How To Use AI To Save Time, Cut Costs & 10X Business Fast

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly cleaned up. Expect the odd misheard word.

1. 0:00
   Josh Snyder

   This is a very significant moment. We're going to see entrepreneurs putting product to market, and it's all going to start via AI.

2. 0:07
   Wes Mathews

   AI is all the rage. You're in the space.

3. 0:09
   Josh Snyder

   What do you guys do with AI? We're what's known as an AI wrapper company. We're using the power of AI to build the spoke software for companies to solve their pain point. What does that do to the cost? Cuts the cost dramatically. What might take hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now we can do pretty complex pieces of software for a very palatable figure. How can we leverage AI to get better? You can ask AI to and see what it spits back. If you're smart and forward thinking at all, there's no better way to start an entrepreneurial endeavor at this point than via AI.

   Josh, welcome.

4. 0:46
   Wes Mathews

   Thanks so much for coming on.

5. 0:47
   Josh Snyder

   Yeah, I appreciate it, Wes. Thanks for having me here.

6. 0:50
   Wes Mathews

   So let's just kind of get to it, right? We have a limited time today. I'm excited to talk about AI. I love AI, just full disclosure. I use ChatGPT. I do the paid version. I think it's amazing. I'm a visionary entrepreneur. And I kind of use this thing as my buddy, right? I'm smart enough to like put all the prompts in, I do certain things. So it actually it knows my podcast, it knows my business, it knows my history, knows my tone. So oftentimes, I mean, how I use it, I use it today for kind of idea dumps and share.

   Honestly, for podcasts, I put through guests and their background, and it gives me some like really great ideas for questions. And what's interesting is it's just like training wheels. It's not like it's giving me this like magical thing. But it kind of helps me just think a little bit versus me talking to somebody. I use it for email, I analyze documents, I'll screen shoot complicated text and submit it. I use it for a ton of things. And I find myself going to ChatGPT more now than Google.

   So I want to talk to you because what you're in this space. And what do you guys actually do with AI? Because it's really cool.

7. 2:02
   Josh Snyder

   Yeah, it is really cool. We are very excited. This has been a great journey for us to get to the point where at the end of last year, we actually launched an offering. And we're what's known as an AI wrapper company. So we're not building our own like large language models or anything like that. But we're using the power of AI to build bespoke software for companies, usually in an operational sense. And so we would have a conversation like this was where I would record it and transcribe it.

   And I can allow the client to talk freely about how what their pain point is in their operations, what they'd like to solve. But historically, they might get bogged down in how to solve that. Now, there's no getting bogged down in the how, because all you have to do is talk about how you'd like to solve it. Your vision for solving this how you'd like to function to solve that pain point. And then we are now at the point and have been doing this for the last about six months, using that transcription to throw into a build engine that we created to then within an hour or two of an initial discovery call, present back to them an initial front end prototype is like, is this what you meant to solve your operational pain point via software.

   And then we use that as an iterative tool to actually get to the point where we can build an enterprise grade production ready piece of software.

8. 3:33
   Wes Mathews

   So help me understand that a little bit, right? Let's let's kind of rewind back like five years ago, and just kind of talk like traditional software, right? Because if I understand correctly, that's the backbone of where you guys come from, like, like more of a traditional software company. And you guys have sort of spun off with this new AI product, correct?

9. 3:51
   Josh Snyder

   That's correct. So we're a, the one part of our business is a legacy SaaS product that we created 15 years ago. We were the first app in the app store doing offline mobile data collection. And so that was all built in traditional software development methods, a bunch of humans coding based on requirements, making sure that that functioned properly, doing a lot of changes, a lot of code built on top of code by humans, right? So that is long time, a historical way of building software. Now we don't even code anymore.

   So we have humans prompting AI based on those transcriptions that I was just talking about a minute ago to actually build customer driven on demand software to solve their pain point. It's a complete, you know, people use this term a lot game changer, but it really is. We're able to not only build it faster, which is huge, right? Depending on the complexity of the software, you could be going back and forth with requirements for a long time with a bunch of humans going back and forth, making sure that they were understanding each other, making a lot of mistakes and then having to do it again.

   And then six months to 12 months to 18 months down the road, you actually get the software that you are wanting to use in the production way. Now we just, we can have a full front end prototype ready to go in less than 30 days. And in less than three months, we can have an enterprise grade ready, production ready piece of software. And basically we can move as fast to say you want to move. If you want to partner with us to build software, we can have as many meetings as you'd like.

