earlier about, if you can really take those assistance and take them to the next level, they can problem solve and they can problem solve a lot of the day-to-day problems. And it doesn’t eliminate the need for human interaction.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(56:38)

Okay. you

 

Jeff Walter (56:51)

But what it does is it allows the people involved to handle the exceptions,

 

right? And takes that automation of the typical day-to-day objections and processes out while having a great customer experience. And then it creates that consistency and scalability and…

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(56:59)

Exactly, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (57:15)

without having to add 100 people to headquarters. ⁓

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(57:18)

Yeah,

 

if you think about the whole point of a tech stack in a franchise opportunity, it’s attractive to the franchise because it creates consistency. Training is going to be a lot easier if you’re using our CRM. There’s a lot of things there, but then it’s attractive to a potential franchise or because, hey, we…

 

Jeff Walter (57:31)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(57:40)

We have our stuff together. This isn’t just a brand. We’re giving you technology that’s proven that we will teach you how to do it. And it minimizes your risk of this venture not working out and you losing your money by joining us. I think we got to start looking at your AI workforce the same way of it creates, there’s a lot of benefits on the corporate side or on the enterprise side, but there’s

 

there are giant benefits to the people looking at the opportunities. And really, we just got to remember the goal of people looking to start their own business, and especially if their first time, they’re just trying to minimize the risk that this isn’t going to work. That’s their biggest fear. And that’s why tech stacks are so cool. And look at us, look at our tech stack. That sounds so innovative.

 

Jeff Walter (58:22)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(58:31)

Really, if you can come and you can ease the mind of like, oh, and what used to take us two months of training, we actually can do in three days. Now, most of the training is teaching you how to interact with your assistants and see where they’re housing the information. But we’re having them do the work for you. Here’s, know, nobody wants to focus on a can’t receivables. Like nobody likes that. But if your assistant handles 80 % of it and sends you the ones where you need to actually deal with.

 

I can handle two of those calls a day if I need to, but I don’t want to do 10 of them. That’s not why I wanted to own a business. And if I can have my assistant handle 98 % of them, gosh, thank you. That’s a part of my job I knew I was going to have to deal with, but thank you for taking that away from me. you’re going to be more consistent than me because you can just tell them to reach out. You can be as persistent as you want to be. I can just…

 

I can turn up the heat. you’re too much late, you’re going to get a daily text from my company. But I don’t have the bandwidth to text you daily. But if I can just do that, there’s a lot of peace of mind that comes with that. And then to me, you’ve minimized my risk in ways that these other companies haven’t been able to. I’m going to go with you even and then this is the most poor part. Even if your brand isn’t as well known, it’s not fun competing with brands, you know, and scaling against brands with giant

 

When they when they have the name, you know, and it’s very expensive to compete that way. I would much rather compete in a way where like hey. You’re right, there’s advantages to going with that company because their name is this, but let me show you why you won’t fail if you come with with our brand and I promise you our brand is going to be known for its customer service and that and we will quickly gain brand recognition from that rather than just paying for commercials and Super Bowls or.

 

Jeff Walter (59:56)

Right, right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:00:20)

whoever you’re competing against that it’s just not realistic to compete on a branding level with.

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:26)

Hey, so you brought up AR and that. One of the themes that’s been consistent as we’ve talked about scaling franchises or just bringing out new franchisees is a lot of folks have not managed P &Ls before. They’re used to their personal finances and most of us manage our personal finances based on the balance in our checkbook.

 

Right and and it’s a very different Managing a pnl is a very different way of looking at it. I’ve talked to number of franchisers and it’s and it’s that whole you know Training the new franchisees, especially owner operators on how to look how to manage it for how to your financials and manage the business manage the business using your financials and I You know and when you mentioned the ar is like

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:00:49)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:01:17)

Has that been something you’ve seen folks, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the customer interaction, but there’s also that like digital assistant, that AI assistant CFO. you know, like have you seen that yet or is that coming down the line or something like that?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:01:32)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, I’m just thinking about internally what we’ve done. mean, we definitely have made some integrations into usually most company, most owner operators, unless there is a, you know, a tech stack or a proven way that they are trained on how to do it. And usually that probably is, but a lot of times I see they usually start on Excel, then they go to a free version of QuickBooks, then they go to a paid version of QuickBooks, and then

 

And then they might find something more industry specific or stuff like that. so, yeah, AI can definitely integrate into a lot of those systems and do a lot of the work for you. I mean, currently we have a system that, you know, collect one-time payments, collect upfront payments, collect overdue balances, act as a collection department for companies.

