Small Businesses Win When AI Fills The Gaps Instead Of Replacing People with Ken Cox

We show how AI fills real gaps in small businesses without replacing people, starting with phone coverage that answers every call and follows your SOPs. Ken Cox shares a practical rollout path, why open source matters, and how guardrails keep service human.

• missed calls as lost revenue and trust
• AI receptionist setup, transparency, and scripts
• using SOPs to drive consistent answers
• collecting useful customer data and preferences
• multilingual support that adapts on the fly
• open source models, access, and risk balance
• monitoring transcripts and adding guardrails
• stepwise rollout under a hundred dollars a month
• freeing owners to be present with clients
• mindset of start small and improve fast

Sign up for our Tuesday AI workshop at nlink.com to see a live setup, get big discounts on the unlimited AI employee package, and learn how to manage your own AI employees

Transcript

Meet Ken Cox And NLink

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello there and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself the Podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole, and I'm very excited to be here today with Ken. So, Ken, go ahead and please introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about who you are and who you help and who's that guy in the background you've got there.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Nicole, thank you so much for having me. This guy here, it's uh it's a hockey mask of Kevin Smith. Um, if you know him, he's a writer director. Um, yes, yes, huge fan. So uh, but me, my name is Ken Cox. I'm the president and founder of inlink.com. We are um web hosting, CRM, email, collaboration, kind of an entire suite for the small and medium-sized business. Um, well, all size business, really. We've been um in the industry for over 25 years. And um in January of 25, we rebranded the nlink.com name to be uh for AI employees for the small and medium-sized business, the the technology and the price and everything have come down so to a spot that we can really give you know the small business owner, the solopreneur, one heck of a package for you know under a hundred bucks. But and then, you know, even for the big guys, we we have packages for them too. So um, across the board, it's been a ton of fun. And then helping small business owners understand that they can implement AI um in place uh to help them fill gaps in their business, not necessarily replacing staff members, but they can fill gaps in their business. We know that phones don't get answered properly in small businesses. We know that follow-up doesn't happen the way that it should. Um, and you know, we we know that we got to follow the follow the leads, but we also have to, you know, hit that Google review and that Facebook review and answer that phone and send that text message. And AI can do so many of those tasks for us today to fill those gaps so that we can focus on what's really important for our business.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I love that. That's amazing, and especially for small business owners, right? And the and the solopreneurs out there. Um, you know, I was talking with someone the other day, is like, yeah, and then you go work for yourself. And so now you're the boss. I'm like, yeah, but you're the boss, but you're also the worker and the IT guy and the accountant and customer service, and you do all the things. You wear so many hats. So where would we start with something like that? So, like, if I wanted to implement, like, where would you recommend that I look at uh, you know, implementing AI in my systems?

AI For Small Business Gaps

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Right now, I would say answering the phone would be the first thing. We know 60% of phone calls don't go answer, go on answer for small businesses. We know that when you do answer the phone, there's the anxiety of is this a solicitor? How do I get them off the phone? All of those things. So every call needs to be answered. You don't know what kind of deal that is. They and we need to be able to get our potential clients or clients the data that they need as quickly as real time as possible. So now with the with the AI receptionist, the the phone answering system, the voice AI, we could set up so quickly and easily, train it on your documents for you know, send them order forms, collect data and get somebody to call them back, um, fill out contracts and send those, right? There's there's a ton of things that we can do to have AI answer the phone, be nice and courteous, be very transparent right out of the gate. And what we found is that users mostly love it. Uh, the end user, once there's a little bit of a shock to some people right out of the gate, and they don't like the AI, they don't like talking with the AI. But what when they realize that, oh, I'm gonna get accurate information really, really quickly. Um, and I'm gonna get the same kind of support every single time I call that business, it's pretty huge. And and the end user kind of forgets that they're dealing with AI pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

That's pretty cool. Um, so like you said, gather your documents, right? Um, something that I always talk to my clients about is establishing your SOPs, everything you do. Establish your SOPs. How does it work? How do you do it every single time? Um, what kind of stuff would you would you recommend that they gather?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Uh so the AI does a great job of gathering the information from the end user. So uh name, email, phone number are the the obvious. If you can, you know, something that we play with sometimes is um, you know, collecting birth dates so that we can send them automated messages on their birthday. Um sometimes I've I've got a couple out there that are saying, hey, you know, kind of different kind of industries, like maybe an escape room, like, hey, would you like to hear a funny joke before we go? Um, and then you can kind of determine is this a person that that likes those kinds of deals or not? Right. Um, and