   The more meetings that we have closer together, we just feed that into the build engine to get you what you want. It's quite something.

10. 5:41
    Wes Mathews

    What does that do to the cost, right? If I'm the potential client, right? And the old school way is as you just explained, but now it's like, Hey, I'm getting it like this. Is it, you know, a fraction of the price or is it the same price? What does that look like?

11. 5:54
    Josh Snyder

    No, it cuts the cost dramatically. We can now, you know, what might take hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million dollars, depending on, you know, what you want to build. Now we can do, you know, pretty complex pieces of software for very palatable five figures.

12. 6:13
    Wes Mathews

    So it's crazy to me, right? So like my background, you know, running a digital marketing company, and today we're like, we're a fractional CMO company. So we deal with a lot of things marketing. I had a meeting with my team the other day and like we took, we have a client that has, you know, maybe their logo, some of their designs need like a little bit of a refresh. You know, in the old traditional marketing, it's like, Oh, we have to go through a rebrand or like all this stuff, right?

    That sounds expensive and timely, right? As we're just on a zoom call, I'm literally on ChatGPT, again, cut and paste, you know, command shift for cut, drop it in ChatGPT and said, Hey, this company's a little old school, I want to clean this up. But I want to like keep the same integrity of what it looks like. And within like, again, two seconds, it spits back. And I'm like, holy cow, like 20 years ago, that would have taken me so many touch points through departments and the designer and sitting down and a kickoff call and like all this time money, and it was literally done right in front of my eyes.

    And I'm like kind of gave me chills, because I'm like, holy cow, like this is so simple and dumb. Like, there's some real problems that this thing is solving. So talk about like, you know, businesses have operational challenges, like they never go away. So like, what do you see that sort of common with clients you talk to or work with? Because I, I just see all these businesses that are just like, how do I even begin with AI? But where should they look to start to get the ideas of where to clean up, clean up operations?

13. 7:44
    Josh Snyder

    Well, that's the best thing about working with our clients. So traditionally, we play in the ag space, the utility space, engineering, food and beverage, some NGO stuff, you know, anywhere where you want to have a offline mobile data collection, that's our legacy product, right? So we're still at the moment playing in those spaces mostly, just because that's our legacy, but we can really do business with anyone working with these people, that's the real gift, because they know their operations very well, they live it day to day.

    And when they can take a step back and assess their operations, from a wider kind of view, they see holes, right? They see things that could be done better, that are inefficient, there's the bad type of redundancy that they're doing. And so, but they might get stuck at that point where they know something's wrong, they can, they can articulate it, but they don't know the how, on how to solve it. And really, I saw a quote one time, it's not about how you do it, it's finding out who has the answer.

    And so ChatGPT now has so many answers, or whatever large language model you're using, there's, you know, other products out there. And so now we're at the point where we can just talk to them real conversationally, they can lay down on the psychiatrist, read the other couch and tell us all their problems, we can now then turn that actually into a piece of software. So really, the great knowledge, the great view of their own operational challenges, rests in the clients, and now they're empowered to actually just talk about that very freely, and then have it turn into a piece of software that can actually solve those operational challenges.

    It's amazing.

14. 9:23
    Wes Mathews

    What's I mean, what, what do you love to do? Like, what's your background? Are you more in the biz dev side? Are you an engineer, developer, or what's your background?

15. 9:30
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, so I have no coding experience whatsoever. I'm not a coder, I'm not a software developer. My background is sales. I've done that my entire career. I've been in SAS for quite a long time. The software space just really interested me. So vast, and there's so many places that you can insert yourself and further the cause of business. And so I'm lucky enough to be here where I work for a very innovative company that didn't rest on the fact that we had this legacy product that's used worldwide.

    We wanted to create another growth engine for the company. And the team that I have here that does have vast backgrounds in software development, they've now kind of checked themselves and have just kind of did the dive headfirst into AI prompting and making AI do this. And none of them are coding anymore, which is amazing, because they've been doing that for decades.

16. 10:26
    Wes Mathews

    What are you know, so based on your experience and kind of the change, when did when did you feel this change coming on? I mean, is it literally in the last six months? Or when were you like, hey, the old way of how we used to do things is completely changing.

