The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Pick The Right Marketing Agency, Not The Cheapest | Andy Seeley
What happens when a business stops guessing on marketing and starts treating growth like a system? One gymnastics gym went from stalled growth to multi-million-dollar revenue—and the playbook applies to any small business. Andy Seeley tells us how.
Summary:
In this episode, Andy Seeley breaks down how to choose a marketing agency that won’t experiment on your budget, why niching creates faster and more predictable results, and how AI can turn raw inquiries into booked appointments automatically. Using a real gymnastics gym case study, we show how operations, pricing, enrollment strategy, and marketing must align to unlock sustainable growth.
You’ll hear how smart micro-testing on Meta finds the right parents, why multi-channel intake matters more than ever, and how AI tools can qualify, converse, and schedule without adding staff. We also dive into retention strategy—specifically the powerful shift from opt-in to opt-out enrollment—and how raising prices actually works when demand and value are built intentionally.
This is a tactical episode for owners who want real growth—not agency hype.
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheSmallBusinessSafari
💡 GOLD NUGGETS
• How to interview agencies for real niche experience and cultural fit
• Red flags that signal an agency is learning on your dime
• Why reading how reviews are written matters more than star ratings
• Using micro-tests on Meta ads to dial in the right audience fast
• Building multi-channel intake around how customers actually prefer to respond
• How AI can qualify leads, hold conversations, and book appointments
• Switching from opt-in to opt-out enrollment to boost retention
• Raising prices by increasing perceived value and demand
• Treating your agency like an extension of your internal team
🔗 Guest / Resource Links
• Creatively Disruptive – https://creativelydisruptive.com
• High Level Thinkers – https://highlevelthinkers.com
• Ashworth Strategy – https://ashworthstrategy.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyseeley/
“Reach out—we’ll help you plan your growth.”
🌍 Follow The Small Business Safari
• Instagram | @smallbusinesssafaripodcast
• LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislalomia/
• Website | https://chrislalomia.com
Thanks to our sponsor Smart Hire Solutions LLC!
Let's record it while we're doing this, Alan. We gotta keep moving, keep going, guys. Another big week. We can pretend we know what we're talking about. That's right. We're gonna pretend. That's what we always do. We're getting Andy to change his name. So any of you who watch this on YouTube, uh, you always wonder uh what do we look like? You can go to YouTube and see it. You can also go to the website. We should follow me at warning uh and tell him worth the effort. It is definitely worth the effort, Mr. Hare. He wearing your hat and checking things out. So here it is, another week, another very, very, very, very, very, very, very busy week for Chris. It started with uh hosting the Atlanta Remodeling Awards and giving my end-of-year presidential Nary address.
SPEAKER_01:You know, can we just go one episode without you uh referring to yourself as the president of Nary?
SPEAKER_00:Guess what, Alan? I have uh as of today, I am done with my term as president, and now I'm just chairman of the Was it a coup? Did they oust you? I ousted myself. Uh I ousted myself before I started. I told them I would do it for a year. Usually we do them for two. Um, but I uh was able to do some really cool things. I made some really positive, effectual changes. Um we started a women in construction group uh that meets quarterly. 80 women has already joined. Wow. We reconfigured education offerings for all of people in Atlanta for remodeling uh to get your CEUs as general contractors or just to learn how to run a better business. We also have started a new fundraising effort where we're gonna go shoot shit. It's called the Southern Shootout. We're doing a clay pigeon, it's a round robin clay pigeon shooting event where you go station by station like golf.
SPEAKER_01:It's like playing golf with guns.
SPEAKER_00:With guns.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_00:So uh we did that. Uh, I was able to put in uh Rob Stephenson, who came on the podcast. He is our membership uh committee chair and on the board. Um, and he did tell me um because I asked as why he answered and and and asked and got involved in the board. So a lot of really positive things happened this year, and I'm really excited. Sounds like you're running for re-election. Um, so I am running for chairman of the board, so I can get back to doing this, man, because I love the podcast. But after I did that, Alan, what did I do next? I went and drove five hours to go watch my 6'11 friend's son. So he's 6'11, the son plays for New Jersey, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Division I basketball, played against High Point. Super cool. If you don't follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you'll see what a midget looks like. I am six foot two, and those guys dwarfed me. Um, and it was awesome. And then I came back and then I went to watch the Falcons absolutely get crushed by the Seahawks. But I got the amazing food, tailgate, do the whole thing, had my last board meeting today, and here we are, podcasting again, talking with you guys.
SPEAKER_01:Man, you've got your NPR voice going. You used a highfalutin word earlier, sanguine.