The AI Receptionist Playbook

SPEAKER_00 5:06

then you give the user options, and then all those things can then just be stored in the database, and then you know more about your potential client or your client at that point. So I I think that as we communicate with our clients, it's a wonderful thing. If you've ever owned a business where customers come in and you're working the front desk on a regular basis, it's a beautiful thing to get to know them and be able to meet them where they're at whenever they're there. And you can't always do that, but with AI employees, you can start doing that more frequently and you can make special days for them more meaningful within your business. And when you start doing those kind of strategies in your business, um, you start building a really, really neat community. Um, and I think that that's really where business is headed for the next 10 years as AI and robotics come to, and then you know all the dangerous jobs will be gone, all the tedious jobs will be gone, and we'll be entertaining each other and um educating each other on different aspects of the world. And that's what business will be. So um, I would like to start prepping for that now.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

That's pretty cool. Um, I studied that in AP human geography, like the the different stages of of like how civilizations go through economies, and we got to service, and they were like, that's it, there's nothing after service. Um, but now in the age of AI, it has become, like you said, where where it is even more service, actually. That's that is where we are right now, right? Because it goes from agricultural to factory work to service, and we're in the service-based industry and everything, and exactly what you're saying of you know, like being able to equip equip us to do those dangerous jobs more safely. Um, and like AI has been around for a while. Like, I know I was using AI before chat GPT came out. That was something I was using for copywriting because it was already there. What chat GPT changed was mass accessibility. It was easy, easier to access. Now we had an interface where the general public, right? And so, like, that's where the wave came up, and now it's becoming more mainstream, and we're seeing AI is everywhere. And so it's not about no, um, I don't want to use that. It's about understanding that this is what TV was to the radio. And so, if we are not looking at that box and saying, oh my God, this is the future, how can I use this? Um, we're gonna get left in the dust. So, um, what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 7:46

I I 100% agree. If you if you're not embracing AI today, well, AI is different than any other technology, right? I think it's probably for humanity, I I think it's the most profound thing since the fire, right? Like it it is gonna change humanity in a way that we don't we don't even understand yet. I I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful that um because we have leaders that have open sourced the technology, that it can't be um contained and used solely

SOPs, Data, And Personalization

SPEAKER_00 8:22

for evil purposes, right? So good people can do it, and it's there there's no stopping it now. As long as there's a computer and a person um to fight for good, then then good can be fought for, right? And and that's a really thing. I think that if had if if the transformer piece of GPT was not open source, we would have really, really bigger issues on our planet to be thinking about because it would be literally isolated to the elites, and that's not the case, right? It is open sourced. I can I have my own servers with my own open llama on it. Thank you, Zuckerberg, right? Thank you, Elon, for forcing this to be open sourced. Um, and for anybody that doesn't know what open source means, it just means that anybody can go to Git and download it and put it on a computer. And if you're good with computers, it's not that it's not that challenging, right? If you're a Linux administrator, you can get this done. It's not um overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

So it it makes me just to kind of give like a um a visual, like in those thrillers where you you know they have the USB that has this technology that would change everything. That's the opposite of this, right? That would be like a closed source, and we have open source.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Okay, so yeah, anybody can do it. So there's no um there's no gatekeepers, and and I think that's what's so beautiful about AI today and and how it's being deployed. Because if it were the other way, if somebody would have kept this to themselves, they could really do a lot, a lot of harm with very little um way to defend ourselves from it, right? We I mean of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Look what we're doing with it.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