17. 10:40
    Josh Snyder

    We started this journey a little over a year and a half ago. So we spent a decent amount of time not going public with what we were doing. We were trying to figure out the best way to serve holes in the market via AI. And so we went through a couple of things where we did a lot of failing, a lot of building again, a lot of failing, just making mistakes to try to figure out how to use it best. And that led us to the point where just at the end of 2024, we were able to go out loud with like, hey, we now have this completely different part of our business that does, you know, operational problem solving via software development via AI coding.

    So it was a great journey. It taught us a lot. And you know, we haven't figured it all out yet, either we still, you know, are trying to push and continue to innovate and give people just more power to create bespoke software that solves problems.

18. 11:38
    Wes Mathews

    So, you know, my background coming from like digital marketing and web development. So like back in 2009, like we actually had our own software that launched websites. So I would tell people similar to WordPress, you know, clients can log in and manage their site, manage their website and do a bunch of things, we would push software updates to all of our, you know, kind of licensed users, etc. And I used to tell clients at the time that, you know, you don't want, you know, your, your sister's cousin's brother's neighbor managing your stuff, right, like hire a professional company.

    And I kind of laugh now, because I feel like that person can actually do a really good job today. Because, you know, you coming from the SaaS world, I mean, there's all these little technologies out there, to give you a couple that I'm familiar with, like, I mean, you have your Salesforce, your Hubspots, but you know, Calendly, you've got all these little things that sort of integrate that make things faster. You know, for you coming from that SaaS world, and like AI and all these little softwares that are out there, you know, what are some like, what's like three low hanging fruit for a business where they're like, you know, how can we leverage AI to get better, faster, like start to now open their mind and how to get into this world?

    Because again, I still feel like a lot of people are on the sidelines, they're reading about it, they're thinking about it, but they just don't know how to jump, jump in.

19. 12:58
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, there's so many offerings out there right now that are utilizing AI in one way or another. And so I can understand why someone might be hesitant just because it's like, where do I go? Like, everyone's kind of going out loud with this AI thing, I'm not even exactly sure what it can do for me. And so something like a ChatGPT or whatever you're using to try to get the answers, like, that's a good start. Like, you can literally ask it, like, where do I go to solve an operational problem for my business that's in the agricultural space?

    So use it as a research tool, my team uses it as research tools, gets you quick answers, and, you know, makes it succinct as well, where you can understand it in a very digestible way, you can do the same thing as like a VP of operations for an ag or utilities company to ask it, like, how do I do this? Like, how do I use this to my advantage based on maybe like three quick bullet points of things that you're looking to solve? So you can ask AI to guide you to how, you know, on how to use AI to better your business.

    So it's all intertwined now, and just using AI as a research tool as well, not only to get the software at the end of it.

20. 14:16
    Wes Mathews

    So what's interesting, I love to get your feedback on this, because like, as an entrepreneur and owner of a company, I'm spending like 90% of my time on one specific company right now, which has employees, about 12 employees and growing, but there's been some times that we've, I kind of get a headache and heartburn, because if we're working on something, I've literally gotten information back to me that I know was just completely ran through ChatGPT. And like, literally to the point, like nobody even took the time to edit it.

    And I'm like, you know, I kind of sit there as an owner sometimes, like, what do I need you for? Like, I mean, that's where my mind goes, right? But, you know, how do you like, it's just 10 years ago versus today, things are so different. I see my kids using ChatGPT to do their homework, and all these things, I keep saying ChatGPT to like, I'd love to get your perspective on other tools out there that might be better. But how does a business even equip themselves to deal with that?

    Like, I find myself getting angry, but I'm like, they're just being kind of smart, right? But how do I how do you accept that as a business? And how do you kind of improve from there?

21. 15:23
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, I mean, what it allows really is to kind of offload things that would take you a lot of time before, but aren't necessarily like the highest value thing that you could be doing in your specific role. So really, AI allows you to focus very intently on the high value things that you do, and offload everything that was more of an admin task, or something like that, to an AI, large language model, whichever one you're using, you know, to your point, a minute ago, like, if you're more of a coder, maybe you want to use Claude or something like that.

    Like, if you're more of a, you know, sales marketing, maybe you want to use ChatGPT, you know, but they all they all kind of offer similar things. But people tend to go to one another based on, you know, what they're trying to do. But yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a game changer, where you don't have to spend as much time maybe doing the things that you don't really want to spend a lot of time on, because you're taking away from things that you know, are high value and have more impact to your specific role, whatever company you work for.