SPEAKER_00:I am very sanguine today, Alan, because today has been one of those firefighting, getting everything done. Oh, oh yeah. Did I mention I sold my slumlord house up in Athens uh on Monday? Did you get rid of the squatter? I did get rid of the squatter that was on one of the episodes. Uh, and now the house is out of my name, and I am thrilled uh to no longer be a slumlord. I got my son through that, and now I have some the proceeds from that. It's gonna fund the rest of his law world. So how's your son in a slum? Is what I just heard. I am a slumlord. I identify as a slumlord. How about that? Whenever you walk up to somebody and go, you know, I'm sorry about the way the house looks. I'm usually not this uh, and you want to think to yourself hoarder. No, I'm not that at all. But we got another great one, you know, a lot of great lessons I talked about in Ari and all those things. Um, but burning up some time. And now we've got Andy Seely from CEO Creatively Disruptive on because he changed his profile on Zoom. Andy, welcome to the show. Can't wait to start talking a little bit more about your stuff and what you do. Why don't you introduce yourself to the Small Business Safari Adventure Team?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, so my name is Andy Seeley. I am the CEO of Creatively Disruptive. Um, and we are a small business marketing firm um that's been in business for um since 2015. So we're pushing into our 11th year next year. Uh started out uh doing websites and all the kind of very regular stuff, and we figured maybe it would be a good idea to figure out how to send people to websites. And then it was, oh, how now that people are going to websites, how do we figure out how to turn them into customers? And blah, blah, blah. To this day, we're we're actually doing everything from uh digital marketing for clients, helping them plan their revenue growth, there's business consultancy, the whole nine yards at this point. Um, because you know, if you do one piece, but you're missing another piece, oftentimes the whole thing doesn't work. And we've, you know, without trying to be everything to everybody, we are trying to be a lot of things that matter to a few people, right?
SPEAKER_01:Um you've niched down quite a bit. I mean, it's a very specific niche that you appeal to.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we've got we've the we've got three brands. Uh, one is creatively disruptive, one which is the main company, one is Ashworth Strategy, which is an e-commerce-focused company. Um, and the other is High Level Thinkers, which is a um kind of a home services type um company that we've worked with local banks, um, you know, renovation companies, roofing companies, um, you know, anything local that wants business creatively disruptive is very family focused, family activity center type businesses. And Ashworth focuses on family, family focused e-com. So anything that uh a mom or dad would want to buy in a household um online, um, that's what Ashworth strategy is is definitely focusing on. So it's the common thread is family focus and home and all the different things around that. But uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But you went on this journey of niching down, though. You started out probably casting a wide net, uh similar to like I did, which was I would do anything to anybody at any time when I first started any amount of money. Absolutely. Was was the niching a strategy that you had to implement over time, or was this something that just started to evolve?
SPEAKER_02:Um being everything to everybody means you're nothing to anyone as well. Um, and uh that's what we really we really really found was well said trying to do everything for everybody meant that no one really cared about you. So, and it was very hard to get anybody to care about you, right? So uh when we first started, probably the first two years were unneased, totally unneased. And we we had e-commerce brands, we had activity brands, we had we had everything, like literally everything. And the problem with that, you know, so if anybody is starting a small business and they're interviewing agencies, if you're intervening interviewing marketing agencies, which I highly recommend, most small businesses should get very, very focused on how to get a nice, steady stream of clients coming through the door. And an agency, a good one, is a really good um, a really good help for that. But when you're interviewing those agencies, um if they're serving everybody, what they're gonna do when they when you hire them is they're gonna learn on the job for probably about six months try to figure out how to make it work for you. And that six months might cost you, you know, ten to twenty thousand dollars. And you might not get a lot, they might luck out and you might get something, and then they'll get if they're decent and they know what they're doing, they'll learn they'll they'll get better after that six months, and then hey, but within a year they'll actually be you know delivering for you. But you've spent twenty to forty thousand dollars on them learning how to uh look after you.