You know, everything ever written about psychology, sociology, and internet marketing and marketing. So to manip to use them for long tail manipulation, which is something humanity has never seen. Um right, I mean, we've had propaganda acts, right? That that would last a decade or so. But I mean, you can literally write long tail disinformation campaigns like flat earth theory and get the whole world to start changing their perspective of how they think the earth is flat. Like the percentage of flat earthers is grazing in 2025 and has been for the last five years, right? So it's dangerous. So having it on both sides of the fence, I think, is wildly important, and that will be the the key. Now, hopefully, humanity doesn't get too lazy and um just sit back and relax and let the robots and AI do everything, but we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yes, and actually, uh, you know, I'm sure you've seen the quote about AI like being able to like wash the dishes and and clean the house so that I can focus on art. Um, but it it it speaks to like how complicated the simple things that we consider simple are, you know, like cooking something or washing a dish and determining, well, you know, how much soap do I use? Do I throw this in the dishwasher? Like there's so many little steps that robots they haven't been able to figure out how to do that. Um, and so I think, you know, there's value in that, right? Um, and we do have robots. Like I put I throw my clothes in the washing machine and then I turn on the dishwasher. I'm like, look at the robots working for me. Like, you know, our ancestors have to be there, like washing every article, and I get to just throw it in there and push a button, and now it's done. And so, like, there's robots already working for us. This is just like a different level. Um, so super interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah, I think the autonomous robots with you know, and the coupling of all of these technologies, SliDAR and motion detection, and you know, all of these different technologies that have all come together. Um I I'm a huge proponent right now of I think our world is going to look drastically different in five years. Um, and it's happening right now, right in front of everybody's eyes. You know, even uh the Quick Trip now has robot floor moppers, right? Down down the street. Like just running. That's that's a you know, a $20 an hour employee that's gone. And they're paying $20 a day to have that guy just run nonstop. So it's going to change everything that we do, uh, which is good. In America, we we

Service Futures And Accessibility

SPEAKER_00 12:46

have more jobs than we have people to do them. Um, this is something that we need to embrace and move forward with instead of fear and run away from. If you if you run away from AI and robotics, you're I I don't know what you're gonna do. Uh Netflix. And to your point, it's that's it.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

It's where we pivot, right? Where we learn to pivot and we have to say, well, what else is there? Like, how can we be creative? How can we how can we, you know, stay stay relevant, stay with it, like stay with the things.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Um relevance now though, it's so cool because what makes you relevant is that you're you and uniquely you, because all intelligence has been democratized. We're all the same amount of smart now, right? We can all go, it's it's not even like I can Google better than the other person. It's literally I can ask any question. I can give it context about my life, my marriage, my work, my campaign, anything. And you'll have a collaborator at minimum, a really, really smart collaborator uh in your pocket at all times, right? Your teacher was wrong. We not only do we have calculators, we have Einstein's in our pocket at all times.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yes. And you know what? Even through high school in my math classes, my teachers did not let us use calculators. So I could still do math in my head. Um, but yeah, they were like, no, you're not gonna have calculators. Um, but it's really cool. It's it's important that we have that knowledge behind what we're doing too, right? Because um, like you said, there could be like dangerous things like happened that I read an article about a book about mushrooms that a family took out and they ended up eating a poisonous mushroom and ended up in the ER because this person wasn't an expert. So they couldn't they couldn't see that in, you know. Um, and so I think it's really important that um that we bring the we keep the humanity in it and and to bring back to what we were talking about, the phones, um, something I think my audience is gonna want to know. Okay, so this this AI is doing the phone calls and they're building these relationships. Where am I in this? Like, how do I know who the customers are? How do I interact with them? Like, how can I be like, hey, thanks for stopping by? So, how do we bring back the humanity into it if we do decide to implement some AI?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

I think that for specifically for service-based storefronts or the solopreneur, you're going to do that by being present with the client that's in front of you right now, right? And you're gonna be fully present with them right now. Instead of if I'm a chiropractor or a dentist or any of those things and having that phone ring in the background and think like, oh, is that an important call? Am I gonna get it? Or who's gonna get it? Or I just hired this front desk person and they're gonna answer the phone and they're gonna screw it all up. I know it and have that anxiety. Um, I'm gonna get to be fully present with the client that I'm dealing with right now and have full confidence that my phone's being answered, my standard operating procedures are being followed, they're getting the data that they need as fast as possible in whatever format they need. Um, if if you want to have it set up to all these different modalities, if you want to have them, you know, it can ask them, how would you like me to send you this? Would you like me to send it in a Facebook chat, a text message, through WhatsApp, through an email, through, you know, would you like the contract? So, you know, as we train these things more and more, they become more user-friendly for your client. And you can adopt more ways to communicate with your clients without having the understanding today, whenever we're getting ready to add a new, oh, we're gonna start supporting WhatsApp with our clients. Now I gotta make my standard operating procedures and I have to train every single employee that ever is going to do the front desk for me again forever on how to use WhatsApp. Well, employees, I train it one time, I keep an eye on it, I watch it, and I have guardrails and I correct it when it goes wrong, but I don't have to train that person on all these different technologies every single time I hire a new person. That anxiety of of the new person answering the phone and standing over them starts to disintegrate. Um, the anxiety