22. 16:30
    Wes Mathews

    And I find like I was using it last night, and it actually screwed something up for me pretty good, like something I saw right away. It's kind of funny, like my relationship with my specific ChatGPT bot, because I kind of like, why would you do that? And it's like, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I rushed it, like, it's kind of bizarre, having this conversation. Yeah. But you know, what can people do, right? So like, there's chat, I mean, do you have any recommendations on like, if you're talking to a business owner that hasn't done anything, is it, are you telling them just go play around with ChatGPT and start to get comfortable with it?

    Like, what's a good first step, because they're not ready to talk to a guy like you yet? Yeah, so I mean,

23. 17:11
    Josh Snyder

    I wouldn't necessarily tell them to play around with it. I would ask them, you know, take a moment, think about what it is you're trying to solve. What problem do you have? What challenge do you need to overcome in your business? Think about that for a moment, just not on a computer, even just use an old school notebook to jot some notes down or make a quick Google doc to be like, okay, like, let's get focused here. What do I really want to solve? And then, you know, you know your business really well.

    And so you're smart enough to ask yourself questions about the business and how I can improve this, then take that kind of like brain dump that you did, put it into ChatGPT, or again, whichever like one you feel like using. And, you know, that's kind of like the popular one. So put it in there and ask it the questions and see what it spits back, right? And it does present some really good things. It does make mistakes, it does sometimes make some things up, but you can challenge it as well, because you know your business.

    And so it's like, well, hey, I'd like to kind of double down on what I see here as, not exactly sure that that's the answer I was looking for, or that maybe ChatGPT is understanding what I was asking it. And so just ask it again in a different way. And it does a good job of like, relearning what you're asking and presenting something better to you that may be more useful to you. So it's really just an exercise of like kind of sitting silent for a moment, and doing a nice brain dump of the things you want to solve, and then using ChatGPT to your advantage to get some answers and continue to push you down the path of a solution.

24. 18:47
    Wes Mathews

    So where are we at in the timeline of AI, right? I mean, are we into like the first beginning 5% stage of where this is going to go? Or like, what are your thoughts on that?

25. 19:00
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, I mean, I would say that's pretty accurate. It's going to continue to get smarter, faster, and be able to do more, right? You know, you can take it from a couple of different perspectives. Like, you know, if you're a GitHub shop, and you have tickets, you know, you can now automate bug fixes through AI, where that would have to go back and forth between a bunch of humans to actually fix this bug in GitHub before that. So that's like one use case where you can automate and thus make your software better, faster by fixing, recognizing and fixing bugs more quickly.

    Again, to your point, like in sales and marketing, you know, you want the barriers of entry have been drastically lower. And so if you have a brand idea that you want to execute and see in a really tangible way, you don't have to go down the road of the designer and all that stuff anymore, you can quickly spin up a brand, you know, obviously, I hope to have a good product behind that brand, you can quickly spin that up and, and get public with it. So all those things are becoming faster, easier for non software developers to accomplish.

    And so, you know, you're gonna see coming up a lot of smaller companies doing large revenue via a whole team of AI bots and a few people.

26. 20:32
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, what's crazy, I totally I agree with you. And I have somebody that I work closely with now. And between her and I, I think we typically get more done than my last company with like 15 people, like very efficient, like it's unbelievable with like the automations and the processes and just how AI is really like helped us move so much faster. It's really to me, it's exciting. I love I'm an idea guy. So like I have no shortage of inputs. Yeah, I still like I suck at execution, like I need people to execute around me.

    And that's a big one too, right? I mean, a lot of, a lot of clients will say, Well, can I just go to ChatGPT and get a strategy? It's like 100%. Right? But like, you're gonna fail on the execution. It's like going to the gym, like you could have ChatGPT, right? You the best diet and exercise plan. But like, somebody's got you have to do the work to get the result. Somebody has to do it. That's, that's where I think I'm safe for a little bit.

    You know, who knows what the future is going to hold. But talking about that, like you have a lot of knowledge on like, you know, you're mentioning GitHub and ticketing and development, like, what do you see as like the biggest change there, right? Like if you're a tradition, is it if you're a traditional coder, you're now migrating into like coming up with really good inputs? Like how do those types of jobs evolve into AI?