SPEAKER_01:Um so you you uh yeah, obviously you uh that is such a great gold nugget. Yeah. For anybody listening. Say it again. Yeah, you need to inter well, and you should you should but you need to interview a marketing agency and make sure that they have experience in exactly what you do because otherwise you're paying them to learn how to market what you do.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, and and companies would do that in the first two years that we were doing business. Uh, if I'm honest with you, companies were doing that. We we worked hard and we really, really we weren't lazy about it. We were really working at it, testing and trialing and testing and trialing and doing things. And we yeah, I think we maybe got it under six months, but if I'm honest, there was months of work where we were trying to figure it out, right? And it wasn't that we weren't good at knowing how the platforms worked, knowing how the different, you know, digital, you know, um tools and things that we use worked. The the problem was knowing, Chris, your customer base and how they worked and what you needed and what was the the short end of the stick, and then turning that into ads that actually resonated and finding the audiences and all and it all takes testing, right? And a good agency will test micro testing. It's like little small steps because if you do big, huge, wide steps, you don't know what was the thing that was magic, right? You wanted like do little tests, you go, oh, when I did this, things jumped by 50%. That must be an important thing. I'll put that in the on the on on the toolbar or the or the checklist of things that we must do. And you know, that's why you really need to be working with niche businesses. It's a little bit like, you know, if I if I hire a high-end man to build my pool, is he gonna do the best job? Is he gonna be figuring it out? Maybe he's never built a pool before. Maybe he's he's got enough brains to know you know how to do it, but it might take him three times as long, might cost three times as much, and there might be some mistakes made along the way. Or do I just hire a pool company to build my pool?
SPEAKER_00:Right? Exactly right. So as you that's uh now now that we talked about that gold nugget, I want to drill into it a little bit. You found this out over time, started to develop it. Do you do you when you come and sit with somebody, are are are you interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So yeah, I mean, on a couple of levels, actually. So we'll interview a client to see if we if we feel confident that we can help them. You know, if you look on our Google reviews and our Facebook reviews, we've got we're really highly rated. Very few agencies um will actually put themselves out there, right? Very few agencies, if you look at most agencies that you won't be able to find them on Google or Facebook or Instagram or or wherever, you won't be able to see any reviews because you know they they haven't allowed it to happen. They haven't put it out there. The reason for it is oftentimes I I actually think that there's tens of thousands of agencies out there. 95% of them are one-man bands with a couple of contractors, and they're not very good. And that's why a lot of people, especially small business owners, tend to get screwed over and they get burnt out and they they lose their their confidence in in the agency industry. Um, there's five percent of us, maybe if a little bit less than that, um, that really do know what they're doing. They they study it, they've been working at it, they've been in it, they've got their partners with the platforms, they've got a lot of good things that are going on across the board. Um, those are the guys that you need to be working with. Um and you know, you need as as a as an agency owner, I want my team to figure out um, is this somebody that we know that we're gonna help? Right? Um, because we've got enough clients that we don't have to bring you on. If I'm looking at you, Chris, and I'm like, yeah, I just don't see how we're gonna make this work. Uh, I don't see how this is gonna be good for him or me. Um, you know, we'll we'll just say, hey, here's some things that we recommend. Go, you know, but we we're probably not a good fit. And it sounds a little bit like a sales uh pitch, but we've got 120 clients, uh monthly paying clients. We're doing pretty well. Um, you know, could we do better? Yes. Uh am I happy where we are? No, I want to always do better. When I hit the goals, I always want the next one and the next one and the next one. Amen.
SPEAKER_00:Amen, business owner.
SPEAKER_02:Andy, let me never you're never happy, right, Chris? It's always the next thing.
SPEAKER_01:Andy, let me let me ask you this. Uh because you bring up such an important thing, and for a lot of our listeners, you know, they're solopreneurs, they're small business owners, and they need to hire somebody to help them scale and help them grow. And it's such a huge decision, but maybe they don't have experience in doing that. So what are the how do they find the five percent? How do they get eliminate the 95% on the interview?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think the thing kind of along the lines of what we're talking about. So interview the um interview them and and speak openly. Don't be don't hold back, don't be like the walls up, because you can choose to work with them or not. Give them the information that you want. If they do something with it and you get the sense that they're actually trying to help you on the call, that there's actually some real discussion going on about your business and learning about your business. If that learning about your business, especially in the first call, um, at least half of it is trying to find out about you and what you're needing and what you what what you need to have success. The other thing is if they do that, that's a good sign. If they are niched, that's a good sign. Um, you know, and if they don't, if they come back with multiple options, so they've put some thought into what you need as a business owner, right? Now we we've got part of our business where it's much more menu-based because we know it so well, right? So the kids activity kind of family activity business, we know it so well, we kind of know exactly what to plug into a business. But then on the e-com and the um and the and the the home services, it's look, it can be a little bit gent, it can be a little bit custom. So we want to have a nice conversation with the client to actually find out you know where they're at, what they're doing. If that agency spends their whole time selling themselves to you, that's a really bad sign, right? So you know the reality is um you want your agency to want to know about you. And if they aren't that interested, they just want to talk about themselves. You really just want to, you you probably want to move on. It's probably not the right one. And if um the other thing is is look at their look at their ratings, look at their look at their reviews, see what the reviews are saying. Now, everybody, we've got some bad, bad reviews on ours. You know, we got a couple of people that weren't happy with with what we've done.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, you haven't been in business if you don't have those. I you know, again, you talk about the value of reviews, you know you don't want to make sure you got people who are not planning them. Oh, I found my my top 60 uh people and I've had them do it. No, you want to have, I mean, here I am with a handyman company. I've got over 1350 reviews already. Um, well, already uh 17 years, but um but still higher. Oh, really? You're right. You want to have a couple that you know show off, and then they want to see how you responded to it because you know that's I think that's another thing.