Open Source, Power, And Risk

SPEAKER_00 17:45

of, oh, school's starting next next month, and I'm gonna lose half my front desk staff and I gotta hire a new staff. All those things go away. Um, and it and it's and it's great.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

That is awesome. Um, I love how how it's you know, focusing on on the systems, on the repetitive, boring, the things that you don't you don't want to be doing anyway. Like you mentioned, like you're a chiropractor, you're with a client, you're like, oh, this phone call might be important.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

And then it's like an automated call about something that's not even for you, and you're like, ah, that goes, you don't have to ever think about a phone solicitor calling you again and dealing with it because the AI is gonna bet that out really fast, but it's gonna answer and it's gonna know was that a legitimate call or not. Um, you know, we just what we've found is that if you're wildly transparent, hi, thank you for calling. My name is Samantha AI. I am the AI agent for this company. If you ever want to talk to a real person, let me know and I'll get somebody from our staff to call you back within the next day. Right. And that that little bit of transparency right out of the gate seems to dissolve any hesitation from the end users.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Yeah, and you know what? When you get to one of those phone menus and they're like, for something unrelated to what you're calling for, press one for something else that is totally unapplicable to you, press two for something else that you don't care about. And you're like, oh my god, and then you get to the next menu, and guess what? We're starting all over.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

And it's something that's wildly cool, and you know, found this on accident early in the game, um, but now starting to implement it, is we don't have to say English one, Spanish press two. You can choose, and and most of my clients choose to keep it English only. Um, but you can choose to let it speak in any language that your end user speaks. Um now we typically say in America, if they go to Spanish, bring them back to English if you can, um, and advise them that we don't you know have humans that speak Spanish, but you can start supporting your customers, fundamental support in their native language naturally. Just because they start speaking a different language, the AI will pick up on that and answer them in their language.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

It's yeah, I've I've done that in chats um because I'm in Miami, so like I speak you know, Miami English, so it's like half and half, and I'll throw in Spanish words and and it just answers me. It just answers and it knows what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

So yeah, I've been using technology my entire life to help me communicate with this planet, and you know, the AI and the Jeep, the Transformer has really done a phenomenal job of humanizing itself, yes, and um in a way that meets the human where they're at, which um is really different than anything we've had before, right? Even the even the the the AIs of of five or ten years ago were just really nice big queries um that could that couldn't hold conflicting ideas and give you input on conflicting ideas. It was like it was very binary, and today it's it's a different world.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Well, it it's kind of like um, you know, when you hear of James Cameron with Avatar, and when he wrote it, the technology wasn't even available for him to do the thing. So he had to wait like 10 years, and then he's like, okay, now I can make it because now we have and so it's kind of like that. The technology wasn't even available, right? The it's all like the steps, right? Because then Google got all this information, and then now we can do this, and now we have aggregated information. Now we have the ability to have this large language model, and like you said, people related to it because it it became one of the biggest downloads, like so fast. Like it was it was the most downloaded um, you know, app ever, like in the fastest amount of time. And so that speaks to the relatability, how people were able to easily communicate, you know. Um, just like the rise. I remember when I was growing up, there was no computers inside people's houses. Like I remember, you know, my grandfather bringing in the computer and they had to buy a desk. I I say he didn't buy it, I say he was sold that thing. Um, and it had even an encyclopedia, and we had like eight discs. So depending on which letter, you know, you were studying, he's like, this is for you guys to study. Um, and then just like that, like it was adopted, and AI was adopted, you know, even faster. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

It's it's been a it's been a remarkable run. Um, and I'm I'm super fortunate to be, you know, I'm 50, so I've got to see 25 years of each century. And um it's it's been a heck of a ride. It's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

And then this in this particular era, um we're all super human, super fortunate humans to be alive today.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah, and you know what? It's only the technology is only gonna advance faster, like it's exponential at this point. Um, and I can get into quantum physics about how the universe is always expanding, but anyway, um, you mentioned more interesting to the audience, I think, that you had a special gift for the listeners. Because can you tell us a little bit about that? Because this is a lot