27. 21:51
    Josh Snyder

    Are they if you're a product owner, right? So you work for a company, you own your own product from a software perspective. A lot of your time legacy wise is spent with this huge long never ending queue of fixes. But as a product owner, what you really want to do and spend most of your time on is furthering the piece of software, innovating, talking to clients, what they want to see out of the software. And so if you can spend way more time getting your clients input, getting your own teams input on how you want to further the product, and then to further the product, you don't actually have to then turn to your traditional software development team to make that happen.

    You can talk in a business way, conversationally to AI to further the product and have additional features, additional functionality be built out. So I read a great article from Kleiner Perkins where they said, hey, for a long, long, long time, all this VC money, all this investment money, went towards the greatest software developers coming out of Silicon Valley or wherever that could create the greatest products. And so the software developer, the greatest ones, they were held at the highest value. But we're shifting where the creatives are actually going to be the ones driving innovation and driving new product.

    So as a product owner, all you need to have to do is a little creativity to how you want to further that product. And you just talk conversational AI. And that feature or that functionality that you wanted is now there. It's amazing.

28. 23:25
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, it's kind of mind blowing at the speed. I mean, you know, I've heard some people speak about, you know, when the internet came out, right? I'll be 44 here pretty soon. So I think the internet kind of hit like, well, 17, 18, 19. I remember buying my first gateway computer that was like this big, right? And then the computer was kind of crappy. Like you had dial up and AOL and you're on messenger. And like what it is today, it's like, holy cow, like what you can do on this thing, right?

    But, you know, for me, how do you feel about that? Like, you know, the internet was the internet revolutionized, right? But like, here we are now. I mean, is this, what is that in your opinion? I mean, how, what does this do for the next five to 10 years?

29. 24:11
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, like without getting, you know, to like, flowering my language, I really think it's like a key moment that we're experiencing right now, much like, you know, the internet boom of the late 90s, early 2000s, where things became real sophisticated, you know, unlike say, you know, 70s and 80s computers, we're at that point now to where this is a real shift in innovation, you know, huge, huge kind of thing for the entire world that we're going in this different direction. So yeah, it's nice to be a part of it early on.

    And I'm excited to see where it goes. And yeah, we're, I don't think I'm like, overstating it that this is a very significant moment.

30. 24:58
    Wes Mathews

    How does it tie in, like, in your perspective around like cryptocurrency, and you hear things about quantum computing, or like, oh, that quantum computing is the next thing that's coming out, it's going to make AI look like, you know, a toddler, right, or cryptocurrency doesn't know what's about to happen? Like, what, what's that kind of thing, quantum computing hovering around right now? And is that going to make, is that going to 10x AI? Or like, what is that to you?

31. 25:23
    Josh Snyder

    I mean, I don't know if I'm in the best position to speak on that knowledgeably to be candid. But, you know, I probably have to do a little bit more digging into the impact of what quantum computing is going to mean to the, you know, 8 billion people on the planet. But the little that I've read, it seems very significant as well. And when that gets to a certain scale, you know, I think we'll see the benefits and feel the benefits of that, or, you know, feel the, the, again, another dramatic shift.

    But yeah, we're, we're still trying to get our head wrapped around just the current AI. And so, you know, we'll get to that bridge, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

32. 26:04
    Wes Mathews

    So if you had to start over today, right, if you're an entrepreneur, like, what would you do? Like, would you, is that what would you use ChatGPT, to kind of architect a new company? Or like, what kind of AI gets you excited? Like, what's your go to your tool?

33. 26:19
    Josh Snyder

    Like, I think we're going to see a lot more globally, just entrepreneurs putting product to market. And it's all going to start via AI. They're going to use their creativity to recognize, you know, a hole in the marketplace that they think they can fill with their idea, and then use, to your point, AI for the execution part. So they'll be able to get a real product to market very quickly, that can serve, you know, whatever function it serves. And so yeah, I think if you're smart at all, and you're forward thinking at all, really, there's no better way to start an entrepreneurial endeavor at this point than via AI.

34. 27:07
    Wes Mathews

    It was crazy to think like myself 15 years ago, it was all about, I got to find somebody like, you know, we talked earlier, there's a great book called Who Not How. You know, so it's like, if you have this idea, like, who's going to execute on this idea, it no longer needs to be a warm body, it can be technology to do it, which is which is just crazy to me.