 

and things like that. And there’s different levels of reporting it back to other softwares that they’re using and things like that. And then the analytics from the data on the financial side is being used all over the place in AI, think. And so there’s definitely ways that it’s being used. To say like, no, that’s my virtual CFO. It handles all of my things financial.

 

You probably want to, most businesses want to keep an eye on that, a little closer than distrusting something. But at the same time, mean, all those things that I said right there, that’s the majority of finance department for a lot of franchises at the place where they’re at, right? And so, yeah, but I think that that is a place where it will just continue to get better. But I think the data that’s being pulled from it, being able to populate things in different…

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:52)

Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:03:12)

places, not just one CRM is a big place where, you know, going with a company that knows how to integrate quickly with whoever you’re using, if they’re not already integrated would be, I mean, that would definitely be a prerequisite for me if that was important. If they’re going to get permission to be able to do that, or if that’s always going to be manual for me or things like that. But no, I think that that is, yeah, I mean, we have some clients that are as close to that as I’ve seen, but I…

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:25)

Right.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:03:39)

But most owners are okay spending some time there, but there’s definitely things inside of it that are monotonous or take a lot of time with data entry or are just not fun conversations or things like that. And depending on how big your staff is, if that’s all falling on the owner, that’s a heavy piece of the business. And I would definitely be using AI to at least assist me in things inside of that.

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:01)

Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. Just because I’m looking at that whole finding the right owner, giving them the tools to identify customers, close customers, service customers, and then understand the finances, do all the backend finances and reporting back to the franchisor because

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:04:14)

Check balances, yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:25)

They got to get their books done and all that kind of stuff. And I think, yeah, I think the customer interaction, you know, they’re so digital now that I think that’s a good, you know, where the first low lying hang fruit is, because a lot of that’s already digital communications. But it’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about that before as you know, going down to the, you know, I’m just, you know, projecting into the future. So very cool stuff.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:04:50)

Yeah, no, no, no, I think.

 

Yeah, it’s fun. It’s fun. Some of the things that you just kind of see coming like, eventually it will probably be able to do that. And then some of that just depends on the willingness of the the software’s that are being used to help that information or things are going to be to let other companies, you know, not having to get too creative to integrate in with them and things like that. So that’s probably a whole nother conversation.

 

Jeff Walter (1:05:04)

Right.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, I like the collections aspect of it. That’s really cool. That’s super cool.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:05:16)

I think it’s

 

always important to talk about ROI and pretty much every customer I talk about, like, obviously new customers that you missed that are now paying customers that got booked on the calendar, that’s an easy way to, it’s hard to know. Well, what was it worth? It answered 900 calls in just an after hours and over the weekends, it was over 900 calls like.

 

It’s kind of sometimes it’s hard to put an ROI to things, right? Especially if it’s just saving your time, but not directly generating income and things. no, there’s definitely the collections piece is like one of my favorite places to be like, well, just in your past dues, it can even do this, then this probably paid for itself 10 times over type of a thing. So it’s a great way to be able to capture

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:02)

yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:06:06)

I mean, think about what people pay collections agencies alone. Like, I mean, by the time you’re there, you’ve kind of probably written it off a little bit in your mind or on your tab. You take the collection agency and then when they finally do collect the money, the agencies get to keep most of it. You know what I mean? Or at least a large percentage of it, which, yeah, which never feels good either. And I am not, I love collections agencies. I think they’re needed. I think a lot of them are using AI.

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:24)

A big chunk of it.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:06:34)

more than probably people think and realize too in doing it. So why not have a line of defense before you go that route where you get to keep the money? You know, I think that that makes sense to me.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:47)

Before we wrap up, it’s been a great conversation. Have we missed anything? Is there anything else out there that you want to communicate to folks? I feel like we’ve really covered a lot of ground. Yeah.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:06:59)

We have we’ve gone in a lot of directions. I’ve this has been

 

fun. But no, I would just say if people are listening to your podcast, they’re probably have at least an appetite for for what you’re talking about. And so that you’re probably we’re probably not just talking to a bunch of people that are definitely afraid of AI or implementing technology. But I would just say my biggest, you know, from a bird’s eye view is, you know, learn how to work with AI, not against it. Like you don’t you don’t want to work against AI like like

 

Everyone is going to either take advantage of it or have to battle against it. So just learn how to, in your industry and what you’re working on, figure out how to work with it and you’re going to be glad you did. And I’ve never met anyone that we’ve worked with that has said, I wish we would have waited longer to save all this time. Or I wish we would have waited longer to compete with our clients that do interact with all their customers or whatever, right? And so I don’t think that there’s ever a perfect time.