Robots, Jobs, And Relevance

SPEAKER_01 23:06

that we've talked about.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yeah, so you know, I understand that AI can be scary for people and it can be scary for businesses, and implementing it is is very frightening. And and quite frankly, I stayed away from it for a long time because the cost and the complexities and things like that weren't ready for the end user. But in January of 25, the voice AI programs got so good that it it was time to bring it to market. It's so affordable, right? For under a hundred bucks a month, you can get started. Um, so you don't have to like commit to this new system. You can literally onboard it and slowly roll it into your business. Um, but on Tuesdays, if you go to nlink.com, on Tuesdays we have a free webinar. It's it's no pressure. We're not trying to sell anything. You get huge discounts on our uh unlimited AI employee package if you if you join. Um but we just go through and we set up a fake company and the fake phone number. Um, we we have it, we call and answer the phone and we go through some different scenarios to kind of show you how um fast it is and easy it is to set up. And you know, I I believe that AI employees are something that needs to be managed within the business. This is not something you should let your marketing firm do. It's something you need to manage it. You need to be able to go in and put different guardrails on quickly. This is your business. You need to own that piece. Um so and NLink is here to help you do that, right? We're not saying, hey, pay us X number of dollars per month and we'll handle it for you. But we're gonna show you how to make sure that it's managed because you're gonna be checking those emails and you're gonna see you know, it's still an intelligent thing. So it can make different decisions sometimes, and you're gonna have to watch it and put guardrails on it. Um, because a question can get asked that it doesn't know, and it might think think through it and say, oh, this might be the right answer, and that might not be the answer you want it to have. So and I, you know, everybody's got great standard operating procedures, but I know that they're um everybody's got some gaps as well. No, no, no. So and we've got to find them and fill them. So inlink.com, sign up for our Tuesday webinar, it's absolutely free, no pressure at all. And we're gonna show you how simple it is to set up AI employees for your business to answer phones, do Google reviews, Facebook reviews. You know, if you want to get more more complex and help you with your content, copywriting, and stuff like that, that's great too. Um, but that's that's it.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

That is amazing. And um, as someone like I managed a brand for a celebrity, we had a lot of emails. Uh and the questions that people come up with that you never in a million years would have considered. Um, yeah, so you so even if you sit down and you think through every possibility, I promise that someone's gonna ask a question that you're gonna be like, never would have imagined that this would come up. I hadn't even thought of that. So yeah, that is a big deal setting up those guardrails because they will catch you by surprise with some of those questions.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Um then you and then you get to run your business your way and you're not dependent on somebody else. And it's super easy to do now.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, once it comes up, you don't you fix it once and that's it, it's fixed. And then anytime that comes up again, it's handled. Um, so I love that so much. Um, how do we self-follow you on social media?

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Uh, if you want to learn more about me personally, just tencox.com and that's got all my social media handles. You'll find my Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Um, all that stuff. And that's where I publish my expanding universe theories as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Love it. Um final tip. Um, signing off here, what's like that big tip? What's gonna give the audience their biggest aha moment?

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Um wow, I was not prepared for that question. I I think what what you were talking about with the standard operating procedures and and you don't know the things that are coming up, right? And you can sit down and don't try to have every chapter of your book written before you get started. Just get started and know that you're gonna stub your toe, you're gonna mess up, and just it's okay. Um, as long as you're willing to understand that and keep an eye on it, and then modify as you go. You're not gonna knock it out of the park on the first try, and that's okay. You might. Some people have. I know a couple, um, not a lot. Uh, we most of us fall quite frequently and get back up and brush up our knees and keep going. So um, you know, you don't have to know all the answers before you get started. Just get started, um, pick a topic to tackle and move forward. But if you can start and not have to think about answering the phone on every time it rings and know that your customers are getting their stuff done, then your your path will be a lot clearer.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I love that. That's been amazing. Thank you so much, Ken. This really was amazing. And um, you guys can read more about all his stuff. Make sure you sign up for his um class. Is that what we call it? Yeah, meeting. I don't know what what would you call it? Workshop?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

I just call it an AI workshop, yeah.

Bringing Humanity Back To AI

SPEAKER_01 28:14

AI workshop. Okay, so sign up for his workshop. All the links that he mentioned are gonna be available down in the show notes. And we will catch you guys next time on the next episode of Overcome Yourself the podcast. Bye.