35. 27:31
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, like even in our like sales and marketing function, we create all this content, but then the management of that content, and who interacts with that content, and then subsequent kind of pieces of content that are put to that individual, that's all automated via AI. So these used to be just humans recognizing that, you know, we had to read metrics on what went on with clicks and opens and things like that. Now just AI is reading all that stuff, and then reacting and executing on the next thing that they should do based on whatever piece of content that they were absorbing.

    So I mean, it's amazing.

36. 28:09
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, I had I had something happen. This is probably six months, eight months ago, but there was like a smaller project with our company. And the individual that came through like I didn't know them. It was one, I 100% handled the entire thing through AI, like the email, the contract, everything, it was just kind of a test for me. And it was, it was pretty awesome. No, that that's, that's really interesting. I, you know, for me being in the sales and marketing side, right, like I'm an entrepreneur, but if you strip me down to the core, I'm probably more of a CRO, more biz dev, more sales, like I love relationships.

    And, you know, I've had LinkedIn forever, but I don't really do anything with LinkedIn. So I again, as a visionary sitting around to your point of like just writing down your business challenge, I have LinkedIn, I have about 5000 people on it. I'm like, I've got to be able to leverage this tool. But my challenge is I don't have time, or at least I tell myself I don't have the time. So the old school traditional way is, you know, should I hire somebody to manage this for me?

    Right, which sounds expensive. And I how do I quantify that? So I went on this mission to find an AI company that manages LinkedIn, I interviewed like 20 of them, which is crazy, because I normally don't do that, I'll interview two or three, and I was like, I'll pick whoever. But I found the right company that I think we, we aligned in terms of vision. Long story short, my AI tool on my LinkedIn, like literally acts like me on my persona. And it goes out there and it connects, whether it's podcast, whether it's, you know, ideal, ideal customer profile, and it's like running, and it's working all the time.

    And what happens is it gets it to a point where it runs into a limitation. And as soon as it hits that limitation, a human gets involved. And as the months go on, that limitation just keeps getting higher and higher and higher. And it's like the most amazing tool I've ever used, because all it does is set qualified appointments for our company. And we're not talking to anybody until we actually get to that meeting, which so it to me, it's like, that's one area, like I just had an idea, and like found that holy cow, there's like 100 companies plus out here that are supplying that right.

    So I just encourage if you're listening, like, to Josh's point, like throw your ideas in ChatGPT, or like really focus on like, what are my top three business challenges, and have ChatGPT kind of help you get closer to that solution? Because you know, you don't know what you can find. So is there anything out there that you've seen on the operation side that, you know, you're kind of seeing a trend, like, this is so easy to like, you have to look at this one thing, and it's going to save you a ton of time and a ton of money with any type of client.

37. 30:55
    Josh Snyder

    I think in our space, like we deal with a lot of data collection, right? And so the legacy way of taking that data and making sense of it, was to say, flow it from a front end collection tool into some sort of database, and then into some sort of tool, like a power bi, right, where you can slice and dice and do lots of great things that power bi does with analysis and visualization of that data. But you need someone who's adept at using power bi, and you need to map the flow of that data correctly, so that tables match up and all that.

    And so, but now you can collect this data and be an AI generated piece of software that can do a quick piece of analysis on that data in a very visually appealing front end way. Now you can not, you don't have to go down the road of mapping all this data to something like a power bi, you can just actually build a tool via AI code gen that does that very quickly for you. And you have this like kind of instant gratification of the data that you collected, making sense of it in an analysis and visualization way.

    So I think that is very significant, where you can, you know, quickly get some insight into the data that you're collecting, whatever that is.

38. 32:10
    Wes Mathews

    So help me understand that a little bit better, like where, where's the data coming from? Is it all via web? Is it like, where, where is that data coming from that you're collecting? That depends, right? Like you can use AI to your advantage to scrape data from web sources.

39. 32:24
    Josh Snyder

    Our legacy software product is out in the field on handhelds and, you know, mobile devices to collect it via humans, say out in an agricultural field, you know, looking at a, you know, a strawberry trial plot. And so that's, you know, collecting data points, like, is it the red that we like? Is it the size that we want? Is it yielding a lot? And then flowing that data for analysis downstream. And so, you know, the data points themselves, I mean, that's fairly vast, as far as where you can pull them from.

    But yeah, you can use AI bots to scrape data from the web. You can use the data that you're collecting via humans out in an agricultural utility or an engineering field somewhere. So really, it's wherever you want to collect it. You can quickly flow it to an analysis visualization tool in a very visual appealing front end, and then actually use that tool to make decisions and have it be actionable. So not just the static look into the data, but be able to take action on it as well.