SPEAKER_01:I don't trust it if there's if they're all perfect, perfect, yeah. Right, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:So I think I think that's part of the interview process as well. You know, uh you didn't say it, but I think one of the questions you everybody should ask is give me an example of a client that didn't work out. Tell me why. Yeah, because because if you didn't have one, then you haven't been trying.
SPEAKER_02:Or if you've prepped for the the the uh meeting, um, you know, maybe go in and have a look at the reviews and pick out the one, pick out a good one and pick out a bad one and ask about it. You bet. Now, sometimes, depending on the size of the agency, to be honest. I've got a friend who owns quite a large agency, much larger than us. Um, and he probably doesn't even know. Like, like his sales team might not even know some of the reviews that are on there. But in my mind, my team does. My team knows all of the reviews are on there, and and I make it a thing, like not just my sales team, but my client services team. They know it's all the reviews that are on there. My production team, they know all the reviews because when we get good ones and bad ones, we've actually in our Slack system, which is our internal communication system, we celebrate the wins and we share it all. So all of the team get reads them, we share it in our meetings, and when we have a bad one, we dissect it and we go, okay, what went wrong here? Is it that the client is crazy, which sometimes you get a crazy client, or is there some legitimate stuff here that we need to get better at? And let's let's get into that and try and find what's going on. So my team actually does know what's what what the reviews are and what's gone on. Um, so asking those kind of questions as a agency of an agency is is critical to get a sense of you know, are they just trying to sell you or are they trying to help you? Um, we have a really strong philosophy of helping small business owners. I'm a small business owner, you know, I've got family members who are small business owners. You know, burning$10,000 for a lot of small business owners is just unthinkable. You just can't, you know, no, you that$10,000 might put you in a bad position, especially if you're starting out. You don't want to be wasting money like that. You don't have that excess cash to just be blowing away. Um, and you want to have a partner because it's a little bit like hiring an employee, right? I I always say to our clients when they come on board, because I usually have a meeting with with a new client that comes on board just to tell them my story and what I believe in. Um, I always tell them treat us like you're we're one of your staff. You know, you that means don't don't abuse us because we're a vendor, right? Treat us like one of your staff. If you and if you if you abuse your staff all the time, we'll probably quit, like your staff member will. But treat us like your staff member, and we will work.
SPEAKER_00:Were you in my last marketing meeting that I had today? Because like I said, it's been one thing after another. And he and I, uh I'm in a number of print things, but anyway, uh you're right, you want to treat them like that. I want to hear uh a story of a company where you came in, you helped them, and what did you do? Let's talk some nuts and bolts of some of the stuff you guys deliver.