 

And really like the longer you’re in business, the heavier lift will be when you finally start incorporating AI into it. So there’s the best time to do it. I think is wherever you’re at right now. It’s not going to get easier. And if you’re starting out, start out with like if I will never start a business again. Again, I started the call by saying I’m more of an entrepreneur than anything else, but I would never consider starting a business again until I had looked at every place where I could.

 

I AI in my business and so I just encourage everyone looking to start something or who currently has something. You probably owe it to your customers into your business into your employees to know where you can use AI to become more efficient and and every you’ll make more money. The customers have a better experience and your employees will love you unless they feel like you’re trying to replace them. So you know, maybe be be upfront with the ones that you’re trying to replace with it, I guess, but.

 

Give people peace of mind that it’s a tool that is going to make their job easier and better, not they’re competing against it. That’s the only other thing we didn’t talk about is getting your employees to buy into it when they’re afraid it’s going to replace them. that’s again, I think that’s more, you know, you’re leader and a business owner. You either, you either like learn how to navigate that through that or you don’t, guess.

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:09)

Yeah.

 

Well, with any change, it’s always a little bit of both, right? I mean, and there’s, know, what I think at the end of the day is it’s a huge productivity improvement tool and thinking of it as an assistant. And, you know, it’s gonna lead to huge improvements. The question is whether or not

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:09:32)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:38)

If you have so many folks on your staff and you get huge productivity improvements, can you leverage them?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:09:41)

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:44)

You know, can you still need everybody within the organization? Are you growing fast enough to absorb them with productivity improvements or not? you know, as past technological revolutions have shown, it’s a little bit of both, you know.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:09:48)

you

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:01)

You know, it’s a little bit of both. That’s the reality. But, you know, you’re also, you aren’t going to stop it either because the people that embrace it adapt it are going to have a leg up because at end of the day, it allows you to do things better, faster, cheaper.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:10:01)

Yeah, that’s the reality of it.

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:15)

And, and

 

if folks want to get ahold of you or.

 

or your organization to learn more, except like you guys doing some really cool stuff, how would they get a hold of you or Adminify?

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:10:25)

Yeah, no, it’s a great question. First off, actually like the technology. I’m not the technology guy. I love business. I love business and scaling.

 

But I really do, I love sitting down with groups or companies and just showing them, well that’s where I would automate. I actually love that conversation, whether we end up working with them or not, I enjoy it. And so if there’s any groups that are wanting to explore it, I’m more than happy to sit down and do that. And the best way to reach out to us is just Adminify, so like admin, right? Adminify.ai is our website, you can get in contact with us there.

 

You know, they can reach out to me directly or, you know, find us on social media and things. But yeah, my email, I’ll just give it to you right now. And they’re welcome to email me too. It’s kevin.trowth at adminify.ai. And if they want to reach out directly, that’s fine. That’s great. But I think that every business should just at least be aware of what other businesses in their industry are doing.

 

and know where they could, it’s up to them if they want to do it or not, but know the places where other companies they’re competing with are automating things because at some point it’s gonna feel like an uneven playing field if you’re not using it at all probably.

 

Jeff Walter (1:11:49)

Okay, and we’ll have the Adminified.ai link in the show notes, so people can go there and click through. Kevin, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And it was very educational. Thank you.

 

Kevin Trost of Adminify AI(1:11:54)

Yeah, I appreciate it.

 

Yeah, no, I appreciate you and all the listeners. This is great platform. I’m honored to be on it, Jeff. But now I think you’re providing a lot of value for your friends, followers, listeners, whatever you want to call it. But I think it’s really cool when you explain to me what it is and your goal with it. I actually thought it was awesome and I was very happy to come on and hopefully something I said helped on some level or another.

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:09)

Thank you,

 

Well, I know I learned a lot, thank you. And to everybody out there, thank you for listening. We appreciate it. Have a good day.