    Okay. That trial plot is performing best. And so I want to send a notification via this nice kind of UI to the field team to continue to monitor that plot and abandon plots two, three, four, five, because they're not yielding what we want.

40. 33:43
    Wes Mathews

    So keeping on that concept, like have you ran into like, that sounds really advanced and really streamlined. Who owns that, right? So like, if I'm the business, and you're starting to pull down and leverage these different tools or software, because like, my brain is telling me like 10, 15 year ago software, it's like, I'm paying for this, I own the IP, you're the company that builds it. But now if a handful of that is from, I don't know if it's open source or whatever these sources are for AI, like, have you seen any of that like, kind of hit ahead or, or what's going on from that perspective?

    Like who owns it?

41. 34:20
    Josh Snyder

    Well, the way that we do it, so there's kind of two ways to do it, right? You can create a piece of software and have it act as a SaaS product where you own it, you host it, and then the client just has access to it, right? But what we've done most often in the last six months is we build, and it's their source code. So it's their piece of bespoke software that we built via AI code gen for them. Now we may host it for them if they don't want to host themselves and things like that, but it's their source code.

    And so they own it, because it was their idea. At the end of the day, we just executed the idea for them. Got it.

42. 34:58
    Wes Mathews

    Got it. So you guys then work best with companies that hey, like what are the, I'm assuming like what are the top three, five operational challenges you're facing? You guys are sort of the liaison to say, here's how we can help you move faster, save time, save money, and build you some bespoke software tied in with AI. And I'm assuming that most companies just, the hurdle is probably like they don't think it's possible, or like they've been dealing with a problem for a long time, and they just, they haven't found a solution.

    So they just kind of sits with them.

43. 35:27
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, the biggest challenge I think anyone faces when they're dealing with someone who feels a little stuck is status quo. We'll just keep doing the same way we've been doing it, because that works to a certain degree, right? So it takes a little bit of, you know, kind of convincing to say, okay, you're no longer bound by traditional software development methods that are expensive to get you further along innovation wise in your operations, right? Like, so wipe that away. You don't have to do that anymore.

    So let's just talk about what you want to do. The execution part is now so much easier. So getting people kind of shaken out of their status quo, that's really the biggest challenge.

44. 36:10
    Wes Mathews

    Yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned something I think a lot about every now and again, which is, you know, you're gonna start to see a lot of like, one to five man shops that are billion dollar companies.

45. 36:20
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, I follow one on LinkedIn right now. And they're very out loud about getting to 30 million in ARR with three people.

46. 36:28
    Wes Mathews

    That's 10 million ARR per employee, like that's unheard of. What do they like? What do they do? How do they monetize? Do you know?

47. 36:35
    Josh Snyder

    It's a it's a sales marketing tool.

48. 36:39
    Wes Mathews

    So they benefit, just kind of automation of sales and marketing functions. Yeah, I mean, there's own services right now that I mean, I was very skeptical. But I listened to one last week where I like literally had a full blown conversation with an AI bot. It completely blew my mind. Like it wasn't, it was probably like 88%. But I feel like this who, what human is showing up 100% every day, right? And then you have coming in at nine to five doing all these different things, the training, like the training for this thing is like literally dump a file.

    And then it's crazy.

49. 37:17
    Josh Snyder

    I was at a SaaS conference a few weeks ago here in Austin, Texas. And a lot of the conversations I was having were about AI SDRs. And, you know, there's some hesitancy, because we all come from these backgrounds where we did a lot of cold calling, we had big cold calling teams and humans to humans. And that's still going to happen. For sure, like, there's gonna be a huge bridge. But the AI SDR thing is getting better and better and better. And it'll be to be able to react better to the human speaking to it, you know, very quickly.

    So we're all monitoring it. Some people have gone down the road already to test it out. Some people are still waiting. We're in the waiting for the AI SDR thing, we have a, you know, human led outsourced SDR function here. So but it's getting better and better. And again, that'll just be, to your point, something that you can employ that doesn't get sick, it doesn't get tired, it can work globally, 24 hours a day, if you wanted to, if you're selling internationally, or, you know, it can work very efficiently in North American hours or whatever.