SPEAKER_02:Um trying to find well, let's talk about the very first client that we ever had, which was actually a gymnastics gym. Uh so the very first client that we ever got, which was in 2015, uh still with us today, uh, was a little gymnastics gym made up of two sisters in Chicago, Lagrange in Chicago. I'll even give their name. It's Gemini Gymnastics. If anybody wants to reach out to Chris, she's the only one she'll talk to you about us, I'm sure. Um, and they were probably doing about half a million dollars a year of revenue. Um, and they couldn't ever get over it. She was only paying herself, and her and her sister was paying, getting paid$1,500 a month. That's what they were earning. They'd been in business for eight years and they hadn't been able to figure how to get far further than that. Thankfully for them, they had two husbands that had jobs. The the husbands didn't take their gym very seriously or their business very seriously. Um, it was like the hobby business. Um, fast forward to today, I'll I'll I'll give the the the The the result, and then I'll fill in the middle. So fast forward to today, uh, they're doing 2.8 million. She she's earning about 350,000, and so is her sister. So they're making about$700,000 profit. Their husbands can choose to work or not now. So the husbands are the ones being taken care of. Um, and and here's the funny thing: sometimes, like when you talk, if anybody reaches out to Chris and you know, the the millions of viewers that you have, Chris, you know, if the if if if Chris Campbell gets uh reached out to, um, she'll probably say that the most critical thing was not our marketing that made the change, it was some of the consultancy that we did. And what they were doing, which was a major problem that we had to change in their business to actually get them to where they needed to be, was every June they would drop every single member of their gym. So that because I'd close for three weeks and clean up the gym, repaint it, do all the things that they wanted to do and have a little bit of a break. And I convinced them to maybe not have that three-week break. Um, to if you want to have a break, have a break. Keep the keep the kids in. You know, don't ever have a system where you're asking the the clients to opt in, you're asking you're telling them if you want to leave, you've got to opt out yourself. And just that fact, instead of starting in July, they were starting from zero, typically, they were starting from 500, right? So instead of starting from zero every July, they was they started at 500 and then they'd go around and maybe they grew to 600. And now instead of dropping anybody, they just started from 600 again. And that might seem like a very simple, you go, well duh, that seems pretty, pretty normal. But it's amazing how many small business owners operate because they think that's the best way to go, and that is a key thing that's hindering them from growth, right? So that was 10 years ago. So, you know, now they're at um about a thousand kids. Um, and one of the other things that they were doing was that they were undercharging, which is something across all industries and all niches, I see a lot of. I see a lot of um small business owners really trying to keep their costs down uh that they charge their their customers. Um, instead of going, okay, how do I bring value and charge as much as I possibly can? So we got her through that. Some of that was because she had this constant stream, and this is the true value of finding a really good agency. She had a constant stream of incoming inquiries wanting to join the gym because we we were able to build that for her. Um, and that gave her the confidence to start raising prices. So she went from$80 a month, now she's at 220. And that's where a lot of her of her revenue growth has come, is from and this is a gymnastics uh obviously.
SPEAKER_00:So uh so uh tell me how you uh find a way to target the parents of these gymnasts. I mean, that's who you're looking for, right? Right. Uh so how did you do A-B testing? How did you do your micro testing? And and which platforms did you find worked?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, to this day, the best platform for targeting still is Facebook and or Meta, right? Facebook and Instagram. Um, and you can you can target down to the point that we can, and it's anything, it could be health homeowners, could be you know, homeowners in certain areas, it could be, you know, um, you know, moms of kids between these age groups and that age groups, and a lot of it is based on the the beauty of Facebook. Everybody thinks, oh, Facebook gets all of my data and shares it with everyone. They don't actually. What they do is they go, Chris likes to look at these websites. Chris interacts with these things on Facebook and Instagram.
SPEAKER_01:You're a new history, right, Chris?
SPEAKER_02:Yep. Chris now has and doesn't matter, you you can't you can't get away from if you interact with any of the platforms, there's no getting away from it. All those things, how did that get here?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. That's so funny. Don't don't look at her over here, over here, please. Eyes, eyes on me, eyes on me, please, people. Uh I only look at home improvement things and new tools.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, well, so so obviously, um, you know, you would get served a lot of home improvement tool ads and thank you and so forth. So, so Facebook looks at it and goes, Okay, Chris has these interests, we're gonna put them in this pot, but really you'll be put in several pots. And then I come along and I'm like, I want to I want to find people that are interested in drill sets. That's how I'm gonna target Chris, right? And it'll be drill sets, this area, you know, uh this zip code, um, you know, it might be other things for for kids, you know, if we're looking for young kids, we're gonna look for parents that have searched for or interacted with anything of that might, you know, that that might be diapers, it might be Johnson and Johnson, it might be, you know, all those kind of things that only a parent or somebody that is very, very involved with the day-to-day management of a ch of a young child would want. And that allows us to really target in on that. Um and and the funny thing is the journey with Chris from Gemini Gymnastics is kind of across all of the different niches and everything that we had. When we started, we built her a website, right? And the funny thing is we got her as a client through me sending a letter in the mail to her. So I sent a letter in the mail to 100 gyms in Illinois, because my wife's from Illinois, and she's a gymnastics coach, though. There you go. Um, I sent a letter, a handwritten letter to 100 gyms. She was the only one that replied, and we built her a website. Then it was like, oh, we've got we've got her website, and this, and think about it, for any kind of business, this is the journey of our company. We got them a website, it's really good. Let's figure out how to get more customers to that website. And then we got good at mark at the Facebook and you know, Google and all of that, and driving more traffic. Now that there's all these people coming to the website and we can see it, how do we get them to reach out to the gym? So then we started building out systems for the traffic to actually start communicating with the gym, right? Then we were like, okay, how do we because to begin with, it was like a very specific thing that we would ask, which was fill out this form, right? Then we figured out that while um parents and and and customers, they like to communicate in different ways, right? Chris, you might want to reach out via phone. I might want to text, you know, someone else might want to email, someone else might want to walk in, right? That's how they're more comfortable. Other people, a lot of parents, a lot of mums, especially if you're going after the female audience, might be much more comfortable messaging you on Facebook or Instagram because they don't have to give you any information. It's kind of somewhat shielded by meta.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and they're allowed to do their life while they're trying to talk with you at the same time. Because just like all of us, they multitask. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. So allowing your audience to reach to you the way they feel most comfortable rather than forcing them to reach out to you in a way that you're comfortable will allow you to get a lot more inquiries because you know, some people will never fill out a form because they don't want to give you any information, and you'll lose them as a possible customer. Then when we we did that and we figured that out, our clients had the problem of well, we've got all these channels to manage. We've got to we've got to be answering the phone, text messaging, messaging on Instagram, looking at our emails, all of this stuff. It's a little, it's quite a lot for a small business, especially if it's a solopreneur or whatever. It's a lot to try to manage. Um, so we developed what we have now, and you can see that that thing there um is Kai, which is the customer AI, and that whole system was we developed that to manage those incoming inquiries through text and email and you know, um messenger and all the different systems.