    It's just an efficiency play at the end of the day. And as long as the human on the other side of it, the prospective client, is getting value out of actually speaking to this AI SDR, well, then you have a win-win, right? Like, and that's why there's a little bit of a waiting game. It's like, can I have a true conversation with this yet? And so, you know, I think it has to catch up a little bit in that way. But I mean, in my mind, I would bet money that it will get there.

50. 38:48
    Wes Mathews

    I love it, man. I mean, I'm, I'm not quite using that yet. But I think that's the next thing I'm going to start to investigate. But the earlier tool I was telling you about, if I don't touch it, meeting like throttle it down, because I'm too busy, for me, business is all about new relationships, and I'll do three to seven meetings a week. And I literally do absolutely nothing, but show up, it like literally goes on my calendar, I click on my calendar, and we have a process now where like, there's an active link that shows all the notes and all the like, what's transpired through any conversation.

    It's pretty wild. I'm really excited to dial into the SDR stuff. Because I think that, you know, taking the emotion out of it and all the baggage, I mean, everybody's had cold calling to some experience and knows what comes with that, like, that's a challenging thing to manage, and do day in, day out. So I'm super, I'm super feedback. Let us know, like, how can people get in contact with I think so for me, it's, if somebody just has, you know, some stale idea, you know, how is this possible?

    Sounds like you guys are a great outfit just to bounce and have that conversation. What does your process look like? Is it like a half hour or one hour discovery on that idea?

51. 40:02
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, so, you know, as far as people get ahold of us, like me personally, you know, on LinkedIn, like a lot of people. So, you know, Josh Snyder, a VP of sales there in software and field apps AI. So you can hit me up there. Our YouTube page, our field apps AI YouTube page has a lot of great content to understand how we work with clients. But yeah, if you go to our website, field apps AI, you can contact us there. And yeah, to your point, it's a quick half an hour discovery call.

    What is your idea? What problem are you looking to solve? We'll record it and transcribe it. And honestly, within an hour or two, after that conversation, we can have back at you an initial front end prototype of like, is this what you were thinking? And then take that further in a full prototype way, then we can go down the road of contracting to do that. And then they get to the end of that and they're like, okay, yep, this is exactly the vision I had. And I want to go into full production and build it for real with a back end and all that, you know, then you go into a different build stage to get it.

    So it's a, you know, enterprise level production ready.

52. 41:06
    Wes Mathews

    So talk about like, I mean, your sales and marketing, so like strike while the iron's hot, man, when that idea is fresh, you can come back and show them visually with that type of speed. That's, that's unbelievable.

53. 41:18
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, it was at that SaaS conference a few weeks ago, and I was telling people about what we were doing on discovery calls, initial discovery calls, and then presenting them back something, you know, very quickly, their idea in a front end visual way. And these are other AI founders, other sales and marketing executives, you know, people have been around SaaS for a long time. And every single one of it was like, that's amazing. Like, you know, so, but one of the reasons I was there was, you know, to figure out how to modernize the go to market function, to get more out loud with it, so more people hear it.

    Because kind of to your point earlier, the buyer's journey, people are not interacting with sales until way down the end, 85, 90% along the buyer's journey. So you have to be there, though, from the beginning, as the advisor kind of once removed with good valuable content, they see like, okay, you know, maybe they're at the stage, they don't even recognize they have a problem, but they see a piece of content, they're like, Oh, that's interesting. Or they're at the stage where they do recognize they have a problem.

    Maybe they've talked about it internally. Now they're getting some valuable content as to maybe how they can solve that. And then they're at the stage where they've talked about internally, they're going to put some money behind it to solve this problem. And you've been there all along the way. So when they finally do raise their hand, you know, that 90% down the buyer's journey, you've been an advisor the whole way, not human to human, but with valuable content and how you can solve it.

54. 42:40
    Wes Mathews

    What's awesome in my mind right now, I just I kind of think of like the gold rush, right, and like the guys with equipment, you kind of have to like pick your stake in the ground and start working. And I think the guys that kind of pick something and go deep and do something like you mentioned, those guys are like, Oh, that's a great idea. So I think it's awesome what you're doing. Best of luck. I hope you guys crush it. I know you will. But Josh, thanks so much for coming on.

    I really appreciate the time today.

55. 43:01
    Josh Snyder

    Yeah, thanks, Wes. It was great to be here. I appreciate the time as well. Awesome.

56. 43:06
    Wes Mathews

    This has been another episode of Entrepreneur Intel. Thank you for joining us for show notes. For other episodes, please visit us at entrepreneurintel.com. Until next time.