SPEAKER_00:So we I've been watching that thing above your head rolling around again on YouTube. If you go check it out, Small Business Fire, we're on YouTube too. When you check this out, Andy Seely's episode. If you want to go out there and take a look at it, he's got this Kai thing rolling across his screen up there. And I was like, I was gonna ask him after I'm like, how the hell did he do that? Because I want to do that too. I thought it was just a little thing hanging from a ceiling.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's a hang it is hanging from the ceiling.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, so it's not on the video? Nope. It's really it's on my wall. Holy crap. All right, what is Kai? Customer AI. I know that's what I want. Well, what is it? I know it's customer AI. What's it doing? So basically now we're getting the real Chris.
SPEAKER_02:Let's let's say you're a you're a home, let's say you're a home handyman, Chris.
SPEAKER_00:And you own a hand. Let's say let's just hypothetically say for a minute I might be a home handyman. All right.
SPEAKER_02:Let's just say so, and let's say you you engage with us and you say, okay, I want more inquiries, steady inquiries, because I I want to start being on the expensive end, not the cheaper end. The cheap end usually means is because you don't know where your next customer is coming from, and it's a race to the bottom because it's gonna be about quoting and and you just want any job you can so you're prepared to do whatever it takes to get that job, right? That's that's on the low end of where I want our customers to go away from. I want you to be on the selective end, on the end where you're the most expensive guy, and we want to build value and we want people to go, you know, I could go and spend money with Andy, he's gonna charge 50 bucks an hour to get this job done, and it might get done well, or I can do it with Chris, and he's gonna charge$200 an hour, but it's gonna be great work and it's gonna be done really, really well, right? I like you, Andy. I like you already. That's where we want.
SPEAKER_01:Don't you just tell Andy that you run a gym? I know that that happens to do handyman work. Right. That wants to charge me about dollars an hour. But it's okay.
SPEAKER_00:So uh talk to us about Kai. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So right. So when all those, you know, those customers start coming through and start reaching out to you. What Kai is we set it up and we connect it to all your system. So we connect it to your your text, your your phone number for the texts that are gonna come in. We connect it to Facebook, we connect it to Instagram, we connect it to your email, um, we put a uh chat widget on your website so anybody that goes to the website can actually communicate with you. It then communicates with our AI, and the AI will have a regular conversation with the client. And the client could even, we've actually had some clients of clients have very like emotional conversations with this AI, and this AI will actually have a proper full-on conversation, similar to you know, if you go on ChatGPT and have a conversation with ChatGPT, it feels very lifelike. Uh, it's a it's a conversational AI. And what it will do will talk to the client, find out what they want, what their issue is. Um, it will schedule an appointment. It will try always to schedule an appointment because that's what we are trying to do with our clients. They want appointments booked. Um, for you, it would probably be scheduling a quote or a visit to go around to see what needs to be done. Uh and it will schedule it in on on Google and it will do it conversationally. So it won't say, hey, click this link and put in your information. It will say, Hey Chris, uh, what is your can you can you spell your last name for me so I've got it? And you spell okay, thanks. What is your phone number? Okay, what's your email address? Great. Hey, I this is all verbal. This is all this is not this is on the phone or this is all text. I got you. Okay, it's there's a there's a verbal one coming along that we we see that that might be working, but right now verbal, like on a call, is not working so well. Mainly because technology is not it the problem with that, just to jump around a little bit, the problem with verbal right now, and I recommend everybody stay away from it probably for at least a year, is the the conduits between you and the system that's talking to you is not fast enough to be like me and you. I say something and you respond like that. The AI takes three, four seconds to do it, and it feels a bit uncanny valid, and it feels a bit weird.
SPEAKER_00:So Kai is something you guys have developed that you implement for your clients.
SPEAKER_02:Correct. So beautiful. So it's it will have a text conversation through text on all those other platforms. It will have a conversation, set up the time, it will say things like, Hey, you know, we got an opening on Tuesday at one o'clock or Wednesday at three. What works better for you? Great, blah, blah, blah. And you can actually train it to talk however way you want it to talk to your customers. And it will do and it will act like a receptionist taking in inquiries and getting things bought.
SPEAKER_01:Are you open about the fact that it's AI or are you is it good enough to where you can pretend like it's a real person?
SPEAKER_02:Um, we don't recommend that you pretend it's a real per person. Uh, we do have one. We had one client that called that wanted to change its name to Julie. Is a is a client in California changed its name to Julie, and it was another uh kids activity center, and it was talking to a grandma, and the grandma started sending photos of her grandkids to the AI, and the AI started responding saying how wonderful this is lovely, blah, blah, blah. And then the AI ultimately bought the grandma, grandma's grandkids into a into a trial clock trial class, and the grandma ended it saying, Hey, I'm really, really um excited to meet with you. It's been a lovely conversation, thank you very much. And the AI responded with, Hey, I'd love to meet with you, be one of the staff that will be, though, because I'm not actually real. I am an AI. Oh, that's hilarious. And the grandma was like, What? That's crazy. Um, hey, this has been a great experience. I'm looking forward to seeing what what else comes from this. So I actually think if somebody asks, is this an AI? I think it's my recommendation is to have the AI say yes. Uh, I say, hey, I'm a uh I'm a client AI, um, I'm here to help.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's uh great advice as well. Another great gold nugget is that if asked, uh, your AI has got to respond with yes, I am an AI. Yeah. I think most people will will deal and be okay with it, especially as it continues to evolve. Andy, I know we're kind of coming up against it. Um, how does everybody find you to find out more about what you can creatively disrupt in their own business and their own marketing plans?
SPEAKER_02:Probably the best way is to just reach up, just go to creatively disruptive.com. Um even if you're not a gymnastics gym owner, you'll see a lot of kids' activity center stuff on that that site. You could go to highlevelthinkers.com, which is much more kind of along your lines, Chris. That would be where our um our handyman and our home services companies temptate. I just got higher level thinking in that category.
SPEAKER_00:I knew it was a good idea.
SPEAKER_01:And he really fed the beast. God damn it.
SPEAKER_02:Andy, appreciate it. High level think, high level thinker, uh thinkers.com. Go go there. But the the main site is creatively disruptive, and uh go in there and just reach out to us through there. You could actually talk to our AI. Um, and it's probably gonna try to get you to do some advertising, get some advertising done with your uh your handyman gymnastics gym that you have, Chris. But right, um just reach out to us through creatively disruptive or high-level thinkers. Um and the other, if you if you're trying to start a e-com brand, and we work, we work, we're one of the few e-com agencies that will work with someone who's starting out because it's really hard yards with startups. But if you're a startup um e-com brand, you know, go to our other um other brand, which is Ashworth Strategy. So Ashworth Strategy.com. So that's probably the best way to go. If I could give you all sorts of other things, but that's that's the the the easiest way to go about it. Creatively disruptive, high level thinker, high level thinkers, and um ashworthstrategy.com.
SPEAKER_00:There it is. We'll put those all in the show notes that way. You guys can go check this thing out, maybe have a little chat with Kai, the AI guy. All right, let's go rapid fire because we're coming up against the end. We're gonna go rapid fire. Final four questions. You ready, Alan? I'm ready. All right, Andy, what's a book that you'd recommend to the adventure team for the small business safari?
SPEAKER_02:It's one of the books uh behind where is it, Unreasonable Hospitality. Have you heard of that?
SPEAKER_00:I have unreasonable hospitality, great book. Big fan of his restaurant trying to get him on the podcast. Uh but he's getting he's he's he's big. He's a big he's a big deal now.
SPEAKER_02:He's a big deal.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he is. He's got great stuff.
SPEAKER_02:You could do is go to go and but get a shake, go and get a shake and a and a burger from his joint.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I go there, or I can go get the hot dog as high-end place, or now they're vegan, but um, but yeah, no, great, great work on resources.
SPEAKER_01:No, no hot dogs are now.
SPEAKER_02:I'm I'm just gonna say that the reason why I really like that is it's that the it's the beginning of building true value and charging what you're worth. And you need to not be having a race to the bottom on what you're charging your clients. You need to be getting yourself in a situation where you're of high value and you charge what you're worth, right?
SPEAKER_00:100%. And I think the race to the bottom is another great phrase uh for a lot of us uh when you talk about, especially in my business, the net's just gonna be a low, it's a low net. This is not an easy net business. You've got to be watching it and you've got to watch the top line. And when somebody says you're too expensive, you didn't prove the value, like unreasonable hospitality will teach you how to how to do it. That's a great one. All right, next one. What is the favorite feature of your home? My backyard.
SPEAKER_02:Why? It's got a nice big huge pool in it, it's got a nice pagola, it's got an outdoor kitchen. I'm tingling.
SPEAKER_00:Don't let that voice fool you. He's in Phoenix, Arizona, everybody. So he's loving life down there. Love that. That's all that sound like an Arizona accent. That must be is that Southern Arizona?
SPEAKER_02:I think it's a southern accent.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, all right. We've talked about customer service and the way you're doing it, and it's all changing right now. But Alan I are kind of customer service freaks. What's a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're out and you're the customer?
SPEAKER_02:I hate I I'm putting it into words because I'm trying to find nice words to use. So I like the fact he hates it this much. Yeah, like I wanted to say something, I was like, I probably shouldn't say that. So basically, if you're not listening to me, if you're not listening to me as a customer, I'm gonna get angry with you. Right? If you're cutting me off, if you're not listening to what I'm interested in, what my interest is in doing business with you, just listen. Like as a as a business owner, listen to your customer. If you think they're full of it and you don't really want to hear it, just pretend you're listening, right? But listen, don't cut them off, especially if there's a problem, listen to them. Let them talk it out, let them get it off their chest, listen. As a customer, especially when I've got something wrong, if you're cutting me off and trying to solve my problem before I finish telling you what the problem is, I'm gonna get it annoyed.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, empathetic listening, I think, is a is a great trait. We talk about that in my business a lot, uh, especially when people call in and there's a problem. You gotta be an empathetic listener, and then eventually could be able to get to solving their problem and why they called. So that's a great one. I didn't cut him off, by the way. Even over here, you looked like he wanted to. And he's inherited. I heard you said it. No, I would Bob Robert Dumpkin.
SPEAKER_01:When's Andy gonna be not talking so I can talk? I jumped in, empathetic listening. All right, so do you know what empathetic means? Uh shut up.
SPEAKER_00:Let's go to the back to me, please. Please tell up on me, Alan. Please, for the love. All right, what's a DIY nightmare story? I do Andyman stuff, and I love the fact that I have absolutely almost chopped my fingers off.
SPEAKER_02:Actually, mostly shot them up with the nail gun, but that's you know, I if I'm honest with you, I haven't had many DIY um issues. Um, you know, I did uh dear uh do it yourself stuff. I I I tend to hire other people in because I want it done right and I'm not 100% sure I'm gonna do it right on my home. If I see I've I've my brain works that if that picture is like this, it's gonna drive me insane till it's straightened. I'm I'm a guy that will go into someone else's house and straighten a picture sometimes. If it's like oh, you're that guy. Yeah, so I'll just look at it, I'll just look at it and I'll be like, I can't straighten that thing, it'll be too much. I don't know the Talk to you so that's level.
SPEAKER_00:All right, Andy. Pet peeve, yes or no? Do you need to have the toilet paper coming over or under? Over. It's over.
SPEAKER_01:It's exactly always over. Who's dumb enough to have it under? Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02:And have you switched to the most restaurants that I go to have it under? Like drives me insane.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. See, we're all over. We are over it, everybody. And this has been a great episode. Andy Seely, CEO, Creatively Disruptive. Go check out that guy because he's been flapping at me the entire team.
SPEAKER_01:We answered such a big question today, though. That was how you pick the right marketing agency. Because they're all going to tell you the right things. But what I heard was you know, you call him because, hey, I need more leads. But he's he's gone back and he's like, what's your website look like? What's your branding looks like look like? And then once we get you the leads, how are you gonna process them? I mean, that's just a full service thing right there. I love it. Me too.
SPEAKER_00:You're right, guys. If you didn't learn something, that's on you because man, we got some great stuff out today. You know what? 50% of your branding and marketing is going to work, and 50% ain't. Which one? You don't know. That's why you're gonna call Andy and go get it figured out. Go make it a great week, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. Cheers, everybody.
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